[Risu2112]

Framework on this board is finally starting to come down, collectibles and field repairs had to be greatly modified before I could really get much done so lets talk about that for a moment.

I'm moving away from collecting a few random elements to a category based system (as you'll see much more similar to say starcon2) Generalizing what the player is collecting in this fashion really makes setting up the field repair system to make more sense.

New categories are currently (in ascending order of value)

Common materials
Organics (sell only)
Repair consumables (purchased or manufactured)
Corrosive metals
Hydrocarbons
Base metals
Noble gases
Precious metals
Radioactives
Exotics


Organics and repair consumables are the only two with special rules, shown in ()'s as a general statement you will not find raw "repair consumables" sitting around on a planet, however you should have little difficulty finding the materials required to manufacture them your self.
Organics can be sold off to starport for trivial amounts of money, the current plan is to have these be very valuable to certain aliens. These need to be collected directly and cannot be purchased from starport.

Field repair changes:

All systems can be repaired in the field, Armor, hull, engines, sensors, lasers, cannons, missile launchers, shield generators

All systems now require (usually small) amounts of repair consumables, which can either be purchased cheaply from starport, or manufactured on the fly from corrosive metals and noble gasses. (this is a one way conversion and is more expensive than stocking up at starport when considering the potential sell value of the required materials)

in addition to the repair consumable costs, repairs also require given amounts from categories, Armor and hull require base metals (hull points require considerably more than armor points) Engines require radioactives and small amounts of precious metals, Lasers,cannons and launchers require varying amounts of precious metals and hydrocarbons, Shield generators and sensors require varying amounts of precious metals and noble gasses


Cost and sell values for everything in the game are being increased by at least a factor of 10, as are the amount of a resource gathered while exploring planets (and the players cargohold), this will allow for a much higher degree of sensitivity in balancing repair costs.


In other news, I really want to implement an artifact system similar to what Starflight used, exactly how that's going to work is to be determined.

[Risu2112]

I have a skeleton surface board now linked up to the game, as soon as I managed to pull that together I started generating test universes. Good news, everything is working smoothly at this point!

There is still a lot of work to do on the surface board but a few of the hardest parts are already finished. Next up I will be standardizing the new minerals and adding the mineral spawning code to the surface board. From there I'll start getting the planet threats back into the game.

It's been a long long time (years) since the game has been in a condition well enough to support any sort of test universe so this is was a major development.

[KKairos]

Ohki, this is awesome.

[Risu2112]

Been planning for hours today on some minor starport interface changes, but mostly on the mineral tables for different planet types, Most of the planning is finished now, just need to make some tweaks. Once these values are finalized or at least pretty close, I'm off to work finishing the mineral generator and piecing together the brand new surface board.

[Risu2112]

Sorry about the delays here, some of the surface board is going back to the conceptual stage after some of the ideas turned out to not be so fun. The terrain generator is also being sent back for a few tweaks to busy up the landscapes a bit.

It's been frustrating working on this board so far and progress has been slow, actually finishing this though would be another huge milestone.

[Risu2112]

Here's a quick little mock up of the terrain board, some of you have already seen it. Pretty much this is just to give you an idea on the basic functionality of the board, and what the planets look like as you're driving around them. Don't be too disappointed, most of the features aren't on yet

Attached File(s)

•  surfacetest.zip (250.59K)
  Number of downloads: 81

[Risu2112]

*Mineral generator is now fully functional!
*Mineral persistence now works correctly.
*Mineral density at each elevation is determined by planet class.
*Types of minerals are determined by the planets subclass.
*Different mineral types are now identified on the surface by the color of their icon.
*mineral background colors were removed (in the event of a matching mineral color/background an alternate set of characters are used with an outline only instead of regular char)
*mineral scars are now persistent (marks on the ground where you've collected a mineral), if you leave the planet and return to it the marks from where you've gathered minerals will still show up, This is actually pretty useful since you can quickly determine if you've mined a particular area already.
*minerals now only spawn as single units, each icon on the ground is 1 unit of a given mineral type however, minerals are now spawned in small tight clusters of varying sizes.

Each of the planet subclasses (currently 16 in the game, a handful more will be added later on) has 3 primary mineral types, those 3 types will make up 80-90% of the minerals found on the surface of those planet types, the remaining 10-20% is spread out across the other mineral types. so you can find almost any mineral type on any planet if you look hard enough, it's just much wiser to mine on a planet that has what you need if you're actually looking for certain types.

This is a significant development for the surface board.

EDIT: Enjoy your new counter bloat from this, in the course of a game this system could potentially consume 7-10 million counters from this alone.

This post has been edited by Risu2112: 18 January 2009 - 01:15 PM

[T-Bone]

Risu2112, on Jan 18 2009, 08:11 AM, said:

EDIT: Enjoy your new counter bloat from this, in the course of a game this system could potentially consume 7-10 million counters from this alone.

oh my

[Risu2112]

The starport board has been largely untouched for years and years now, for some time I've just considered it good enough and didn't have an intention to go back and change it. However as it turns out it's such a freaking mess of hard coded junk I have no choice but to throw the damn thing out and start over. Some of this code predates mzx2.51, I'm shocked that it's survived as long as it has.

Plan is to not really change the functionality of the board much, just make the menus much cleaner, more responsive, as well as better organizing the interface for the player (my old habits of cramming globs of incoherent data at the player leaked onto this board).

The trade depot screen was just rewritten 2 weeks ago to comply with the new mineral types so at least that part is out of the way.

[Hoof]

Sweet. When can my children's children expect to play this?

[Koji]

LOL hoof :3 <3

[Risu2112]

Far too long without an update...

Shield systems have been completely rewritten and rebalanced. New system is as follows

All shields now have 100 shield points in the forward and rear shield arcs, and shield status is now displayed as a percentage.
Average recharge rate of shields is roughly doubled

Shields no longer have a liner recharge rate, Peak recharge rate is currently at around 30%, recharge rate gets slower as the shields start getting maxed out, the recharge rate also drops off very fast as the shields fall below 30%. The concept here is that as the shields start to fail, they fail hard, and getting them back up is troublesome. The player in many situations is better off lowering his shields if they get knocked out and letting them recharge back up to that 30% mark before switching them back on.

Shields now have a strength value. Shield strength functions as a divisor of your shield points, which determines how many shield points are lost per point of incoming damage. Simply put, 100 shield points come in all shields, if you have a shield strength of 20, each point of incoming damage will reduce your shield points by 5.
Higher strength allows for your shields to withstand more total hits before failing.

Shields now have a damage threshold value, Basically this is the maximum amount of damage your shields can absorb from a single incoming strike, measured in points of real damage. Example

your shields are at 100/100 your shield strength is 20 your damage threshold is 5, a laser hits you for 8 damage, your shields absorb 5 points of that hit, you lose 25 shield points, and 3 damage continues through your shields and strikes your ship's armor.
Damage threshold will likely always be directly proportional to shield strength, I might end up making it a derived statistic if I commit to that.

Most weapons of similar class to your shields will be able to overcome your damage threshold slightly, so even if you manage your shields perfectly you're likely to still take a little bit of damage.

This change has so far made shield management much more interesting in the game, where as before it was just another number that had to be reduced before you die.

Now that said, there have been MANY trickle down balance changes to go along with this, here is a brief summary:

#1 Neutron pellet guns (a shield piercing weapon) have had their damage increased by around 50% since now most weapons have the ability to pierce shields to some degree
#2 lasers and plasma cannons have had their damage reduced slightly, and their firing rate increased slightly (about the same DPS) to slightly reduce the shield piercing effect from these weapons, They still do get a good amount of damage through per hit. This change was mainly to give the player a way to eat through shielding faster to line up a missile attack
#3 Missiles are not subject to damage threshold, if a missile explodes on shielding the shields can absorb as much damage as they have points to absorb. Remember that missiles damage all sectors of a ship, so they are VASTLY more effective against a ships hull than against their shields.
#4 Missiles are having their firing rate doubled, ammo doubled, and damage halved, previously messing up a missile strike set you back too far, this will reduce the punishment for wasting a missile.
#5 Armor values on ships are getting roughly doubled to make it more valuable upgrade and more in line with the improved shielding.
#6 Hull values are being increased for the first time since the game started, (by around 50%) to keep it in line with the rest of the changes.


Other unrelated accomplishments:

Key D sensor toggle display now works for the first time, pressing D will toggle your target readout between visual damage display/armor/hull values to a listing of that ships sub systems and their relative class strength of each. Also the relative mass of the ship compared to yours (mass is a derived statistic mostly made from comparing each ships max hull values)

Sensor critical hits now work again for the first time in at least 4 years. They are much less intrusive now than they used to be. As you take damage to your sensors, critical systems information on your target starts to get blocked off, and finally if they are destroyed you can't even see the armor/hull bars of your target, only the visual representation.

Fuel works again for the first time in over a year! This was actually quite a bit of work, it was a complete rewrite. No more simulated floating point values!! hooray!!

[Risu2112]

Finished setting up a new test environment that showcases ~10-12 ships and all of the standard player upgrades. Full scale balance & game play testing will start once... someone starts testing it? I'll likely upload this version of the engine after getting some feedback, so I can implement any features that are needed.

All of the enemy weapon types are now working in the game, almost every sound effect has been replaced (might tweak the new ones a bit still but it's already a huge improvement, much less speaker popping and hissing). I'm hoping to show off the full versatility of the engine this time around rather than just the tiny glimpse we had last time.

[A-Guymzx]

I am willing to test it. That's what you asked for, right?

[Risu2112]

Huge thanks to WW for putting together a video of the new changes which can be seen here: http://www.youtube.c...h?v=v9yIaWJ38AU

If you have not already seen what this game looks like, go take a peak at that.

So far a few minor changes have happened as a result of the video:

#1 WW seems to have had a habit of firing at ships which were in their death animation, causing the animation to start over, I intentionally had it set up that way for some reason which I can't remember, so I've removed it. Currently you cannot begin firing at an enemy which is dying. If you have a missile already on the way, it will still travel to the target and pop on it (being wasted) but the animation will won't be interrupted. Conversely you can cycle targets and the missile will start tracking your new target (the video demonstrates this functionality already.
#2 There is now a message displayed in the message box for "TARGET SHIP DESTROYED" which is printed when the targets primary hull value is reduced to zero (the same time the target begins it's death animation and can no longer be shot )

#3 at around 2:30 ww changes the target display to the critical systems display, the ship he's fighting isn't equipped with shields however the engine printed it as shield class zero (in the wrong color). added an exception to not print that line if the targets max shield system hitpoints are zero (meaning it doesn't have a shield generator)

#4 Adding an exception to the players current capacitor level when you have zero energy remaining to print the line with c80 black on dark grey. Currently it jumps from red on red (low energy) back to green when you actually hit zero.

Also a quick note, ship facings only come into play when determining which shield ark is exposed, any damage penetrating the shield can hit any of the ships sectors

[A-Guymzx]

Oh my F****** God... This is much, much, MUCH better then i expected! How the hell could you even make this... with MZX? I'm making a special file for this right now.

[djtiesto]

Really digging the per-pixel movement in the video, even if everything was a bit hard to see (due to the size of the YT video). Like others said, I'm so completely impressed you've worked on this game for so long... spaceship simulation games may not be my cup of tea, but I will make sure to check this out when it finally is released, just because I know of the effort you put forth on this game.

Is this the longest MZX game still in development? (If you count the original Kikan, that game was 1998-2008 Though development time on the 'new' one was late 2005 to Jan 2008)

[Risu2112]

djtiesto, on Sep 23 2009, 03:41 PM, said:

Really digging the per-pixel movement in the video, even if everything was a bit hard to see (due to the size of the YT video). Like others said, I'm so completely impressed you've worked on this game for so long... spaceship simulation games may not be my cup of tea, but I will make sure to check this out when it finally is released, just because I know of the effort you put forth on this game.

Is this the longest MZX game still in development? (If you count the original Kikan, that game was 1998-2008 Though development time on the 'new' one was late 2005 to Jan 2008)

Yes it is, hands down. As best as we've been able to narrow down SFmzx was born in aprox. febuary of 1997. I believe it was first made public in early to mid 2000.
And yeah it does look a little smoother in actual run time without any video compression.

[Risu2112]

A-Guymzx, on Sep 23 2009, 02:44 PM, said:

Oh my F****** God... This is much, much, MUCH better then i expected! How the hell could you even make this... with MZX? I'm making a special file for this right now.

Thank you, the current incarnation is the result of many many rewrites, and a lot of help from the community in general. All those monologues on IRC have been very beneficial if you could believe it.

[weasel]

Risu2112, on Sep 23 2009, 03:51 PM, said:

Yes it is, hands down. As best as we've been able to narrow down SFmzx was born in aprox. febuary of 1997. I believe it was first made public in early to mid 2000.
And yeah it does look a little smoother in actual run time without any video compression.

So I got it wrong, then...I guessed 2003 in the video, which makes me look kind of bad. =P

[Risu2112]

Moderate progress on the starport rewrite, the menu driven idea seems to be paying off so far. It is quite a bit of work as you probably expect. Top priority is getting the manifest, shipyard and tech lab fully functional, then linking the board up. I'll figure out the operations section later.

After that's finished I'll have to adapt some of the work to handle your ships mobile manufacturing and repair abilities.

Oh, that's right, the current plan is to allow the players ship to handle most of the tasks starport does, just at significantly reduced efficiency. Including Manufacturing fuel,ammo,missiles,repair materials, and possibly landers (still on the fence about this one though).

[Risu2112]

Manifest/storage is now set up and is minimally functional, Shipyard is also up and minimally functional. Next up tech lab... this one's going to be a lot of work, though shipyard was quite a bit more trouble than I thought it would be.

Lots of polish to do on these screens still...

[Risu2112]

Still fumbling around on the menus, have to make new icons for all the levels of each system again to fit the new displays. Tech lab layout is a little tricky since I'm having it handle all manufacturing and researching and still want it to display a ton of statistics... We'll see how well that works out I guess

[CJA]

make sure you back it up

[Risu2112]

Bleh, no way to make them all fit on the same menu, going to have to split ship research/manufacture and general manufacture/lander stuff. And I'm still at a bit of an impasse regarding how the player will upgrade his ship under the new system, but it will probably be something to the effect of:
Step 1: manufacture class 1 for small amounts of minerals
Step 2: research the next class, (requires a few uncommon/rare token items)
Step 3: manufacture next class, (takes globs of standard materials)
repeat.

Each class requires the previous class as a prerequisite, and each class is considerably more expensive than the previous one. This will force the player to actually head out and explore deeper into space rather than just hang around the nearest few star systems strip mining every planet till his ship is maxed out. Which happens to be how most people that played SF1/2 & SC2 went through the game.

[Risu2112]

Had to change up the plan from the last post, so disregard it. Here's a screenshot of what the menu driven starport might end up looking like. It's lacking a lot of polish at this point though...

Working on this stuff is terribly boring however essential. :\

[A-Guymzx]

Wow... that, already, looks realy nice! But still it needs some polish here and there. Try to make something good of it!

[Padz]

I remember a time, years ago when I still had lots of time to mzx, wishing to myself I was older so I could finally play this game... I'm still having the same thoughts!

[Koji]

Well you got 4 more years.

[Risu2112]

This starport revision is piss. I'm throwing it out and making a better one. I might just go ahead and fix the naming conventions on all the player ships stats, there's just so much pointless overhead with how they are now when I could just stick them in a pseudo-array and be done with it.