[Pyro1588]

man, this rocks! a little complicated (esp. the movement) but it's nice to see a good space shooter with a full set of features.

[Risu2112]

Obtain the latest version of the demo here:

http://kenohki2112.h...s/SFteaseV5.zip

[Risu2112]

Lots done on the surface board.. Hotspots are now working correctly, I fixed several issues with the lander becoming vulnerable durring the landing process.

The maps are now wrap around, how ever some tweaking is still needed..

Still to be done,
Revision weather effects.
correct wraparound issues
Fix the resource generator to work with the new engine.
Re link the board for exiting


Did any one play the demo? I've gotten almost no feedback.. It wasn't THAT bad was it?

[GetDizzy]

Ken, I think people dont read this thread much anymore because it makes them anticipate a release too much. . Post the demo in a new thread in NGR and you'll get feedback.

[Risu2112]

Insidious, on Jun 27 2005, 08:06 PM, said:

Ken, I think people dont read this thread much anymore because it makes them anticipate a release too much. . Post the demo in a new thread in NGR and you'll get feedback.

http://www.digitalmz...?showtopic=9104

I did post it in NGR ;_;

[Zagooky]

I'm downloading it now. I'll tell you what I think then.

[Zagooky]

Pretty sweet. It was alittle complicated so I didn't play for very long. You should have a tutorial at the start of the game (Optional tutorial ) Where you slowly introduce the keys and how to do stuff.
Otherwise, very very good. very.

This post has been edited by Zagooky: 28 June 2005 - 08:14 AM

[Risu2112]

So many unforseen complications on the surface board.. Hotspots are now wraping around almost correctly, I've no intention of getting them to work any better than they are now, hopefully I can use the mini map code to generate the X.Y location of the lander, as I've just realized the old one is completely broken. Need to put minerals back on the planet surfaces now.. and then make the whole launch of planet animation... bleugh..

[Risu2112]

Just waiting on the mineral generator, and take off graphics at this time for the surface board, This will be a very large step for the game as it will allow me to actualy create large amounts of content and test them.

Releasing that demo has done wonders to the combat board, perhaps another demo might be realeased soon that explores most if not all aspects of the game (however none of the actual content only test content). I'm going to have to assemble a beta-test team soon enough.

[SpellWeavre]

I just downloaded and played the demo. Holy grap that's cool, the programming involved must have been intense! But it's so hard... I played a dozen times and could never defeat the enemy even once. What sort of tactics should I be using?

[Risu2112]

SpellWeavre, on Aug 11 2005, 07:07 AM, said:

I just downloaded and played the demo. Holy grap that's cool, the programming involved must have been intense! But it's so hard... I played a dozen times and could never defeat the enemy even once. What sort of tactics should I be using?

Charge your shields and all of your weapons before you start the fight.
Once the fight starts, try to stay in laser range and keep pounding him with the laser, The hard part is with all of your systems on you have to keep your speed low, (2-4) you need to anticipate where the enemy is going to move so you don't turn the wrong way.

[Risu2112]

For the first time since mzx 2.69, the surface board is now working correctly, This means I can now begin testing it in conjunction with the rest of the game, something I've been eager to do since the port initialy broke my board =D

At this time I do not think there will be an option to unload your lander in the ship and redeploy without launching off of the planet and re landing (and thus paying the fuel cost again). I initialy wanted this, however I don't think it will be a practical choice balance wise.

Remember, there is now only one surface board now which not only will generate ALL of the planet maps previously intended to be spread out over 150+ boards, but also generates maps of a MUCH higher quality.

I'm changing my focus now to the h-space board, since it works under the same method as the old surface boards, I have a large amount upgrades to apply to it. At this time I do not think an entire rewrite will be necissary. The scale of space is going to be greatly increased, as a general rule of thumb I'm going to aproximatly double the distance between stars primarily to increase fuel consumption and make that more of a limiting factor in exploration. More updates to come.

[Revvy]

I think KenOhki's having a good joke by stringing us all on for 3+ years.

[Dr Lancer-X]

Revvy, on Sep 14 2005, 05:11 PM, said:

I think KenOhki's having a good joke by stringing us all on for 3+ years.

;D

[Risu2112]

I am now creating a test universe, I'll start with space, system, orbit, surface, and starport. Assuming there are no complications (I don't anticipate any) I will add in random encounter with the new and improved combat engine from the demo. There are a few things I'm going to add to it to allow me to create content faster, primaraly regarding the graphics of the enemy ship. If that gets up easy enough I'll move on to the communications board, which if I recall correctly was in pretty much full working order minus graphics for the talking aliens.. Right now I have some place holders that are mostly stolen from SC2 or other games, honestly though I wouldn't be suprized if some of them make it into the release =p

Once that is taken care of, All I need are some cinematics, an intro, a STORY, and a big ass wad of content! Before that though the test universe is going to have to weather the most through beta testing I and probably some of you can provide.

For the first time in literaly years I actualy feel like this thing is comming together rather than falling apart ^^


EDIT: Oh yeah the starmap board, since most of the MZX limitations that were bothering it were removed I should have that working for the first time.. ever tonight ^^

This post has been edited by KenOhki2112: 15 September 2005 - 09:51 AM

[Risu2112]

Starmap gave me a fight but it's working now, it is of course subject to tweaking but right now it's pretty much totaly sweet.

The starmap contains the locations of all of the stars in hyper space, you can freely scroll around the map, if you center on a star you have visted, it shows the star type and planet types of that system. There have been a few linking issues with the test universe so far, nothing game breaking.. For some reason a few boards when you select the leave option it brings you back to the same board, selecting leave again corrects the issue. I have not run into any snags creating content so far <3

[Risu2112]

Huge progress lately, Test universe creation was slow due to many issues cropping up. Every thing is pretty much under control now. Few more planets and stars to fire up then on to the combat board which thanks to the bug reports I've gotten back from the demo should merge back into the game with very little difficulty.

[GetDizzy]

Dude, you should definitely use the spathi talking graphics from SC2 in your game. That would be so cool.

[Koji]

.... you mean he should remake a talking program in mzx and then implement it within his game?

No.

Talking programs are crap... it'd only be crappier in mzx, I once wanted to make one... it really isn't even worth the effort.

[Risu2112]

Koji, on Sep 17 2005, 04:55 PM, said:

.... you mean he should remake a talking program in mzx and then implement it within his game?

No.

Talking programs are crap... it'd only be crappier in mzx, I once wanted to make one... it really isn't even worth the effort.

er what? My vision of the communication screen is very similar to starcontrol 2's, large graphic of the alien with some animations for talking, blinking or what ever. The player will be presented a few options of things to say, which will produce a responce, and more options. I have already programed the board to automaticly format every thing said by the aliens and the player, I actualy DRAW the tree with custom floors and a robot reads the ground to determine what the next thing said will be, much like a train driving on a track, with each player responce representing multiple swich tracks.

I can litterly produce a convorsation tree with out opening a single robot. ^^

I'm not sure what you mean by a talking program.. And as for the spathi, they don't even have a talking animation, they just have that eye moving around. The biggest problem I'm having is that I'm a poor artist and can't draw a cool alien on the screen

[GetDizzy]

Koji, no, I mean the spathi talking graphic, as in, a graphic animation of the spathi from SC2 talking. As in...
EDIT: As in THIS except the animated version.
Nevermind koji, I'm completely frustrated with your complete lack of cognescence.

KenOhKi2112: And yeah, the spathi dont really animate when they talk.... but the creepy eye thing is cool and you should reproduce that at least.

This post has been edited by Insidious: 18 September 2005 - 07:06 PM

[Koji]

Hey insid, guess what? Chill the fuck out.

I missread your post, you COULD have just said "Nah not a talking program I said graphics."

You could have even been a little ass holeish and said like "No dude read the post again, I said GRAPHICS.."

But nah, you had to underline explode it, on top of all that insult me and just completely be a dick about it.. personally I'm fed up of your little pissy bitch fits. And that's all I have to say about that, have a nice day.

This post has been edited by Koji: 19 September 2005 - 03:34 AM

[Risu2112]

So as not to hard code every single damage display in the game I will be converting the damage display to copy from the board and the overlay (so that sectors that share a character can have their half of the char the apropriate color). Hopefully this goes smoothly, I will have to pull out some new enemy graphics to test it out, while I will still have to track coords for every sector of every ship, it's still far less work than refrencing and offseting said numbers in addition to tracking them. I also like the idea of exporting/importing the graphics rather than having them stored all over the board.

[Dr Lancer-X]

I personally understood what insidious meant originally, but really insid, you didn't need to attack him for it

[Risu2112]

That was like a month ago yo.

Not implented yet btw.

[Risu2112]

Problem: Hard coding enemy ship speeds in hyperspace.

Currently the game has two tables for ship stats which always need to by synced, when the ship is randomly spawned in hyperspace it determines what race or faction the ship belongs too, then picks a ship from that race's ship options, then sets the movement speed of the ship and sends the ship to pursue you. If it catches you it then generates all of the combat stats for the ship (200 counters or something per ship) this is done after the ship catches you and not when it is initially generated because more than one ship can be chasing you at a time.


Solution:

Determine faction, spawn the ship with a random intercept speed, determine ship type after an encounter is triggered.

Explanation: Hyperspace propulsion =! Conventional thrusters used in combat, a big fat slow ship may very well be quite fast in H-space because it's a different system (easy to buy just ignore the fact that on your ship it's the same). Furthermore, why should a ship always intercept at Max speed, maybe it doesn't care too much about you so it goes slow.

Effect on Code: I no longer will have to manually input the speed values for each ship for H-space, as such it will no longer matter if they are inconsistent.

Effect on balance: With the old system certain slow ships would be almost always avoided and only the fastest ones would ever meet the player. Why bother coding 50 enemies if only 5 of them ever get used?



Also: I've finished planing out the new damage display stuff so hopefully it will be far easier to add new ships.


EDIT: turns out the enemy spawn code was only temp code that is not refrencing the starmap at all to determine what types of ships to spawn.. gonna have to write that in now :<

This post has been edited by KenOhki2112: 13 October 2005 - 10:40 AM

[GetDizzy]

This should really have been called "StarControl 2 MZX". Its becoming less and less like StarFlight every day.

[Koji]

Starflight or not it'll be an awesome game once it's released...

[Risu2112]

Everything I listed above is finished.

Working on some starmap features, influence areas to be specific, I want to make them revealable by exploration.

I need to come up with something of a reputation system, not really sure how complex it will be at this time, probably something simple. The communications board is has not been re integrated into the game yet, I'll probably work on that right now.

The new damage display has been thoroughly tested and seems to work quite well, it will greatly speed up creating content for that board.

[Risu2112]

Com board is giving me all sorts of trouble. It works fine roboticly, but I'm concerned about order of linking, how the player procs a comunication, and mulit com boards or single com, I would much rather have just one board but it's going to require some reform, mostly to do with animations. Also I need to get all the displays on the board working which is a troublesome task.

The actual com engine is pretty sweet if I do say so my self, the code follows a logic map that is literly drawn onto the board, so I never have to alter any code to add content, very user friendly and flexible. Coming up with content for this board will still be quite difficult however as I'm not the best writer, and won't be satisfied untill I have a killer epic story. I need some alien graphics though I really really suck at making them :<

Oh yeah, and the revealing influence area map was largely sucessful yay!

This post has been edited by KenOhki2112: 20 October 2005 - 01:08 PM