Interesting Decisions

I spent some time recently in Illyraid, a web based MMORTS.  I think I racked up 3 or 4 weeks of playtime.  It's a decent game with a lot of similarities to Eve Online.  I ultimately stopped logging in though.  The game just ended up not being engaging enough to keep me hooked.

I think Illyraid lacked interesting decisions to make.  As a new player, you're expected to spend your time increasing your research production and performing other building improvements.  Eventually, you are able to create another city, but that takes some time.

A sandbox game, like Illyriad, should provide interesting decisions to players as soon as possible.  I don't think I should have to put weeks into the game before it gets interesting.  It probably explains the new player attrition web games often suffer from.  Of course, if it was an easy thing to do, they would all be doing it.

It got me thinking about my development test bed, Stellar Fortune, and whether or not my plans had interesting decisions to make early in their life.  Trading is one of the early game activities, which in itself does not provide anything too interesting.  However,  an event system which presents players with choices on how to proceed might spice things up a bit.

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Screenie

As I mentioned yesterday, I am working on my Stellar Fortune project is some of my spare time.  It's a space based trading game for browsers which uses both Unity and HTML.  Unity is used to show off ship and planet models while HTML is used to display information and do commands.

You can pan around the ship and zoom in and out.  Cool ships would be a core part of the game, so I figured there should be a neat way to see them, even if you don't control them directly.  In this case, you would give it to an Agent, who will use it to carry out your orders.

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Crowd Funding as a Game Mechanic

Some of you may read my posts about Stellar Fortune before.  For those that haven't, it is basically my ever evolving game project where I try new ideas.  I've been working on it a bit over the past few weeks.  In its simplest form it is a web-based space trading game.

I'm not super interested in making a violent game at this point, so I've been focused on making it more economic.  There are plenty of games where you just kill stuff, so I wanted to do something a little different.  That's not to say there won't be combat, it would just be abstracted.

Anyway, back to the subject.  Kickstarter and other similar sites have really taken the gaming world by storm.  So I thought it might work out as an actual part of my game.

In Stellar Fortune, the galaxy is a blank slate, except for the beginning worlds.  It would be up to the players to build the infrastructure to exploit the rest of the galaxy.  These are pretty big endeavors, so I want players to cooperate (and compete) to get the job done.

That's where Crowd Funding comes in, or in this case, Public Projects.  They are issued by the 'Game Master' (me).Here's an example...

Project: Mining Operations.  A search of the CoreDB revealed plans for an automated mineral extractor.  This would be a major improvement over our current surface collection methods.  In order produce the first prototype, we need resources.

Iron: 5,000 units
Copper: 100 units

Unlocks: Small Mineral Extractor Schematic

There would be market Buy Orders setup for the Iron and Copper, which when filled will complete the Project.  The new schematic would be available for everyone to buy and free to those who contributed.   There could be different levels of contribution and rewards too.

Other examples would be to construct a Jump Gate, or Space Port although I have not really figured out how to properly reward players for those.

New projects would become available, introducing new aspects to the game.  The players, game and game world would all grow together.

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Anatomy of a Trade

While most of my time has been spent playing games lately, work has been continuing on Stellar Fortune.  When we last left it, I was revamping it to run using a command line interface for development efficiency.  So far, it has worked out well.  Let's take a look!

The economy, and trading, are the foundation of the game.  So my first task was to get that setup.

I'm using a basic buy and sell order system which you've seen in games like Eve Online.  As we can see, There is money to be made by taking Food from Prime to Alto.

Lets buy some of the Food.  It acquired some inventory space for us on Prime to hold our newly purchased Food.

Now that we have some stuff to sell, how do we get it to Alto?  Originally,  I had the player transporting it via ship.  That didn't mesh well with the executive role I wanted the player to take.  I don't want to heap mundane tasks on the player in this day and age.  That is where Agents come in.

I'll go more into Agents in another post, but here are two for hire.  They both are able to transport cargo, but lets take a closer look at them.

Agents can be thought of as party members, and what they can do for you depends on what they know and what they have.  This guy can fly a ship and has cargo space.  He should do just fine.

Ok, we hired him for a day.  This is just a contractor, players can actually put Agents on their payroll too (and contract them out to other players).  We also gave the agent a Transport order, which will take a few minutes.  He is actually travelling through the game world, so 'events' can happen.  Hopefully your agent is prepared.

And finally, now that the cargo is at its destination, we sell it.

The interface is pretty rough, but it is actually all JSON based so replacing it with something modern will not be too difficult.  The terminal look brings back a lot of good memories for me though :)

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Prototyping

I have not talked about my side project, Stellar Fortune, lately.  It is still alive and kicking, albeit it in a little different form.  The last time I posted about it, I had converted it to be entirely web-based discarding those pesky graphics. Now I have gone a bit further.

Since this is all still firm in the prototyping stage, I needed a more efficient way to develop it.  It turns out most of my time was being spent on interface development rather than shaking out the flaws with my game design.  As this is a hobby and my time is limited, that just wasn't going to work out in the long run.  So now I have a new plan.

1)  Offline, command line interface
2)  Online, database, command line interface
3)  Real interface, live

By using a command line interface, I can really concentrate on the game itself.  So far it has been going well, and progress has been made. I've been taking a lot of my web-based code and stripping it down to just the essentials.  Here is a peek at the agent detail information:

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--> agent info 3

Name: Xues Juterty
Status: Hired
------------------------
Skills

  Basic Starship Piloting

--------------------
Assets

  T1 Light Transport

---------------------
Cargo Capacity: 10 Tons (8 free)

Food            2

-------------------------------------------

If I ever get to Stage 3, and the project is worthwhile, I'll probably get a professional to do the interface.  This game would have a ton of data to be displayed, and I'd like it done right.  In the meantime though, I'll be plugging away at making sure the core game is fun.

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Who needs a ship?

Stellar Fortune is an always evolving project of mine.  Will it ever actually see the light of day as a real game?  I hope so.  Until then, I use it as a platform to try new ideas and technology.  This week saw important changes for the project, which I'm pretty excited about.

Kendo UI.  Much of the work that has gone into the web version of SF is Javascript.  Using JQuery worked pretty well, but it soon became clear that it was just getting to be too big and complex.   I took a look at some frameworks and settled on Kendo UI.  It wraps up JQuery into a lot of nice controls, including a DataSource model.

Here is what Stellar Fortune looks like now:

Agents.  Since I don't want SF to be about combat (there will be some), it occurred to me, why does a player need a ship?  Customizing a freighter is only so much fun.  Flying stuff from point A to Point B is also not very exciting, even though the decision making process can be.

As a result, I made Agents to do all of the actual work and leave the decision making to the players.  In the trade example, a player would choose an Agent from a list, and he/she would move the goods for them.  Then the player would sell the goods.

Agents can also be hired permanently, if the player owns a company.  They can be trained for new skills ( pirating, factory management and so on) and given ships.  Most importantly, they can be hired out.  So beyond some starting Agents, I hope everything is done with player companies.

Now on to my current problem.  Space is hazardous, so Agents can be told to avoid sectors.  This will cause them to take a different route.  A different route means a longer trip, more fuel spent and the destination may be out of range.

The hazard could pop up after the Agent is en route, so what happens then?  If they cannot make it to the destination, does the whole job just get cancelled?  That would kinda suck for the player.  Recalculating paths is also not very cheap resource wise.

I'm sure there is a good compromise somewhere.  Range limits could add a lot of depth to the game.  The map is pretty empty, so it will be up to players to build the infrastructure.

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New Map

Since I've been in a productive mood lately, I decided to give an important piece of Stellar Fortune an overhaul.  The map I currently use in the game is really just a placeholder and not very functional.  To really be useful, the game map needs to be more flexible and more interactive.

I settled on using OpenLayers ( Open Source Google Maps ) which allows for a much more interesting map.  With it, players can now zoom in and out, move the map around and interact with the map itself and markers.

You can check it out here:  http://alpha.stellarfortune.com/maptest

It is not hooked up to the server, so you don't need to login to play around with it.  I think it is pretty neat and offers a ton of potential over a static image map.  For example, I could easily use this for planetary maps.  I can also highlight individual sectors for things like territorial control and route visualization.

What do you think?  Did it work for you?  If not, please let me know which browser you were using.  Thanks!

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Brainstorming

As I mentioned earlier this week, I am in one of those productive kind of moods.  So far, it has been mostly directed at my on and off again project, Stellar Fortune.  I still like it as a web game, rather than a Unity 3D game.  Basically,  I've been thinking about how to make a compelling game that does not involve combat.

Seems like every game I play has combat as an integral part.  I'd like Stellar Fortune to be mainly an economic game, but is that enough to make it interesting?  It really comes down to giving players enough to do.  Here's what I have...

Buy low, sell high.  This is the base level of the game, where new and mid-level players will earn money.  Not very exciting though, mostly about the research.

Companies.  Once a player has enough money, they can start a company.  this would be an official (and name approved) entity with it's own wallet and functions.

Raw Materials.  Companies can open facilities which generate goods like minerals or agricultural products.

Manufacturing.  Companies can also open factories to make more complex goods.

The next import aspect of the game is Factions.  out in space there will be a number of inhabited (and uninhabited) planets.  The ones with populations are controlled by a faction.  If your company wants to build a facility there, it must get in good with the Faction.

This would make up a big part of Corporate wars, as companies jockey for influence using legitimate (and not so legitimate means).  When it comes down to gameplay though, I'm not sure how fun it would be.  I see Company A spending money to dig up dirt on an official in order to blackmail them.

It'd be a click, wait a bit then another click or two.  I'm not sure it would actually be fun or provide any interesting decisions.  I suppose if the system was deep enough, it might.

Stock Market.  I'd like to do a lot of stat tracking when it comes to companies.  That should allow for some intelligent decisions to be made about what to buy, instead of just a guy on the forums.

Territorial Control.  Taking control of a planet (and space) would be reserved for the larger companies.  Here players would be responsible for planetary management and who knows what else.

These are just some thoughts I wanted to get down.  Still not sold on it being a concept worth making, especially in this day and age.

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Mining Design

The new version of Stellar Fortune is moving along nicely.  Players can now buy from one dock and sell at another.  There is also now a way to view prices without being docked, which certainly helps when you want to trade.  Over the past few days I have been working on a new feature for the game, Mining.

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Update and Test

Last week, I wrote about the new incarnation of Stellar Fortune.  Since then I have had some time off and advanced it quite a bit.  It is slowly approaching the point that it could be considered a game.  Most importantly, it is now a multiplayer experience.  Read on for the details and testing info.

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The Next Generation

Last week, I mentioned that it was time to start over with Stellar Fortune.  I just wasn't very happy with the direction of the game.  Since then, I have made good progress on the new version.  It is actually very different from the original, but I think it has potential.  Continue on for a look at the new Stellar Fortune and testing details.

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Time to blow it up

You might recall one of my side projects, Stellar Fortune.  If not, it's a small game I had been making in which the player took on the role of a space trader.  I have not posted about it much lately, mainly because there has been quite a bit to talk about with Warhammer Online.  The project lives, but is in for a big change.

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Gaming Update

Despite my lack of gaming posts lately, I've actually been pretty busy playing.  I figured Friday was a good day to cover that.  Surprisingly, most of my game playing has been taking place on my X-Box 360 rather than my computer.  It is mainly due to the backlog of games I have for it.

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New Ships and the Haulers Union

This week in Stellar Fortune I accomplished two important things.  The first was adding the ability to purchase new ships.  The second was the introduction  of the Haulers Union faction.  Read on for more details and screenshots.

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How to make hauling fun

Let's face it, moving cargo from Point A to Point B isn't the most exciting gameplay.  In Stellar Fortune's first Alpha release, that is all there really was to do.  Hauling cargo is only meant to be a short term activity until you advance beyond the Merchant rank.  That doesn't mean it shouldn't be fun.

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Ownership and Companies

It was quite a successful weekend as far as Stellar Fortune goes.  I implemented ship buying, which required me to rethink a bunch of code.  More on that later this week.  The task currently on my mind is, who owns a Factory?

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Stellar Fortune Alpha Release

For the past couple of months I have been working on developing a game as a side project.  It has been a lot of fun and a great learning experience.  Since my end goal is to actually complete a game, I set myself a deadline to get out something playable by the end of the month.  With a day to spare, Stellar Fortune Alpha version .1 is ready for release.

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It's a big universe

This week I spent most of my time tightening up the Captain experience in Stellar Fortune.  This involved a lot of tweaking of Traders so that there is a good choice of jobs available to the player.  I also whipped up a simple starting screen for next week's public test.  I added the concept of Star Systems to the game, read on for more details.

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Expanding the economy

Last week, I covered Stellar Fortune's job system.  It is basically responsible for moving goods from point A to point B using the player and NPC's.  This week I focused my development efforts on the overall economy.  Read on for more details about Stellar Fortune's economy.

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A job is a job

When you are beginning your career in Stellar Fortune, you start out at the bottom hauling cargo.  It may not be the most exciting profession, but it is vital to the game's economy and a good place to learn the ropes.  In this post, I'll discuss the details of hauling cargo and some of the decisions still to be made.

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