Spoiler: The Paperboy | Starfighter General

Yo,

First background which you can skip like a cutscene, later I talk about the story line:

I’m at the point in the game where I have 2-8 weeks and the MMO multiplayer is wired in again. This process is not completely limited by my coding time behind the computer, quite often I’m waiting on loading bars or making dinner or at the gym and have time to think. During this thinking time, I need to make a tutorial eventually… So I’m writing a tutorial while I push tech forward.

I wish I could share the tutorial as it is high grade scifi, and trust me, people say I write better stuff than movies and tv as I joke and be entertaining on stream. This scifi is soooo good it’s better in ways than anything that came before, but I can’t spill that spoiler cuz it’s too good and tutorials get boring fast anyway. So I’ll share you a general quest I came up with while brain storming the tutorial, general quests come after the tutorial.

I take GREAT inspiration from Legacy of the Ancients for C64. Zones are gated by buying a gem from wandering merchants who won’t appear until you pass mini gates you don’t know you passed. So you always want money on you. Also you can get mail in one place and deliver it elsewhere. Since information packets cannot be warped, you can warp in harddrive information packets to other sectors. Cell phones were not a realized tech in this alt-80s future future, and cell phones don’t travel interplanetary. There’s also other mail like packages n stuff.

One of the funniest things in Legacy of the Ancients is getting someone’s mail that lives in a town a few miles down the road and not delivering it to him for years after adventuring across mountains, through swamps and in the depths of dungeons. “Oh hey, it says you’re invited to his kid’s birthday party.” “Thanks Mr. His Kid has kids now who also have kids. Well at least I’m alive to see this date and prove to Chester that I never got the invite he sent months in advance.” Well it didn’t have that dialogue, but we always made up funny mail stories that needed to be delivered asap while 32939 days passed since the mail got delivered. lololol.

Starfighter General will have these concepts… And they’ll give you feedback on your delivery of mail… But get this… If you TANK your feedback, totally to the ground, everyone mad at you for being late and destroying everything you get a quest offer from one of the Space Mafias… The Paperboy.

Spoiler Script:

Mafia,’Hello *name*, we’ve heard about you. We have a job for youze.’

You,’Yeah what, a hit man? I know you, you’re that wanted mobster’

Mafia,’No, we need you for a job bigger than a hit man, we need a paper boy. They think cutting down trees is bad for the universe, but it just encourages us to plant more. Then you got people watching that dang trash GNN. We can’t let people do this to themselves. Just ain’t right. So we want you to deliver them the news, badly style. They gotta know they livin’ wrong, they need to wake up and buy our paper.’

[choice][choice]

If accepted:

You,’For a mafia bad guy, you sure sound not all that bad. Hey, what do you want me to do?”

Mafia,”Anyone not payin us off. You just miss when you’re throwing packages. Ya know? Miss da welcome mat, throw it a right through their window. It don’t even gotta be their packages, mistakes happen. Maybe ride in their lawn with your vehicle, kick some lawn gnomes on accident you know they had it coming. Get creative and they know what’s coming their way. Maybe misfire your plasma blaster at their porch, maybe damage their vehicles. You know when a vehicle is damaged, it’s called an accident. No one’s gonna suspect a thing, you got a track record a mile long kid. You should know Mr. terrible feedback for a delivery boy/girl. You’re a completely legitamite wrecking machine.” Just keep being you and it will all pay out.

[choice][choice]

If accepted, player can choose to try and deliver right and redeem feedback and get the mafia angry, or live out every vandal’s dream of getting paid for being a detriment to society.

2) Networking that pushes the envelope where no networking has gone before. People laugh at this like it is impossible to innovate, but I marketed it to Midway in 2003, and they laughed too. Meanwhile it was working in house as a Tekken style(3d fighter) MMO with part of what today is known as rollback code. Midway's manager was mocking what is today's standard thinking rollback and such was impossible. Infinite action players same zone, limit only by video card and other hardware, networking ain't a limiting thing anymore.

4) First MMO designed for late game. Everyone enjoys mmos until power capped and then get bored.
There is no power cap to begin with(just a log log logarithmic progression), but there are many many many other end game design elements to make it so want to keep playing end game! The grind is there, but better and more fun things are around too! You can build up a super big fleet and it get destroyed to pieces and you start over again. You have a power floor level that you can't go below so you're always building permanent power, but temporary spikes of power surges and galactic dominance for fleeting moments give a rush. The larger the fleet, the larger the fleeting moment.

8) PVP bounty system. Everyone can PVP at all times. Stakes are low if your ship explodes. If you get attacked without declaring aggressive mode or an opponent to duel, the aggressor gets a bounty on their head in accordance with the damage dealt to you. If this bounty gets high enough, and they get caught, they will be put in jail. When they log on for the next few hours or days, their character can play only in jail, and visitors come see him and such. Enjoy roleplaying being a prison inmate, or just use a different crew member on your account. Developing many crew members is a thing for when you fly capital ships.

10) Omnipotent roleplay: Earn your right into a a movie anime by great roleplay! Live game masters in about 6-12 months after the content updates roll through. We bias people with Founder's RP tokens some and good manner role players who stay in character(we have chat logs and even game logs). This promotes good role play even when not live GMing. Who doesn't want to bring their friends to a movie and surprise em with their own character in it? So stay in character for a better game! https://www.starfightergeneral.com/live-role-play/

Punky-Pulpy action, Levels, stats, skills, talents, items, fleet amassing, and great apocalyptic space plots, trippy Lewis Carrol level Mad Hatter humor along the way. It's really weird to see how this synergizes from a game design standpoint. Players naturally want to level up and power up... That's the twink min maxer in all of us. So when humor, plots, intrigue, or NPCs getting your blood boiling to action vs them happens, you get stoked, rewarded, happy and tossed off your axis. Then when resolved, you look back and get serious about powering up. The core of a RPG gamer is always powering up, it is something we can't get rid of, but the core of a game designer is to get you out of a spreadsheet mindset temporarily... And then you appreciate both more. So tacky humor, along serious pulp action and serious leveling up game mechanics... It is like a symphony of fun.