Hello,
Yesterday I spent 12 hours getting automated randomized art working. I only have about 12 hours til I can patch Starfighter General and it start being “Super Nova Fun” levels. I would hope in the next few days barring mishap, we have the first officially super fun patch out, and then it will rapidly get insanely fun.
Here have some of the randomized art seen here for events in Starfighter General:
Yo,
Finally all techs have been secured to get to a place where Starfighter General will be fun, and get funner and funner rapidly never looking back. Let me explain:
I’m a fan of Star Trek. I see the first generation and the next generation first seasons being the best. The problem is that in TNG they wanted to cannonize and make sure all the aliens and such stuck with their lore and everything was known… This was the opposite of the original intention of “We don’t know what is out there.” And as they put the frame and limits on the universe, it got boring towards the end with Jordi and Data always calibrating computers to stop an anomaly. I saw the idea of limitations on what is possible as a weakness, and this is why in Starfighter General, anything is possible, from any imaginable realm or dimension, except the realm of the copyrighted, for that is a forbidden realm, unseen except through veiled sight of those who would get a private council with the alien people known as ‘the lawyers’ from which you may not speak of again. Heh. Long story short, random universe, random events = A BOAT LOAD OF FUN!
And I want this in asap.. I’d hesitate to say in one day it will be a fun patch, but we’re about that close. Once a few fun random events are on the table. I just keep adding em and making some rare in the far recesses of the galaxy. WOOO! We’re ready to supernova the fun. You’ll have so much fun in the pulpy action, strange/weird goings, funny humor that you will often forget about your experience/leveling/currency/equipment/skill/crafting/mutant power/Role Play Point climbs.
Okay, took 17 days to get back where I was. I’ve added a tech that speeds my compile, but had to pay 40$ for it. We’re looking really good for moving forward and to be fun ASAP!
#1 We going to add random events that happen during space travel and in Clash.
#2 We’re opening up the size of the zones to beyond solar system size.
#3 Multiplayer.
Those three techs are getting slapped in asap.
Be aware, I am not using Unity’s Limited in scope multiplayer, but research level tech never before seen in game. We’ll have lower latency and no player cap.
I’m just happy to have a stable build again.
Hello,
I haven’t got much done since 9/16/22, UNITY is super unstable under terrible executive decisions.
I tried to start updating my Unity from 2020.3.f5 to 2020.3.f10 & f11: 100 hours later doesn’t work.
I spent 30 hours on UNITY l2CPP, Unity didn’t let it work.
Now my project UNITY addressables are bugged again. I had them working after fighting for 400-600 hours over months before.
Now my project won’t even launch, doesn’t understand system files.
Just to make sure it wasn’t me, I reinstalled Windows!!! Anti virus says nothing, all my other programs work. Unity is a bugged mess right now, and they should be improving stability, but they keep making things unstable like the new DOTS/ECS update is so radical you have to tear your whole system down. I’m to the point where I’m like… “Hey I have enough tech and my game is fun now. I’m not going to update for a very long time until something breaks that requires an update. I lost an entire half a month of development time on something most other software companies could provide in under 20minutes…a normal patch/update just doesn’t work.”
I literally do not like any of the choices the CEO of UNITY is doing now… Seems like panic plays from struggling leadership. Unity is great software becoming increasingly unstable. I lost an ENTIRE YEAR of development due to Unity bugs… If the CEO is serious about his new commitment to stability, great, but I don’t have high hopes. When you get Unity stable, let me know. Until then I’m going to hide in an old version that does work.
Pray I can get my game compiled and working again guys, I just spent 15 days watching Unity crash dozens of times a day. If I get back to .5 and stay in old DOTS, we can have a MMO out in 2-6 weeks. I got basicall nothing done the last 15 days because I tried to just do standard patches which do not work.
Those are the talking points coming soon. It’s going to get REALLY run really soon.
EDIT 4:30pm est: I want to get already working multiplayer code tooled in asap, yet it won’t be fun without random events. I thought I might want to proc gen a universe to wander about and hit random events, but I could do this in the current area. So proc gen of the universe is not ahead of multiplayer/random events.
Now that we narrowed it to multiplayer/random events, I could shift focus between the two depending on my mood, or I could figure out what needs to be done first.
Multiplayer always needs to server a purpose. If its just two people doing their own thing ignoring each other, it ain’t multiplayer. Look at World of Wacraft in towns. Unless you trading, it’s boring. They can’t fight you, you can’t fight them, everyone minding their own business. Take away trading and it’s two people playing a single player open world game where art passes by. Multiplayer needs to server a purpose.
This said, I think I’ll have a first zone, beyond just the pyramid moba thing. I think I’ll have it so there is normal asteroids to mine… Then every 5 minutes a glowy asteroid cluster spawns with good drops. Players would truck to that, fight over it. It is not the ultimate in multiplayer, but it’d test out the combat and looting in a team environment which I could expand to better multiplayer experiences.
I think I talked myself into the dev being:
Today I already enabled the music/sound settings finally after all these years ^^
4:45 est Since I want to get Wandering Monsters/Random Events in space, it helps to get ideas from Dalle. I pipe in a word salad of my design documents and sometimes cool stuff comes out. AI literally doesn’t just give art, a picture tells a thousand words. These thousand words a picture tells then in turn gives me ideas. There’s lots of easy ways to word salad, but I find piping in certain specific random words of different classifications of speech: adjective/adverb/etc…. Works better… Even some weighted more than others. I’m almost fully done designing this. So I might as well implement the work parts going. I can think while I work.
Hello,
In this video, I explain how game development is like doing a classic cardboard puzzle. First you do the techs[outside frame] then you fill in the middle. Most of the ideas I have on this webpage will be realized as we fill in the middle.
Current next steps:
So I took it slow last week just establishing techs to upgrade. This week I hope to rapid dev and get a patch or three out. If you know about position/velocity/acceleration, you know that as the frame is nearing completion, position and velocity of the fun content is improving each patch. This is where it is heating up guys, it’s fun just to check on each patch now… And soon we’ll super fun, cuz this game has lots of techs never seen before in any game, and I’ve made games people said are more fun than anything they ever played… So a combination of new techs and unhindered creativity ( Cancel culture doesn’t affect the indie) means it can be better than even television and movies in the cut scenes. Play now, grind and be ready for for universe domination… My bro reminded me of a tech I had in an old MMO design where you can conquer zones and tax them… Ok, I’m chomping at the bit to dev this week. I hope you’re diving in and base managing/raiding.
This skeleton designs the hard hitting tutorial plot of Starfighter General. Do not watch it if you are certain to play and don’t like spoilers. I however, love reading spoilers, lol, and this will get you a hint of the genius of hard hitting, heart string pulling entertainment of Starfighter General: (1 hour 1 minute in, gets interesting)
Half of this video is talking about how long it takes to update UNITY that I work in my sci fi game, other half is really really really powerful stuff about how to write as a modern writer and what I believe is the skeleton of a script that hits your feels SOOOO hard that it’s better or as good than any sci fi I ever saw: https://youtu.be/DhJrV8nCrJ0 If anyone wants to talk about it, lets have discourse. I share the secrets of how to generate creativity and write powerful books/scripts/games because there is a formula and most people don’t know it. When you learn it(if you don’t know it yet), you’ll grow exponentially in talent.
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.
Hello,
I’ve had multiplayer in Starfighter General already, works quite well. I need to hook it up for DOTS/ECS parallel programming. There’s some more things to consider too, so I’m easing into next patch carefully. What is nice is that lots of the updating of Unity/changing techs and organizing things takes incredibly long times of loading bars and Unity crashes that take waits. So it’s good for me to do other things as I prep, and the Tutorial Mission looks like fun to design.
Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe -Abraham Lincoln
I have a few story missions to make right out of the gate if time allows. What’s funny is that I actually code two versions of my same code base at the same time. Like I said, one is updating, getting ready incrementally for latest Unity techs, compiling to standalone issues, and all sorts of tech headaches new unstable Unity provides. I legit think it will take 2-4 days of changing options, running and relaunching Unity over and over to get stable. If you don’t believe me, I’ll live stream it later [This will turn into a link if I get a round to it].
The tutorial has me stoked to design storyline, it has some sci fi tropes/plots never seen. I want to spoil it here, but I’d be spoiling some of the best sci fi ever, can’t do that. While one version of Unity plods forward updating, the other I can code tutorials or clash things. It’s how you’d develop in a team of two, not stomping code another is working on, except I’m one person, working like I’m two inefficient devs, lol. This actually makes sense to someone out there, and sounds dumb, but is extremely high level.
I am going to make the tutorial story line as impactful emotionally as I can like Spielberg or Seinfeld would…. Start with the human side, get a bunch of funny/emotional, gut wrenching, impactful stuff… Then chain it all together. Anyone can write down a bunch of funny things that happen in their life and boom, they have The Hangover 9, but chaining them together ain’t much more work… The hard part is remembering to write all the funny/human/awesome stuff down. And when I came up with these ideas, I ran home to get working on em… Then I tripped off a step and wrenched my back, hooray, don’t have to go anyplace anyway.
NOW THAT THE EXCITING STUFF IS OVER, Here’s my boring TODO list:
1) Plenty of Ebay to get a little money to get gas and food.
2) help a friend turn an Adobe flash file to a .exe for Steam
3) Update my Brother printer driver . Update my Brother scanner driver. The IOT got hacked apparently. I think this is why M$ was talking about printer errors a few weeks back in updates. I’m just guessing there.
4) WOOO, while typing this, my first standalone with the new update and a patch is ready. Boring patch, bug fix, tech in, nothing new, but its a step!
Read about it here: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/658480/view/5801222098375078925
If you just like AI made art, check out my youtubers:
Check out my portfolio links:
I’m world class at designing UI, but UNITY’s UI is weird. It should be ‘What You See Is What You Get’, but it is not always that way. I found a bug in UNITY’s grid system that lets you move it, but it resets later. DOTS/ECS while awesome, still is difficult to interface back and forth. The actual implementation of UI is difficult and my traditional UI helper is busy doing another project. I wanted this patch out a while ago, but there’s a whole host of tiny details that add up to a big mess. Maybe I’ll get a patch out today or tomorrow.
Most people are having difficulty with this planned inflation to destroy America on purpose garbage, but I was already at rock bottom due to family inheritance squabbles. So it’s really hard for me to get by, but I beat most health issues and I’m almost in a rhythm. It’s been 1.7 years and my computer desk is still yet to be set up because I have to keep moving it. Life’s literally extremely difficult, and I’m pushing out an unfunded MMORPG. The only way this happens if God is helping. God please help.
Hello,
The word “Hardcore gamer” has gotten demonized along the way to mean bad. But I think in part, this is because it is difficult to cater to a hardcore gamer. It takes more work to satisfy a hardcore gamer much like in music it is hard to appeal to Doors and Beatles fans. It is easier to churn out non-culture with yet another boy band targetting the next generation of young girls with no taste in music. Dr. Dre talked about it this phenomena and while I don’t agree with pushing gangster culture, I do agree about money vs artistic value.
If you make money repackaging cheesy garbage like Electronic Arts does these days, are you really helping the gaming culture? Sure, you’re making money, but does that mean you’re advancing the craft? After all EA is known for buying out and shutting down many gaming studios merely for the fact to destroy competition so they can get away with making money off less effort. I just wanted to draw this point before going into the meat and potatoes: Just because it makes a bunch of money, doesn’t mean you produced something of value.
So I see Master of Orion 2 as around the pinnacle of complexity in video games. Unless you got really really into it, and I mean more than 2,000 hours game play, MOO2 is a mystery in lots of respects of what stuff exactly does. You only could get glimpses of strategies and such (pre internet days).
Since peak complexity (mid-late 90s), the first movement was towards just cleaner UI. I agree, UI needs cleaned up. Even today, Google, Ebay, Windows and even Apple get UI messed up. They’re trending slowly in the right direction, but UI often gets hijacked/sabotaged by the executive/managers because they want to make it look like they did something. Long story short on UI, simplicity and casualfying UI has been a decent success story.
Where the problem lies is the gaming content. Instead of complex gaming mechanics, everything is dumbed down. Instead of Magic the Gathering with diverse rule sets, spells, counter spells, mana, that takes thought in play, we get Hearthstone where basically the game plays itself after you build a deck online. The player’s mind and engagement is almost useless, since you clone a deck online, and it plays itself. The casualifying of the game, makes the games ostensibly worse for game play. There are many many more examples, but don’t want to fortress of text you.
How did we get here? Well, in the mobile arena, and the WOW crowd, we’ve attracted basically non gamers to the culture. They call em casual gamers, but it stretches further than this… These are office workers, executives and people who might not have grown up their first 35 years of their life gaming, but they do have a job and lots of money. Contrast this with 13 year old kids at home on their console who doesn’t have an easily pryable open fat wallet. The target for where the $$ is at has moved from an actual gamer, to people playing things that seem game-like. This target actually stretches what ordinarily would be a pure hardcore gamer game into the land of casual just for money sake. This is part of it, but I get to laziness of game designers in the wake of designing for $$.
We opened this conversation about how the amount of money you make does not directly correlate with the artistic value for the gamer and the gaming community. So what happens is that many game designers get lazy and start trading their art and passion to create for mail it in designs for $$. These game designers realize,”Whether I make a good game or a bad game, as long as I follow some tropes, guidelines and formula, the $$ comes in from the casuals. Why should I cater to the hardcore? After all, hardcore demand a lot of extra work and effort.” No one wants to talk about this. No one wants to look in the mirror and go,”Hey I could be doing better, but who cares as long as checks are coming in. My revenue is the judge of my game design, lets not think about this issue.”
It’s tough to reflect and consider,”Could I be making better games if I tried harder to cater to hardcore?” It’s easier to just bash hardcore gamers with deep culture,”They’ll never be satisfied anyway. They’re rooted in nostalgia. They have too much skill to make something challenging for them and an average player.” The excuses for bashing the true fans of video games goes on and on. I see this in other art forms. Above we talked about how musicians who do boy bands trash Doors fans, Beatles fans and even Metalheads. Boy band regurgitation ain’t having Nsync compete against Offspring or Smashing Pumpkins. Disney has an entire PR wing dedicated to trashing their fans on Facebook,”Why don’t you just enjoy the drivel we slap together nowadays. It’s supposed to be made for kids, and you’re grown adults. Get over it.” In every artistic industry, there’s a group of profiteers, who’s job is to insult die hard fans in order to push re-wrapped garbage for nothing more than stupid cash.
TL:DR Not all casualification of games is good and the put downs on hardcore cultured video gamers should stop too, since these dis tracks often come from game designers not skilled enough to cater to hardcore gamers.
