Random Events/Story Line/Inventory/Leveling/Building a fleet convoy/Balance talk

Click to watch part 1:

Click to watch part 2:

Read patchnotes and play, also trippy: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/658480/view/3329873512160423220

Take that Science based Dragon MMO lady, now we’re adding a specific subdomain of physics and in space. PS, if science based dragon MMO lady is ever around, get ahold of me you can work with me or if I make bank, drop you a cash filled manila gorilla envelope. Don’t be ashamed of that fame, it’s awesome!

Play this video to see a dragon attack, it’s funny to me. Need to give it flame attacks:

So the way absurdity trail works is you have your normal space piracy game trading and taking out enemy plunder if you want(thanks Sid Mier and Elite). But every 30 seconds or more, a random event happens like in Star Trek. Someone hails you for trade or barter, you might find a broken down ship to investigate and loot, maybe an anomaly to research is found,others just attack you, you may find a worm hole to another star system, or maybe you push your quest line forward… It’s AWESOME! Coming in next few days… I was just dying laughing at the space dragons.

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:

1. Absurdity Trail aka Random Events aka Orgeon Trail style random events is in. This means as time passes and you travel, you get random events. Random events can be people trading, your quest advancing, enemies to fight, anomalies to study, allegiances to form, worm holes to distant galaxies. In short, all things in Starfighter General that are pretty cool will be happening as you lead your mining/crafting/fighting/piracy/admirable general/cartel running/whatever career. These random events happen more often if you cover more space. If you go to places in space you haven’t been before, it helps improve your loot tables. Camping one area of a galaxy to be hundreds of billions of star sectors large is boring anyway.
2. Between Random Events and a Randomly Generated universe… I merely have to keep filling in the tables and the game gets better and better and better. I don’t have to hand script 500 billion galaxies…

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.

1. Absurdity Trail: We are adding “random events” like wandering monsters in D&D or encountering trading Indians in Oregon Trail.
2. Universe Creation Asap.
3. Multiplayer

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:

1. Get some random events that are fun + mining.
2. Enable the multiplayer.

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:

1. Recover from this computer virus.
2. Make the loading screen a bit more like a fun flip book. [A test case for a required tech]
3. The Tutorial with Lucas/Spielberg feels hitting plot.
4. Multiplayer [I have a 2nd computer open now to do this]

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.’

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.

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!