Hello,

Today, I hit a milestone of coding, one that I’ve been trying to make a MMO before they were known as MMO or even existed: 1992. I’ve been coding MMOs for more hours than anyone alive likely even though I have not released one I had working publicly. So I’m releasing the foundation code, which is the base of which a strongly architected MMO will be built upon.

Most game developers are fly by night slap dash coders who look for effect and cash in. As they try and update, they realize their code was not ready for it and they have trouble patching. They build akin to a house of cards on top of a stack of jello. I’ve been coding since I was 3, and I have been through that, and now I’m a grand masterful renaissance style software engineer and designer. Many who know me know me as the greatest of skill in playing video games #1 in a lot of video games I played world even prestigious ones. But not a lot of people know how much this translates into the insight of the core of making video games and what they are about… So I have a foundation… The foundation is humble, and so is my creator, but he’s bestowed upon me some really outrageous creativity and software engineering skills. I’m bragging on my creator in hopes he helps me create this new universe.

That said… Your character progression will be saved. The dimensional alignment (change until the Prime Dimension is focused and stable) will have you go through strange realms. As you collect items and level up your character(s), your progression stays into live version. There is no reverting in this beta unless serious database corruptions happen.

This makes things exciting! It’s like the old RPG that you could carry your character into the next… So you spend weeks grinding just so you’re stronger for the next patch/update/world. We have this going here.

I’m going to give it to you straight: LOTS of features are stripped out. Your fun might be just you logging in, checking out the new world, collecting some gear and waiting for the next patch. And this should be fun since the space zones will be wild to look at, at least. I want to be pushing patches every day or about that… This is a target I know I’ll stumble from time to time as life hits me, but this is the plan.

Expect the first world tomorrow. I could launch today, but I want to make some sort of zone that is pretty neet at least. All the working techs for the game are in as of this hour… I put about 5000-7000 hours into this game so far depending on metrics… And it is all investment for the long haul, a strong foundation, and you can build on it for a long time. I want this to be an MMO you play casually or hardcore for a lifetime, and for it to grow into the original vision and beyond.

Take care, and I hope to have a patch out tomorrow, assuming life doesn’t hit. I could bust tail and get one out tonight, but I want to take it easy for a bit. Thanks for following along this long, shooting for the moon is fun, for even if you miss and get sent out to the stars, you’re going really fast and its a rush!

,Jim

So, there are all sorts of cool particle effects, whales and bistles in Starfighter General. Bells and whistles…

So the FPS is monitored and if it drops below like 50 FPS, unnecessary stuff like excessive particle effects, animations slowed down, and all sorts of lower caliber stuff doesn’t get processed as often.

I wanna hit the gym, see who’s there, come home and launch the most important, but plain patch: Foundation.

Hello,

I’m launching a humble foundational update soon.

This patch is HUUUGE for me, but humble for you.

It will just be a curiosity, log in, do some stuff, but not much depth.

Behind the scenes tho, we can send patches out daily or every so many days, updating it a little at a time.

This is HUGE for me, but just a teeny curiosity for you.

Your character progression is permanent outside of roll backs.

So while the game and universe changes radically each patch, you bring your same character in.

This is an exciting never before done concept. Reminds me of Old Quest For Glory 1-3 and retaining your character.

It promotes wanting to upgrade your character for what comes next. So it makes some of the grind parts more fun.

Boy Scout Motto: Be Prepared

Hello,

I wanted an inventory that could change a lot. If your ship takes a bad shock, your ship might live, but your eggs might get smashed. If your ship gets torched with a flame thrower, explosions might trigger in your cargo bay if you’re hauling flammable things. As the temperature rises, the volume of your cargo changes if it goes to liquid or gas form. If you haul radiated cargo, how many rads. Heck if you want to pawn off stolen goods and call em by something else even to other players… I had to really sit down and figure this out.

Turns out I use actual science. I’m getting the molecular masses of elements. I’m checking out melting points, calculating volume based on mass and density. It’s crazy. I even got to ideal gas laws and such.

Inventory items have a mass(different if particulate matter such as salt vs a full item like a bicycle), temperature in Kelvin, an inscription anyone can add to if they hold the item, the name you’re calling it if you’re pawning it off as stolen goods, durability(wear and tear), quality(craftmanship), rads of radiation. On top of that there is dictionary look ups on items.

This inventory is just complex enough to be kinda fun and different. The core of any sci fi is some science. I could publish in just 2-3 hours the foundation by which we update til quality MMO, but I’m tired. Good Night.

Yo,

Last night my car didn’t start, and I have no water at my place, so I kinda dehydrated through the night. The number of basic challenges to just survive life I experience would break your Bull-S*** meter just in two days… And it’s been happening for a year and a half. Still, I got character creation in yesterday. Mom is picking me up to get water today, but I’ll spend most the day mowing the lawn for her. I have to mow her place and my place. I have so much dumb stuff I have to do in order to just get some time coding. This is how it is when you don’t get a kick starter, no funding, and multiple catastrophes happen in a row in your life… Yet you do not give up, you fight on.

Today as I mow, I’m going to design the structure of proceedurally generated zones. It actually shouldn’t be tough. I might even bang out the first Foundation beta patch today of SFG. Since I have designed the patch/update journey to focus on your character staying the same, but the universe in flux, this is great! I can just massively patch like once a day if I can once this foundation is in.

That said, the Foundation beta will be probably unimpressive, just mining some iron from asteroids, and selling em, or bringing em back to base. I think the permanent progression will be that if you bring back goods to your dimensional gateway, you can permanently keep them in your base. The temporary progression will be you building a really HUGE fleet that could be destroyed. I’ll have no PVP on the horizon rim of the Prime Dimension, but not many rewards, PVE is aimed to be skewed towards carebare “I don’t want to be attacked” PVP. You have to declare attacking each other, except in contested sectors…. In fact harassing PVPers might even go to jail. Okay, waxing too much where I want to go.

To rehash:

1. Life’s fricken brutal in such a way I’ve never heard anyone I know go through this, not even in the Bible, not even in history. People have gone through more torturous things, people have had worse health conditions… But the number of quite trivial things that become major issues on a daily basis, nah, never heard anyone go through this… And the number of catastrophes to get me in this position remind me of the Book of Job.
2. Character Creation in.
3. Gonna make a super minimal zone mining iron by shooting asteroids.
4. Then I’ll plan to try and update several times a week til game gets funner and funner my Fun Soul Brothers and Soul Sistas.

This is a stripdown launch, lets not get excited:

1) Make a character
2) Make a zone
3) Make items
4) Stuff to do
5) launch

6) UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE every day!

As I strip features to get the MMO out asap, I ran into a problem I recently solved:

The problem is this: How do I allow you guys as players to have permanence through this beta phase that rolls into the live game? I don’t like betas that take everything away from you and start over, we can do better.

The solution to allowing you permanence is this:

1) You keep everything in your character and items just like the normal game even out of beta.

2) The universe around you may change at any moment as a dimensional fluxing universe would, but your character and items stay the same.

3) The only exception is there is an exploitative or bug induced data corruption or near infinite resource error. Then we roll you back until this is fixed.

By having these three rules, we allow you to have confidence to retain your character and progression, yet I do not have analysis-paralysis in design of the game that levels and zones stay permanent. And it works with the lore since the dimensional alignment is causing cosmic forces to shift,

I have a friend helping me with UI as we close in on a very stripped down launch by which will be the foundation on which we can update our way to get in all the techs we describe here: https://www.starfightergeneral.com/my-books-2/

Our goal is to bring you a stripped down launch asap so you can start getting some MMO progression. This philosophy affords me to essentially roll out in stages, changing the universe willy nilly if I have to so I am doing more than planning up front… Your character’s progress is of our utmost concern tho, as evidenced by we want you to keep your beta progress to live release!

Read more announcements: https://steamcommunity.com/app/658480

Different aliens, hybrids, robots, cyborg, cyborg aliens, cyborg alien hybrids, robot cyborg robots and even human factions control different star systems. Yet most of them let the Amish farm their agriculturally rich planets. Sure even whatever year this is, Amish get made fun of still. And no one knows how they got to different planets since they shun electricity and such… So its another mystery of the Prime Dimension of Starfighter General.

So, there’s a game you play if your cell phone is lost, and you have bluetooth headsets… If you music is off, you are far away, but when the music plays, you’re in range. In Starfighter General, if you have the proper skills, you can track down things of interest, things you may have inscribed, or trackers you placed on a ship. Starfighter General is the future imagined by the 80s, so a little less tech like cell phones ain’t there, besides it is space… So tracking stuff has a local component… Also there may or may not be unique items there is only one of that when someone logs off, it stays in play… So seeking them is cool.

FREE DOWNLOAD: https://www.starfightergeneral.com/2022/08/my-coveted-rano-particulo-publically-available/

I’ll be supply free particle effects here: https://www.starfightergeneral.com/rano-particilo-downloads/

Hello, As I generate procedural algorithms for interesting space zones and star systems, I must be careful to make it interesting or it will get boring fast. So I am watching scifi on the side as I do day to day stuff… I started old, real old with Georges Méliès ‘A journey to the moon’ which predates copyright so can be used in games. One particular sci fi I found interesting was: The Star by HG Wells. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63rPR2nh9f0 Its not just a well done play, the voice actor in this audio adaptation is masterful.

I started to think of other apocalyptic movies from my childhood, and remembered “When Worlds Collide 1951 movie”. TURNS OUT IT IS AN ADAPTATION of HG Well’s The Star! Watch on Daily Motion: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x24k211 Now Mystery Science Theatre 3000 has ruined me on movie production acceptance, but taught me how to learn tactics and arm chair directing to make things better which helps me in cinematics in game and the future anime.

When world’s collide seemed more fun as a kid when less sci fi was around… basically its one long drawn out adventure in engineering drafting rooms, fun at the time, but now it reminds you of school. LOL. There’s a bunch of stock footage too. I also glimpses of the best score in Robotech’s play list: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbdZNHG-iSE&list=PLxZGoAiclLonKzYerxYDyl3YZxxYJnSpF&index=8 as the core rifs found in When World’s Collide in 45:16 . Anyway when I was young, I thought it was especially well written, but of course, it was HG Wells, The Star with a planet attached to the star like a morning star to collide… I’m glad they did this, and I am glad I watched it as an adult with notions on movie making and such.