Beta Galactic Artifact - Release C

[jook2oh]

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My method. Probably similar to yours

Early game: (When most of your upgrades are still low level)
Don't pick up any Artifacts until you have found a shop.
Don't worry too much about getting the most from a single dollar artifact ($).
-If you can get an upgrade by selling a few $ to the wrong place, do it.
Upgrade speed to at least 3 or 4 before other upgrades if possible.

Middle game: (When you have enough spped and drive to go to a thicker spot)
Move to one of the thicker arms.
-Only pickup $$ or $$$ artifacts.
-Fill entire inventory before going to a place to sell anything

End game: (Most of your upgrades are maxed, you have $100 to $300 extra after a fill up)
Pick up a few of each of the races, get some variety.
-Remember that $$ is much better than $. (Don't get I-$)
Start the search with an Ancient and an Industrialist clue.
Continue doing the same thing, or using any F-$$$ you may have.
Near the end of the search, take ANY clue you can get.
-The F-$ and F$$ are the most useful near the end.


General tips:
* Use the number pad in the early game, sometimes pressing '5' quickly and repeatedly to get an idea of everything on the map.
* Use the mouse once you have a level 9 or 10 radar. (It's much faster)

* To increase your mouse speed, play this little game I made
(2D Pong Attached to post) [attachmentid=357]
-Click the red square to start the game
-Left click to go faster
-Right click to go slower

* To increase your number pad speed
- Get a Rubik's Cube and learn ANY method, then solve it by moving your fingers as fast as you can.
- Find a lot of numbers on something, type them as fast as you can on the number pad.

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With these hints/tips in my arsenal, this game only takes me 11 to 14 minutes routinely, however sometimes out of pure chance (aka: 'Lucky Start') I can beat in as little as 9 to 10 minutes. Hopefully after you read this, you can beat it faster too.

 

[TrevorBradley]

My record for Rubik's Cube is about 2m50s, but lately I've gotten old and out of practice and average about 4m30s

I'm not going to put in any block on IP, or force the last winner not to win. If it's unfair for the best player they're not going to play either. Give me a good week to think about fair solutions for everyone. Keep posting ideas here...

Go ahead and try connecting with the beta client with the cheats... It should give you a version mismatch.

 

[fusion_power]

I'm happy when I only need 20 Minutes. I'm not that fast and I always try to sell the Artifacts at the right Alien Race, this cosrts time of course. I like the more relaxing playing method.
For people like me, there could be a mode where you have to make the most Money in a certain time. Or if you like more stress, you could try to upgrade the ship as fast as possible, maybe a later scoring system could include various things that give points?
Navigation from sector to sector is very good with ctrl+ arrows, onto the Pandora there could be D-Pad or another A-Pad only so we don't need a button like ctrl for sector movement.

I also can accelerate the game a bit when I look onto the Price Artifact at the beginning. It really helps to see the right Alien Race tha Artifact belongs. The Price should have a different colour in the message screen so this Info is more clearly. And a option to show the Artifact name could also help.

Another (already mentioned) suggestions is a fuel-measurement including warings and a reserve if you travel to far.
Throwing Cargo into the space is a urgent implementation for the next releases. And I wonder what we could do with the Computer updates. I usualy play Singleplayer so I think they would be more useful in multiplayer combat?

 

[TrevorBradley]

A few things...

I'm starting to seriously consider other game modes. One of the problems with the existing game mode is that it's "winner take all"... There's no satisfaction for coming in second. I was hoping that adding a points system where you would score points for gathering information would keep 2nd or 3rd place players more interested (and also let you keep tabs on how far your opponent was progressing) would keep things more interesting, but I'm not sure it's enough.

(The points are going to be exponential by the way.. 100 points for 8/9ths of the galaxy excluded, 200 points for 80/81st, etc... They would have been in this release except I was calculating them from the minimap, and the whole thing overflowed a couple of minutes before the end of the game as the minimap filled up red.)

Here are some of the variants I'm thinking of.

Multi-Artifact quest. Have perhaps as many as 10 artifacts you're all searching for. You'd have to either ask for information on a specific artifact, or perhaps certain aliens would only have information on certain artifacts. You'd have some sort of keyboard toggle to flip you between different information exclusion sets. This is closer to an original idea where there would be side quests for mega-ship upgrades, something that doesn't make as much sense now. This would allow 2nd place players to perhaps get 20-30% of the artifacts, which is a bit more satisfying..

"Easy" or "Medium" game modes, where the game starts with the ships upgraded to 5 or 10 across the board. This would lead to faster game rounds, perhaps a bit more punchy for new players and take away some of the skill required in initial ship upgrading.

Quest mode: Where there's no specific artifact you're searching for, but alien races offer quests to find artifacts. Finding these artifacts and returning them would offer points, and the game would be won when a certain number of points was found. You'd be limited to perhaps one quest at a time (which you could abandon if need be).

I'm torn though. My developer spidey sense says that it's best to complete the game, and then work on extra features after its done. I need to work on things like the computer upgrades, the ships overview panel fine tuning of gameplay before I expand into radically changing the game mechanics.

The Easy/Medium mode is easy enough to do and I think I'm going to do the following for Release D. Other multiplayer games allow the players to hold a vote to change the game map. What I could do is have server commands in the chat (I was already planning on /kick and /ban) that would allow you to /call for a vote for a new game type and then /vote if the game should be changed to that game type. I could also have the server rotate between various game types between games, and the players could change that with a vote. Votes would have to be unanimous at the moment with so few players (or perhaps 2/3+1, or 3/4+1 so that if there were more players it wouldn't need to be unanimous.

I think the Easy game mode could be more exciting (especially if scores were implemented), but I don't want to eliminate upgrades from the game all together...

(Oh, and I think if you log into the server from an older release, you get the old speed... I don't use that to cheat, but it is possible.)

TheMonkey, can you ask your buddies and let me know which version the exe is? I thought I might have a beta server still running, but that doesn't appear to be the case.

 

[fusion_power]

Ha, believe it or not, I also had a idea about searching for more than just 1 price Artifact! Actualy I thought about searching 2 or more pieces and you have to find all to complete the price artifact. To bring more fun we could add a little puzzle mode where you have to set the pieces together. ^_^ Yes, this would require graphics for the Artifacts but I'm sure we have enough bored gfx artists out there for such a task.

Your "quest mode" is also very interesting, especialy for Single Player mode. I can imagine that one alien planet offers a quest and you have to deliver the artifact to exactly this planet. I think thats a job for a good automap function. And we have to spend alot of money into buying fuel if the Planet is far away from the artifact.
Maybe there could be a quest log and you could start more than one quest for specific artifacts. Points and different ammounts of money if you finish the quest, maybe special upgrades for the Ship...many possibilities I think.
With such a mode there could be a "sub price Artifact" system, between the big unique Price Artifact and the normal Artifacts.

 

[hessiess]

Some sort of 'quest mode' on the single player game would be good, instead of trying to upgrade as quickly as possible, have multiple artifacts which are spread throughout the galaxy. So instead of searching through the entire galaxy for one artefact, search a small aria nearer the start location, when this is found place another artefact further away and so on.

At the start of a game, currently I seam to get a 'wave' of a specific type of aliens, which can make upgrading slower due to the time spent searching for the correct type of aliens.

Also the 'aliens' currently look far too human, have the human race concered the whole galaxy or something?

 

[jook2oh]

Well. I got 2 ideas.

1) What if the artifact could stay on the planet after the first person got it. So that anyone playing has to get it, go inactive for a few minutes or log off before the next 'round' continues and we get a new artifact. It will make the most sense after you display a scoreboard of times.

!!!! Seriously consider this one: !!!!
2) Make a pop-up say, "Do you really want to end the current game for all the other players?" and give a choice, please.


I frequently just want to narrow down the search so I know my time, but give others who just logged in a chance. Every time I get it on accident, and someone leaves, it ruins my day , because I didn't even want the artifact, I just wanted to know my time. Then I was going to go off somewhere and get rich.


QUOTE
...Go ahead and try connecting with the beta client with the cheats... It should give you a version mismatch...

Umm. I didn't mean with the cheats, I just meant with the old speed modifier. It would speed up the game abit. But if you say there is a "version mismatch" already in the code, then my apologies for bringing it up.


Edit:
QUOTE
...My record for Rubik's Cube is about 2m50s...

Oh. I'm only 1m15s to 1m30s. I didn't mean solve time anyway, I meant finger speed. Someone could learn the "Beginner" solution and solve in 2m30s minutes, but move your fingers quicker than me.

Also, what is the ancient going to look like, somehow I imagined a long flowing robe... Like a white and purple robe made out of silk or something. I guess Ill just wait and see.

 

[fusion_power]

I had another Idea and this could solve 2 Problems at once.
Problem 1: What to do with the Computer upgrade, especialy in Single Player
Problem 2: Expand the time for searching the Price Artifact over long distances

The Galaxy could have various obstacles like Asteroid Fields and dangerous nebula, gas/dust areas. At the beginning this is no problem while you only travel from small sector to small sector. You could see the obstacles and travel around. BUT later, when you have the power and the speed to travel through the Galaxy, you can't check every sector for obstacles of course. And so you can easily damage your Ship. (that means we also can REPAIR the Ship )
The Computer upgrades could increase the Scanners/Radar/Navigation systems so we are warned if the Bearing crosses dangerous Areas of space. And the Computer could guide the ship around these Areas. (Or reveals these things onto the map)
So you better don't warp with full speed blind through the Galaxy. And If we ever will get a huge black hole in the Center and/or small random wormholes here and there, things could get very tricky. (Imagine, you are close to the price and suddenly you fall into a apperaing wormhole because your Computer can't scan these things...and you are seconds later at the opposite side of the galaxy :lol: ) Very mean in Multi Player mode I think.

 

[cb88]

awesome game... reminds me or ur-quan masters

 

[TrevorBradley]

Just a warning to you guys. My poor Slackware server is in need of a massive overhaul. I'm planning on switching over to Another Linux Distribution*. I just bought myself a 1TB hard drive to back up my 900GB Raid, but realized the backup and reinstall process is probably going to take between 1 to 2 days. This means taking the GA website and multiplayer server offline for that time.

I'll give you a bit more warning before I take it down, but I'm planning for later this coming week, before the weekend.

(*) Name held back to prevent flame war.

EDIT: I'm offline now... at the rate things are going it's possible it's going to be a couple of days...

 

[TrevorBradley]

Server's back up...

 

[fusion_power]

any news/ new developments from the Single Player front? \^_\^

 

[grimfang4]

Hey, it seems I'm late to the party...

Can I be any help with using Sprig?
From what I've seen so far, you have concerns over Sprig's color format:

SDL_gfx seems to use RGBA for everything...
Sprig does it "right"
With any function that uses a color, you must have that color in the same format as the surface that you're using it on. This does mean that you have to do a little conversion, but it also means that Sprig is not wasting CPU cycles by doing the conversion every time.
Example:
SDL_Surface* screen = SDL_SetVideoMode(...);
// Draw a purple line
Uint32 purple = SDL_MapRGB(screen->format, 127, 0 127);
SPG_Line(screen, 0, 0, screen->w - 1, screen->h -1, purple));

The alpha part is independent, since it is common to change the transparency frequently:
// Mostly-transparent line
Uint8 alpha = 100;
SPG_LineBlend(screen, screen->w - 1, 0, 0, screen->h - 1, purple, alpha);

I wrote a header SDL_ColorDef.h (found on my website) that has a bunch of nice colors in it that you can use very simply:
Uint32 myColor = RGB_Blue(screen);
This does the conversion for you.

If you need anything else, your best bet to getting a hold of me is to email me.

Jonny D

 

[TrevorBradley]

Hey, it seems I'm late to the party...

Can I be any help with using Sprig?
From what I've seen so far, you have concerns over Sprig's color format:

Whoa... Sprig's author... Awesome!

I don't have "concerns" so much as "I've written everything with SDL_gfx and it's RGBA colour scheme, and then later found SpriGwhich is awesome beyond words, but converting everything over to SpriG would mean a lot of time and effort I don't have at the moment for this particular release".

All my game *is* is graphics primitives... there's a lot of work to be done.

SpriG's Zoom functions seem to work fine even on a reversed colour Uint32... I started to hit some problems when doing transparencies and decided to hold off a bit.

I do plan to convert over to SpriG in a later release; SpriG seriously kicks sdl_gfx across the pavement. At the moment I'm going to focus on gameplay. I might be sending you that email in about 4-6 weeks..

If I did have a plea (totally tangential to this game) it would be to see ellipses with arbitrary angles (i.e. not fixed to the x/y axes) in a future version. That might inspire me to attempt my Orbital Mechanic game again.

A quick update... I've been taking a couple weeks up to try to rest and catch up on other projects... My server upgrade seems to be complete. I do have a few other things to get done though. I'm thinking I might start up again at the beginning of march.

fusion_power, which single player updates were you looking for again?

 

[grimfang4]

SpriG's Zoom functions seem to work fine even on a reversed colour Uint32... I started to hit some problems when doing transparencies and decided to hold off a bit.

If I did have a plea (totally tangential to this game) it would be to see ellipses with arbitrary angles (i.e. not fixed to the x/y axes) in a future version. That might inspire me to attempt my Orbital Mechanic game again.

Sounds cool. You might not have noticed a difference when zooming if you didn't specify the background color (or made it black or white). Other colors would probably turn out wrong. There is an issue with transparency that I hope to resolve sometime soon. That one is pretty important for clean sprite manipulation.

I think you'll be happy to know that I had been planning for arbitrary ellipses even before the v1.0.0 release. I just haven't found a good algorithm for it, and I'm not a computer scientist. If you come across anything, send it my way! I'll keep on searching... EDIT: Okay, a quick search now gives some good results... This may come sooner than I thought!

If I end up with some free time next week, I'll take a closer look at how tough it'd be to convert the game to Sprig primitives. My first idea was to write a header that maps the SDL_gfx calls you have to the equivalent Sprig call with the proper format conversion. It'd still need to be fixed later, but it would immediately remove an extra dependency and wouldn't take much effort. If Andreas hasn't applied my submission to SDL_gfx yet, you would also get nicer and faster arcs.

 

[fusion_power]

fusion_power, which single player updates were you looking for again?

Uh, I just meant single player game features (or game features not only for multiplayer). Just some suggestions that had been made by me or otheres here in the thread.
Many things here spinning around the Server and Multi Player stuff so I just wanted to ask if the game development includes some new features in the next release and not only multi-player fixes and Server improvements. ^ _^

 

[TrevorBradley]

fusion_power, which single player updates were you looking for again?

Uh, I just meant single player game features (or game features not only for multiplayer). Just some suggestions that had been made by me or otheres here in the thread.
Many things here spinning around the Server and Multi Player stuff so I just wanted to ask if the game development includes some new features in the next release and not only multi-player fixes and Server improvements. ^ _^


The server code is working great now. The next release is all feature additions, improved UI and gameplay fine tuning.

 

[jook2oh]

After post on: Galactic Artifact - Game Balance

Playing that many times gave me some new ideas I dont remember hearing on the forums. Treat these with the usual might-be-a-good-idea-but-also-could-be-a-complete-waste-of-time disclaimer.

1) An arrow pointing to the side that has the most stars one screen over (if you pan). Or maybe 2, showing the 2 sides with the most stars (because you might have just come from the side that has the most already.)
(Possibly a bonus you get when your computer and scanner are over a certain level, like level 3)

2) A "Quest Mode" that you have to go through. First beating the game with a max of level 7 on all the upgrades, then when you get an artifact, you can have that races upgrades to one level higher. So after at least 9 "Quest Mode" games, you can have all the upgrades to level 10.

3) Similar to the first. A bonus that you get when you have some upgrades over a certain level. Like the speed over level 5 and the tank over 5, you get to... iono... have 5% discount on fuel on industrialist planets, or maybe a 2% bonus on top of the drive bonus. Or with a cargo over level 7 and a drive over level 7, you get one free "extra cargo spot" that only works for a F-$$$ artifact. Just little random stuff that helps a little, but really doesnt give you a crazy/unfair advantage.

Im still in anticipation of what the computer does, I want it to look something like cracking a cipher on "Uplink". But maybe it could just give you little HUD options with every level. WOAH, brain idea.. get me paper.. ok here goes.


---- Rambling at this point... Read on only if you feel the need to read the whole post. ----

4+) (Just thought of it) Add "battery" as something you have to fuel up on, and your computer uses it, (very slowly) to do little stuff. And an options menu if you click on where it tells you the computer level, then you get to check and uncheck little things that the computer does, some use very very little power, other are power hogs.
-- If you check on "Calculate Artifact Location", then it uses more (depending on the level, but with each level, it increases the battery storage) and slowly little sectors randomly get put into the red zone, (think F-$ hints, all over the place). So slow that if you left it going for 30 minutes, only about half of the map would be in the red zone (then it would say "Simulation Complete"), and it would cost lots of money to pay for the "battery" it would take. And you dont even have the option until you have asked for at least 5 clues.
-- If you check on "Store Path", it takes practically nil to none battery power to store the path.
-- If you check on "Point to Most Dense Nearby Sector", it uses very little power, but only during a little loading bar (like 1 second) after you come on to a new sector.
-- If you check "Set Hotkeys for Nearby Aliens" (aka: F1 F2 F3 for the three races) then it only uses a little power when you land on the planet, and a little more if you press F1 to go there. but only works within a few sectors range.
* Also, most of these would have options, like a slider or a box to input a number.


(((( I want to do a little math for the "Calculate Artifact Location", just for fun. If the game is 4782969 sectors (2187 x 2187), and in 30 minutes it calculates half, then thats (30 minutes * 60 seconds) = 1800 seconds for 2391484 sectors. Or with a computer at level 10, it would put 1328 sectors into the red zone each second... Ok. It sounds like alot. But for 30 minutes to narrow down a half of the board? Seriously, in that time, you could just get a few artifacts and do more... but I still like the idea. because. well. it would look really really cool... mostly useless. but really really cool. ))))

 

[TrevorBradley]

4+) (Just thought of it) Add "battery" as something you have to fuel up on, and your computer uses it, (very slowly) to do little stuff. And an options menu if you click on where it tells you the computer level, then you get to check and uncheck little things that the computer does, some use very very little power, other are power hogs.
-- If you check on "Calculate Artifact Location", then it uses more (depending on the level, but with each level, it increases the battery storage) and slowly little sectors randomly get put into the red zone, (think F-$ hints, all over the place). So slow that if you left it going for 30 minutes, only about half of the map would be in the red zone (then it would say "Simulation Complete"), and it would cost lots of money to pay for the "battery" it would take. And you dont even have the option until you have asked for at least 5 clues.
-- If you check on "Store Path", it takes practically nil to none battery power to store the path.
-- If you check on "Point to Most Dense Nearby Sector", it uses very little power, but only during a little loading bar (like 1 second) after you come on to a new sector.
-- If you check "Set Hotkeys for Nearby Aliens" (aka: F1 F2 F3 for the three races) then it only uses a little power when you land on the planet, and a little more if you press F1 to go there. but only works within a few sectors range.
* Also, most of these would have options, like a slider or a box to input a number.


(((( I want to do a little math for the "Calculate Artifact Location", just for fun. If the game is 4782969 sectors (2187 x 2187), and in 30 minutes it calculates half, then thats (30 minutes * 60 seconds) = 1800 seconds for 2391484 sectors. Or with a computer at level 10, it would put 1328 sectors into the red zone each second... Ok. It sounds like alot. But for 30 minutes to narrow down a half of the board? Seriously, in that time, you could just get a few artifacts and do more... but I still like the idea. because. well. it would look really really cool... mostly useless. but really really cool. ))))

Actually the right analogy here is CPU usage. With a better computer, you could devote more CPU time to certain activities. It's a decent idea.

My brain's still spinning with ideas on what to do with the next stage of the game. As fusion_power suggests, the next update will be almost all gameplay related. By Release D we should have fully functional computer upgrades... the last big thing missing from the game.

Unfortunately the real world is catching up with me, I'm not sure I'm going to be able to start working on this again next week. I've got a number of other things going on that I need to deal with first. Thank goodness I don't have a formal release schedule.

 

[azmodean]

First, aaaaw yea uplink, awesome game.

A crazy idea I had based on TheMonkey's idea of a useless (but cool) slow elimination of random sectors, what if at a certain point of scanner development it started clearing sectors as you flew through them (only the lowest or next-to lowest level of sectors of course), this would do three things:
1. have an "explored" trail of sectors that follows you around once you have the upgrade
2. something of a sense of accomplishment for clearing area, even if it's incredibly unlikely to get you anywhere
3. it would tell you if you entered the sector with the final artifact, at which point the game is pretty much over anyway.

Most likely problem with this idea is programming difficulty, computational overhead, or both.