Beta Galactic Artifact - Release C

[grimfang4]

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.

Something simple and helpful would be to mark a sector red after you visit every star in it. The tougher way would be to red-out each section of a sector that you've explored all the stars in. Maybe just a special marker for stars that you've visited?

Are you open to code contributions? Is there a repository set up? If so, maybe you could write a text file that explains the code structure of the game so we could help better.

Jonny D

 

[TrevorBradley]

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.

Something simple and helpful would be to mark a sector red after you visit every star in it. The tougher way would be to red-out each section of a sector that you've explored all the stars in. Maybe just a special marker for stars that you've visited?

Are you open to code contributions? Is there a repository set up? If so, maybe you could write a text file that explains the code structure of the game so we could help better.

Jonny D


I'm not worried about code complexity for the rest of the game, but rather game balance balance and enjoyment. The computer ugprades are the last tool I have in my toolkit to balance out the existing game to make things "fair".. At the moment we really need to allow more than one strategy to win the game.

At the moment I'm not taking code contributions. I know people are really eager and want to see the game progress... don't worry about that.. Keep posting ideas though. They're helping me refine my ideas as to what goes in the next version.

When I start working on Release D in March, I'll be releasing Beta versions again so we can start playing with the new features
and see how they actually work. I'll likely code up a bunch of computer features and then figure out where the fit into the puzzle...

 

[jook2oh]

Ok. Another idea Ive been mulling over. Since you have thought of it before, you might already have a plan for it... this is just my two cents. Here goes:

Some math to set it up:
All sectors: (1x1 = 1) 3^7 x 3^7 = 2187 x 2187 = 4782969
Zoomed out once: (3x3 = 9) 3^6 x 3^6 = 729 x 729 = 531441
Zoomed out twice: (9x9 = 81) 3^5 x 3^5 = 243 x 243 = 59049

Using the fuel you start with you can go across 9 sectors, so that should count as your "Starting Sector", and there are 59049 sectors of the 9x9 size. Difficulty should be rated based on how much all the artifacts within one of those 9x9 sectors are worth.

What format are the stars in? Because I wouldn't mind writing a program that parses each of the 59049 sectors for its number of artifacts and alien planets. Then I'd make 2 tables: One for sectors that have no stars or not all 3 aliens or no artifacts; and the Second one arranging all the ones with all 3 aliens and at least 1 artifact from low artifact count to high artifact count... I don't mind leaving on my computer for hours to get the results. I like doing stuff like that.

 

[TrevorBradley]

Ok. Another idea Ive been mulling over. Since you have thought of it before, you might already have a plan for it... this is just my two cents. Here goes:

Some math to set it up:
All sectors: (1x1 = 1) 3^7 x 3^7 = 2187 x 2187 = 4782969
Zoomed out once: (3x3 = 9) 3^6 x 3^6 = 729 x 729 = 531441
Zoomed out twice: (9x9 = 81) 3^5 x 3^5 = 243 x 243 = 59049

Using the fuel you start with you can go across 9 sectors, so that should count as your "Starting Sector", and there are 59049 sectors of the 9x9 size. Difficulty should be rated based on how much all the artifacts within one of those 9x9 sectors are worth.

What format are the stars in? Because I wouldn't mind writing a program that parses each of the 59049 sectors for its number of artifacts and alien planets. Then I'd make 2 tables: One for sectors that have no stars or not all 3 aliens or no artifacts; and the Second one arranging all the ones with all 3 aliens and at least 1 artifact from low artifact count to high artifact count... I don't mind leaving on my computer for hours to get the results. I like doing stuff like that.

Stars are objects, held in the Star class in Star.cc

There's already a method to scan stars in sectors... lemme check It's in Star.cc called surveyStars... I left the code in there because it's handy to scan the whole galaxy for weirdness... You can tweak it to do what you need to. It takes about an hour to run on my faster computer.

The problem is I'm eventually planning on randomizing the galaxy... so that the star positions will fluctuate from one galaxy to the next... so plotting stuff in advance isn't as helpful as it looks. The server might be able to do it though...

I'd like to actually focus more attention on balancing out the starts... perhaps having the server do a "roaming scan" to move the start location to something a bit better.

On the thinking of new ideas front, I think I've formalized an idea for the computer.. Instead of having a battery, I think a better analogy is a Loading Progress Bar... like you'd have for copying files. You could have a number of different tasks you could set your (initially weak, later powerful) computer to do... it would run that sequence over and over again.. It would do things like "decrypt alien communication" "plot galaxy map" (something that would give "free" alien information, every N seconds). This would be independent of other additions like showing your path or giving GPS data for alien stars.

 

[jook2oh]

do a "roaming scan" to move the start location to something a bit better.

So basically, it picks a random spot, then starts scanning nearby sectors to find a more fair starting sector. Nice.

QUOTE
something that would give "free" alien information

I was just thinking that one type of computer assisted hint might be that after you get a normal hint, you can check an option to "Recalculate Data" and it takes some time, but your computer gives you another free hint. A hint that is halfway to the next $ level. So a Recalculated Data for a $ hint would give you halfway between a $ or $$, and a recalculated $$ would give you halfway from a $$ to a $$$. But no option to recalculate a $$$.

 

[dentrado]

How is the project going, any updates?
and you said something about an OS X binary, on my laptop I'm only allowed to have OS X (I borrow it from my school) so a OS X binary would be nice.

 

[TrevorBradley]

How is the project going, any updates?
and you said something about an OS X binary, on my laptop I'm only allowed to have OS X (I borrow it from my school) so a OS X binary would be nice.

To be honest my health has tanked in the past 2 months and I've not been able to work on the project at all. I'm still hoping to work on it again when I get a bit better.

There was someone working on an OSX binary, and actually got it working... but it was compiled statically.. I got some flak for releasing static binaries for Linux so I asked the compiler to try to go for a dynamic compile.. and that was the last I heard of it. Anyone with OSX is more than welcome to give compilation a try.. all the source is there and the libraries are publicly available. If anyone does manage a OSX dynamic binary they're willing to share, I'll pass along a key file that will allow the OSX client to connect to the server.

 

[Klaus]

I'm sorry to hear that and hope you'll get better soon! (And not only because I'm looking forward to the next release. *g* )