Screenshots Of My Future Pandora Space Exploration Game

[Username]

Tobriand's second idea for the pirates would be better than the first. The Pirates would be a great addition.
QUOTE
False information, as you'll see, would be completely evil, as the game and its excluded zone mapping relies on multiple sets of 100% accurate information... anything false would totally throw you off and leave you completely frustrated.

You could get the info from them after you win the fight. I still think the radio idea sounds great as well.

 

[TrevorBradley]

Tobriand's second idea for the pirates would be better than the first. The Pirates would be a great addition.
QUOTE
False information, as you'll see, would be completely evil, as the game and its excluded zone mapping relies on multiple sets of 100% accurate information... anything false would totally throw you off and leave you completely frustrated.

You could get the info from them after you win the fight. I still think the radio idea sounds great as well.

The most logical position for any potential pirates is either at the location of an unplundered artifact (capturing people as they went to gather the artifact), or at an alien star (capturing people as they come to cash in their artifacts). The game actually encourages people to hold on to artifacts.. you get better value for them selling an ancient artifact with the Ancients. But with ships capable of crossing the galaxy at the press of a button before you can say Betelguese, I'm not sure what the pirates would really be able to do about the traders. Possibly rig a found artifact to cripple the ship.

At present players don't interact by radio. I'm not sure how allowing them to trade changes the game flow (money for information is the only trade that makes sense).

Mechanic and flow wise, pirates slow down the game, and could be useful to insert at certain points. With the current game balance, a pirate showing up early in the game would be deadly, late in the game would be somewhat meaningless.

I think the problem with pirates is that the game isn't really about artifacts at all... it's about building up your ship and getting to the middle of that unexplored region. Things like wormholes that alter your position would be far more deadly. Or removing some of the preciously purchased ship upgrades. As soon as your ship has enough upgrades to get to a dense region of space, you're kinda set.

Other ideas, like using your ship's computer to hack into an opponent's ships computer and delete their information, make more sense to me now. Information is the true currency of the game, and I have 9 computer upgrades to think of...

Still, the pirates are appealing... I'll give them some serious thought. (Maybe you could recruit them as privateers to take out an enemy?.. or are there ways in which players could behave like pirates to stop or slow the opposition?)

 

[benjymous]

Looks really awesome! Have you heard of Captain Blood? It looks like there are quite a few parallels with that game (I'd love it if you got the pictographic language communication system into your game!)

At present players don't interact by radio. I'm not sure how allowing them to trade changes the game flow (money for information is the only trade that makes sense).

That seems quite simple - Some artifacts sell better to different Alien races.

I've discovered a race that I know is looking for a Hysenbob Discontribulator, so I can get a much better fee for it than you. Likewise, I've got a Dichloric Alloy Macrophotosabre (*) that I've not been able to offload for anything useful, but you personally know a guy in orbit around a certain star who'd love that sort of thing.

Maybe players trading directly with each other might not work, but if you get an AI working, it'd certainly make sense for two players to gang up against another player, and form some sort of trade agreement at the early stages of the game


(* god, making up names for fake Scifi tat is fun!)

 

[TrevorBradley]

Looks really awesome! Have you heard of Captain Blood? It looks like there are quite a few parallels with that game (I'd love it if you got the pictographic language communication system into your game!)

That seems quite simple - Some artifacts sell better to different Alien races.

I've discovered a race that I know is looking for a Hysenbob Discontribulator, so I can get a much better fee for it than you. Likewise, I've got a Dichloric Alloy Macrophotosabre (*) that I've not been able to offload for anything useful, but you personally know a guy in orbit around a certain star who'd love that sort of thing.

Maybe players trading directly with each other might not work, but if you get an AI working, it'd certainly make sense for two players to gang up against another player, and form some sort of trade agreement at the early stages of the game



The guys who made Captain Blood went on to form Cryo and make the original story based rts-ish Dune game.. One of my favourites and the one I replayed on my GP2x a few months ago (SegaCD version). Sounds very cool.

Again, the game isn't about the artifacts, it's about closing in on space. The players ability to move quickly through the galaxy and find aliens to talk to and trade with pretty much everywhere makes ganging up not make too much sense. Anyone who took the time to trade artifacts or information would quickly fall behind in the race.

I am thinking about a "co-op team mode", where two players play on the same team and share information and finances. But that information sharing has to be a co-ordinated effort throughout the game... information sharing isn't very useful as a one off event.

The comments here are exceptionally interesting and are getting me thinking about new game ideas... I'm just sure how easily they fit into the existing jigsaw.

The one thing becoming clearer to me is that with this many people interested in the game, getting networking multiplayer in there should happen a lot sooner rather than later. It's the last major component of my game that isn't polish that could radically affect how I'm coding the game (I've already tried very hard to ensure my "Ship" object isn't a static class (i.e. there could be more than one of them). I did some font and visual improvements yesterday, but I think I'll start working on that next. Actually playing multiplayer is going to open up a lot more game ideas...