91

Development & Discussion / Re: [Progress - 3rd April] Engines and Spaceships

« on: April 16, 2016, 12:28:18 AM »

Okay, thanks! For the update and the hard work.

92

Development & Discussion / Re: [Progress - 3rd April] Engines and Spaceships

« on: April 03, 2016, 05:30:02 PM »

Thanks for the update!

I'm happy to hear the team is growing bigger. Isaac, your work is a blissful sight for sore eyes, and I cannot wait to see what else you have in mind.

Too bad about the delay, Mark, but it's better to delay the game slightly, than to work on it with an unstable engine. I do hope you're able to delay it without major consequences for yourself or the team.

93

Development & Discussion / Re: [Progress - 27th March] OBJ Mesh Importer

« on: March 28, 2016, 07:28:47 PM »

Thanks for the update and good luck!

94

Development & Discussion / Re: [Progress - 18th Feb] Cry(Engine) No More

« on: March 18, 2016, 05:32:06 PM »

Sadly, I found the engine lacking.

That's too bad. I've heard good things about CryEngine, so when I saw the subject I was intrigued to see what's wrong. As it's open source, there's always a slight chance someone will implement what you need, so maybe you shouldn't discard the idea of using it until you have to.

and there are plenty of programmers who aren't terribly smart.

Unfortunately. That's why there are so many bad applications out there.

I'm really sorry about the DevLog delays, we just don't want to release one for the sake of doing it. It has to have content worth showing.

I agree. Your primary objective is to make the game, not the marketing for it. I'm okay with less updates, if that means you're all working hard on making the game awesome.

We could do things faster, but it would mean cutting corners. We firmly believe in doing things right the first time.

Exactly!

95

Development & Discussion / Re: [Progress - 13th March] The Mod System

« on: March 15, 2016, 10:28:21 PM »

I hope that makes sense.

Yes, it does.

The API would allow you to program entire new behaviour for weapons (as well as other things). This would allow you to, for example, create a turret which acts as a tractor beam.

Oh! Nice! That would make it possible for a comprehensive mod to create a whole race of aliens, and completely overhaul their weapons, and whatnot. Amazing!

96

Development & Discussion / Re: [Progress - 13th March] The Mod System

« on: March 15, 2016, 10:05:31 PM »

Other than the UIs, mods normally add content (not replace it). So if, for example, you copy a ship from UNIONBase into a new mod and tweak it then that becomes a new ship in the game. Missions will have default/recommended ships, but when creating a server the host can override this with any available ships.

Excellent!

Something I was considering, and due to your question it's something I think I will do, is allow people to create mods which "extend" other mods. When you create an "extension" mod it's contents get merged with the contents of the mod it is extending.

Yes!
So, that would include a possibility of a user creating a mod containing many new ships, let's call the mod "JohnsShipyard", and another user creating missions in a mod called "DeepSpaceLost", but the mod "DeepSpaceLost" requires mod "JohnsShipyard" in order to work. That's part of the new feature, correct?

Exactly what will be changeable is not nailed down, but I expect that at least weapon, armor and equipment behaviour will be moddable using the API.

What behaviour are we talking about, exactly? I know it's not stats, but I'm not sure what it is.

97

Development & Discussion / Re: [Progress - 13th March] The Mod System

« on: March 13, 2016, 09:04:14 PM »

That makes more sense, yeah. Oh, the things we can do with that... People modding ships, people modding missions, people modding UIs, ... And the players combining mods. Aw, yeah!

I see that config/data will be JSON, but what about other content? For example, texture files. Overwriting textures could work, but what about adding new textures? People would probably love to design their own ships and include them without replacing the existing ships.

Damn, I'd like to know more info about all of the content you said will be possible to mod (ships, equipment, UIs, maps and missions,).

98

Development & Discussion / Re: [Progress - 13th March] The Mod System

« on: March 13, 2016, 08:51:05 PM »

Does "RequiredMods" require minimum version of a mod or of the game?

99

Development & Discussion / Re: [Progress - 9th March] Spaceship Templates

« on: March 09, 2016, 08:45:12 PM »

One file per ship is good. Makes it much more manageable.

And mod enabling sounds very cool.

100

Development & Discussion / Re: [Progress - 9th March] Spaceship Templates

« on: March 09, 2016, 08:39:29 PM »

Thanks for the quick and elaborate answer!

Will there be one file per ship, or one file with many ships?

I'm not a JSON expert, but why are TurretMinXRotation and the 3 following keys not in quotation marks?
These are decimal numbers. In JSON numbers are written without quotation marks.
I meant the labels themselves, not the numbers.

101

Development & Discussion / Re: [Progress - 9th March] Spaceship Templates

« on: March 09, 2016, 07:22:03 PM »

Another great idea!

It would be great if you could document it a bit, though. Let us all know what the possible keys and values for those keys are, what's their impact, etc. Let me explain by asking more questions...

What would happen if we put "weird" values for some of these? For example, setting "PowerWheelRotation": 12.6."MaxPowerOutput": 999999
What would the game do? Crash? What's the max number for each value?
What are Classes in the Systems? Is it better to have a higher or a lower class? How far do the classes span? 0 to 10? -10 to 10?
I'm not a JSON expert, but why are TurretMinXRotation and the 3 following keys not in quotation marks?
How many equipment types can a ship have? Is there a minimum amount? Can we delete the Systems node completely? Can we have two Systems nodes?
How many characters do you allow for the value of "Name"? What about characters? Are they stored and showed ingame as UNICODE?
What happens if we remove or add an axis from "LocalPosition" and "LocalRotation" node?

That's about enough...

102

Development & Discussion / Re: Devblog 3?

« on: March 09, 2016, 07:11:34 AM »

Glad to see others get into UNION.

Looking forward to any updates you've got, Mark.

P.S.: the mail notification is now working.

103

Development & Discussion / Re: [Progress - 4th March] Pausing the Simulation

« on: March 06, 2016, 03:40:13 PM »

Absolutely, our focus in UI design is feedback, feedback, feedback.

That's a good focus to have.

I think that the mail is getting caught in your spam filter, can you confirm? This is due to a misconfiguration on the server, I'm working on it today.

It did earlier, so I added a GMail filter that's defined like this:

Code: [Select]

Matches: from:(*@wiredgames.eu)
Do this: Apply label "UNION", Never send it to Spam

104

Development & Discussion / Re: [Progress - 4th March] Pausing the Simulation

« on: March 06, 2016, 03:13:34 PM »

Pausing is really useful in this type of a game. The idea about Captain's voting on it is exceptional! In cooperative missions, it can happen that someone looses a connection; having the game pause-able would allow the rest of the crew to wait for their absent comrade.

Also, please add a message saying that the game is paused (in Pause Mode?). This doesn't exist in Artemis, so we're often unsure if the game froze (which happened to me a few times) or if it's really paused.

On a side note, it seems like I've stopped receiving mails when a new forum topic or post is made... Weird.

105

Development & Discussion / Re: [Fiction] Without A Scratch

« on: March 04, 2016, 10:32:12 AM »

I really enjoying reading this short stories. They make such a great foundation for roleplaying, and answer many questions we at TSN have about the ships in Artemis.