Starfury : Lacking a lot?
 

I've played Starfury for around 12 hours now over the past few days.

I think its good overall, its fnu upgrading your vessel with different components and fighting + winning battles.

However, I think the game is missing a lot of things, things that modders probably won't be able to add. This seems like a game released ahead of schedule just to prove a feature (3D models for SE:V?).

How far did I get? Playing campaign one, I got as far as the mission where you had to do 3 Pirate missions, then go to a planet. I must have done 20 pirate missions now, in various systems, and not been able to progress... I dropped the campaign story line and began saving money for a new ship.

I bought myself an Xiati Cruiser, loaded with weapons shiny defences, fast engines, etc. Its a rather nicely designed starship I think.

Okay, so I've got a vessle I like, my goals are complete. That was a fun game??? Kinda, but I don't see much room for advancement.

These are the main gameplay featuers of the game for me:
1) Delivering Cargo > Money
2) Destroying Ships > Cargo > Money
3) Visiting Starports > Ship Upgrades
4) Following the story line? (Didn't get me far).

Faults:
The Galatic News seems dreadfuly empty.
Unsure about campaign progression.
Impossible to tell who is friend and foe.
(e.g. illegal cargo : TCN attack until you dump
cargo, then they're all friendly).
Too much effort trying to navigate your ship, should have autopilot feature (leaving it up to you to avoid rocks).

I vaguely understand why the ships are as big as planets, but thats really lacking. I would have thought that exploring vast areas of space to come across a highly detailed and sensibly sized planet would be very interesting.

I think a much better system for navigting this game would be to scale all the models precisely, and have the main game map represented by a holographic map of the system. The map would define your position, and the position of unknown objects. You could then click on highlighted objects to see details, such as a magnified image of a ship/planet/asteroid. Objects that you chose to track would then be 'enlarged' holographically on the map.

Upgrading your ship, great fun. Best bit of the game. Getting to try out new weapons and shields is good fun.

The map could be greatly improved too. If you take the idea of a a holographic/virtual map then there could have been camera angles which showed your position in space relative to the central suns.

Also, since they went 3D, I would have expected gravitational simulation to be applicable. Fly too close to the sun, you'd have to pull away from it so you don't get dragged in.

There was so much that could have been added to this game. Modding everything seems boring. It would better if Malfador focused on their game for gameplay, making it fun, adding great features. To be honest, the only thing I'd want to add to this game is my own ship design. A separately developed campaign maker would be interesting. Modding games is great fun, but leaving it down to editing a bunch of text files is more like 'tweaking'.

Thats my blurb, I thought I should write something since I rolled out so much time playing the game.

Tell me what you think.

Re: Starfury : Lacking a lot?
 

With the campaign you ran into a bit of vague description. You need to do three pirate -mercnary- missions, not commerce.

As for the modding being tweaking..heh. Actually the game can be almost completely re-done through these files, within some limits.

Doing everything to-scale would be a problem, as you'd never seen anything but the map. An earth-sized planet would be over 6000 times the size of the biggest ship..and the stars would dwarf the planets.

Re: Starfury : Lacking a lot?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">You have to remember that Malfador is really one man doing all the programming. Therefore, adding features like those you described takes a long time. Also, Malfador is a small company that (I assume) can't afford to wait for another year even to add more, better features. Money is always a consideration.

There is hope that some of your suggestions may be incorporated into future patches too.

I agree with you that there are some things that could have been done that would greatly enhance the game. Personally though, I very much enjoyed the game, and have spent more hours than I should have playing the game http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif . I guess we'll just have to see what comes.

Just my opinion on the matter.

Renegade 13

Re: Starfury : Lacking a lot?
 

To compensate for the extreme reality of scale, I would have made a game that focused around a holographic map, representing the galaxy, not pretending that was the way things happened.

I'd also program in auto path finding, and stick the camera at a higher rearwards isometric angle, kinda like in C&C games I geuss (Emperor: Battle for Dune, Generals).

I suppose theres no changing the current model now, but the game has set out some fun ground rules.


Maybe Aaron should hire some more programmers?

Re: Starfury : Lacking a lot?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Hmm, lets see. At approx $40 retail, say Malfador gets $20 per game. (Probably high.)

Low end programmer salary, $60,000, plus overhead, might bring that up to $90,000.

Thus, one more programmer is roughly 4500 sales/year. That is just to break even, maybe.

The numbers can be better or worse than this, but it shows that games at this level are not done to get rich....

Re: Starfury : Lacking a lot?
 

How exactly does the higher camera angle help? That and if you really want it, try the function keys for the above/below views, and adjust the distances in the text files to taste. Not sure if you can adjust the angle for the default view, haven't tried that.

Re: Starfury : Lacking a lot?
 

Even so, the game was still lacking a lot. If it was made even better, they'd sell more copies right?

What were you getting at?:
<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Well, the function enabled camera angles aren't very useful, they're not zoomed out enough. It be really useful to see the solar system from a zoomed out perspective, like the top down map, but you'd easily be able to see your vessel is. in relation to everything else.

Re: Starfury : Lacking a lot?
 

EV: Nova does that. It ends up not working all that well- either you're zoomed in tight enough you can't see much (and get shot from off-screen) or you're zoomed out so far you can't make out detail.

You can adjust the top-down view distance, though. What you want is to adjust these lines

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">Viewing Distance Side := 10
Viewing Distance Overhead := 50
Viewing Distance Above Behind XY := 10
Viewing Distance Above Behind Z := 5</pre><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">for any ship you'd care to use that with.

Re: Starfury : Lacking a lot?
 

Just tested it. Going for what you'd like doesn't work so well, for the reasons I mentioned..you'd have to adjust the scales of everything to match as well.

Re: Starfury : Lacking a lot?
 

u can probably get some programmers in the bay area for less than 30k....hell...some will work for free for the first three months...

Or...u can have a pseudo-open source (for the graphics engine at least) and get ppl who want to program for free, to program for free.

Re: Starfury : Lacking a lot?
 

Yeah people like me? I was going to knock up my own Version of the the game, but with simlper constrainsts.

Kinda one solar system, shuttling cargo between planets.

I was also going to try a 'real scale' system, and represent everything on a holographic map, replacing the need for the view system map. My idea would use labels to highligh key items, because everythng would be too small.

In a real scale system, you could add alot more detail, and then do the Zelda thing where you can only see whats near you (based on scanner technology/speed of light response time), and then larger items such as the Sun and big planets would be always visible but 'in the fog'.

Too busy at the moment tho =)


Might try adjusting the view angle of some of the ships then, might make my life easier. Thx for the research/code Phoenix.

Re: Starfury : Lacking a lot?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">.
</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Your suggestion of hiring another programmer is expensive. It is easy for one person to work on something at a relatively low hourly rate of return. It becomes a much different proposition when you hire someone and have to pay them for every hour worked.

Open source? Interesting. But there seem to be a lot of open source projects that start, and never get very far.

Re: Starfury : Lacking a lot?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Um, based on the fan base here, I think that is a spurious remark. There are a few very talented and dedicated programmers on these forums, and some darn good artists too. I think an open source project is a fine idea for SESF!

Re: Starfury : Lacking a lot?
 

More to the point, you can't really make money on open source projects, and this is Aaron's job. He may not be making enough to hire another programmer, but SF -would- suffer if he had to get another job (see the recent patch history for an example of that, and rememeber that he's working on the SE4 patch too)

Re: Starfury : Lacking a lot?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">There is your starting project. You have all the info you need to create it. Start small, then grow. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon6.gif

I would count myself as one of the better programmers on this forum, but my day job leaves me little energy to spend on recreational programming. I suspect that is true of most programmers with day jobs. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

I find bugs, though... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif That is easy.

There is a fair amount of code behind StarFury, although some of it is definitely common with SEIV. I am impressed that one programmer has created these two games.

Re: Starfury : Lacking a lot?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Which is why I'm hoping for of a plugin system for SE5 - it keeps the basic game engine proprietary, so Aaron can still make money off it, but people can write plugins in some programming language or another (hopefully via COM objects or something common enough that you don't have to use the same language the game was developed in), but people can still add to the game in much greater depth than they can by modding data files. (Imagine if the combat engine was just contained in a DLL function that took as input some predefined data class containing all the ships and formations involved in combat and returned the results (survivors, damage, etc.) ... and if you set the game to use a different DLL created by someone with the publicly available SE5 SDK then you could use a whole new combat engine! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif )

(edit: obviously this makes cheating by mod creators and writing of Trojan horses much easier, but it's no worse than the risks you take when you download a freeware game off the Internet http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif )

[ December 18, 2003, 14:27: Message edited by: Ed Kolis ]

Re: Starfury : Lacking a lot?
 

I just want a plug in for the AI. I don't want to write the whole game, but I would really like to improve the computer players... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

So if we get into allowing DLLs or whatever, I've got my choice.

Trying to fix the AI in SEIV requires code changes. The data file entries are just too weak. In StarFury the AI could certainly fight better. There are all these data files for flight patterns, but the reactions to player actions are, umm, consistent? pathetic? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif

Re: Starfury : Lacking a lot?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">And there is a fair amount common with Dungeon Odyssey. Potions/emergency plating anyone? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon6.gif