Star Blazers Mod

[Campeador]

I am working on an update for the StarBlazer Mod. There will be no change to the Music part, just the Data (the smalled downoad of the two).

This will solve most of the things that people were comenting about:
1. I will increase the "command points per level" - this means that you get more regeneation points on repair for ship, shields, or whatever the player chooses. (no one mentioned this, but I think that points are too low)
2. I will fix the invisible warp point in Pluto - a bug. (yet, no one has found it as I know, but me).
3. I will add a message to notify the player of the end of the campaign (this will make "Q" happy!)
4. I will fix the firing points, and engine "glow's" on most of the Gamilon ships that are off. ("Captain Kwok" noticed this, thanks)
5.I will have the folders in the right place to make things easier (as Suicide Junkie pointed out).
6. I will eliminate all the unnecesary planet data files from the campaign. (It does not affect the game at all, but lesser unnecesary files will meant a little smaller download).
7. The ambient light and speed is the same as the origial game. The player can adjust that through the keyboard shortcuts, therefore I will not chage them.

All the story of the "Campaign 1" takes place in the solar system. I did not wanted to make all happen in one map so I divided the solar system in sectors. I could not put a sun or star in each one, it would not look right. So most of the light come from the Nebulae. (The system should show only the present solar system planets, and Minerva (which in the story there were suposed to be 11 planets on the "Sol system", one was destroyed by the Gamilons (Minerva), and the story of the other plane is not revealed on this story.)
The speed is as fast (or slow) as the original. I normaly decrease the speed to half while in combat with regular ships. To deal with fighters sometimes I decreased to 1/4 speed. Whatever your preference, all through keyboard (-,+).

Note: when you install patch 1.17, a PDF Manual is included as part of the installation. For those who have lost the manual, all the keyboard short cuts are there.

One final thing, the more comments I made the more great ideas the players come up with. I do not want to keep making changes to the game even thought there are better ways to do the game than my way. I will remember them, will learn from them and maybe will implement them on the next project, but I do want to move on, and do "Campaign 2". I would like to have the second part done by December.

I will have the update done withing the next 2 days.

[Suicide Junkie]

2. I will fix the invisible warp point in Pluto - a bug. (yet, no one has found it as I know, but me).
I mentioned earlier; If you warp from minerva back to pluto, you come out at the invisible warppoint.
Following the ID#s from there should help you track it down.


#8: Shields, sensors, ecm and a few minor components still increase with tech level. Most, including all known weapons, do not. This should probably be fixed in order to maintain balance as the campaign progresses.

[Campeador]

Sory SJ, you did mentioned. I did fixed it in my computer a few hours after it was released on that Friday, but by then it was too late, since it was already uploaded on the server. It was an easy fix.
Actually, the components (all the components) not increasing with tech level is intentional. The whole story on StarBlazers takes place on a single year (to Iscandar and back to Earth). By the time "Campaign 1" ends its been only 50 days, 315 days still to go. They do have the latest high tech Earth had to offer, at the time of departure. Therefore I did not want any tech leveling up unless is the dooing of Sandor, the science genius of the Yamato. Still the expeience points are handy for the rate of damage repair on the ship (or personal skill), and that can reflect the crew getting better at their job, as they travel to Iscandar.

[Q]

Campeador said:
Actually, the components (all the components) not increasing with tech level is intentional. The whole story on StarBlazers takes place on a single year (to Iscandar and back to Earth). By the time "Campaign 1" ends its been only 50 days, 315 days still to go. They do have the latest high tech Earth had to offer, at the time of departure. Therefore I did not want any tech leveling up unless is the dooing of Sandor, the science genius of the Yamato.

I and probably SJ as well agree with you, that it is a good idea to make no technological progress during this campaign. However SJ said that shields, sensors, ecm still do get better during the game.
Because the weapons remain constant this makes a shift in the game balance, which was probably not intentional.

[Suicide Junkie]

Would it be possible to swap the hitpoints on shields and armor?

I don't know about the physics of the starblazers universe, but from the story in-game, it sounds like you are supposed to be taking damage in these combats.

As it is now, armor is extremely weak, and shields are very strong.
ISTM that the reverse should be true:
Shields : weak, but regenerate over time
Armor : strong, but only repairable at spacedocks.

[Campeador]

SJ can you make a new link for me on the Mod/campaign section as before? I posted the new update called StarBlazers-Campaign1_v1.1.rar (6.3MB). I deleted some of my previous posts that became obsolete.
The update will reflect bug fixes, and a few minor changes as I mentioned before. I did also beefed up a little the base at Pluto since it was a tad too easy (I added more armor to it).

There are shields on StarBlazers universe. In one of the episodes (they actually show it once) you could see a transparent shield bubble covering the bridge and part of the cannon bateries on the Yamato. Since the Earth forcess copy most of the technology from the most advanced Gamilons, it is logic to assume to the Gamilon ships also have shields.
The crew of the Yamato was continuously reparing the Yamato every chance they get. Even while traveling through the sectors (but not during space warp). This reflects nicely on the game since you can fully repair the damage every time you dock. During combat the regeneration is slow enough not to make a real difference unless there is a good amount of time to rest (At Pluto, after taking a pounding they try to hide behind a moon to make repairs, but the Reflex gun hit them there with the help of the satellites. They even went to the other side of planet Pluto to make repairs and they got hit again. They even went on water, there is the Pluto Sea, really!, to make repairs and still the Gamilons keept hitting them). They went under water to escape the Reflex gun and make repairs and they were attack by Gamilon submarines. Pluto was a real pain. (There may not always be spacedocks to make repairs, will see how it works on the second part.)

Thanks one more time for pointing out corrections and ideas. Have fun!

[Suicide Junkie]

Oh, I'm not saying that the shields should be eliminated.

Just that you should consider swapping the strength of shields and armor.
That way the shields help by blocking part of the damage as they recharge, but you are sure to take some armor damage in combat. Something with a little more tangibility than numbers on the shield bar. Busted stuff that you have to peel off the ship in spacedock and replace with new plates.
Gritty repair work, you know?


PS:
Teach a man to fish they say - All you need to do is right-click the attachment link, and copy the address.
Then paste that address into a post over here.
[ url=<destination address>] Acutal Link Text [/url]
Click Me

[Campeador]

SJ, thanks for showing me how to do the link, that was real easy.
About the armor/shield thing, point taken. Maybe I do someting about it later. By the way I do get alot of damage on my ship, sometimes my ship survive will all the systems in red, if it does not explode first(not every player is a top gun, at least not me). Anyway the first part was supposed to be easy for the Yamato, except maybe the last two missions, but it is going to get alot harder as they go into Gamilon territory.

[Q]

I look forward to see the next campaign!

The reflex cannon really got me. I was blown to pieces before I realized what was happening. To be killed by one tiny satellite was really unexpected.
Then when I learned how to kill them I thought to be very smart and picked up a reflex cannon from the debris that was floating in space. Just to learn that they could only be used in sats and bases!

Good work!

[Q]

In the last mission when you should destroy all Gamilon ships in the Pluto system I had twice the same problem:
There is a Gamilon battleship and I fired the wave motion gun at it. The game froze completely and I could not even activate the task manager (Ctrl/Alt/Del) to end Starfury. I had to switch the computer off (Windows XP Home). There was no problem when I destroyed the battleship with other weapons. Nor was there any problem when I used the wave motion gun against other ships.
Could someone try to reproduce this?