Alliance Space Guard (a 3D spacesim with orbits and ship avionics!)

[D.C.Elington]

Posted by: @sscadmin
But I am sure that is tough from a logic standpoint

Well on paper all the necessary ingredients are supposed to be there already, so the problem should essentially amount to "piecing everything together"... That said I'm expecting to be slapped in the face quite a few times on that one too!

[DelwynElysia]

Posted by: @d-c-elington
Hi SSC,
The work on the NPC traffic is going on (focused on the Orbital Traffic Control system right now). Meanwhile here's a little update about the updated external view and radio internet chatter.
Cheers!

Thanks for sharing.

[D.C.Elington]

Posted by: @sscadmin
But I am sure that is tough from a logic standpoint

Hello SSC!
You said it all above D1 But at last the NPCs are now flying. From the beginning of the project I had been focused on flight planning / path finding and I had completely overlooked decision making and execution tasks layering. These were also subjects I really did not know about so it took a bit of time to learn and then assemble a reasonably working contraption. Here's the related vid:


At the moment all NPCs behave as "galactic starliners" but they will be given new and more elaborate missions as it goes!
Fly safe,
David

[Cody]

Hey DC - good to see you!

[sscadmin]

Damn @d-c-elington this is really good stuff what you have done here.... We might need to check your mental state after all of this math you been doing
You have built a complex engine here another thought would be to package all these mechanics together to sell to other game devs looking to make a space game with some scope. Because damn you have some impressive stuff here even at this early stage. 
Question: 
I like what you have done with the transponder in the ships, will the player have the option to disable the transponder for whatever needs they may have?
And it looks like you rely on speeding up time a lot in your game, about midway through the video you selected another system. If you decided (doubtful) to fly in real time how long would travel actually take?

[D.C.Elington]

Warships can turn off their transponder for sure. The player's frigate has 3 modes:
- Off,
- Alliance Identification System = with military encryption but accepted only in Alliance space,
- Galactic Navigation Organization = the standard valid everywhere,
plus a "Fire Solution Denial System" sub-mode that adds noise to the broadcasted vectors to "be polite but not stupid" during diplomatic missions for instance
I would expect actual navies to have a whole range of "non verbal messages" to communicate their state of mind to one another. So for instance in the game beam-forming one's beacon to send it with a lot of directed power could be quite meaningful, an IFF ping would be the next level of warning, and "taking a friendly range measurement with the main laser" the last step on that scale... So I don't know if that will materialize into actual gameplay but I'd really like to make use of this if I can. I think that could be much more fun than only have the option to poke holes through the target!
About traveling times, without the jump capability the ships in the game are just very efficient rockets, so maybe one order of magnitude faster than what we have IRL. That would still keep interplanetary trips in the multiple months / years range, and other stellar systems definitely out of reach (hundreds of thousands of years away).
And yes my mental health may have taken a few dents on that one, I even started to learn Korean! 안녕하세요 !
Hello captain @cody!

[Cody]

Posted by: @d-c-elington
plus a "Fire Solution Denial System" sub-mode that adds noise to the broadcasted vectors to "be polite but not stupid" during diplomatic missions for instance

Like it!

[Pinback]

Good to see you back DC, look forward to seeing some more updates about the game.

[kabouik]

Eagerly looking forward to hearing more about this simulator, and then sink all my free time in it when it's available. I'm a Linux player so whenever a first build is available to the public, I'll also immediately test it under Wine/Proton.

[D.C.Elington]

Hello SSC,
Here's the latest update about the NPCs. Nothing really new except that after a loooong fight with galactic bugs they are now really operational. That is as previously discussed they are fully persistent and continue with their operations even when outside of the player's range.

The next planned round of features is the completion of the ship's civilian systems before starting to implement the gamification layer (missions and career).
Heading back to the docks! ‍

[Pinback]

Nice one DC.
As a suggestion would it not be better to have the arriving and departing triangle a different colour or shape, so the player could tell at a glance what the ships were doing.

[Cody]

<looks up> Hey DC - cool!

[D.C.Elington]

Posted by: @pinback
Nice one DC.
As a suggestion would it not be better to have the arriving and departing triangle a different colour or shape, so the player could tell at a glance what the ships were doing.

Hi Pinback These symbols are temporary and correspond to a dev mode cheat with no fog of war actually. Eventually these should be replaced by tactical markers only relaying the effectively available information (either from the ship's sensors or from external data feeds).
Also interpreting the current activity & threat level of the different contacts will certainly be left to the player: in fact I'm expecting that this identification and classification work should be a very important part of the gameplay!
(... and the starting location will have to be less busy to avoid overloading new players!!)
Hello captain @Cody!

[D.C.Elington]

Hello SSC,
Sorry for the radio silence between these dev reports, the days are a little too short!
This one is quite nerdy about the ship's systems again, and that were just fitted with diagnostic tools, alarms and protections. That should hopefully greatly reduce the number of blown-up reactors up there


The next task will consist in implementing the repairs at stations, and then I'll move to the front section and work on the life support systems primarily.
Generally speaking maintenance is expected to play a rather important role in the gameplay. The components wear out depending on their usage, and the less repair downtime and cost the better. And of course in-flight failures should spice things up from time to time, knowing that the ship's redundancy should be able to keep it operational without too much loss of performance (if managed correctly).
Fly safe!

[Pinback]

Excellent update DC.
Will their will be some automation of the maintenance systems as in the setting of the option menu, otherwise you could end up overloading new player to the game.

[D.C.Elington]

Hi @pinback
Yes the system will create bills of maintenance "in one click", to be transmitted to stations. The intent is that this should be more about strategic decisions, for instance deciding whether to go for one more mission or not (less downtime but higher probability of failure), or planning trips so as to stay in range of a high-tech shipyard... that kind of things.
Also since the ship will be brand new at the beginning of a game, that should leave time for cadets to learn the ropes before facing maintenance issues... or deciding to go play something else!

[Cody]

Posted by: @d-c-elington
Yes the system will create bills of maintenance "in one click", to be transmitted to stations.

Hey DC - cool!

[D.C.Elington]

Hello Captain @cody!

[Cody]

Question: the inhabitants of the Quadrans pocket-galaxy - are they humanoid? Or perhaps octopoidal? What's the Lore?

[D.C.Elington]

Ah I think that for the sake of simplicity we'll go with strikingly human-like beings, as in "a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away"!
If only because I have to be realistic about my skills as a writer... not mentioning my English that gets more and more limited as I venture away from basic technical stuff