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Posted Mon 09 Dec 2013 08:58
Suddenly you’re jolted to the left, knocking your head against the cockpit. The damage readings flash a warning and you see that you’re losing pressure. A spaceship flashes overhead. Is it your enemy, who’s taken you by surprise, or a friend trying to protect you?
It’s difficult to teach the AI about how to react to being shot at, if you want to do it properly. You could just fake the entire universe to revolve around the player and have the AI assume that it’s the player that’s shooting at you. That seems strangely unsatisfying, and would give rise to some pretty weird or canned gameplay effects.
Instead, I’ve decided to take a more difficult road, and broadcast an event to the surrounding area that an attack has taken place. The passengers on the attacked ship react to this by piloting the ship to defend themselves, by firing back. This will work no matter who fires at who, so we don’t need to can the results of a player firing.
There’s a flaw with this: Currently, if the victim accidentally fires and hits a passing ship whilst defending, then all hell will break loose - all the ships will start firing at each other. The next step is for all the surrounding ships to note the initial attack and remember who started the fight, and possibly to jump in and help the original victim.
In future, I want to make the victim and witnesses remember the ship that started a fight, and form an opinion about the crew of that ship (assuming they know who it is). This will them be communicated via gossip to other people in the planet bars, or officially to the police via a report. That way, reputation will be built through interesting network effects rather than a simple number…
Grateful as always for any thoughts or feedback.
Posted Mon 09 Dec 2013 07:40
You might say we’ve jumped on the bandwagon: but I’m convinced that alternative currencies have a future. Therefore, we now accept a small amount of bitcoin and litecoin in return for Sol Trader Alpha Access.
Today it’ll just cost you 0.0059 BTC or 0.16778 LTC to buy access. Bargain! I’m still basing the price in USD, so the BTC/LTC price will change as the prices of the currencies fluctuate.
To buy, log in or sign up, click “Buy with Bitcoin” or “Buy with Litecoin” and I’ll send you a transaction address.
Thanks!
Posted Thu 05 Dec 2013 09:32
Now you can click on a ship to scan it and find out just how damaged it is…
Posted Wed 04 Dec 2013 05:38
I’ve been working on the Hyperspace effects this morning: what do you think?
Posted Mon 25 Nov 2013 18:16
I got the movie bug :) and put together a little trailer video tonight. Check it out on the front page of soltrader.net, or here.
Want to have a go? Get Alpha access now.
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