TIGSource Forums

Hey great work ! this is fun : )

I am both happy and sad to see this game.

Sad because I have plans for something very similar and hate doing games too close to something out there already.  :concerned:

Happy because I think there is a real place for an updated, browser based tradewars type game. It looks really good and plays pretty well. I cheer you on sir!   :handclap::gentleman:

Thanks for the praise, theres always room for more than one thing in the genre :)  But know how you feel too...  Just put a new update up with a few days work in it, we are pushing toward cleaning up the battle screen panels at the moment, making it a little more user friendly, and making multi ship battles a little more streamlined than they are currently.  

Just put the updated graphics for the collosus class in too also, which is really cool looking ingame, this is half the ingame size, the other ship is the starting class the scout:

Wow - it's so shiny! I love the idea of MMO-esque battle sequences, but so far the ones I've played haven't involved any strategy. Is there target selection or mana management further into the game?

I had trouble after a while earning enough XP to level up to explore further out. Nobody was picking fights with me anymore, so all I could do was trade trade trade trade... hwich got kinda dull. Should I have attempted to attack other ships? Does that work?

I also had a little trouble understanding the hardpoint system, since it wasn't clear what kinds of hardpoints there were or what kinds of hardpoints were used by different kinds of equipment. Could you create an icon for each type and display them both on the ship and on the item lists in the equip and purchase screens?

Am loving it so far.

Yea we are throwing multi ships/targetting in for the next update with any luck, we just need to sort out the battle UI at the moment from the aftermath of rebuilding it from the last battle system concept, still tossing up wiether to include a "mana/fuel" equivelent ingame or leave it with cooldowns, you can actually toggle different modes currently with the +/-, though that might be stripped already....

I think the XP thing is apart of what we will be balancing once the contents done, I also fall into that gap of not being able to explore more so I just unally everyone on the map for LOLs, so yea that definately needs some balance.

Good idea about the icons...

This is pretty great, beautiful as well. Good work.

So today, did some work on getting the main character for the first (Free) chapter of the game in, what you see below is a backplate for the chapter, hes got some sprites ingame also... hes a mercinary pilot type hired out by Tricorp, and that planet is Calamadon the pirate planet to the south of the first galaxy, wooo.

Woho, gonna give this a go later.

Been playing for half an hour and I think I'm thoroughly addicted.  I love the depth of the game universe.

I'm curious whether you're planning on being able to look at and modify your ships crew.  I'm hoping that's where the design is going with being able to buy drinks at the bars.

Love it already.

Couple of minor things:
- I could get a pop-up for a planet while hovering over a menu item
- "prepare to be fired apon" - should be "upon"

The bar is the quest/errand hub, but eventually finding pilots and alike in there will offer bonuses to your ship if you choose to hire them, so in short, yes :)


Haha my english is terrible, ill add them to the list, thanks for playing dudes.

  In the future I'll post to the Big Block forums, but for now I'm waiting for my confirmation email so I'll post here.

  Anyway, I have a couple of suggestions and an issue.  I thought it might be nice to be able to scroll the screen in the solar system view.  I notice there's an asteroid in the first system with a path to something that's too far away to click on.  And, I know there's not really a functional menu yet, but I would like to be able to turn off the sound since I tend to listen to music while I'm playing.

  I imagine you've already got plans for this but at first it's very confusing knowing what you're buying, what everything actually does and how many of each Item can be equipped. 

  Perhaps you could color code the borders of each category of ship upgrade.  The border of weapons bays could be blue, launchers and lasers could be green, engines could be yellow and upgrades (boosts, extra damage, etc.) could be red, or something along those lines.

  Or you could color code the laser bay, the lasers and any upgrade to lasers one color, all the missiles, missile upgrades and the missile bay another color, and so forth.  Something like that.

  It's not entirely clear what each part does for you.  I'm guessing the lasers are in your laser bay and torpedoes and missiles are in your missile bay (or would torpedoes be in the bomber bay), but is there a reason you can only have three of any of these? Is that the limit?  Are you planning on including fighters that can be bought the way anti armor lasers and torpedo launchers can be bought?

  As for the issue I'm having, it's very strange.  I logged in today, and started playing and when I leveled up I noticed one of my experience points has gone missing.  That is, at level 18 I have Weapons LVL 10, Piloting LVL 24, Navigation LVL 30, and Trade LVL 25, and no extra point to bring Piloting up to level 25.  In the hopes that this might be fixed, my character is Buzzlby.  I'm hoping it's not just that you only get four points for your first level and I didn't notice or something equally dumb on my part.  :P


  Okay, enough griping. I'm really looking forward to seeing your game develop and what you've already got is addicting as hell and I'm digging the aesthetic.  Those backgrounds in planet view are freakin' awesome.

All good man I check here every day so cool to post either, umm okay, we opted against scrolling because alot of the additions we want to do later are -barely onscreen- planets that are designed to be hidden, scrolling would take away from that.

As far as the buying/equiping, and how many of each you can have, you have sort of caught us mid update of a new system, if you notice the new battle bar in the build last night, this will be incorporated on every screen soon and the mechanics/ship items will have a bit of a overhaul also...

I think a big fat tutorial is needed reguarding ship equip slots, that should solve most of the other problems for now...  As for the points on level, I dont exactly understand the question, are you asking what point is there leveling to 25 piloting?  We cant check your profile currently as serverside profiles isnt implemented.

I think you need to make a distinction between lanes that don't lead to a civilised world and lanes which can't be travelled due to insufficient navigational ability - I thought for ages the red lanes couldn't be flown, until I actually tried it. Basically what I am saying is that I look at the lanes to tell me whether I can travel, not the destinations.

Also there is a lane off to the right that is so long I cannot select the destination.

I bought two Anti-armour IV lasers and equipped them in my laser bay; only one appeared on my ship even though both appeared as equipped. I could sell one, so I did - when I looked back at the equip screen the second laser had indeed gone. I bought and equipped an auto-laser II which DID appear on the ship graphic. I didn't notice it automatically firing, however!

Battles in general seem far too easy. I haven't had to flee once yet.

Would be good to see more varieties of ship for purchase (I haven't really read any of your notes yet so I don't know what's planned / in progress). They seem mostly middling (i.e. balanced between offense/trade), and I didn't notice an increase in available weapon slots or whatever, just hull integrity and capacity...

Even though it is lovely and evocative and immersive, it's quite annoying to have to click on the small buttons to access the planet menu, could it also be laid out in shortcut at the top left as it is once you open it?

I like the levels system, but sometimes it feels like I'm piling points into something with no purpose... like, I don't have any need to put anything into "piloting" until I want to buy a new ship, but by the time I realise that I might be quite high level and it'll take me ages to put enough points into that skill, as levels are very far apart. I think I need more incentive to allocate my points intelligently instead of just picking crazy random stuff. Like, I know I have Navigation goals as there are places to go where I need e.g. 50 points to go there, but I've only seen 15 points for trading arms, and some amount of points for a new ship (didn't check too closely), and haven't seen anything at all for arms.

Was thinking piloting could feed back into the battle system for dodging missiles etc...? Just a thought anyway.

Hmm fuel is annoying so I understand why you got rid of it, but it drops the incentive to sell off cargo at a loss - I might as well keep hold of it until I find a sweet deal, seeing as it's not costing me anything to haul it around the galaxy; in fact I'm keeping in profit due to the battles being easy. How about turning some of the dropped cargo bits in battle into actual cargo so that I have to offload that shit before I head out pirate-hunting?

Anyway FUCKING sweet game, the graphics are really sweet and good sound and movement, interface etc is nice. Looking forward to more.

Hey yo alex, Ill spend some time while things render..

I might suggest something to mike about the tradelands being broken before you have the skill to reach there, there might be a few lanes that have that sight problem also as we really havent even built out the galaxys yet, let alone put docked screens/proper spawners in most of them, give it a month or so that stuff should be sorted.

We got a report of that double up bug also, it should be fixed shortly though we are overhauling the mechanics menu to include items that work outside of battle also, check the build in the next few days I imagine youll see the first look at that.

As for ships, alot of them arent actually enabled, theres 23 classes of ship currently, which is basicly all we need for beta, though Ill be adding more every few weeks when I find the time.  Its more we havent actually had the time to balance this stuff/put spawners in for some of the ships yet.

Good idea about the small buttons also...

The levelup system is being revised, check back in a few days, basicly we want a more even spread of leveling to stop people power leveling, though beyond that we are just hoping we put the spawners in the right places and items appear enough to entice players to purchase/pursue them.

We are throwing a extra 10-15 "Rare" commodities also into the game to make trade a useful skill past level 15, and units like the collosus above a useful ship to pilot if you can reach the retarded levels needed to obtain it with a piloting skill, that being said, we dont want to baby players too much there.

Oh and end of the day, its a trade game, and we are planning some sort of death after a defeat in combat that removes your ship, potentially limiting your future space piloting if you dont have enough resources to buy another, so that should balance the lax difficulty, and kind of drag the focus away from combat a little.

Cool, well, looking forward to more :)  :handthumbsupL:

Haha.  Yeah, I should really be patient and let you guys do your thing and wait for the game to develop.  Guess I'm just a little overzealous.    :)


Nevermind.  I did some math and realized that since you start the game with four skill points, one in each skill, by level 18 I'm going to have distributed an additional 90 skill points bringing the total to 94, meaning one of my skills won't be a multiple of 5.

It just threw me off that I one of my skills is at 24 while the rest are multiples of 5.

I'm really lookin' forward to seein' this develop to the point of player interaction, by the way.

Cheers.

Played some more, still loving it.

Thats probably a good sign :)  So tonights build should have all the new rare commodities, and skills such as mining, planet searching, extortion, jumpgate abilities, aswell as cooldowns that dont instant recharge after a battle, throwing a little strategy in the mix on items such as fighter bays that have rather long recharge.

Bit of a update, last week or so has been padding out the solar systems, adding a few new level graphics for smaller docked areas in the game in the outer systems, fixing alot of bugs and finishing off the new out of battle skills and functions, all of which turned out pretty cool, flying around extorting other ships makes me happy  :lol:

(http://img199.imageshack.us/img199/467/newp2.jpg)

(http://img708.imageshack.us/img708/3250/newp1.jpg)

More to come!

New update, game is now 4megs to start playing instead of high 20meg-low 30meg, which is always a good thing!  :lol:  Death functionality is in so when you are destroyed you fly around in a escape pod (still working on the graphics, so expect those soon), basically as a harsher death penalty than just taking there commodities and a small chunk of money.  Now you have to fly your escape pod to a planet and re-purchase a ship, its still kinda buggy so give it a day or two to mature.  Also ships hiding in the asteriods chase you now which adds a interesting angle on enemy ships on the galaxy screen.

so come check out the latest build (http://www.bigblockgames.com/), tell us what you think of progress!


Heres some of the new enviroments ive been adding this week also!  

(http://img715.imageshack.us/img715/948/sc6j.jpg)
(http://img19.imageshack.us/img19/5793/sc4r.jpg)

Nice to see it coming along, hadn't realized the name had been set so I never checked the devlog.

Sent you guys a PM with a question.

Thanks for the PM Hangedman, we are hoping to hit the beta milestone in a few weeks, got everything falling together  ;D  Lots of stuff has been changed last few days, would be good to get some opinions on the new UI, any exploits you can find in the weapon setups or ship setups, and general stuff like that.  The other thing ive been meaning to ask is has anyone been experiencing much cpu lag or sluggish download from the server?

haven't had a chance to play this yet, but the visuals are definitly nice! :o

Oh you should check it out man, we just did a pretty massive update:

- Ability to override the track for a specific planet
- Dead planets can have planet info now
- New commerical world background
- No longer automatically sending out search pods
- Fixed music to loop
- Slightly improved alignment for port info panel
- Player is now the #1 tab on the galaxy screen
- i button on galaxy goes straight to the player's stats
- Moved up OK button on notify menu
- New planet description scene
- Fixed bug with music not playing twice in a row
- Enlarged factions panel
- Uploaded smaller backgrounds for the Docked Screen (faster load times)
- Finished graphics for sigma khan
- Removed entity error line (thanks crdk!)
- Fixed battle scene colours
- Changed text width algorithm to work on pixel width
- Gave the starting character name etc
- Particles not created on the near torpedo laucher
- Fixed marquee viewport
- Put logic in to scale the battle music to the right difficulty
- Purchase successful popup doesn't happen on ship items
- Fixed bug where sell button was disabled due to funds
- Target indicator surrounds health bar
- Health bars fixed on all ships
- Fixed bug where planets were shrowded on the galaxy screen
- Removed health bar from the enemy portrait display
- Fixed big laser perspective
- Jet glow on the escape pod
- Put in descriptions for the bridge items
- Changed Jump Gate to Worm Hole
- Aligned flashing quest indicator properly
- Fixed icon coloring
- Fixed ports and autolaser alignment
- Spinning ventilation fans on Sigma Khan
- Buy buttons in ship merchant and items are properly disabled now
- Autorepair no longer happens while you are flying away from a port tax
- Autorepair happens when you first click on a panel
- Fixed bug with lasers not firing after one ship destroyed (thanks cdrk!)
- Added a subtitle for the planet
- New planet descriptions
- Extra information about a planet displayed, as well as a quote
- New ticker display for the ads at the bottom of the docked screen
- New music!

check out the latest build (http://www.bigblockgames.com/)

I've played a little bit of it. Very gorgeous. Took me a bit to figure out how to progress in the game..but I think I got it.

Cool anything that could be simplified? We should have a tutorial quest in shortly, but meantime heres latest fixes/additions:

- Fixed bug where missile launchers were not creating the right amount
- Added damage chance to the EMP
- Updated asteroid background
- Stopped overlap on items display
- Massively updated item stats (needs more changing)
- Bridge items now have 5 levels
- Extort bridge item implemented
- Cloak bridge item implemented
- Aligned ports on the Colossus
- Fixed bug where escape pod would be attacked on dead planets
- All bridge items are properly implemented
- Fixed bug with cloak
- Sped up text width check
- Fixed bug that wasn't displaying faction specific text in the dialog box
- Fixed bug with leading space in the quotes file
- Implemented titles for various chance panels
- Added dual glows for the colossus
- Cut off tail end of the item spawn probability curve
- Brought health/targeting bars closer to the ship
- Gave space between the notification title and lines
- Fixed bug with the wrong character being displayed on a chance ambush
- Added incoming transmission title to the notify boxes
- Added the faction of what's searching you, can't be pirates
- Added more factions to solar system #1
- Added more battle music
- Changed fleeing to work on a % basis
- Fixed panel titles being upper case and <COMMODITY> problem
- A ton of writing changes

More changes, big notable ones across several days from the last are the new name change!  The game is gonna go be called "Black Market" it seems, voyager seems a little bit to close to a certain other sci-fi brand  :lol:  Just started balancing this week, quests are starting to creep into the game, aswell as a improved looting/faction system, so as usual, come check out the latest build (http://www.bigblockgames.com/), tell me what you think!

Update 24 June
- New name!
- New ads for the first planet
- Fixed bug where you'd get too much cargo
- New loading screen!
- Balancing changes

Update 23 June
- Fixed tabline zorder
- Animating quest display
- Fixed the zorder of the faction displays
- Added faction icon to the attacking display
- Reduced number of ships floating around the galaxy
- Equipped search at the start
- Fixed bug with ports not firing
- Tightened up the icon speeds
- Better loot system
- Sped up escape
- Enemy ships have a 2 second delay between firing special weapons
- Fixed bug clearing commodities (thanks earthcoder!)
- Fixed bug with no ship builder in system 3 & 4 (thanks arkus!)
- Fixed bug with torpedo not firing

Not bad. A little unforgiving at first... where do you go if you can't buy another ship - is there some way of earning cash in nothing but a pod? Or do you just call it quits and restart?

If you die with less than 10k (?) then its game over currently, once quests are in their will be a "get my ship back" type quest.

Wont be a update for another few weeks as we are overhauling/adding campaign/polishing towards beta, so update images for now:

(http://img339.imageshack.us/img339/3904/colourk.jpg)

New colour portraits, backgrounds, the lot.

Oooh, this is looking good.

I love the map layout and its many layers of communication. It's all very clear, thanks to color codes and outlines, while being sci-fi sexy. Great work, can't wait to see the game.

Thanks for the kind comments, actually you can already test the game out from about a month or so back dom2d... in the first post.  A month of delays, heavens, wouldnt be because of the tigsource comp  :lol:  Glad you guys approve  :beer:

so how much cash do you need before you can get another ship? I was wondering this due to not having enough slots to cram guns in.

I think frigates are about 100k, they are usually a good choice for ports vs hull armor, might be a little more as I know its different in the private build to the one on the website, just nosey around the ship builders.

some how the kroths are real ladies men seeing how almost everyone sister ends up being married to one.

So run over and check out act 1 of the campaign, the remainder of the story, act 2 and 3 will drop in a few days.  That took WAY too long.  New campaign comming shortly also.  We got a big chunk of bugs from this release so expect the build to get a little nicer in the comming week.

the amnesia trope and artificial imaginary friend bond to lead to either A) He finds out he hard coded a clone persona of him self and caused Amnesia so he can cover his tracks and start a new life with out getting into too much trouble. B) Vince not talking to an AI but a transmission of Commander Hardgrove who is manipulating him so that his plans what ever they are go as follows.

or C) nothing to obvious for the story pretty low end Silly.


any way I only stop at the hotel so far, and as much as Hardgrove plays out this gives me enough to plan out the story for said Black Market conversion Map Pack.

I was watching Firefly with my friend Dan yesterday and was wondering how this was coming along.  Nifty bit of coincidence it's on the front page of DevLogs.