next »

[Kisguri]

I thought tonight I will talk a little about away missions. Were you can send them, what they do once they arrive. Everyone has being bringing some good input on that in the last few days and I want to show you guys what I have incorporated from those ideas thus far. I think first it best to introduce you to your crew types!



Marine: This guy hits the ground running, They are your first line of defense (or offense when needed) Armed with the latest in pixel hand weaponry, when selected, this guy can dole out some damage where need be. I would also like to point out he is in a "Red Shirt" and i think we all know what that can mean. So keep that in mind when you have him charge into well, whatever!

Science: The blue shirts like to research and examine stuff, of course he is the guy to tell you that their is a 12.453847592% chance of this or that. In Tiny Trek the science officer on a away mission is to use the trusty scanner to locate cool things that might be useful or interesting or perhaps even dangerous. With the scanner you can scan specific items that have a scan icon appear when near to them. He is also the one who collects the samples and brings them back to the ship be stored in the cargo bay.



Repair: The Repair officer uses his fancy repair tool to open doors, fix busted control panels, and interact with any kind of machinery you find. The Repair officer also is the one who can mark minerals for mining, which will be transferred back to your cargo hold when done.

Command: The Yellow shirts main function is to communicate or negotiate with other sentient species. They are highly adapted to handle exchanges and trade. When you need to conduct some business, sending one of these guys will certainly help.

Medical: If you remember we do have red shirts in the game, and they have a tendency to, well you know. With a Medical Officer on the team he can heal people hurt on the mission helping to ensure in dangerous situations that they can succeed. Their is also the possibility we can get the engine to allow the Medical officer to heal npc's adding more depth to the episode generation options.

Some things I have added or beginning to code since reading your comments are reflected in part in the next image. You will notice that now we have three HUD boxes at the top. These will store the names of the characters sent down to the planet. The hope is I can give you the option to name you officers and they will have health points and can earn experience that will improve overall efficiency on your ship.



 I think this can be a nice addition and deeper fleshing out of my original idea. Just a note I won't be providing a very deep micro managing mechanic to the crew. But I do see value in personalizing them and giving them some progress and growth. I am uncertain about perma death and recruiting replacements. I believe I am looking at incapacitation during a mission and if so they earn no experience. But if one party member at least remains and the away team makes it back, then the advanced technologies on your vessel will revive them and return them to duty.

I look forward to your thoughts!

If you haven't checked Tiny Trek out yet, please visit our Kickstarter at, http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2064021040/tiny-trek

[Kisguri]

We hit our initial funding goal in 4 days! Guys thanks for the tremendous support, I am humbled and motivated! Next stop first stretch goal!

"$6,000.00 Raised - Robust Editing Tools: If we can hit this mark we can afford to spend the extra time developing more editor tools for the player, providing more customization to you. More editing tools for your ships and races, more color options, and the ability to edit your home world. At this amount we would also provide procedurally generated weapon systems that you can edit. "

[NoobsArePeople2]

We hit our initial funding goal in 4 days!

Woohoo! Congrats! Your latest update looks great, too.

Is the tablet/tricorder thing (device with "Plant Life" on it) supposed to be flat or curved? It looks like it should be flat but it shaded like it's curved.

As far as the permadeath/incapacitation stuff goes why not have both? In most of the Trek shows the main characters almost never die -- to use your term they merely become incapacitated and then magically (scientifically?) revived by the end of the episode. Conversely most away missions have the unnamed or just introduced five seconds ago "red shirt" who is almost certainly going to meet an unfortunate end and never be seen again.

You could have a core "bridge crew" of characters that cannot suffer permadeath, non-bridge crew members do suffer permadeath. The player could designate these characters but there would be a limited number of slots, say three, where an away mission might call for five characters. In this way there is always a chance to suffer some permanent setback from an away mission without completely wiping out your elite, core characters. I dunno, though. All of that gets rather complicated and micro-manage-y. Probably would be best to just go with one or the other.

[Kisguri]

The hand held scanner is going to be flat, It's all WIP graphics, I copied another element and placed it as my base. Promise it will evolve in to something that looks much better, maybe even a leather strap

As far as the away team is concerned, I am going to chew on it for a while.

[compostface]

I like the concept, but I'm not sure I can handle that many super saturated colours on screen all at once.

[Kisguri]

Yes it seems I do like blasting the colors in this one!

[Kisguri]

So i am thinking about procedurally generated weapons, I am going to list the base weapons in the game now, and after you read them maybe you guys can give me some ideas of what kinda of ship to ship weapons we could maybe include in the procedural generation. Note in game, the energy weapons will do hull damage, but cannot destroy the target, however they are super effective on shielding. Torpedo aren't effective on shielding but are the only weapon type that can finally destroy the target. Hope that makes sense, writing this a bit late in the evening.

Energy Weapons - good on Shielding

1. Beam Weapons (Continuous beam for short time, med range) 2. Energy bolts (rapid fire of many small length beams, long range) 3. Scatter net (Creates expanding ring of energy,provides cover, short range) 4. Vulcan (Fires in direction of ship, Massive amount of fire, long range)

Torpedoes - only thing that can destroy ship core

1. Regular Torpedo (Dumb fires in direction of target, Quick recharge) 2. Homing Torpedo (Locks on and follows target, Can only turn so fast) 3. Drone (follows target, punctures hull multiple times before ending) 4. Barrage (Fires consecutive torpedoes at once)

The idea I am after is to look for weapons that work within the two systems. Look forward to your suggestions.

Recently it was suggested also a third category of defense, so you could have shields or point defense, etc.

[NoobsArePeople2]

In my mind there would be two main attributes shared by all weapons:

1. Power: how much damage they have the potential to cause.
2. Accuracy: how likely they are to hit the target.

Beacon Torpedo: This doesn't do any direct damage. When it hits the hull of an enemy ship it latches on and increases the accuracy and damage of subsequent shots until the beacon is destroyed. It lasts X seconds or Y shots whichever comes first.

Ion Beam: Doesn't do damage but reduces the effectiveness of shields and other energy-based systems.

Cutting Beam: Short range, short duration. Takes a long time to charge. Does massive hull damage. No effect on shields.

Frag Torpedo: Explodes on contact like a normal torpedo but also disperses several mini-bombs that also explode on contact.

Mines: Deployed into open space. Used to destroy drones and limit enemy manuverability.

Tractor Beam: Latch onto an enemy ship and prevent it from moving. Reduces the power of beam weapons but increases accuracy for all weapons. Cannot tractor a ship with shields up. If tractoring a ship and it raises shields the beam is broken.

Decoys: Dummy probes launched to confuse homing torpedoes.

In the defense category you could have different types of shields and point defense.

Standard Shield: Blocks both beam and projectile weapons. Not especially strong, regenerates moderately fast. Basically the middle-of-the-road, vanilla shielding system.

Deflector Shield: Reflects beams back at source. Deflects projectiles off at random angles. Lasts a long time but regenerates slowly.

Point Defense: Super effective against projectiles, does nothing against beams.

Scatter Defense: Very effective against projectiles (but not so much as Point Defense). Creates a cloud of shrapnel that scatters incoming beam weapons, reducing their accuracy and effectiveness.

Reinforced Hull Plating: Extra strong hull that is resistant to beam weapons. Goes well with Point Defense.

[Kisguri]

I really love some of these ideas! Thanks, will post a new list soon.

[Kisguri]

11/25/2013 - Weapons Systems Update

Ok so I took all of the ideas I got, and tried my best to strip out "variables" out of them, like scaling, amount of fire, duration, angle, etc. Wit this I was able to go about laying the ground work for procedurally generated weapons. The following images are not polished, But do show a bit of the direction I am taking. Backers will be able to play the little demo that generated this images as well.

What they will find when they open the EXE up is the bootup logo, a small intro and then it jumps in to the screen as shown below. The bottom 4 buttons switch between directed beam, Energy field, Wave beam and finally particle cannon. The roll button effects the current value of variables shown as meters. Each variation effects the weapons output. It's early on but the results so far are promising.


Particle field example 1


Particle field example 2

My thinking on implementation is that you do a "roll", and it generates a random weapon system based on a total value pool that is partially determined by your races stats. Then I would provide the player the ability to manipulate it by moving some of the points around. Also note that not shown are some variables that will be generated based on the overall settings of the weapon, things like Weapon strength, shield and hull damage modifiers and recharge time.

So take a look at the screens and if any thoughts come to mind please share, the last bit of brainstorming really helped me here. And I look forward to see where this goes. If we hit our first stretch goal, then this prototyping can be polished and moved into the game.


Laser cannon fire


Cutting type beams


Wave cannon example


Particle cannon example

[Kisguri]

Went ahead and did the old Steam Greenlight business.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=198351562

[Kisguri]

if any of you fine folks backed Tiny Trek so far, Wanted to pass on that backers will get to blow stuff up tomorrow with first play test of the battle engine.

[Kisguri]

To my Kickstarter investors a new build has been posted in the latest update for you to take for a spin. Look forward to your comments. For those thinking of backing us, come join the fun!

[Kisguri]

So the recent backer build I posted over at Kickstarter included the ship editor allowing for the first time users other then me the design a chance to play with the editor. I added the function to screen capture and save a image of the editor to the app. I have alot more to do on it, but today I received a image of our first user made ship!

If you a backer and have tried the tool feel free to send me a pic of your ship, Want to see how users are crafting their vessels. Might give me ideas for editor improvements!

[Kisguri]

Stretch Goal 1 Complete

     Thank you my friends, We have reached the first stretch goal, Now I can assure you get better editors and deeper control over your ship design, weapon systems, race stats and looks. It's quite exciting. I will post more information on that this weekend as well as more detail on what we plan on doing with the internets and sharing your creations across players games should we reach the next stretch goal of $8,000. The campaign so far as been amazing and that is due to you guys and gals, I deeply appreciate it. Help me continue to push this out the world so we can assure the best possible quality game I could muster by the end of May. Any suggestions on how to reach more media is more then welcome. Now that's out of the way let's talk about legs.



Crew Members v2 - Now with Walking!

      So I wanted to share this recent development concerning the Away Team graphics, specifically the team themselves. As you can see in the above image we have the old static blocky crew member representation I am came up with. But my good friend and game developer colleague D.Czanik chipped in with hopes of solving my walking dilemma with the two animations you see next to mine. So I ask you the mighty 451 (Backers as of this update) what do you think. Do you like them? Do they fit in the game? These little guys are important cause you going to be doing a lot of adventuring together so we want them to look just right.

     Speaking of away teams I have been asked recently "What do you do on a Away Mission anyhoo?". It's a fair question, so to give a bit more detail, the away mission engine will be capable of delivering interesting fun and excitement a couple of ways. One is when you just decide to visit the surface of planet for no reason, on the surface you will be able to scan items, collect samples, conducting mining, And conduct trade and conversation with sentient species you might meet. During this you may trigger "Episodes" which provide more structured gameplay through the mission matrix. A trigger on the surface of planet or on board another ship could be requests from other sentient beings, discovery of a artifact or even running into so pirate smuggler types. The idea is I have gone through and attempted to figure out what kind of things one would do on a Mission and distill that into triggers, and mission components. What kind of triggers and planet surface mission components would you like to see?

Kickstarter: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2064021040/tiny-trek

Steam Page: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=198351562

[NoobsArePeople2]

Not really liking the walking animation overall and it certainly doesn't fit with the game's look. I like the old blocky dude much more than the new guy.

You have a really lo-fi look and the animations should match up with that.

does a good job of giving simple sprites some character.

[Kisguri]

The lack of blackness has been a consistent response, we are going to run these guys through the digital conveyer a couple more times till we get it right, I appreciate  the input NoobsArePeople2!

[Uykered]

Nice! it looks x100 times better than the previous style, but I think you need to stick with 1 pixel size to be consistent (eg. human looks detailed but some things are more blockier). Also this is a much better looking TV effect.

[Kisguri]

Did a interview on DJ Grandpa. You can enjoy my sultry (insert sarcasm here) voice at http://bedrockcommunications.blogspot.com/2013/12/dj-grandpas-crib-maiden-voyage.html

[Kisguri]

Stretch Goal #2!




http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2064021040/tiny-trek

So we are working towards the second stretch goal with seven days to go and I thought I would talk more about what we have planned for this. Basically all the generated content that you create during a game is stored in strings. We can send these strings across the net from PC's, tablets, phones and other devices to a central server. So what we would we do with that you ask. Well here we are have several ideas i'd like to share...

Historical Records: In game you can dock at Space Stations and the idea is one of the station function options would be to review historical records. View other players races, You would be able to see their ship, race avatar, planet, Captain name and a record of the exploits. Kinda of a cool way to see what other people are doing in the pixelverse.

Encounters: We could with the server make it so some of the races you encounter in your current game could be other players races. So I generate a race play my game and have a certain ship design and weapons layout, you might play your game and encounter my race as a NPC or enemy. We can extend this idea and track in your historical documents what races you have battled or made friends with from other players.

Melee Combat: Search online records and select other player created races to do combat with in a separate melee mode. And we can then store the success rate of downloaded races in the historical record how they fared against other players.

Web Viewer: We would also create a web based interface to review all the race historical records using HTML5, You could search out your own races and see their stats, or search other peoples submissions.

Editor

I also today I finally got the ship editor to behave bug free, and include not only symmetrical editing but also the most requested asymmetrical editing mode. So I decided to craft a few ships for fun.


Battlestar?


 It might not look like much but it's got it where it counts...




We are Pixlingons!


 I'm sorry Dave I am afraid I can't do that.


Trekking along!