Which one do you prefer?
I can't choose! I like them all!
Tell me which font from those pictures you like best. This will be used for the title only. Although it's possible it could be used elsewhere, the question here is only for the title though.
I'll probably be fixed by Monday the 11th of march. I'll let you know.
Thanks.
The point is science.
I'm a nerd. I love science.
I particularly love astronomy and astrophysics. I'm no expert by any means, even on an amateur level. Sure, I do know some stuff--I don't really have a choice since it's a passion of mine and I do soak a lot of info when I love the subject--but if you asked me to give you the Kepler's laws of planetary motion I would stare at you with an bland look. Behind my eyes, my brain would choke trying to remember what it is these laws are composed of. Oh, don't worry, I know about the Laws of Keplers, I just can't tell you what they are or explain them, even succinctly.
But, that's beside the point.
The point is science.
Diplomacy is tough.
Of all the things in a RPG-type game, I think diplomacy has to be one of the hardest thing to get right. Not only is the goal of diplomacy to convince the other parties of the benefits of your point of view, there should be consequences if you fail. Of course, it is obvious to every party involved in a negotiation that whoever the speaker is, the goal of that person is to get as much impetus on his side to convince the others to join him--either by passive-aggressive means, threats or otherwise. In turn, the actors knowing this, it mitigates the side-effects of a failed negotiation. Negotiation is, indeed, the art of give-and-take. Everyone involves know this and will try to get the most for his side. But, what if the demands are too steeps? Or unreasonable? You can't declare war on anyone because they didn't want to exchange a basket of apple for a sheep.
Or do you?
Disenthral – A narrative Introduction, Part III.
Adyaphede's reaction shouldn't have been a shock to me. It was plain those aliens were powerful and their influence was stretching far and wide. No suddenly-appearing-aliens are feeble aliens.
Their ship was what brought me here. Although my location could, maybe, be blamed on my abject luck. But even so. If I accidentally was responsible for ending up here, so could they. Only they would do so consciously. One way or the other, how I got here didn't change anything. I was here, wherever here was.
Despite Ady's flaming interest in my story, he didn't say a word. He was hanging to my lips, waiting expectantly for more. At this point there was nothing else I could do. I closed my eyes hoping I wasn't about to spill the beans to a hidden enemy.
Disenthral – A narrative introduction. Part II.
To read the Part I, click here.
"Early in 2010 a new movement was born," I said kicking into gears. "'The Zeitgeist Movement' it was called. The brain child of a young man called Peter Joseph, he entertained the idea that the monetary system of Earth was obsolete and effectively crumbling the society as we knew it at that time. He was right." I paused a second to assure myself Adyaphede was listening.
The man was standing stock-still, immutable, statue-like, frozen and expectant to hear my story. I obliged.
Disenthral – A narrative introduction. Part I.
I've been wanting to move those narratives here for a while now but I've never had the time to do so.
The originals can be found on my personal website.
Due to lack of time and opportunities I haven't written part III yet, until tonight. I will post it a bit later, once it is written.
Hopefully you will enjoy the setting and the introduction story.
Dany.
--------------------
He wants to know everything.
I can only imagine it's a cultural thing. I did save his or her life. I'm not sure if he is a he or a she. He sure displays the anatomical references of a he. I don't know what to think. I'm so confused after this whole ordeal. After rescuing him, her, from the shipwreck, that I unknowingly caused. We sit here on the cold dark metal hull of this cargo bay and he--whatever he claims or demands of me--I'll just refer to him as he. It's too confusing. Maybe I'll adjust later... He wants to know everything.
Harvesting Resources in Disenthral.
For all the old timers around, Disenthral has had a big influence from, among others, several games I have played years ago. The main inspiration was Star Control 2, a game released in 1992. Another game that inspired me was Ascendancy, developed by The Logic Factory and released in 1995. Although there are very few elements from the latter, it is still a game I remember fondly of.
One of the features of SC2 was the ability to land a harvester ship on a planet surface to gather a narrow range of resources. If I remember correctly there was about a dozen different resources that could be extracted from each planet. Once those resources were brought back to the mother-ship the planet was effectively devoid of interest for the rest of the game. An interesting factor of each planet visited for gathering purposes was that several environmental effects could damage your ship while roaming the surface. Quakes, lightning, etc could damage the harvester and, if all your crew died, you lost what you had gathered so far (plus the crew).
Disenthral currently supports planet harvesting. The way to do so will surely strike a pang of nostalgia to anyone who has played SC2. The planetary surface map, like in SC2, is in 2D and you have to use the A, S, W, D keys (I'm unsure if SC2 used the arrow keys.) to move your ship around. When you hit a resource node, you would add that to your harvester inventory.
Disenthral will differ a bit from that formula. Since there is no crew per-say in Disenthral, you will have the ability to construct helper robots. They will be able to help you in several tasks during your voyage, but one of those utility will be to be used as a crew during harvesting mission on planetary surfaces. As with SC2, environmental effects exist. Depending on the planet you will find yourself on to gather the resources from, quakes, lightning, acid rain, freezing rain and other effects will deplete your harvester of shields. When that shield is completely gone, your crew will that damage. Another difference between SC2 and Disenthral is that harvesting will not be automatic. You will have to spend time (around 5 seconds) to gather individual node. During that time, both the ship and the crew will receive environmental damage. The number of simultaneous environmental effects will depend on the planet; its size, proximity to its sun(s), the number of moons it has, etc. In short, a small-ish tellurian planet with 3-4 moons close to its sun will generate a lot of quakes for example.
As long as you remain on the surface anything you will gather will remain in the harvester's cargo hold. Only when you recall the ship will you get the bounty. The ship's hold will allow for a limited amount of kilograms of resources, independent of the kind of resource itself; only weight matters. Another difference is that the harvester ship will have a limited amount of fuel. As you move around, you spend fuel. If you run out of fuel, you can only come back to the mother-ship.
Hopefully that will appeal to space game enthusiasts and Star Control 2 veterans.
As a treat here's a couple of screenshots I took about a week ago.
I hope you like.
New Disenthral Video Uploaded to YouTube.
For some reason I always forget to post here. I guess Twitter is handier and faster.
Nonetheless, even if I'm a bit late (13 days), here's what the video is all about.
As I mentioned in the previous post, I was working on planetary procedural texturing and it's pretty close to completion. Rocky planets need a little bit of tweaking, but they're actually very close to what they will ultimately look like at release. I do have a propension to change things several times during the course of its life, but I do think, honestly, that there won't be much changes, only small tweakings.
The video says it all, so here it is.
In other news, the music composer deal fell through yesterday. So if you know or you are a composer that would like to participate in Disenthral contact me at dise...@danyrioux.com and we'll talk. Alternatively post a comment and I'll get back to you ASAP.
Enjoy.
-- MadJack
Mini update.
A small update to announce several new things about Disenthral.
First, I have added several eye-candy items to the world of Disenthral. All spatial bodies will use procedural texturing, that is, textures done on-the-fly directly on the GPU. I really love the results with stars. Planet texturing is not there yet, but the results are not that bad. It will be improved upon though. Right now this isn't a priority.
Hopefully, by the end of next week, I will post a brand new video showcasing the game's environment. Solar systems, the galaxy sectors (although that hasn't changed much from the old video posted) and finally some GUI windows. Nothing extreme, but it will be good to show what was worked on.
Finally, Disenthral is on the verge of getting its own music composer. Since the deal hasn't been sealed yet I will not disclose who it is, but suffice to say that I love that person's music and I really think it will complement the game. As soon as it's a done deal I will post the news here and on Twitter. That composer has 3 ambiance albums on the market and his style is comparable to Vangelis and Tangerine Dream. The musical score will contain 9 pieces; the main game's theme and one for each of the race. For those interested, the album will be on sale shortly before the game is launched.
Development on the game has been going strong and continuing to go forward. The pace is not exactly what I would ideally like, but it's still coming along nicely. Recently I have had to rewrite some part of it for different reasons and that slowed things down a bit. But as soon as the finishing touches will have been made, the video will be recorded (it shouldn't be longer than 4-5 mins at the most), I will jump on to populating the galaxy with the other races' ships and right after that I will implement both the crafting system in-game and starships fights. The last stretch will be spent to complete the game story, interaction, dialogue, etc.
In all fairness I think a launch for November 2012 is attainable. But take note that this is not a promise. I am only 1 man coding a very large game world.
- MadJack
The art of Crafting in Disenthral
Before delving into the deep end of crafting in the game, I have to apologize for the lack of update. I took a much needed break from pretty much everything during the holiday season, a whole 3 weeks. Although this has been salutary for my sanity, I should have split that into smaller chunks. The result was that, after literally unhooking from everything I lost complete track of everything. It was a really tough time to get back into it fully. Next time I'll know better.
Now, to the meat of it.
From day 1 I wanted Disenthral to implement a crafting system. The plan was to give the players a basic ship and have them improve it as they wished. But, as usual, I always have a grandiose, but narrow, view of things. The scope of the work involved and the vision of how it should be done in my mind is not always the same. I've always had a clear vision of what I wanted with crafting, only that I didn't grasp the scope of it. In short, crafting will be--hopefully--a satisfying experience, but involves a great deal of work. At least in the coding sense of it; it should be mostly transparent to the player.
That work has to start with the schematics, or if you prefer, the recipes to make new thingies.
Let me try to explain with an example.