I (as others have found from looking at the comments) find the rate of degradation on the ships system too high. I understand the main gameplay loop is busy work on the ship but by the time personally things break too frequently. By the time I've got everything working I will set a course and within seconds of starting say the piloting minigame I get the red triangle and have to go through the ship and fix everything again. For me there is not enough down time to look through the star system/plan next moves/play the mini game. I am not far into the game either so imagine this only becomes a bigger problem as ship gets more working parts.
A fix could be that the warning signs don't flash whatever needs fixing until it is in more urgent need of repair. I understand that I can just ignore the red triangle for a bit but I hate it flashing so have to get rid of it immediately. I am sure I am not the only one.
Bug I experienced. I was in the rear end of the ship (no upgrades - picked the bigger slower ship) when something broke rendering me unable to open the doors, basically soft locking me. Reloading the game returned me to cockpit so no great harm done.
I don't have much to say, but I did find 2 more bugs. One was where I cleaning the scoops and suddenly an asteroid hit the exact grid where I was standing. The resulting breach pushed me outside the ship and I could no longer move. I was lucky and could just reload a save but still relatively game breaking. The second happened when I enlarged my cargo platform, which pushed my hydroponics bay (which was on the right side of the cargo platform) one grid space to the right. This would be fine if it wasn't for the fact that the plants growing in the hydroponics bay didn't quite get the memo and stayed in the same grid space where they were before the platform enlargement. The plants still seemed to work, since their animations were playing and they were destructable, but it was still slightly immersion breaking. These are kinda minor but I still thought I should report them.
So, I have played multiple builds. Most persistent issue in my eyes is that the core gameplay loop isn't fun. I find cleaning / maintaining the ship is very tedious. For the first several versions, I would use the sleep mechanic to just skip until I got the red triangle warning then clean the ship before repeating the process until I got to my destination. Now that sleeping no longer speeds up time, it just puts this issue in sharper relief.
I think one of the things I've found annoying is the rate at which the ship degrades. I actually like walking around my ship and repairing it now and then. But I can't enjoy that because everything starts breaking immediately after you fix it. Without the fail state in the game I'm also just running around not caring about stamina, because there's no reason to.
At the end of the day, I think the problem is that the gameplay loops are in conflict. In Stardew Valley, if you plant a plant or chop a log, you get get something from it, which you can then use to further your goals of making wine or friends or whatever.
In Starstruck Vagabond, the objective you're thinking about is getting the ship from point A to B, which it would be perfectly capable of doing if the #$@! air cycles could stay working for five minutes. When you fix them, you just get the opportunity to get back to the game.
I think folks wouldn't mind the fast rate of decay if this was a survival game about keeping the spaceship running for as long as possible, but this is supposed to be a game about doing things WITH the ship, but your ship just happens to be garbage.
I made these three short demos of soundtrack music that I thought could work here...
I see what YC means in that many moments in-game don't feel like they need music - the ambience of the ship is rich enough. But maybe at some points (like when a new story beat happens), a little tune could fit well.
Anyway, here they are - hope people have a way of trying them out along with the game itself. :)
I have a hypothetical way to access the story mode early.
Because it was mentioned in the "Seed of your pants" video that the only thing locking the content was a single True/False variable, a tool like cheat engine could be used to easily edit the variable and access the content. The hardest part would be the trail and error trying to find the right variable to edit.
I'm not going to try this personally because I have other things to do, but if yall want to have a sneak peak the option is these.
A macro and a variable aren't the same thing - presumably what he's doing is setting the story code to only be compiled if LOCKFULLGAME is set to 1. In other words, story content is literally not present in the code of the version we get to play.
Also also, had I not been watching your videos, my first instinct upon finding pea seeds on a planet (right next to grown peas) would be to throw it at every distinct ground sprite or look for a hoe item, assuming you're supposed to grow plants ON THE PLANET, that being where plants grow in my real life experience.
Also, if you're dumb enough to sell your first upgrade unit (which displays on the sell screen as "unknown item") you can soft lock the game to the first system.
As the ship gets larger (particularly bow to stern), routine stuff like filling the warp engines then getting back to the bridge starts to take longer and longer. A conveyer belt "turbo lift" upgrade might be handy.
A hull breach can spawn on top of the ship right where the player normally spawns after climbing the ladder. Fortunately the game just awkwardly has the player stuck on the tile for a bit before shunting them out, so it doesn't really impact gameplay much.
I did have an incident where a hull breach in the ceiling didn't appear from outside my ship, but inside the "air being sucked out" effect still played along with audio cue and I was rapidly losing oxygen. That was annoying, although fixed with a ship upgrade.
I was dropping off waste on an uncivilized planet when I received an error and the game crashed. It didn't copy the error like it was suppose to but it was an array out of index. Almost like it was looking for something at [4] index and it wasn't there.
I don't know if rng just isn't in my favor or I'm doing something wrong but it seems that several times while trying to play the "flying" minigame the screen is filled with asteroids to the point they are unavoidable and my ship takes a lot of damage as a result.
I'm not sure if there's a way to refill your coolant without getting a ship upgrade, but it's super annoying to have to deal with half coolant for potentially quite a while (until you can save enough to buy an upgrade & get an upgrade unit).
I think perhaps offering a "full repair" at planets with an upgrade station that doesn't require an upgrade unit would be good, as it would still be a financial drain of sorts but could fix annoying issues like that, maybe refuel the engines to a neat 100% (instead of having them stuck at 95% and never being completely full), and just generally serve as a way to come back from a series of really bad collisions.
Eventually I lost all of my health so I stopped worrying about stamina, and honestly I had more fun when I just wasn't thinking about it. I would vote for its removal, but implementing eating (which isn't implemented as far as I can tell?) along with the hydroponics bay being a potential steady source of food would be a way to reward players for the first few upgrades.
Also, the collisions in asteroid fields seemed very frequent, to the point of sometimes having multiple in a row that necessitated at least half a health bar of excess work.
Finally, the computer says sleeping restores stamina & passes time, and while I notice it does restore stamina faster I don't notice it passing time faster? Maybe I'm just not very perceptive, though.
Can't you check if a person picked up the quest item every time a player lands on a planet and spawn non quest loot if they haven't picked up the quest item
Found a bug, after you initially return to the ship from collecting the ore it will only let you open the (cockpit) door from a specific corner, I can provide a video if you want
Just started the latest build (0.1.4) and noticed something. To cut a long story short, by skipping the tutorial, you skip the parts where the dialogue system best guesses what you are
Really enjoy so far! The writing and environmental details are excellent. More of that, please.
I have found that a lot of the text seems to go by quickly. I have a 144 Hz monitor, maybe that has something to do with it? Or maybe I just read slow.
Either way, looking forward to more content as it gets added!
If you have 3 Job-Mission that are to be delivered to the same planet the 3rd guy/gal will be outside the loading zone and not execpt its luggage. You have to fullfil one of the 2 others' requests and go to your ship and come back for the 3rd guy to now be in the loading zone and except his package.
My guess it has to do with the fact, that you are only allowed to drop stuff in the loading zone and elevator. This code most likely also prevents the drop of to the 3rd guy.
^Also noticed this bug. A simple fix would be to arrange the NPCs vertically instead, which would increase the limit to like 7ish (but block off the western exit to the platform)
___________________________________________ ############################################################################################ ERROR in action number 1 of Draw Event for object con_pda:
trying to index a variable which is not an array at gml_Object_con_pda_Draw_0 ############################################################################################ gml_Object_con_pda_Draw_0 (line -1)
Experienced on new ship just waiting while school was going on. On the planet turning part.
in sell menu when you have only one item on the list, pressing up will cause the item to disappear as though you scrolled down, but it cant be made to reappear
What about an espionage mission where a corporation or militant group tasks you with stealing equipment or resources from rival corporations or planets?
What about black market jobs where instead of smuggling stuff out of restricted areas, you smuggle stuff into them.
You’d have to fly stealthily & slowly to be careful or fly quickly to get in and out of restricted space. Maybe you’d use that flying mini game.
Restricted areas of space would add more danger to space travel, maybe you’d have to adjust course to stay out of militarized zones or risk sneaking or speeding through them to save time and risking getting arrested.
___________________________________________ ############################################################################################ ERROR in action number 1 of Draw Event for object con_pda:
trying to index a variable which is not an array at gml_Object_con_pda_Draw_0 ############################################################################################ gml_Object_con_pda_Draw_0 (line -1)
game crashed while I was in the pause menu not really sure what I did though. V0.1.3
When you go to rebind select, when you press the new keybind it auto-inputs select again (or maybe I'm just not hitting the frame-perfect hit & release) and so it throws up the prompt to bind "select" again. Then you're trapped until you hit escape.
Similarly, when binding "back," it instantly takes you out of the keybind menu b/c the game thinks you're inputting "back" when you hit the key to bind it.
On a ship with air air cycler fault (Duh system). All air cyclers 100% operational. I hear the sound of air escaping, but no tear inside or out of the vessel and O2 levels don't drop.
Dialog still has references to sleep, even though it doesn't exist anymore.
The emotion icons and the effect they (might) have are not directly clear (to me at least). Perhaps add an entry in the manual about them? Same for the delivery cycles bar - took me a while to notice it.
In the trading post sell menu, when you sell everything on the loading area, perhaps you can directly return to the main menu instead of having to press the spacebar first?
Picked up 2 waste disposal jobs at the same time. All barrels appeared on the dock, but only one of the jobs completed successfully
I've been playing the 0.1.3 version (I'm enjoying it a lot) and here's a list of thoughts and comments:
-I accidentally took 2 jobs at the same time when calling the galactic freight. I couldn't finnish the second one in time so I had a lot of boxes and nothing to do with them so I just left them in the landing area of a planet and they are stuck there. Would be cool if they were just removed if you run out of time.
-I suppose someone has already said it but the game runs slow on uninhabited planets.
-I know this has been pointed out but there seems to be no penalty for running out of stamina and I don't know if there's a way to lose health. You said it was the only kind of challenge in the game but right now the only challenge is completing the jobs in time. Would be cool if there were other ways to fail aside from running out of time.
-It would be nice if you could name the spaceship and have the name appear somewhere when you go out to do some repairs or clean.
-I suppose planets are randomly generated but there are a lot of empty platforms.
Regarding variety:
-I like the ship mainteinance but it's always the air cyclers and the liquid. Other things barely break or get dirty.
-I don't know how much work it requires but every star system feels the same. Every system has the same planets with the same stuff and it feels a little bit repetitive.
-I do know you said creating new mechanics is a lot of work but it would be cool to have some variety in the type of jobs you do. Maybe transporting something that's illegal so you make more money but your ship could be registered by police or something.
Well, these are just the thoughts I had while playing but I don't know the direction you want to take. Anyway, as I said, I'm enjoying it a lot and I'm looking forward to next updates.
Your idea on changing the sleep thing is good, BUT it's often postulated that people in space would likely go to the Awake 2 or 4 hour model with a 30-minute or 1 hour sleep in-between (like people on submarines sometimes do). I've personally done the 2-Hr. version for weeks at a time when working on coding projects and there is a curious catch to the idea of only needing 5 hours of sleep a day -> IF YOU DON'T TAKE THAT NAP WHEN YOU SHOULD, you get so tired you can't keep going. You start making dumb mistakes, dozing off and the like. Having a sleep-power reserve like some watches do might be another good resource to manage. As you get too tired, you might mis-read what resources are on a world and waste a bunch of time when you realize it wasn't real (like a mirage). OR maybe your character just dozes off uncontrollable. This could be a fun, real-world management issue.
Framerate tends to drop on uninhabited planets. It's normally not a big problem, but it can make the hot-cold flashing on the Oniris devices harder to read. Also, after delivering crates to a planet, the crates will be back in the planet's loading bay next time I visit it. I tried taking them out and dumping them on an uninhabited planet; that got rid of them
Love the gameplay! Very chill and relaxing. Looking forward to when the hydroponics bay is functional; being less dependent on air cyclers seems like it would feel very rewarding. As another commenter noted, being able to rotate the crate stamper would be pretty cool; you could potentially set a bunch up around the landing platform to automatically stamp a lot of your crates as soon as you come aboard. In general, more variety in what needs to be maintained moment to moment would be pretty great (maybe some systems unique to the cargo bay, cockpit, and other areas? Could be a way to scale up how much maintenance needs to be done as your ship gets larger, in addition to requiring more air cyclers), and feels like it would be increase the impact of the crew once they're added in, as it would ensure they always have something useful to do (if you go the route of using them to automate tasks)
After exploring the entire galaxy the last time I played, I decided to dial it back. This time Jonas Starhawk is just a simple man trying to get a big spaceship as fast as possible. In doing so I found a nifty trick. By allowing stamping machines to be bought, I made a little auto-stamp system with four of them. I really like this emergent automation and I think it could make for interesting ship upgrades. I got money rolling quickly and was living the high life in only a few hours.
For fun I decided to try the varying prices mechanic that trading posts have. I found one planet that sold Pineapple Chunks for cheap, and another that bought them for more than double what I paid. You made a joke about someone filling their ship with Bananas for weird reasons. Well laugh it up, because I bought 126 Pineapple Chunks at $51, sold them at $136, and made a cool $10,710 profit.
Was it terribly inefficient? Yes. Can I make more in ¼ of the time by doing freight jobs? Yes. Did I accidentally by 126 Pineapples first, load them up, and then have to scramble to find a buyer? Yes. Do I want this feature to be built up more and improved still? Absolutely.
I think this way of making money ties into an idea you said a few videos back about a character's personality drifting depending on their actions. Helping ships slides you more altruistic, so then maybe normal freight jobs pull you towards apathy. Oniris surveys could move either more altruistic or egoism, depending on how they tie into the story. I think my experimental pineapple delivery could be a new delivery type that skews egoist. Say there’s a building you can buy crates from similar to Oniris. You can drop those crates on items like in the slimes mechanic. Except, now that crate is carrying the item. Make each crate be able to carry ~4 of the same item, increase price differences, and boom, now my method is more profitable than normal freight. The player has more personal choice in which material to specialize in. They live or die by their own actions, a very private egotism choice. Idk, just something I thought of.
Notes on Sleeping and Stamina:
I decided to run a test on if Stamina increases if you stay in the bed. At level 15, it took 1:40 to regenerate to full Stamina while standing around, and only 50 seconds if in bed. Despite that effectiveness, it only took 18 seconds to use all my Stamina cleaning just 4 Air Cyclers, not even accounting for other residues or package delivery. These findings lead me to one of two conclusions. A) Drastically increase the natural Stamina regeneration, add new ways to regenerate Stamina, and decrease the amount of ship breakdowns. Or B) Just get rid of Stamina for a patch or two.
No matter which path is chosen, I think ship degradation and breakdowns should be highly reduced as more content is added. I never felt at peace for more than a few minutes while on my maxed out ship. I’d always be running around fixing the air or residue or coolant. Air Cyclers are the most significant culprit here, as another commenter pointed out. I get there being a lot of breakdowns right now since there’s nothing else to do in the current build. But once new secondary loops get added in my ship needs to stop breaking after one minute of jotting down notes.
I also just realized food was a useful thing this update from a comment. I tried it out, and it is kind of fun to fill a whole landing bay with apples and sprint through eating them. I’ll definitely experiment with this feature more in future updates. I do think it suffers from the same problems plaguing Stamina overall, mainly diminishing returns. I needed to fill that landing bay up twice with food to regen my full Stamina at level 15. The cost was negligible but I don’t think rapid overeating is the tone this game is going for.
Bugs/visual glitches:
*BIG GLITCH* Random storage containers will be at ports I’ve never visited before or taken a quest to pick up from. They can also appear after revisiting already discovered planets. The ghost boxes luckily only messed up one of my missions, because new storage crates for the quest didn’t replace the ghost boxes and didn’t show up when new landing space was available.
Contacting Galactic Freight from your ship's computer crashes the game.
The repainting menu still doesn’t fit with every room added. You can also open the menu and scroll up to get what I could best call a “phantom” tab. Nothing is selected and pushing enter doesn’t do anything, but it doesn’t sync up like all the other menus.
Still some lag on Uncivilized planets, can’t tell if that’s on my end or not.
More than my last run through I had the issue of my character colliding with an item I’d just put down. This resulted in countless times where I would be halfway in a crate and couldn’t walk up or down to get out. Maybe placing items could “bounce” you to the tile where you were placing from so this collision wouldn’t happen
If you stop holding space while buying the hull repainting, the card stays and doesn’t reset like other repainting stations.
I’m glad Fuel Injectors and Warp Rings are getting dirty, they both now have the issue of never getting fully aligned. Injectors can only sometimes get to 100% and Rings still can be a very small (yet infuriating) amount of pixels off.
Freight Jobs still have no description in the Menu.
Gameplay Ideas:
After playing through basically the same delivery and job board missions a dozen times, I’d like to throw some ideas into the ring.
Pet Delivery: pick up cages, put them on your landing dock. Once back on your ship the animal escapes and has similar AI to the slimes, except faster. To deliver them you need to recapture them in a cage. Maybe get rid of doors crushing them, maybe not.
Heating and Cooling: Highly specialized delivery missions where you have to keep packages around a heating/cooling device.
Being able to rotate the crate stamper with the wrench for more customization.
I had the idea of getting a push cart/dolly after a few freight deliveries. It could hold two crates and go faster than walking speed. Transporting full docks of cargo can get tedious and that could really move it along.
I’m liking these new features and I’m excited to see how NPC’s will interact with them. Good demo as always!
Only found one big issue. There is an upgrade unit that the rumor says can be bought from the trading post but in that sector there is only one uninhabited planet. I don't know if I am missing something or not.
My 2 cents: Some kind of pause would be nice. Not everyone can play uninterrupted.
Something in the tutorial about eating. I only noticed it when looking at the key bindings.
Not a big deal now but when running out of air does damage it is going to be difficult to find crashed ships in time. I don't know if that is how you want it but perhaps a way to refill O2 at the platform.
Looking great, absolutely adore the game though I did run into one game-ending issue when unloading waste on a planet. Since I can't pick up the barrels once I've set them down and I accidentally blocked myself in.
So I put a good few hours into this game last night so here is the problems I had:
-I felt that the Air Cyclers broke far to quickly as I couldn‘t go more than a minute without having to go fix them.
-A ship I was paid for fixing would not let me leave due to an invisible block at the platform.
Suggestions; Make the warp engines break a little faster, especially the coils, and I feel an anti-asteroid laser of some sort might be a good mid to late game upgrade (Tied to story?).
Just gave 0.1.3 a try. The only issues I ran into so far were: -Unable to sleep. -A bit of a stuttering framerate on the first planet, possibly from all of the rock sprites.
I don't know if you saw the patch notes, but sleeping was specifically removed. I did see the computer still mentions sleeping in the tutorial, but that's probably an oversight. I am going to check if staying in bed boosts stamina regeneration, but it seems to me it's only placebo levels. Hope that clears things up!
I got the results from my test. At level 15 I could regenerate full stamina in 1 minute 40 seconds by standing around. By "sleeping" in bed (just moving into it) I could fill it in 50 seconds. So technically sleeping is still a usable feature.
It still only took 18 seconds for me to use all my Stamina on some Air Cyclers though lol. Definitely needs to be balanced or have a patch testing no Stamina.
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One comment and one bug report.
I (as others have found from looking at the comments) find the rate of degradation on the ships system too high. I understand the main gameplay loop is busy work on the ship but by the time personally things break too frequently. By the time I've got everything working I will set a course and within seconds of starting say the piloting minigame I get the red triangle and have to go through the ship and fix everything again. For me there is not enough down time to look through the star system/plan next moves/play the mini game. I am not far into the game either so imagine this only becomes a bigger problem as ship gets more working parts.
A fix could be that the warning signs don't flash whatever needs fixing until it is in more urgent need of repair. I understand that I can just ignore the red triangle for a bit but I hate it flashing so have to get rid of it immediately. I am sure I am not the only one.
Bug I experienced. I was in the rear end of the ship (no upgrades - picked the bigger slower ship) when something broke rendering me unable to open the doors, basically soft locking me. Reloading the game returned me to cockpit so no great harm done.
I don't have much to say, but I did find 2 more bugs. One was where I cleaning the scoops and suddenly an asteroid hit the exact grid where I was standing. The resulting breach pushed me outside the ship and I could no longer move. I was lucky and could just reload a save but still relatively game breaking. The second happened when I enlarged my cargo platform, which pushed my hydroponics bay (which was on the right side of the cargo platform) one grid space to the right. This would be fine if it wasn't for the fact that the plants growing in the hydroponics bay didn't quite get the memo and stayed in the same grid space where they were before the platform enlargement. The plants still seemed to work, since their animations were playing and they were destructable, but it was still slightly immersion breaking. These are kinda minor but I still thought I should report them.
So, I have played multiple builds. Most persistent issue in my eyes is that the core gameplay loop isn't fun. I find cleaning / maintaining the ship is very tedious. For the first several versions, I would use the sleep mechanic to just skip until I got the red triangle warning then clean the ship before repeating the process until I got to my destination. Now that sleeping no longer speeds up time, it just puts this issue in sharper relief.
I think one of the things I've found annoying is the rate at which the ship degrades. I actually like walking around my ship and repairing it now and then. But I can't enjoy that because everything starts breaking immediately after you fix it. Without the fail state in the game I'm also just running around not caring about stamina, because there's no reason to.
At the end of the day, I think the problem is that the gameplay loops are in conflict. In Stardew Valley, if you plant a plant or chop a log, you get get something from it, which you can then use to further your goals of making wine or friends or whatever.
In Starstruck Vagabond, the objective you're thinking about is getting the ship from point A to B, which it would be perfectly capable of doing if the #$@! air cycles could stay working for five minutes. When you fix them, you just get the opportunity to get back to the game.
I think folks wouldn't mind the fast rate of decay if this was a survival game about keeping the spaceship running for as long as possible, but this is supposed to be a game about doing things WITH the ship, but your ship just happens to be garbage.
I made these three short demos of soundtrack music that I thought could work here...
I see what YC means in that many moments in-game don't feel like they need music - the ambience of the ship is rich enough. But maybe at some points (like when a new story beat happens), a little tune could fit well.
Anyway, here they are - hope people have a way of trying them out along with the game itself. :)
Title screen/main theme:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qj_xzbMsij7F-ZMWmuzsi5QJolU1yK7r/view?usp=shari...
Menu/character creation:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/15W9l4n5gpVuaHYy-zSUifdNjTOm-uT9v/view?usp=shari...
Occasional in-game background:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cN5G1_dPFi3qo9PCwvWIPMYGDeJyi3uS/view?usp=shari...
I have a hypothetical way to access the story mode early.
Because it was mentioned in the "Seed of your pants" video that the only thing locking the content was a single True/False variable, a tool like cheat engine could be used to easily edit the variable and access the content. The hardest part would be the trail and error trying to find the right variable to edit.
I'm not going to try this personally because I have other things to do, but if yall want to have a sneak peak the option is these.
Live long and prosper.
A macro and a variable aren't the same thing - presumably what he's doing is setting the story code to only be compiled if LOCKFULLGAME is set to 1. In other words, story content is literally not present in the code of the version we get to play.
Also also, had I not been watching your videos, my first instinct upon finding pea seeds on a planet (right next to grown peas) would be to throw it at every distinct ground sprite or look for a hoe item, assuming you're supposed to grow plants ON THE PLANET, that being where plants grow in my real life experience.
Also, if you're dumb enough to sell your first upgrade unit (which displays on the sell screen as "unknown item") you can soft lock the game to the first system.
As the ship gets larger (particularly bow to stern), routine stuff like filling the warp engines then getting back to the bridge starts to take longer and longer. A conveyer belt "turbo lift" upgrade might be handy.
A hull breach can spawn on top of the ship right where the player normally spawns after climbing the ladder. Fortunately the game just awkwardly has the player stuck on the tile for a bit before shunting them out, so it doesn't really impact gameplay much.
I did have an incident where a hull breach in the ceiling didn't appear from outside my ship, but inside the "air being sucked out" effect still played along with audio cue and I was rapidly losing oxygen. That was annoying, although fixed with a ship upgrade.
I was dropping off waste on an uncivilized planet when I received an error and the game crashed. It didn't copy the error like it was suppose to but it was an array out of index. Almost like it was looking for something at [4] index and it wasn't there.
I don't know if rng just isn't in my favor or I'm doing something wrong but it seems that several times while trying to play the "flying" minigame the screen is filled with asteroids to the point they are unavoidable and my ship takes a lot of damage as a result.
I'm not sure if there's a way to refill your coolant without getting a ship upgrade, but it's super annoying to have to deal with half coolant for potentially quite a while (until you can save enough to buy an upgrade & get an upgrade unit).
I think perhaps offering a "full repair" at planets with an upgrade station that doesn't require an upgrade unit would be good, as it would still be a financial drain of sorts but could fix annoying issues like that, maybe refuel the engines to a neat 100% (instead of having them stuck at 95% and never being completely full), and just generally serve as a way to come back from a series of really bad collisions.
Eventually I lost all of my health so I stopped worrying about stamina, and honestly I had more fun when I just wasn't thinking about it. I would vote for its removal, but implementing eating (which isn't implemented as far as I can tell?) along with the hydroponics bay being a potential steady source of food would be a way to reward players for the first few upgrades.
Also, the collisions in asteroid fields seemed very frequent, to the point of sometimes having multiple in a row that necessitated at least half a health bar of excess work.
Finally, the computer says sleeping restores stamina & passes time, and while I notice it does restore stamina faster I don't notice it passing time faster? Maybe I'm just not very perceptive, though.
Can't you check if a person picked up the quest item every time a player lands on a planet and spawn non quest loot if they haven't picked up the quest item
New Bug! If you press A really fast right as a notification for a derelict ship shows up, you can freeze the game.
Found a bug, after you initially return to the ship from collecting the ore it will only let you open the (cockpit) door from a specific corner, I can provide a video if you want
Just started the latest build (0.1.4) and noticed something. To cut a long story short, by skipping the tutorial, you skip the parts where the dialogue system best guesses what you are
Really enjoy so far! The writing and environmental details are excellent. More of that, please.
I have found that a lot of the text seems to go by quickly. I have a 144 Hz monitor, maybe that has something to do with it? Or maybe I just read slow.
Either way, looking forward to more content as it gets added!
Job Bug:
If you have 3 Job-Mission that are to be delivered to the same planet the 3rd guy/gal will be outside the loading zone and not execpt its luggage. You have to fullfil one of the 2 others' requests and go to your ship and come back for the 3rd guy to now be in the loading zone and except his package.
My guess it has to do with the fact, that you are only allowed to drop stuff in the loading zone and elevator. This code most likely also prevents the drop of to the 3rd guy.
^Also noticed this bug. A simple fix would be to arrange the NPCs vertically instead, which would increase the limit to like 7ish (but block off the western exit to the platform)
Found Bug
After you get your new ship, the first time you get on the ship (after you load the crystals) the ship calls you 'Username' instead of your name.
___________________________________________
############################################################################################
ERROR in
action number 1
of Draw Event
for object con_pda:
trying to index a variable which is not an array
at gml_Object_con_pda_Draw_0
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gml_Object_con_pda_Draw_0 (line -1)
Experienced on new ship just waiting while school was going on. On the planet turning part.
Probably due to the Crew tab bug reported elsewhere.
Bug ?
I had a rumor that in the BLELO sector I can buy a Upgrade Unit at a trading post, but there is only an uninhabited planet.
found bug
in sell menu when you have only one item on the list, pressing up will cause the item to disappear as though you scrolled down, but it cant be made to reappear
What about an espionage mission where a corporation or militant group tasks you with stealing equipment or resources from rival corporations or planets?
What about black market jobs where instead of smuggling stuff out of restricted areas, you smuggle stuff into them.
You’d have to fly stealthily & slowly to be careful or fly quickly to get in and out of restricted space. Maybe you’d use that flying mini game.
Restricted areas of space would add more danger to space travel, maybe you’d have to adjust course to stay out of militarized zones or risk sneaking or speeding through them to save time and risking getting arrested.
Just a thought.
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action number 1
of Draw Event
for object con_pda:
trying to index a variable which is not an array
at gml_Object_con_pda_Draw_0
############################################################################################
gml_Object_con_pda_Draw_0 (line -1)
game crashed while I was in the pause menu not really sure what I did though. V0.1.3
likewise, same error message and everything (V0.1.4)
I can replicate this error in 0.1.4 as follows:
1. Open Pause Menu
2. Select "CREW" Tab with Mouse Cursor
3. Move the Mouse to the Text area on the right
4. As soon as the cursor enters the Text area the Game crashes
Confirmed in 0.1.5 as well.
Instead of a player planet perhaps a space station. that seems more in line with the themes of the game.
When you go to rebind select, when you press the new keybind it auto-inputs select again (or maybe I'm just not hitting the frame-perfect hit & release) and so it throws up the prompt to bind "select" again. Then you're trapped until you hit escape.
Similarly, when binding "back," it instantly takes you out of the keybind menu b/c the game thinks you're inputting "back" when you hit the key to bind it.
Something I noticed when the game starts and you select your save, the transparency of the selection is a bit high, making it kinda hard to read.
Playing V0.1.3
On a ship with air air cycler fault (Duh system). All air cyclers 100% operational. I hear the sound of air escaping, but no tear inside or out of the vessel and O2 levels don't drop.
Dialog still has references to sleep, even though it doesn't exist anymore.
The emotion icons and the effect they (might) have are not directly clear (to me at least). Perhaps add an entry in the manual about them? Same for the delivery cycles bar - took me a while to notice it.
In the trading post sell menu, when you sell everything on the loading area, perhaps you can directly return to the main menu instead of having to press the spacebar first?
Picked up 2 waste disposal jobs at the same time. All barrels appeared on the dock, but only one of the jobs completed successfully
Yahtz I just want you to know I too am something of a wordsmith, so I've gone ahead and named the game folder Star Bum.
I've been playing the 0.1.3 version (I'm enjoying it a lot) and here's a list of thoughts and comments:
-I accidentally took 2 jobs at the same time when calling the galactic freight. I couldn't finnish the second one in time so I had a lot of boxes and nothing to do with them so I just left them in the landing area of a planet and they are stuck there. Would be cool if they were just removed if you run out of time.
-I suppose someone has already said it but the game runs slow on uninhabited planets.
-I know this has been pointed out but there seems to be no penalty for running out of stamina and I don't know if there's a way to lose health. You said it was the only kind of challenge in the game but right now the only challenge is completing the jobs in time. Would be cool if there were other ways to fail aside from running out of time.
-It would be nice if you could name the spaceship and have the name appear somewhere when you go out to do some repairs or clean.
-I suppose planets are randomly generated but there are a lot of empty platforms.
Regarding variety:
-I like the ship mainteinance but it's always the air cyclers and the liquid. Other things barely break or get dirty.
-I don't know how much work it requires but every star system feels the same. Every system has the same planets with the same stuff and it feels a little bit repetitive.
-I do know you said creating new mechanics is a lot of work but it would be cool to have some variety in the type of jobs you do. Maybe transporting something that's illegal so you make more money but your ship could be registered by police or something.
Well, these are just the thoughts I had while playing but I don't know the direction you want to take. Anyway, as I said, I'm enjoying it a lot and I'm looking forward to next updates.
in every version of the game I played it wouldn't let me change the last name of my character. Is it just me, or is it an actual issue?
Your idea on changing the sleep thing is good, BUT it's often postulated that people in space would likely go to the Awake 2 or 4 hour model with a 30-minute or 1 hour sleep in-between (like people on submarines sometimes do). I've personally done the 2-Hr. version for weeks at a time when working on coding projects and there is a curious catch to the idea of only needing 5 hours of sleep a day -> IF YOU DON'T TAKE THAT NAP WHEN YOU SHOULD, you get so tired you can't keep going. You start making dumb mistakes, dozing off and the like. Having a sleep-power reserve like some watches do might be another good resource to manage. As you get too tired, you might mis-read what resources are on a world and waste a bunch of time when you realize it wasn't real (like a mirage). OR maybe your character just dozes off uncontrollable. This could be a fun, real-world management issue.
Excellently written. Looking forward to more. Also,
Version 0.1.3:
Framerate tends to drop on uninhabited planets. It's normally not a big problem, but it can make the hot-cold flashing on the Oniris devices harder to read. Also, after delivering crates to a planet, the crates will be back in the planet's loading bay next time I visit it. I tried taking them out and dumping them on an uninhabited planet; that got rid of them
Love the gameplay! Very chill and relaxing. Looking forward to when the hydroponics bay is functional; being less dependent on air cyclers seems like it would feel very rewarding. As another commenter noted, being able to rotate the crate stamper would be pretty cool; you could potentially set a bunch up around the landing platform to automatically stamp a lot of your crates as soon as you come aboard. In general, more variety in what needs to be maintained moment to moment would be pretty great (maybe some systems unique to the cargo bay, cockpit, and other areas? Could be a way to scale up how much maintenance needs to be done as your ship gets larger, in addition to requiring more air cyclers), and feels like it would be increase the impact of the crew once they're added in, as it would ensure they always have something useful to do (if you go the route of using them to automate tasks)
Alright, version 0.1.3!
Continued Gameplay Adventure:
After exploring the entire galaxy the last time I played, I decided to dial it back. This time Jonas Starhawk is just a simple man trying to get a big spaceship as fast as possible. In doing so I found a nifty trick. By allowing stamping machines to be bought, I made a little auto-stamp system with four of them. I really like this emergent automation and I think it could make for interesting ship upgrades. I got money rolling quickly and was living the high life in only a few hours.
For fun I decided to try the varying prices mechanic that trading posts have. I found one planet that sold Pineapple Chunks for cheap, and another that bought them for more than double what I paid. You made a joke about someone filling their ship with Bananas for weird reasons. Well laugh it up, because I bought 126 Pineapple Chunks at $51, sold them at $136, and made a cool $10,710 profit.
Was it terribly inefficient? Yes. Can I make more in ¼ of the time by doing freight jobs? Yes. Did I accidentally by 126 Pineapples first, load them up, and then have to scramble to find a buyer? Yes. Do I want this feature to be built up more and improved still? Absolutely.
I think this way of making money ties into an idea you said a few videos back about a character's personality drifting depending on their actions. Helping ships slides you more altruistic, so then maybe normal freight jobs pull you towards apathy. Oniris surveys could move either more altruistic or egoism, depending on how they tie into the story. I think my experimental pineapple delivery could be a new delivery type that skews egoist. Say there’s a building you can buy crates from similar to Oniris. You can drop those crates on items like in the slimes mechanic. Except, now that crate is carrying the item. Make each crate be able to carry ~4 of the same item, increase price differences, and boom, now my method is more profitable than normal freight. The player has more personal choice in which material to specialize in. They live or die by their own actions, a very private egotism choice. Idk, just something I thought of.
Notes on Sleeping and Stamina:
I decided to run a test on if Stamina increases if you stay in the bed. At level 15, it took 1:40 to regenerate to full Stamina while standing around, and only 50 seconds if in bed. Despite that effectiveness, it only took 18 seconds to use all my Stamina cleaning just 4 Air Cyclers, not even accounting for other residues or package delivery. These findings lead me to one of two conclusions. A) Drastically increase the natural Stamina regeneration, add new ways to regenerate Stamina, and decrease the amount of ship breakdowns. Or B) Just get rid of Stamina for a patch or two.
No matter which path is chosen, I think ship degradation and breakdowns should be highly reduced as more content is added. I never felt at peace for more than a few minutes while on my maxed out ship. I’d always be running around fixing the air or residue or coolant. Air Cyclers are the most significant culprit here, as another commenter pointed out. I get there being a lot of breakdowns right now since there’s nothing else to do in the current build. But once new secondary loops get added in my ship needs to stop breaking after one minute of jotting down notes.
I also just realized food was a useful thing this update from a comment. I tried it out, and it is kind of fun to fill a whole landing bay with apples and sprint through eating them. I’ll definitely experiment with this feature more in future updates. I do think it suffers from the same problems plaguing Stamina overall, mainly diminishing returns. I needed to fill that landing bay up twice with food to regen my full Stamina at level 15. The cost was negligible but I don’t think rapid overeating is the tone this game is going for.
Bugs/visual glitches:
Gameplay Ideas:
After playing through basically the same delivery and job board missions a dozen times, I’d like to throw some ideas into the ring.
I’m liking these new features and I’m excited to see how NPC’s will interact with them. Good demo as always!
*tips trilby*
Great game. Can't wait for the story.
Only found one big issue. There is an upgrade unit that the rumor says can be bought from the trading post but in that sector there is only one uninhabited planet. I don't know if I am missing something or not.
My 2 cents:
Some kind of pause would be nice. Not everyone can play uninterrupted.
Something in the tutorial about eating. I only noticed it when looking at the key bindings.
Not a big deal now but when running out of air does damage it is going to be difficult to find crashed ships in time. I don't know if that is how you want it but perhaps a way to refill O2 at the platform.
Looking great, absolutely adore the game though I did run into one game-ending issue when unloading waste on a planet. Since I can't pick up the barrels once I've set them down and I accidentally blocked myself in.
So I put a good few hours into this game last night so here is the problems I had:
-I felt that the Air Cyclers broke far to quickly as I couldn‘t go more than a minute without having to go fix them.
-A ship I was paid for fixing would not let me leave due to an invisible block at the platform.
Suggestions; Make the warp engines break a little faster, especially the coils, and I feel an anti-asteroid laser of some sort might be a good mid to late game upgrade (Tied to story?).
Just gave 0.1.3 a try. The only issues I ran into so far were:
-Unable to sleep.
-A bit of a stuttering framerate on the first planet, possibly from all of the rock sprites.
I don't know if you saw the patch notes, but sleeping was specifically removed. I did see the computer still mentions sleeping in the tutorial, but that's probably an oversight. I am going to check if staying in bed boosts stamina regeneration, but it seems to me it's only placebo levels. Hope that clears things up!
Ah I totally missed that. I saw that mentioned in the video, but when the game still mentioned sleep I just assumed it was still a feature. Cheers!
It's not fun to stand in place while the Stamina slowly regens, though. Hm
I got the results from my test. At level 15 I could regenerate full stamina in 1 minute 40 seconds by standing around. By "sleeping" in bed (just moving into it) I could fill it in 50 seconds. So technically sleeping is still a usable feature.
It still only took 18 seconds for me to use all my Stamina on some Air Cyclers though lol. Definitely needs to be balanced or have a patch testing no Stamina.