>I find myself often standing next to the snack dispenser, waiting for enough snacks to refill my stamina so i can go on to the next thing. If i have forethought, I'll scatter some snacks on the floor so i don't have to wait so long next time, like some hamster/squirrel hybrid. >Does something happen when I go to a ship in distress, kill the zoobs/preform repairs, remove their aircyclers from powered strips, and leave just before everyone suffocates? >No matter what I "roll" for clothing options, i always end up looking like a divorced high-school math teacher (or English teacher, if female).
Possible Bug:I had a sidequest, to deliver some boxes to a place, but then i got a warp drive and my sidequests cleared so i have the stuff but no idea where to deliver it.
Possible Bug: In release 0.1.8, i think the flying minigame was supposed to change direction based on which way the ship was flying. for me, it still goes "up" no matter where i'm headed.
I love the writing. It makes me look forward to Will Ignore the Galaxy for Privacy, or whatever JM3 turns out to be titled. I'm enjoying following this game's development
Enjoying the game so far. Granted, I haven’t gotten to the warping stage, yet.
There was a game I played on Big Fish’s site where you flew a cargo plane. All you really did was deliver cargo, give passengers rides or buy/sell goods. It was very chill, with no combat. I really liked it.
This game has a similar vibe, but with a Han Solo ‘keep the ship in working order’ feel to it.
I really like the aesthetics of the game. The computer screen with it’s old school display and beeps, the various tools and their uses.
I also like the cargo is handled and physically moved to and from the ship.
You’ve done a good job so far and I can’t wait to see what else you add to the game.
i found a really annoying bug that i got in two separate saves
if you accept a board job for getting a bag twice, and its on the same planet. it will generate only one and the other will never spawn, even if you complete one of the job and return.
In the current build (0.1.7), a sector can't have two of the same job, so there's no way that bug can happen. If you are playing the current build, you're probably playing a save game from a previous build, because the sector jobs are all generated and saved when you start a new game, so an old save will still have jobs that a previous build generated.
Start a new game in 0.1.7 and you shouldn't have this problem. Sorry about constantly having to start anew but that's alpha testing for you.
I thought the junk collecting mission was kind of interesting, and encouraged using the piloting minigame, but the other two types of flying missions I would just grab whenever I got to a new system, and take the free money as a part of my delivery missions.
Overall, I feel like there's been several attempts at distractions from lulls in the action that I end up pushing aside or ignoring altogether. I find myself getting the crate stamping done right after bringing crates on board, even though it might be better stamina economy to try and squeeze them in in flight, since it's not likely I'll have time to stamp them all during travel time. I'm happy to take free money for being in a dust storm, but the last thing I want to do is postpone the next delivery or Onaris dropoff to pick up 1000ish credits that I'll probably get anyway. And whatever maintenance needs to get done tends to be put off until I don't have a timer to move cargo, at which point I do all of it at once before focusing on the next thing. I dreaded getting a hydroponics bay, since I knew that it would be another thing to juggle while missions were going on.
In my experience, the rhythm of the game centers around the warp drive. As long as there's gas in the tank, you can and should always be flying somewhere, and any component fixing you have to do should be manageable while still keeping stamina near maximum. Once you reach the end of a freight trip or Onaris "survey" hot-and-cold game, you'll be near zero stamina, but if you've still got gas you can keep going and trust you'll rest up by the next planet. Once you need to refuel though, it's time to refuse the next mission, and take some "shore leave".
You can't order warp fuel online, which means you don't want to do it while there's a delivery timer going, and to me that completely changes gears. Now I want to order more fuel, pack it on, and now I've got plenty of stamina left to go over my ship and fix everything back up. This low pressure time tends to be when I go after upgrade units. If there were NPCs to talk to and story to advance, I imagine this is when I'd do it.
You've talked about players not having anything to do while enroute, but I feel like in the frantic full-gas-tank-times these lulls last a minute or two tops, and the longest gaps tend to come from low stamina more than nothing to do. Have you considered adding sleep back in to skip dull moments and low stamina? Maybe this would be a good time for NPCs to come bother you with dialog? What if the player took the tutorial computer's advice, and just zoned out for a moment while staring at some cool space sprite for a bit?
The prompts for broken components took away a lot of the fun for me. I always enjoyed figuring out what I needed to fix (and in a pinch, what I can get away with NOT fixing) to be far more engaging than pressing the button to actually make the sprite happy. Now that the game just says, "use the green tool here dummy!" it now feels like the game is just playing itself.
You know what? I take that back in the case of the hydroponics bay. There's no way I would have remembered to keep those plants alive (and made those sweet 40 credits) if the humidifier didn't remind me.
I found a soft lock to be fuel. I accidentally warped to a sector with the last of my fuel with little cash and the last of my fuel and because there wasn't any uncivilised planets I couldn't harvest fuel either.
I think a good answer to this would be allowing the player to send a distress call to a ship which could debt them some credits and having the credits be automatically deducted from their next delivery job.
Where the bloody hell is the scrapyard in the Teh system? I'm racing around like a lunatic trying to find it, but can't remember where Dripberg said to go after you pick up the upgrade unit -- can anyone help?
ive been following the dev diaries for a while and was inspired to make some sprites! i know its extremely presumptuous but if you'd like to use these sprites id be happy to contribute to a cool project. i tried to size them relative to their corresponding sprite. ps: this image was upscaled so the sprites are unusable in this particular image.
I found a half dozen bugs, but I don't think you care at this stage, so I'll stick to broader thoughts:
I really like the new pace of things wearing down. Not only do I feel less annoyed by air cyclers, but it's also clear that different components are becoming an issue at a more even rate, as opposed to always going for the cyclers and coolant, and ignoring everything else. Best of all, it feels more like "maintenance" to me: something you can feel proud of staying on top of, or push off until your ship looks like a beat up mess. My favorite moment this time around was when roleplaying as a space redneck who ended up late on a delivery because he had to keep running back and forth fixing the warp nacelles, only for something else to go wrong when I tried to start them up again.
Stamina is in a weird place at this point. In the first few levels, it's an important element of strategy. You physically can't maintain a whole ship without overexerting at level 1, so you have to pick and choose which components are important, and having to pick up and drop four boxes in a row to get to a clogged air cycler can be a fatal mistake. Later on, your stamina bar gets more lax and time becomes the limiting factor to completing missions effectively. The biggest problem is that if you screw up and run out, your only option is to sit around for a minute and let it regen. I would suggest thinking about how important stamina is to this game, and either factoring it into game balance, or removing the system.
I think there's more you can do with repair missions as "levels" with existing pieces. Because they are optional and don't mess with the player's ship, you might want to look into using creative layouts as puzzles, or even tutorials for less used parts of the player's ships. Examples might be an extra fast zoob on a ship with enough boxes to coral it in with, a ship with a simple problem but a maze of cargo in the way, or a ship where the fuel tanks are pure residue and need draining.
In my experience, the most common case for a component giving off emotion bubbles was in the warp engines, right before warping. In that case, you can't tell what the bubble is referring to, kind of making it useless.
If you go into the suspended animation chamber while still holding miraculum, you get frozen holding it, and wake up with a bag in your hand. Honestly, I would recommend just owning it and making the sprite for the chamber taller so it doesn't clip; doing the rest of the tutorial with a rock stuck to your hands is kind of hilarious.
In theory you could use this as an exploit to get a free second air cycler at the start of the game, but in a single player game I wouldn't be concerned by that.
On my save in 0.1.5, actually a few hours before the latest version update, I had a fairly big game issue. During one of the meteor showers I got into my coolant was smashed, and I had only seen the coolant once before on a derelict ship and never again. Turns out at 60% coolant, practically anything will take you from mid yellow to red. I'd like to suggest making sure that coolant is a much more common addition in shop menus ideally. When I upgraded my ship I did get a coolant refill, but having the option to buy it commonly if needed would be helpful. Enjoying the game.
I believe one of the in-game items you can buy and sell is a refined coolant, though presently I don't recall it's name. It'd be neat if that item could be used for it's intended purpose of topping-up the coolant tank.
I had an odd bug today. I came across a stranded ship while travelling. When I went on board, the owner told me they didn't know why their ship wouldn't start.
They then flashed the happy face, thanked me for fixing it, and gave me some money and a hint. I looked over the ship, and didn't find anything broken. If I had to guess, the code which picks what parts are broken failed to actually break anything.
Bug report: I can't travel to one very specific sector on the map (don't know if it helps, but it supposedly has an upgrade unit). All that happens is that the animation for jumping sectors starts then the game freezes, crashes and this was what showed up on the crash reporter:
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)
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>I find myself often standing next to the snack dispenser, waiting for enough snacks to refill my stamina so i can go on to the next thing. If i have forethought, I'll scatter some snacks on the floor so i don't have to wait so long next time, like some hamster/squirrel hybrid.
>Does something happen when I go to a ship in distress, kill the zoobs/preform repairs, remove their aircyclers from powered strips, and leave just before everyone suffocates?
>No matter what I "roll" for clothing options, i always end up looking like a divorced high-school math teacher (or English teacher, if female).
Possible Bug:I had a sidequest, to deliver some boxes to a place, but then i got a warp drive and my sidequests cleared so i have the stuff but no idea where to deliver it.
Possible Bug: In release 0.1.8, i think the flying minigame was supposed to change direction based on which way the ship was flying. for me, it still goes "up" no matter where i'm headed.
I love the writing. It makes me look forward to Will Ignore the Galaxy for Privacy, or whatever JM3 turns out to be titled. I'm enjoying following this game's development
Enjoying the game so far. Granted, I haven’t gotten to the warping stage, yet.
There was a game I played on Big Fish’s site where you flew a cargo plane. All you really did was deliver cargo, give passengers rides or buy/sell goods. It was very chill, with no combat. I really liked it.
This game has a similar vibe, but with a Han Solo ‘keep the ship in working order’ feel to it.
I really like the aesthetics of the game. The computer screen with it’s old school display and beeps, the various tools and their uses.
I also like the cargo is handled and physically moved to and from the ship.
You’ve done a good job so far and I can’t wait to see what else you add to the game.
The game ran into an error while warping, here's the message
___________________________________________
############################################################################################
ERROR in
action number 1
of Draw Event
for object obj_console:
Variable obj_console.eggx(102463, -2147483648) not set before reading it.
at gml_Script_redrawminimap
############################################################################################
gml_Script_redrawminimap (line -1)
gml_Object_obj_console_Draw_0
i found a really annoying bug that i got in two separate saves
if you accept a board job for getting a bag twice, and its on the same planet. it will generate only one and the other will never spawn, even if you complete one of the job and return.
In the current build (0.1.7), a sector can't have two of the same job, so there's no way that bug can happen. If you are playing the current build, you're probably playing a save game from a previous build, because the sector jobs are all generated and saved when you start a new game, so an old save will still have jobs that a previous build generated.
Start a new game in 0.1.7 and you shouldn't have this problem. Sorry about constantly having to start anew but that's alpha testing for you.
I thought the junk collecting mission was kind of interesting, and encouraged using the piloting minigame, but the other two types of flying missions I would just grab whenever I got to a new system, and take the free money as a part of my delivery missions.
Overall, I feel like there's been several attempts at distractions from lulls in the action that I end up pushing aside or ignoring altogether. I find myself getting the crate stamping done right after bringing crates on board, even though it might be better stamina economy to try and squeeze them in in flight, since it's not likely I'll have time to stamp them all during travel time. I'm happy to take free money for being in a dust storm, but the last thing I want to do is postpone the next delivery or Onaris dropoff to pick up 1000ish credits that I'll probably get anyway. And whatever maintenance needs to get done tends to be put off until I don't have a timer to move cargo, at which point I do all of it at once before focusing on the next thing. I dreaded getting a hydroponics bay, since I knew that it would be another thing to juggle while missions were going on.
In my experience, the rhythm of the game centers around the warp drive. As long as there's gas in the tank, you can and should always be flying somewhere, and any component fixing you have to do should be manageable while still keeping stamina near maximum. Once you reach the end of a freight trip or Onaris "survey" hot-and-cold game, you'll be near zero stamina, but if you've still got gas you can keep going and trust you'll rest up by the next planet. Once you need to refuel though, it's time to refuse the next mission, and take some "shore leave".
You can't order warp fuel online, which means you don't want to do it while there's a delivery timer going, and to me that completely changes gears. Now I want to order more fuel, pack it on, and now I've got plenty of stamina left to go over my ship and fix everything back up. This low pressure time tends to be when I go after upgrade units. If there were NPCs to talk to and story to advance, I imagine this is when I'd do it.
You've talked about players not having anything to do while enroute, but I feel like in the frantic full-gas-tank-times these lulls last a minute or two tops, and the longest gaps tend to come from low stamina more than nothing to do. Have you considered adding sleep back in to skip dull moments and low stamina? Maybe this would be a good time for NPCs to come bother you with dialog? What if the player took the tutorial computer's advice, and just zoned out for a moment while staring at some cool space sprite for a bit?
more plzzzzz
The prompts for broken components took away a lot of the fun for me. I always enjoyed figuring out what I needed to fix (and in a pinch, what I can get away with NOT fixing) to be far more engaging than pressing the button to actually make the sprite happy. Now that the game just says, "use the green tool here dummy!" it now feels like the game is just playing itself.
I'll have a system menu option to turn them off in the next update. I had a feeling some players would want that and you've confirmed it.
You know what? I take that back in the case of the hydroponics bay. There's no way I would have remembered to keep those plants alive (and made those sweet 40 credits) if the humidifier didn't remind me.
i have discovered the sound never wants to play though my headphones. also related maybe but my wired ps4 gamepad also does not work with the game.
I found a soft lock to be fuel. I accidentally warped to a sector with the last of my fuel with little cash and the last of my fuel and because there wasn't any uncivilised planets I couldn't harvest fuel either.
I think a good answer to this would be allowing the player to send a distress call to a ship which could debt them some credits and having the credits be automatically deducted from their next delivery job.
Otherwise great job.
Found an interesting infinite delivery / money bug in V0.1.6
Where the bloody hell is the scrapyard in the Teh system? I'm racing around like a lunatic trying to find it, but can't remember where Dripberg said to go after you pick up the upgrade unit -- can anyone help?
There's a lot of randomization. I'd recommend just starting a new game and hoping a shipyard spawns this time. Look for the crane icon.
ah thank you!
ive been following the dev diaries for a while and was inspired to make some sprites! i know its extremely presumptuous but if you'd like to use these sprites id be happy to contribute to a cool project. i tried to size them relative to their corresponding sprite. ps: this image was upscaled so the sprites are unusable in this particular image.
I found a half dozen bugs, but I don't think you care at this stage, so I'll stick to broader thoughts:
I really like the new pace of things wearing down. Not only do I feel less annoyed by air cyclers, but it's also clear that different components are becoming an issue at a more even rate, as opposed to always going for the cyclers and coolant, and ignoring everything else. Best of all, it feels more like "maintenance" to me: something you can feel proud of staying on top of, or push off until your ship looks like a beat up mess. My favorite moment this time around was when roleplaying as a space redneck who ended up late on a delivery because he had to keep running back and forth fixing the warp nacelles, only for something else to go wrong when I tried to start them up again.
Stamina is in a weird place at this point. In the first few levels, it's an important element of strategy. You physically can't maintain a whole ship without overexerting at level 1, so you have to pick and choose which components are important, and having to pick up and drop four boxes in a row to get to a clogged air cycler can be a fatal mistake. Later on, your stamina bar gets more lax and time becomes the limiting factor to completing missions effectively. The biggest problem is that if you screw up and run out, your only option is to sit around for a minute and let it regen. I would suggest thinking about how important stamina is to this game, and either factoring it into game balance, or removing the system.
I think there's more you can do with repair missions as "levels" with existing pieces. Because they are optional and don't mess with the player's ship, you might want to look into using creative layouts as puzzles, or even tutorials for less used parts of the player's ships. Examples might be an extra fast zoob on a ship with enough boxes to coral it in with, a ship with a simple problem but a maze of cargo in the way, or a ship where the fuel tanks are pure residue and need draining.
In my experience, the most common case for a component giving off emotion bubbles was in the warp engines, right before warping. In that case, you can't tell what the bubble is referring to, kind of making it useless.
If you go into the suspended animation chamber while still holding miraculum, you get frozen holding it, and wake up with a bag in your hand. Honestly, I would recommend just owning it and making the sprite for the chamber taller so it doesn't clip; doing the rest of the tutorial with a rock stuck to your hands is kind of hilarious.
In theory you could use this as an exploit to get a free second air cycler at the start of the game, but in a single player game I wouldn't be concerned by that.
On my save in 0.1.5, actually a few hours before the latest version update, I had a fairly big game issue. During one of the meteor showers I got into my coolant was smashed, and I had only seen the coolant once before on a derelict ship and never again. Turns out at 60% coolant, practically anything will take you from mid yellow to red. I'd like to suggest making sure that coolant is a much more common addition in shop menus ideally. When I upgraded my ship I did get a coolant refill, but having the option to buy it commonly if needed would be helpful. Enjoying the game.
I believe one of the in-game items you can buy and sell is a refined coolant, though presently I don't recall it's name. It'd be neat if that item could be used for it's intended purpose of topping-up the coolant tank.
I don't suppose you'd accept a friendly writing note? In the opening crawl, if it's a secret mission, why would the galaxy be awaiting it?
I had an odd bug today. I came across a stranded ship while travelling. When I went on board, the owner told me they didn't know why their ship wouldn't start.
They then flashed the happy face, thanked me for fixing it, and gave me some money and a hint. I looked over the ship, and didn't find anything broken. If I had to guess, the code which picks what parts are broken failed to actually break anything.
I know I'm a *bit* late with the game name suggestion but I really would like to push this one even though it's probably pointless now.
Spaceporter
Transporter in space but also a play on the word porter aaand the guy who roams inbetween space ports.
It's short, it's punchy and it's crystal clear.
That starstruck word sounds like something on TV that Simon Cowell would be depositing his verbal diarrhea on.
Bug report: I can't travel to one very specific sector on the map (don't know if it helps, but it supposedly has an upgrade unit). All that happens is that the animation for jumping sectors starts then the game freezes, crashes and this was what showed up on the crash reporter:
___________________________________________
############################################################################################
ERROR in
action number 1
of Draw Event
for object obj_console:
Variable obj_console.eggx(101253, -2147483648) not set before reading it.
at gml_Script_redrawminimap
############################################################################################
gml_Script_redrawminimap (line -1)
gml_Object_obj_console_Draw_0
I can still play the save file but I just can't travel to that sector. Just that sector though, I can still travel to other sectors.
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.