Ace in a Day

ID:31837
 
Jun 21 2007, 5:57 pm
Commodore Jackson saves the day with five confirmed kills of the vilified Straylians

Ace pilot Commodore Jackson saves the day with five confirmed kills of the vilified Straylians in his twenty-seventh sortie. In spite of his Eagle fighter limping with two damaged manoeuvring thrusters and an open wound in its port quarter that could allow ingress of a missile at any moment, he continued to press on, his limited supply of Orik homing missiles rapidly dwindling. After scoring three kills with his homing missiles before they ran out, he was not to be daunted. Turning to his unguided high-explosive Plectron missiles, he finished off another two fighters, causing the remaining enemy fighter to decide to die another day. In recognition of his unfettered dedication to valour and the preservation of our race, we are pleased to award Commodore Jackson his second Gold Cross. Long live the Ryckurn!

http://www.windowsgames.co.uk/critical.html
Jun 21 2007, 8:09 pm
The game looks pretty sweet, but the trial version's limitedness annoys me.
Jun 22 2007, 8:58 am (Edited on Jun 22 2007, 9:25 am)
Is this yours, or did you find it? It looks pretty wicked.

For some reason, I always find a hard time finding sci-fi material to base a game off of, so I guess I have to stoop down to the level of finding cool things in other games.

This was my first attempt :)

http://members.byond.com/JustinKnight/files/ critical%20mass.PNG

My second attempt:

http://members.byond.com/JustinKnight/files/ critical%20mass2.PNG

P.S. the trial version stinks
Jun 22 2007, 11:55 am
I've been playing Critical Mass for years... it's still one of my favourite coffee games, and well worth the US$20. An abortive project of mine, Battle for Solaris, was based loosely off of the same combat system -- turn-based real-time tactical combat. The difference was that BfS had lasers as well as missiles and had a more strategic bent.
Jun 22 2007, 10:04 pm
J.T., how far did you actually get with Battle for Solaris ? On the hub page it says between 0 and 20%. I'd like to take a look at anything you had done (game-wise, but code is always fun too!).

I'm sure you've checked the hub page for my Project Talon, right? As King ACWraith stated yesterday, I'm going back to work on it soon after I polish up Deadly Waters a bit. I might use your vectors library in PT if I could figure it out! Honestly, I only took a peek after it right after it was released. I don't know if you expanded any of the documentation on it. It looked very useful for my purposes, though!
Jul 21 2007, 12:54 am
15-20% is probably a good figure for completion on BfS. However, I don't think Project Talon has much in common with it based on your description, and what I have isn't playable. I tended to work from the top down on many of my older games, meaning that I wrote the front end, periodically playing around with writing unique core systems, generally not writing a cohesive back end.

I still have some trouble working on the back end first these days, but if I were to release a binary of Newtopia, people could at least run around and interact with the existing game environment. In BfS, the game has a bunch of damage procs but the combat system to cause damage doesn't even exist. =P
Jul 23 2007, 7:38 pm (Edited on Jul 23 2007, 7:48 pm)
Hah, hah! I figured you'd reply to this after your "internet hiatus." I see... so from what I'd gathered Project Talon is MUCH more playable than anything you made in Battle For Solaris. I thought it was at least semi-playable when I saw you had made an FAQ for it.

We obviously have very different development cycles... I make tons of systems, and then (sometimes months) later I realize the help files are outdated. :/

I had a change of plans with development... I tend to work on Deadly Waters for quite a while without any "real" results... by that I mean I can update it until I'm blue in the face, but it doesn't really get a new surge of players. From the newbie's perspective, the game is ridiculously complicated for BYOND game. From my perspective, the game is incredibly simple and repetitive. The current basic training system took me something like 6 hours to implement, and most people just guess on the test until they pass and/or claim it was easy. Both ways seem to leave newbies absolutely clueless to the things I wished to enlighten them on in basic training. So, needless to say, it's not enjoyable for me to host or play the game. Updating the basic training system isn't really on my "fun" list, either...

So, I moved back to Project Talon because it's my "dream" game. I get way more personal satisfaction and results from working on it. I'd show it to you if you'd like, but I have a feeling you probably don't want/don't have time to play it. Anyway, I've been frequently checking your blog because I like your ideas and what you create. Just make something playable! :P

Here's the backstory of PT if you want to check it out...

EDIT: I forgot what this blog post was originally about. During your hiatus I purchased Critical Mass... well actually my Dad bought it for me as a sort of graduation gift. I like it a lot for some quick fun, but I prefer more strategic games like AoE III and Homeworld on a long-term basis. Critical Mass, in conjunction with Mano A Mano has led me to seriously considering turn-based PvP combat on a seperate, small map for Project Talon.