I am gonna try to do an alpha style release! So I am gonna get the basics working and release it for a dollar. As it sells and I keep working on it, I will raise the price whenever it reaches a new tier of quality and enjoyment. We will see how this goes!
That's an interesting approach that I don't think many are brave enough to take! Nonetheless, if it means I can get my hands on it faster, I'm all for it!
All releases will be rolled into 1 app. So it will "release" for a dollar, and if it sells enough and I'm into it enough, I'll keep updating it. So like Minecraft, if you get the alpha, it'll just roll into the beta and then the finished version. Game Design question! I want a very simple economy, and it could be super cool if tradable items affect everything (long-long-term goal). So, right now I have "sundries", "resources", "arms", and "valuables". Valuables don't take any space, and are the currency in the game. Arms are weapons, ammo and such. Resources would be wood and stone and other construction elements, while sundries would mean food and miscellany. Each of these things might eventually affect how a port grows or shrinks or supports pirates or otherwise. How does that sound to you? Do you like the name "sundries", or would you rather just read "food" and imply broadly what that means? Having "arms" on your ship that you could actually use, or trade, how does that sound? It might be necessary to split these up into specifics, like swords and cannons and cannonballs that you are carrying. But it might be better to just have a broad weapons skill that you can upgrade, and then "arms" is an ammo count, and for every space taken in the hold, you get 10 cannon-balls? == In the end, everything needs to be in service to sailing around and fighting. If the economy or ship stuff gets too complicated, then it could overshadow the fun of just sailing and attacking ships.
I would definitely prefer being able to buy and trade different weapons. From my point of view, the more customization the better. And yeah, you may wanna use something other than sundries haha, when I think of sundries I think of things I would get from a gift shop
I think "sundries" is fine. If you want it to affect the game in more than a way food would, you could try "supplies". The idea that what you trade affects not only the economy but also the growth and progress of the port is amazing. Good luck getting that working!!
Gonna stream again in the morning! Aiming for 10:30am PST or thereabouts. Maybe I'll get my act together and figure out how to stream with my webcam and audio. I'll probably be doing some art, unless I find myself engrossed in the ship-to-ship knowledge passing! Twitch.tv/randallion Word!
Check it out! http://www.randyo.net This is a new idea, but since this game is largely about a simulated world and your place in it, I thought it might be cool to drop a non-interactive version onto my personal site. So as the game progresses I'll try to keep updating this page, hopefully it'll get more interesting to watch. Hope y'all enjoy watching! The current thing I'm trying to solve is how exactly ships pass information. It's easy to do the transfer of info, but basically how do they prioritize whether to accept info from ports over their own knowledge and rumors. Just a lot of questions, and I should probably just get a basic version up, because I imagine how this works will shift over time. But it's a lotta thinking and contemplating how best to approach a ship's knowledge and rumors.
I'm coming at this after just reading this post, so I apologize if I'm way off from anything helpful or if you already have thought all this out, lol. But you could handle rumors and knowledge differently. Like a "rumor" would be an actual statement, such as "there is treasure in x area" and it could be a specific area, or a broad area that you have to search. Of course there COULD actually be treasure there, or it could be a trap, or it could be nothing but the person wasting your time so THEY could get to the good stuff themselves. "Knowledge", on the other hand, could be a system of ratings divided into different categories, like military, commercial, navigation, and so on. Then you could encounter ships that either raised or lowered you levels in the various categories. Your knowledge levels could have real game effects, like your commercial rating could determine how good of a deal you can get while trading, military could raise or lower your effectiveness in combat, and navigation could effect how accurately you can plot and follow a course. Then to make things even more interesting (or complicated, lol) your knowledge ratings could also effect how well you deal with rumors. Like, for instance, let's say you are told a rumor that there is a really good deal on supplies at x port. If they were lying and your commercial knowledge was high enough, the game could immediately alert you that you can tell they are lying, and then you can have the option of attacking them for trying to betray you, if you think you can take them, that is. Speaking of that, judging combat strength could be something that is made easier or harder based in your military knowledge. Just my random thoughts.
Hiya MrMojo That's not really how rumors and knowledge are going to work as yet, but I appreciate the thoughts. It's good to hear a lot of ideas at this stage in the game. The basic premise of rumor and knowledge is purely so ships remember events. That your actions are noticed and remembered. Knowledge (right now) is information a ship has directly encountered, so if you fire at their friend, they have negative "knowledge" about your ship. Rumor is if a port or another ship has transferred knowledge or rumors to them. So they might have negative rumors about you, and that will bias their behavior when they encounter you. Ideally what this is intended for, is that the navy of a faction will start to attack you if they have enough rumors about your aggression. And if they have knowledge of you, they may flat out go hunting for your ship. All of this is still in early phases, so I may rework ship awareness, and it will probably need to get ever more extensive, but for now that's the basic idea!
TWITCH TUESDAYS! A reminder that I'll be doing twitch streaming at various points tomorrow of my game dev. Watch it at http://twitch.tv/randallion, around 10:30am PST and in the afternoon as well! - http://www.roguesgame.com
