Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates new up
Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates new up Folks,I updated the original post at the beginning, but some people are going to jump to the end of the thread rather than check there, so here is the change log for the new update. Some things did not make this update, but we are planning to make a stab at online play, and other things might creep into it when we do so. The change log follows. One important note: Due to changes in the way the game saves new statistics, older save games are not compatible with this version. We're sorry if this causes loss of progress. nearby scan N no longer is limited to function only from your unit's point of view. It now works anywhere and displays anything within two squares of the cursor at the time you press n. It does not show anything that none of your units have detected. k and shift+k will skip earth if it has been taken over, no more invalid Mission descriptions added as cut scenes just at the end of startup sequence, directly before initial placement or what ever is appropriate given the mission context. You can toggle this using a new item in settings, cut scenes. This setting saves to the guidedog account. Rearanged settings menu items for a more logical order. planets discovered, static hazards discovered and mobile hazards encountered are now listed in status menu, game over menu and clipboard copy text. Note that this change makes it impossible to load games that were saved using earlier versions. examine square menu added. reports planet or hazard if any at the top, with all detail associated. Then lists the number of each ship types present for both alliances. Friendly ship types are sub menus. Hitting enter on the fleets sub menu opens fleet management menu, hitting enter on any other friendly ship type opens a newly created menu that lists every lonely ship on the square of that type. You can hit enter on a ship therein to select it. When listing the ships on a square this way, the type isn't read out for each item to reduce verbiage. Only the purpose if any, the id, and the efficiency, followed by autonav information if enabled is given here in concise format. You can open examine square menu by holding enter or by pressing ctrl+q. These work in placement phase as well. When you use place with map mode, the game now says "place with map mode" when map mode turns on, instead of "map exploration mode", if the current phase is placement. Helps understand whether you're in movement phase, or if you're still in place with map mode. * when not activated and you hit escape to continue with demonstration, a new menu appears prompting you to choose lightning game or close quarters mode. Fix sneaky bug that could cause ships within fleets to be thought discovered or not when they were the opposite. new lonely universe mode mission, combines capital planet start only with far corners mode New mission matching minimized start. Both alliances have a pair of space station or asteroid belts in addition to their capitals. new mission planetary bounty mode added. Get 50 credits for every asteroid belt or space station you colonize, only if the other alliance has not yet colonized it. The spoils of victory credit income is unaffected, but that starts for ice planets and up anyway. Planetary Bounty mode is compatible with existing victory conditions. Added a note of the selected difficulty to the log file. A couple new sounds, one for movement phase, and one for a planet being colonized. new sounds for successful intelligence gathering, combat on square, you win, and you lost. You win and lost experiences can be skipped by pressing enter. They should come after the victory condition met message is given, but before the voiceover says you have beaten the game, or you have been defeated! rename capital planet sound to our capital planet is here, play this when the capital is colonized by player, play a new, their capital planet is here sound, for a capital colonized by other alliance. New sounds for enemy ships on square, and capital planet. This only works when announcing the total contents of a square, which for the most part means just in map mode. Certain menus, like nearby, will as well. New sound for start of placement phase. Added cash sound for purchase phase and gun battery sound for combat phase, which only plays if there is actual combat. learn game sounds menu added to the main menu. Lists most sounds and plays the sound after giving a description. Press enter to repeat description and sound, or press space to just repeat the sound. We now have volume keys (f2 f3), and a scroller in settings, for general sound volume. This setting saves to guidedog account and to disk. Added a new setting to allow inverting the y axis. Off by default, this saves to the guidedog account. Now supports alternative speech packs. Place a folder in the program files/ExpandingKnownSpace folder that starts with speech. a speech pack scroller
Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates Aaron here.Pretty sure the code changes are finished. Jeremy is having an issue with his copy but I think his defender ate the game. We'll have to submit this version for analysis to try and stop this nonsense as soon as we settle on a final update for the next release, hoping this don't hit the customers as bad as it's hitting us. Barring unexpected issues, the changelog along with the game itself will be ready in a couple of days if not sooner. Just need to sift around for bugs.I just beat an epic game on insanely not fair. It kept steeling colonies back from me. I actually was trying to take them back, but some of the ones I had weren't back under my control yet by the time I gave that idea up and went for capital control. I'm glad I tested though, because I did find some missing speech files that I recorded but didn't actually get around to moving over.single nonstop session, no breaks.Game Statistics for Playthrough of VGA Expanding Known Space, Version (26 beta ).The player beat the game! woohoo!The game lasted 2 hours 43 minutes 21 seconds and ended on Monday, September 9, 2019 at 7:54 PM.The war between you (the solarian federation) and the enemy (the interstellar union) started in 2850 and ended in 2873 (95 turns, with the solarian federation victorious.Game was in insanely not fair difficulty.Military victory condition was assigned - was not metColonization victory condition was assigned (60%) - was not metEconomic victory condition was assigned (60%) - was not metCapital Control victory condition was assigned - the solarian federation met this condition for 4 seasonsThe enemy was in normal mode.the solarian federation finished with 19 colonies (47%) with the most ever held being 19. the interstellar union finished with 5 colonies (12%) with the most ever held being 9.the solarian federation colonized 0 of 1 asteroid belts, 3 of 7 space stations, 0 of 3 ice planets, 5 of 7 volcanic planets, 3 of 4 ocean planets and 8 of 18 earth type planets.the interstellar union colonized 0 of 1 asteroid belts, 1 of 7 space stations, 0 of 3 ice planets, 1 of 7 volcanic planets, 0 of 4 ocean planets and 3 of 18 earth type planets.the solarian federation discovered 31 of 40 planets, 78 percent. the interstellar union discovered 31 of 40, 78 percent. the solarian federation discovered 17 of 40 static hazards, 43 percent. the interstellar union discovered 37 of 40, 93 percent. the solarian federation encountered 17 mobile hazards, the interstellar union encountered 94At the end, the solarian federation was making 166 credits for 49% of the total income, the interstellar union was making 294 credits for 13% of the total income.the solarian federation made a total of 13706 credits, the interstellar union made a total of 37457.the solarian federation spent 10 on intelligence gathering, the interstellar union spent 435.the solarian federation purchased 117 interceptors, 591 destroyers, 58 frigates, 113 cruisers, 278 battle ships and 38 colony ships for a total of 1195.the interstellar union purchased 130 interceptors, 22 destroyers, 65 frigates, 36 cruisers, 1430 battle ships and 50 colony ships for a total of 1733.the solarian federation lost 4 interceptors, 258 destroyers, 28 frigates, 50 cruisers, 129 battle ships and 15 colony ships for a total of 484 (453 lost in combat, 31 lost to hazards).the interstellar union lost 139 interceptors, 36 destroyers, 73 frigates, 43 cruisers, 1246 battle ships and 48 colony ships for a total of 1585 (1398 lost in combat, 187 lost to hazards).the solarian federation lost 3 ships to changing loyalties, the interstellar union lost 10.you have won 0 military, 17 colonization, 0 economic, 4 capital control and 16 mission victories and you have lost 0 military, 0 colonization, 1 economic, 0 capital control and 1 missions for a total of 23 wins, 3 losses. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/460769/#p460769 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates Hi.Aaron here. That's a perfect answer, the both of you. That's how we'll do it then. I just now pushed changes up until I only have two major things in the to do, so I don't expect it'll be long now. I'm excited! It doesn't have everything you guys asked for, or in fact everything we wanted, but we still have quite a lot of new things to show off. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/459609/#p459609 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates Hi.Aaron here. That's a perfect answer, the both of you. That's how we'll do it then. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/459609/#p459609 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates Hi all.Aaron here. Wanted to say we're still working on this and haven't forgot about you all. I fell ill in my stomach, it all got kicked off by eating a Flamethrower burger from Darry queen of all things. Somehow, even though I eat plenty of spicy foods, I reacted more badly than I expected. I've been nearly a full month recovering. I went from 150 pounds to 136 in that time.Anyway, we have still pushed out a total of 4 beta updates in that time, and we're introducing some improvements we're pretty excited about. We didn't make the end of August deadline like we hoped, but I have a darn good excuse.Do you folks think we should start a new thread for each public release, or continue the current one? I'm leaning on just adding it to the current one, but I'm really not sure. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/459252/#p459252 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates Icemaster,I'm not sure in the case of Avast, but we have had reports of false positives from Microsoft Windows Defender users. Microsoft flagged all users of BGT as possible Malware due to a few programs written in the language. I suspect the same thing is true of Avast. We've been reporting these to Microsoft, and we'll do so to Avast as well. The game is not a virus, and we're very sorry that it's appearing to be one to some virus scanners and malware detection programs.The more users that can report that it is not malware, the better.Sidenote: We are still working on the update, but Aaron has had health issues, and we've been significantly slowed down. Take care, and thanks for the report and the question,Jeremy URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/454465/#p454465 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates Not to beat a dead horse, but I want to post this to demonstrate exactly how many ships can be involved in a game. One of our betas challenged me to beat the game on the first three difficulty modes on military victory. I managed that, but now i'm trying to do the same on ridiculous mode. my first outing ended in 25 minutes with the AI victorious. This one lasted longer, but still didn't work out well for me. There were upward of ten thousand ships produced in this game. At the end, the AI was moving around 8,800 a turn. Multiply your own experience with hazards and losses, and then think about sound spam with ships tied to individual sounds.Game Statistics for Playthrough of VGA Expanding Known Space, Version (21).The player lost! It'll be better next time?The game lasted 1 hours 43 minutes 19 seconds and ended on Thursday, August 1, 2019 at 11:44 AM.The war between you (the solarian federation) and the enemy (the interstellar union) started in 2850 and ended in 2900 (202 turns, with the interstellar union victorious.Game was in ridiculously not fair difficulty.Military victory condition was assigned - the interstellar union met this conditionThe enemy was in normal mode.the solarian federation finished with 2 colonies (5%) with the most ever held being 11. the interstellar union finished with 38 colonies (95%) with the most ever held being 38.the solarian federation colonized 0 of 1 asteroid belts, 1 of 7 space stations, 1 of 3 ice planets, 0 of 7 volcanic planets, 0 of 4 ocean planets and 0 of 18 earth type planets.the interstellar union colonized 1 of 1 asteroid belts, 6 of 7 space stations, 2 of 3 ice planets, 7 of 7 volcanic planets, 4 of 4 ocean planets and 18 of 18 earth type planets.At the end, the solarian federation was making 3 credits for 0% of the total income, the interstellar union was making 1468 credits for 98% of the total income.the solarian federation made a total of 8163 credits, the interstellar union made a total of 204652.the solarian federation spent 5 on intelligence gathering, the interstellar union spent 1010.the solarian federation purchased 389 interceptors, 263 destroyers, 44 frigates, 98 cruisers, 113 battle ships and 30 colony ships for a total of 937.the interstellar union purchased 342 interceptors, 48 destroyers, 165 frigates, 110 cruisers, 8223 battle ships and 52 colony ships for a total of 8940.the solarian federation lost 408 interceptors, 263 destroyers, 48 frigates, 101 cruisers, 181 battle ships and 16 colony ships for a total of 1017 (988 lost in combat, 29 lost to hazards).the interstellar union lost 18 interceptors, 8 destroyers, 2 frigates, 5 cruisers, 102 battle ships and 5 colony ships for a total of 140 (117 lost in combat, 23 lost to hazards).the solarian federation lost 9 ships to changing loyalties, the interstellar union lost 87.you have won 2 military, 5 colonization, 0 economic, 3 capital control and 3 mission victories and you have lost 1 military, 0 colonization, 0 economic, 1 capital control and 1 missions for a total of 11 wins, 3 losses. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/452495/#p452495 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates Couple of quick notes:Oversight: I forgot one item that we have completed in the update that was requested. The select planets menu during start up, now shows the planet type next to the name of the planet to make selecting specific types of planets easier.Sorry about that, a lot of ground to cover, and I just blanked.Story/achievement discussion: We're discussing doing something similar to what Dark suggested in post 110 as a stopgap. It's not the way I'd like to do it, and I don't think it fully satisfies those who would rather have a large campaign, but that is doable with the current infrastructure. We're also discussing achievements and possible unlocks from those. These if they happen will be very modest things. This last is still in discussion stage, it might still not happen, but it is being seriously considered. However, due to the infrastructure things I discussed in 125, any of this will be small scale and probably half measures. Take care,Jeremy URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/452166/#p452166 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates Frastlin,I have to admit, I lean more toward Darren's opinion on this one, but achievements is something we could do. I'll add this to my list of things to look into. I'll also see if maybe we can't have it unlock some things as well. NO promises on either count. As to the story thing, if people want a story outline at the beginning and ending of missions, that can be provided. I don't think it's quite what people want, but I'm willing to do it. I've been taking notes on the suggestions people have made, and it's possible we'll revisit EKS later. After all, if we wanted to do a multiple faction version of the game, as suggested by the Blackscreen gaming team, we'd be better off setting the war during the Second Interstellar Wars where we could theoretically have 4 factions. If we did so, building long term campaigns, rpg elements, etc would be easier to do. Take care,Jeremy URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/452065/#p452065 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates Dark,There's not so many turn based strategy games floating around that are accessible that I'm to the stage of I won't play something that doesn't give me a story based reason to do so.My comments in 123 were not that it's completely off the table, but that it's completely off the table for a fast update.The main issue is just a. how the game is structured, and b. creating a set of missions that would escalate and be interesting to play following a storyline. If I do a storyline like this, I want it to make sense and have cohesion, not just be a little bit of fluff at the beginning of each mission on the game. I could write one of those, but it wouldn't really satisfy me.That said, running a chained storyline like this would be interesting, but it would take some radical restructuring of how the game works currently. Essentially, we'd have to write a new mission and it would require a lot of major changes to how the game operates. Infrastructure things that go on behind the scenes. It's not something that is going to happen soon if at all with this game. Not because I hate storylines, or think they can't be incorporated, but because this is basically a finished game, and what you're wanting, at least to my reading, would need a lot of new infrastructure to work.If, when I get a chance to talk to Aaron about this in more detail, he says, no that wouldn't be a problem, then that might change things. The VG universe is a nice construct, and it is something we want to make more use of, but we also wanted to set up some base line assumptions first. We wanted Interceptor to introduce some of the technologies, a little more elaborate way of handling damage to a ship, and experiment with a fighter simulator. I want to revisit this and make it better and more complex, and incorporate a lot of the good suggestions we got from the forum. But to do so, we're going to have to essentially create an entirely new game. The infrastructure of Interceptor won't support all the ideas we received nor some of the ideas we had ourselves.TKS we did try to modify using the existing structure, and frankly it became a nightmare. The game was built quickly and with simple assumptions, and we had to totally restructure certain things. It's a mess right now, and I honestly think we might be better off starting from scratch, but neither of us wants to do that really.Yellowbonnet we built with the idea of expansion in it from the beginning. We know how we want to pursue that, and it's in the plans, but just not anytime soon.EKS was supposed to be the macro version of Interceptor to show off how some of the 2d map things from TKS and the ideas from interceptor about ships, how they interact, and what they do work together in a larger setting.With EKS, we were working with older code which we revamped. A lot of the assumptions of the game are fine, but the general infrastructure issues make certain ideas harder to implement. Because of the way the board is built, creating different board sizes, configurations, etc, is more complex than it should be. If we had used a different method for building it, it wouldn't be, but we didn't do that at the beginning. Going back now and fixing it would probably take a while just because of introducing new headaches into how things are handled.Right now the game is designed essentially to play through once and stop. For missions to build to a next mission in a campaign scenario, the game would have to be restructured to do that. It's not impossible, but again, to do so takes time and effort.So, it's not off the table, but it won't be happening soon. I get the wishing for more context to put around the game, but my interest in the game first and foremost was primarily as a strategy game. The missions introduce different situations where you have to use different strategies in most cases. The difficulty levels force changes in strategy. However, at the end of the day it's a strategy game. It could incorporate the suggestions about new units, and larger maps, and storyline easily, with a rework to make it a different conceptual space. However, we'd have to build that infrastructure from scratch, or else have several months or years to make it work the way it needs to with the current game. I'm open to your suggestion about how to make the game work as is, but i'd like some concrete examples. If you have my private email still, feel free to email me, or post here. I've been taking notes all through this thread, so nothing that was said earlier was lost, or ignored, just not acted upon immediately. If you are suggesting just working up some storyline based intros for what we already have, I can do so fairly easily. However, that wouldn't be my optimal solution to the storyline issue and judging by your posts, I don't think it's yours either.Take care,Jeremy URL:
Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates Darren,In answer to your question, so far the changes are these:1. We have created an o hot key that replaces the old on hand credits o hot key. This one allows you to see ships not on planets that have no autonav orders.2. On hand credits was moved to become extra information given with the t hot key.3. L now gives cursor location, and shift l gives location of last selected ship. This moves cursor location from the hot key u because of the next change.4. U and shift u now cycle through five purposes for ships: scout, defense, attack, and convoy. The fifth is unassigned. Putting a fleet or ship in scout mode now enables scout mode on it without going into the autonav menu. These purposes are displayed when the player looks at the ship or fleet on map mode. 5. We have prepared a text file that will list all file names in the speech folder, and the contents of each file for recording your own voice pack, or for translation. In addition we've created a utility that converts this string file into SAPI speech. It is not a complete fix, as because of the way our voice sends are written it makes Sapi rather choppy. However, it does provide an alternative. We still encourage the community to record their own voice packs and use those as the recorded speech will be much more effective. We are looking at things we can do to smoothe the SAPI speech out, and might include a pregenerated SAPI folder, but that's still being debated. Our stants is still that we're sticking by our original script, we're providing the alternative, but the onus of use is primarily on the end user.Those are the completed, or near completed items that we've worked on.Other items that are under discussion, and will probably be completed are these:6. Providing an examine square menu that will tell you all ships on the square that are not in fleets, possibly having submenus for each fleet to display its contents separately. We're looking into what options are the easiest and most efficient to code in a short time. This might take a completely different form in the final version.7. An option to flip the Y axis. I want to say the original reason we flipped it from common usage was due to complaints on the original TKS forum, but I might be wrong about that. For me, I always think of the map as the lower right quadrant of a cartesian plane with the origin in the upper left corner, but we get the confusion factor, and figured out an efficient way to provide a toggle.8. We're looking into a way to make map mode disappear once you place your final ship, and making this a toggleable option that would be a replacement for the current behavior which is the map hangs around until dismissed. The game used to cause the map to disappear, and it is messing with several beta testers when it doesn't. This might or might not get implemented as it is complicated, and currently not something called for by most customers.9. We're looking into introducing a second demo mode to provide more combat and/or a regular game experience. We're still debating which way we want to do this. Our original reasoning for using lightning mode was that if we set an arbitrary turn limit, there's no guarantee that a player will actually encounter the AI by that limit. Usually, yes, but not always. This one is going to happen most likely, but we don't know what form it will take.10. We're looking at adding two more missions. Currently, this is merely a speculative idea, so might or might not happen. one was suggested by this forum, another by beta testers. If others get suggested and we have time, and they are again efficient and easy to code, we will strongly consider including others. 11. We're looking at including three new stats in the game status, end game, and copy text options that would track how many planets out of 40 you have discovered, how many static hazards, and how many mobile hazards you have encountered. The same stats would be provided for the AI.12. I'd like to rearrange the way the copy and paste text is presented, if I can convince Aaron it's worth doing, but this might or might not happen. I include this one as a side note. This copy text is in line with how our other games have been set up for the most part, so it will probably stay as is, but I had originally wanted a more broken up format that might list for instance how many interceptors we bought, how many the AI bought, and alternate more to make the comparisons easier. 13. We're looking at where we could profitably insert sounds for those who want them, and still put them on a toggle for those who find it too cluttered, slow, or makes the game less responsive. Whatever we do in this direction, the soundscape will still be very sparse and will likely be mostly sounds to indicate small events, and shifts in game phase. As I noted in an earlier post, having individual sounds tied to individual ship
Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates Dark,Thanks. We appreciate it as always. I really like the introductory paragraph. Very well done.We are working on the update. Aaron's family lives and works a farm, and this is fair week, so they've been very busy. That's slowed us down, but we are working to implement those things we can.Some will have to wait on a more extensive update, or may never happen.Right now though, we have address three or four of the major concerns brought up here. We still have another 8 or 9 we want to address. No guarantees when this will be out, but any update we do will update existing copies of the game free of charge. We're hoping for end of August at the latest, but it might be longer depending on what roadblocks we hit.Take care,Jeremy URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/451814/#p451814 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates I know I posted stats earlier for a larger game, but as I was beta testing some of the things for the update, I had a really rougher game than I've had in a while, and thought i'd share. This is by no means a large game, but it gives a different flavor to people who have been seeing much smaller games.Game Statistics for Playthrough of VGA Expanding Known Space, Version (22 beta ).The player beat the game! woohoo!The game lasted 1 hours 44 minutes 51 seconds and ended on Friday, July 26, 2019 at 7:45 AM.The war between you (the solarian federation) and the enemy (the interstellar union) started in 2850 and ended in 2866 (65 turns, with the solarian federation victorious.Game was in ouch that's really not fair difficulty. Mission far corners mode was enabled.Military victory condition was assigned - was not metColonization victory condition was assigned (60%) - the solarian federation met this condition with 70% for 4 seasonsEconomic victory condition was assigned (60%) - the solarian federation met this condition with 71% for 3 seasonsCapital Control victory condition was assigned - was not metThe enemy was in normal mode.the solarian federation finished with 28 colonies (70%) with the most ever held being 28. the interstellar union finished with 11 colonies (27%) with the most ever held being 19.the solarian federation colonized 1 of 1 asteroid belts, 4 of 7 space stations, 2 of 3 ice planets, 5 of 7 volcanic planets, 3 of 4 ocean planets and 13 of 18 earth type planets.the interstellar union colonized 0 of 1 asteroid belts, 3 of 7 space stations, 1 of 3 ice planets, 2 of 7 volcanic planets, 0 of 4 ocean planets and 5 of 18 earth type planets.At the end, the solarian federation was making 263 credits for 71% of the total income, the interstellar union was making 240 credits for 25% of the total income.the solarian federation made a total of 9045 credits, the interstellar union made a total of 19952.the solarian federation spent 0 on intelligence gathering, the interstellar union spent 325.the solarian federation purchased 287 interceptors, 429 destroyers, 32 frigates, 111 cruisers, 104 battle ships and 49 colony ships for a total of 1012.the interstellar union purchased 96 interceptors, 18 destroyers, 96 frigates, 25 cruisers, 705 battle ships and 48 colony ships for a total of 988.the solarian federation lost 82 interceptors, 193 destroyers, 9 frigates, 20 cruisers, 29 battle ships and 9 colony ships for a total of 342 (309 lost in combat, 33 lost to hazards).the interstellar union lost 74 interceptors, 18 destroyers, 75 frigates, 18 cruisers, 441 battle ships and 24 colony ships for a total of 650 (621 lost in combat, 29 lost to hazards).the solarian federation lost 4 ships to changing loyalties, the interstellar union lost 12.you have won 0 military, 3 colonization, 0 economic, 1 capital control and 1 mission victories and you have lost 0 military, 0 colonization, 0 economic, 0 capital control and 1 missions for a total of 4 wins, 1 losses.During the course of the game I lost Zion, Vishnu, Vesta, Grunwelt, Paradise station, and Amundsen. I managed to retake Vishnu, Zion, Vesta and subsequently lost Vesta again. The only reason I won was because I made a lot of smaller strike fleets and sent them to run around in his rear area striking where he didn't have many forces. Between colonizing planets he had skipped or not gotten to, and taking over his colonies, I managed to win. I never saw Bolivar, but likely couldn't have taken it over in any case. The AI in ouch that's not fair mode sometimes has upwards of 120 battleships on Bolivar. Still it was touch and go, even til the end of the game, he was still sending fleets of 20 battleships to Earth. in addition, these were not single large fleets. There were multiple occasions where fleets of 20-30 battleships struck me at multiple points. There was a point in the midgame where I was fairly sure i'd end up losing. Take care,Jeremy URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/451229/#p451229 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates Frastlin,This game was envisioned as more of a pure strategy game. We're working on some more story based games in future, but Expanding Known Space was an early project we returned to. It also is laying groundwork for where we want to go with a possible Interceptor sequel. In terms of story ideas for possible use, I'm all ears. We focused at first on the lower hanging fruit to start with. As you can see, this game is more ambitious than either TKS or Interceptor. The TKS expansion we're working on incorporated a number of the ideas people here and elsewhere suggested. Trying to combine it with EKS might be a little daunting, but I think when we release the TKS expansion it'll have a little more to do both in terms of commercial opportunities and in terms of combat. The main problem with combining the two games, as I see it, is both a historical time period one, and a mechanical issue. The two games take place 300 years apart. Further, it'd take a lot more infrastructure to handle the buying of goods on planets, the tracking of commercial opportunities, and the military aspects of the game. I agree, though, that would make for an intensely complex game with a lot of potential for interesting play options.Keep the ideas coming. Take care,Jeremy URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/450670/#p450670 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates Frastlin,I've added a note to create an examine planet hot key or menu option. This isn't a big deal, and should be easy to add. I get the issue. Since individual ships are read with their identification number, it can lead to confusion sometimes. Is 3 interceptors, destroyer 2, and frigate 9 5 ships or 14? If you are having trouble with how the voice spaces these, you might try playing with the end cue before delay option in the settings. THat might help, but I think I see where you're coming from on this.Take care,Jeremy URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/450518/#p450518 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates Ironcross,I would agree with you if there hadn't been numerous points made earlier that we were looking at changing this setting.As to your opinion of the voice, that's fine, but the reason we did so are twofold:1. Of the two of us, at the time, Aaron had the better microphone and recording setup to handle the voice duties. 2. Paying for professional voice acting is frankly unrealistic. It would either be prohibitive and basically cut any profit we make to 0, or it would cause us to price the games far above where we wanted.We could have others do so on a volunteer basis, but that then puts our production schedule at the mercy of numerous others whom we have to wait on, possibly not use depending on recording quality, and then coordinate.For the first few games those considerations decided the matter.With this game, the fact is like it or not, the voice is part of what sets our games apart from others. I accept your point about international players, but if the game is in English, no matter the voice, it's possible to run into the issues no matter what device is delivering the text. Working with the community has been something we have done extensively in the past, so I find this line of argument fececious at best. We released updates to all of our games except Interceptor within a month or so of their release to address issues brought up by the community--other than the sself-voicing. The only reason we have not offered an update to Interceptor yet, is that we are planning to do a complete overhaul of the game to make it a better experience, not just apply some patches to a game that we felt, in retrospect, was not as good as it could be.We have addressed this voicing issue numerous times, just in this thread, not to mention in previous threads. We have noted three times now before this that we're exploring use of another synthesizer. We're not going to address this further. At this point, continuing to argue about the voice is frankly, an attack. If someone tells you they are changing something, then continuing to criticize the thing being changed is not constructive nor criticism. Take care,Jeremy URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/450459/#p450459 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates Liam,Thanks for the offer, and for the comment in post 88.Re: voice discussion.I can only assume that people are either choosing to ignore, or haven't read, the thread just on this page of the discussion. Aaron has mentioned twice in this page that he's working on a solution, that while it might not meet with any of the critics' approval, is a solution that they can take advantage of.As to whether our intransigence is hurting the game, or whether people's stated discontent should be a reason to change it, the final decision is ours. We listen, and we have talked about this issue with each release. Given that a number of people on this forum have complained about the name of Guidedog as being too blind specific, i'm surprised that so many people think that someone who has "a speech impediment" or is "profoundly handicapped" should not use their voice or perform useful work in society.You can't have it both ways. Either you want things a certain way, or you should encourage entrepreneurship within the disabled community, no matter whether it's a blind person, deaf, mentally challenged, or whatever you wish to pick.That said, as I pointed out earlier, Aaron's already made two announcements of a change in this policy, so it seems even worse to continue to beat on a dead issue.Frastlin,What would you like to see as an alternative to the current way ships are discuss on planets? If you fleet them up, you can see them in a menu one at a time or on scrollers. If you choose not to, the way we did it seems to us the most elegant and least spammy way of handling it, but we're open to other suggestions.Take care,Jeremy URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/450436/#p450436 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates Hi.On our end the speech is not unclear. There are quite a few people playing it without issue. Two things come to mind.1. The speech is pretty loud. Try turning it down in settings or just by pressing f5 after the game is running. Even if it doesn't sound loud, it might be possible that it is distorting the compression on your sound card. I actually have a sound card that does that, and I have to turn affects off in windows itself. I have issues with everything sounding silly though when this is on, and I quite honestly wonder why pc manufacturers even bother. With this Lenovo if I wear headphones and use my screen reader or play any game for very long at all my ears start ringing and I get dizzy and my head hurts, until I turn Dolby off.I also have a little tablet AsusTeK T100TA-Am that distorts if the speech is at anything louder than say, -10 on speakers. Works fine with headphones though. The speakers distort easily on that tablet anyway so this is not a surprise.2. The speech files are all jumbled together. It may take practice to understand the speech this way. The default separation is what we think is a good compromise of intelligibility versus efficiency, but it may help to try setting speech file queue before end delay all the way down to 0 to bring this more in line with how most games using recorded speech work. This item is also in settings.3. Can't promise anything yet because this is in the early stages and we may hit an unforeseen road block, but we might possibly be making it easy to switch to a different speech pack.Aaron URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/450349/#p450349 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates Hi.Aaron again.I've got code that can do this, but it doesn't work well with delaying. This is because the screen readers don't report through their various access methods this relies on when they finish speaking. There's a similar setup to how GMA's games handle it, where it goes by the number of words and you calibrate it by letting it say something and telling it when it stopped, then that creates a bit of an average that sort of works.There's also the issue that if you want to interrupt the speech you can't do so with control unless the screen reader supports speakInterrupt with a blank string. I think all of them do. Note that if you don't need the keyboard hooking function in the game to be on then control will work anyway.The main issue is that delay estimator thing isn't always accurate. You'll have the game continuing on either too soon or too late in situations where it was supposed to wait until speech finished.A future game we have planned will need a lot of long winded speech output that won't lend itself to recorded speech, so we'll likely explore this and hopefully other options while we're at it at that point.Another reason not to do this though is that players can slide in a translation for the game, or their own preferred speech folder even if the same language, then all the recorded speech might be in say, Spanish even though the game is really English. It's never perfect, but it's sometimes good enough to get by, where translating all strings that would go to the screen reader or SAPI or which ever is not a simple proposition for us or who ever wants to handle the translation.We are working on generating a text file with the file names and the strings each file has which may help translators or other players who just want to mod the game by providing their own pack instead. The bulk of the work here will be on whom ever wants to make the mod, but it should be a possibility. I have to code a new entry in settings though to allow for this, because if you put modified speech files in the speech folder the next time the game updates it may accidentally delete them if they're in the default speech folder. So this will involve pointing the game at a completely separate folder. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/450292/#p450292 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates Hi.This is Aaron.SAPI is fairly easy to break. Over the years I've run into problems with it a few times, and I've heard discussions of other people having similar horrors with it. Some voices will leave parts of themselves behind when you uninstall them, or perhaps they remove too much data, and now SAPi either doesn't work at all, or the voice is still there but doesn't work. My Yoga2pro laptop has several voices that don't work, for instance, even today.This is when a customer contacts you to help them fix their SAPi since your game can't speak through it, even though the game itself is not the problem.Additionally, many voices have an issue that causes a long delay after something is spoken before the voice reports that it's not speaking anymore. this results in long pauses in between strung together phrases. Microsoft's own SAPI5 version of the One Core voices like David are among the worst.On my system, my game is silent for just about a full second and sometimes even longer before the game is able to continue, if it is waiting for SAPi to finish. I wind up just using the SAPI5 version of ESpeak on all of my computers because the rest are just terribly slow. I like Eloquence, but I haven't decided to buy the SAPI5 version of Eloquence yet.Recently, just before releasing EKS, I was troubleshooting a problem where my game crashed after Windows 10 updated to version 1903. When SAPI would try to speak, game crash every time. I have code that tries to check if a voice is going to work, and if not, it spells the message using the recorded speech instead. This wasn't working. Come to find out, I forgot to account for the internal list of voices not containing as many voices as the number the currently saved voice was. This is called an index out of bound. I call the fact that I missed this crappy coding on my part, and the fix was relatively easy.However, I got the crash to stop, and then I was experiencing a several second pause every time SAPi would be supposed to say something, but not actually hear anything but silence. Even in settings in the game, I could arrow across the voices and it would never say anything.I wound up setting up alerts to show me when it was trying to say things just what it was saying. Then I backtracked my SAPi code and alerted the heck out of it too trying to find the issue. I had at one point the knowledge that for some reason, the voice was reporting at speaking immediately, even though it wasn't speaking. The fact that it reported as speaking caused the code then to not break out and revert to spelling. So how in the heck was this the case? Since when did SAPi report speaking when it really wasn't? I banged on this for about an hour and a half changing a lot of code in the final release version of EKS, something I really didn't want to mess with.Come to find out, it sort of was not a bug in SAPI after all, but it kind of was as well. I have the VB Cable driver installed on this computer. Before the Win10 update, everything was fine. VB Cable lets you put the audio output to its own virtual sound card, then you can pick up what went into it on the other end by pointing the input/microphone selection of what ever apps you want to it. You can listen to VB Cable through the default sound output device using the native windows functionality for that, so you can continue to hear what ever it was even though it was not being piped to the regular sound card directly.What I had done was used the advanced app settings in the Win10 settings app under sounds to force Eks to output through the VB cable, even though EKS doesn't support that capability on its own. I then used Team Talk to listen to VB cable on the microphone side and was able to stream something I had recently changed over Team Talk to show it off to a close friend to see what they thought. It worked great, they heard everything just fine.After that Win10 update, somehow Eks was still outputting through the VB Cable, even though I know I changed it back to the default output when I had finished. Plus, in the past, any time you close out a program that has been forced to a certain output like that from the sounds section in pc settings, it reverts back to default anyway, a fact I found somewhat annoying when I closed the game out and opened it again to start fresh with a new game and such.But, for some reason, SAPi couldn't be heard, while the recorded speech was working perfectly. Beats the heck out of me, but I was pretty annoyed about that, to say the least.So saying, it has always been my policy to keep these games as self contained as I can manage. Besides the fact that I've always liked a game that used recorded speech myself, I just wanted to be able to do that too. We've both mentioned this before, but fortunately or perhaps unfortunately, we're producing games we would want to play here, and for the most part, their interfaces and way of
Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates Dark,In answer to your question about planetary defenses, there's two answers. One is the historical one, i.e. planetary defenses of the type you describe just aren't available at the time of the First Interstellar Wars in our universe.The second is the technical game design side of it. We initially had thought about having stationary defense stations for planets and/or mine fields and possibly sensor arrays. Once we started talking about it though, the stationary gun platforms for planets, in practice, weren't that much different from battleships. Rockets for planets would be extremely expensive unless fired from orbital platforms, and again, this ended up in practice being something like battleships. The mines made things very tricky. You'd have to mine around a planet, leaving a corridor in or out, and mines in essence would be hazards that would only do limited damage to incoming ships. A big enough fleet of ships wouldn't even be inconvenienced. Also, if we had mines, reasonably, we should have mine sweepers, and this added another ship with little practical use. The sensor array idea was proposed by one of our beta testers, but once we started arguing about the logistics of it, again, we decided that if you want sensor arrays, the best route is to string interceptors out.EKS is supposed to be more about the tactical problems of using the hazards, planets, and ships on the board to best effect, not about the realities of a real war in space. That way madness lies because first off, physics would have numerous things to say about how dumb this entire idea is. War in space that is, not your planetary defense ideas.SLJ,Glad the tutorial helped. It was a larger and more involved project than I first thought, but I think it does cover the gap you noticed.Aaron and I have already started working on an update to be released soon that addresses some of the issues raised here and some that weren't. I make no predictions on when it will be finished. Finally, this morning, I decided to play an insane mode game, and I was beaten miserably, and after listening to Michael's easy trouncing of the AI I wanted to give the Interstellar Union it's day in court so to speak. Before I post this, let me say that it is possible to beat Insane mode, and I have done so. I believe I sitll have the log if anyone wants to see it. On the higher difficulties, the matter becomes more of survival and out colonizing the enemy or gaining control of the economy. That did not happen in this game . So here's my stats:Game Statistics for Playthrough of VGA Expanding Known Space, Version (21).The player lost! It'll be better next time?The game lasted 27 minutes 59 seconds and ended on Saturday, July 20, 2019 at 7:40 AM.The war between you (the solarian federation) and the enemy (the interstellar union) started in 2850 and ended in 2855 (21 turns, with the interstellar union victorious.Game was in insanely not fair difficulty.Military victory condition was assigned - was not metColonization victory condition was assigned (60%) - was not metEconomic victory condition was assigned (60%) - was not metCapital Control victory condition was assigned - the interstellar union met this condition for 4 seasonsThe enemy was in normal mode.the solarian federation finished with 16 colonies (40%) with the most ever held being 16. the interstellar union finished with 14 colonies (35%) with the most ever held being 14.the solarian federation colonized 1 of 1 asteroid belts, 3 of 7 space stations, 2 of 3 ice planets, 3 of 7 volcanic planets, 1 of 4 ocean planets and 6 of 18 earth type planets.the interstellar union colonized 0 of 1 asteroid belts, 0 of 7 space stations, 1 of 3 ice planets, 2 of 7 volcanic planets, 1 of 4 ocean planets and 10 of 18 earth type planets.At the end, the solarian federation was making 124 credits for 34% of the total income, the interstellar union was making 1236 credits for 58% of the total income.the solarian federation made a total of 1803 credits, the interstellar union made a total of 12752.the solarian federation spent 0 on intelligence gathering, the interstellar union spent 105.the solarian federation purchased 27 interceptors, 73 destroyers, 10 frigates, 18 cruisers, 22 battle ships and 21 colony ships for a total of 171.the interstellar union purchased 40 interceptors, 5 destroyers, 8 frigates, 8 cruisers, 500 battle ships and 15 colony ships for a total of 576.the solarian federation lost 19 interceptors, 29 destroyers, 3 frigates, 5 cruisers, 17 battle ships and 2 colony ships for a total of 75 (71 lost in combat, 4 lost to hazards).the interstellar union lost 4 interceptors, 0 destroyers, 2 frigates, 0 cruisers, 3 battle ships and 1 colony ships for a total of 10 (6 lost in combat, 4 lost to hazards).the solarian federation lost 0 ships to changing loyalties, the interstellar union lost 2.you have won 0 military, 1
Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates Shane, At one point we had the planet type assigned in the planet selection menu, but at the suggestion of the beta testers we took it out as it was making things too easy. Since this information is available in the documentation, there's not any real reason to continue Hiding it. I will make Aaron cry, and suggest that tthis might be a real easy addition to an update. We could either put it back, or alternatively, to make m work in the planet selection menu.The earthlike planets in the game, assuming I don't forget one are: Earth, Terra Nova, Vesta, Vishnu, Grunwelt, Bubba Elyssium, Olympia, and Zion for the Solar Federation. For the I.U. they are Bolivar, Charlemagne, Gautama, Ishtar, Magellan, Mandela, Osiris, Wovoca and ZengHe. I have the feeling I"m forgetting one or two, but that's the majority of them.Dark,That is an exceptionally fast game. The AI is a slow colonizer. We tried various tweaks and hacks to get it to do better, and never came up with a way to speed it up to player standards in normal mode. However, a lot of the AI's problems often have to do with cash flow. On higher difficulties, this is less of a problem, and the AI becomes very aggressive at colonization. It still doesn't do as well as a human player would with those resources, but it's better. In reference to Earthlikes colonization, etc, I did post a new version of the documentation with more info about spoils of victory, occupation of planets, and colonization and how it works. I'm glad you whipped them so thoroughly, the Pax Solaris can begin that much sooner in your universe:)Take care,Jeremy URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/449631/#p449631 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates I have created a tutorial and uploaded it to the web site. The link is https://www.valiantgalaxy.com/eks/tutorial.htmlI have a link to it on our front page, and on the Expanding known Space page itself. Hope this helps.Jeremy URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/449609/#p449609 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates Dark,As to how to achieve a military victory, it's easiest if that is the only victory condition, or the only one with capital control victory. it's possible to do it on other settings, especially if you find the enemy's planets quickly, and eliminate all but Earth or Bolivar then take that last, but it's extremely unlikely as a scenario. Military victories are fun, but time consuming ways to play the game.As to fleet composition, this honestly is a matter of taste. I like destroyer wolf packs for exploration and strike forces to slow up large enemy concentrations. Since a fleet must stop and fight if it's in a square with enemy ships, using interceptors or destroyers to slow down advancing enemy fleets while you build defenses can be very effective. However, that said, having a large fleet of battleships is very deadly as well.The real advantages of the different ships are these:Destroyers gain 1 more square of movement making them by far the fastest ships. They lose this advantage in fleets.Edit: They lose this advantage when part of a fleet that has anything which is not a destroyer.Frigate allows salvage of capital ships giving 1 credit per destroyed capital ship in a fight. For instance, in the tutorial game I played yesterday, the AI sent a fleet of 21 interceptors, a destroyer, and two battleships to a planet. When I destroyed this fleet, I gained 3 credits income because of having a surviving frigate.Cruisers can repair other ships. This is more important in defense, but it can be useful when traveling across the board, as cruisers can bring ships damaged by hazards back up to speed before they engage the enemy.Battleships can fire on more distant ships, and hold fleets together. The second is the more useful ability. Long range fire is inaccurate, and while it helps, it's sometimes less effective than one might like.When we first began play testing, I used almost exclusively destroyer fleets. They were fast and hit fairly hard. However, as we retooled the AI and he began using more and more battleships, this became a more and more dicey proposition. Further, once we introduced the larger ships' abilities, it became harder to ignore the benefits of having the others.Nowadays, I generally like to have a colony ship, as many battleships as I think I can afford, one to three cruisers, a frigate, and round out the rest of my income with destroyers. I send these small attack fleets out to colonize and rampage, while I build larger fleets to take out hard targets or for assaults on the capital.One of the beauties of the game though is that it supports a number of play styles. As Michael mentioned earlier, he virtually builds only three or four large fleets, and just sends them around the board colonizing and destroying enemy forces. I prefer a number of smaller attack fleets. One of our other beta testers uses something of a hybrid. Aaron generally uses mostly battleships and little else. All of these work, they just take various amounts of time to accomplish.If you'd like a different style game, but don't wish to go off normal mode, you might try matching optimal start. This provides both alliances with three earthlike planets to begin with. It's a subtle change, but it makes a large difference over time.The game takes a while to really understand. Our beta testers were hitting around a month or so before they hit their stride, but once you begin to see what your preferred playing style is, the game can be very rewarding. Then you switch difficulty levels, and you have to change I'll warn you, I know with me at least, going up difficulty levels forced a complete rethink of strategy. Take care,Jeremy URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/449596/#p449596 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates Dark,As to how to achieve a military victory, it's easiest if that is the only victory condition, or the only one with capital control victory. it's possible to do it on other settings, especially if you find the enemy's planets quickly, and eliminate all but Earth or Bolivar then take that last, but it's extremely unlikely as a scenario. Military victories are fun, but time consuming ways to play the game.As to fleet composition, this honestly is a matter of taste. I like destroyer wolf packs for exploration and strike forces to slow up large enemy concentrations. Since a fleet must stop and fight if it's in a square with enemy ships, using interceptors or destroyers to slow down advancing enemy fleets while you build defenses can be very effective. However, that said, having a large fleet of battleships is very deadly as well.The real advantages of the different ships are these:Destroyers gain 1 more square of movement making them by far the fastest ships. They lose this advantage in fleets.Frigate allows salvage of capital ships giving 1 credit per destroyed capital ship in a fight. For instance, in the tutorial game I played yesterday, the AI sent a fleet of 21 interceptors, a destroyer, and two battleships to a planet. When I destroyed this fleet, I gained 3 credits income because of having a surviving frigate.Cruisers can repair other ships. This is more important in defense, but it can be useful when traveling across the board, as cruisers can bring ships damaged by hazards back up to speed before they engage the enemy.Battleships can fire on more distant ships, and hold fleets together. The second is the more useful ability. Long range fire is inaccurate, and while it helps, it's sometimes less effective than one might like.When we first began play testing, I used almost exclusively destroyer fleets. They were fast and hit fairly hard. However, as we retooled the AI and he began using more and more battleships, this became a more and more dicey proposition. Further, once we introduced the larger ships' abilities, it became harder to ignore the benefits of having the others.Nowadays, I generally like to have a colony ship, as many battleships as I think I can afford, one to three cruisers, a frigate, and round out the rest of my income with destroyers. I send these small attack fleets out to colonize and rampage, while I build larger fleets to take out hard targets or for assaults on the capital.One of the beauties of the game though is that it supports a number of play styles. As Michael mentioned earlier, he virtually builds only three or four large fleets, and just sends them around the board colonizing and destroying enemy forces. I prefer a number of smaller attack fleets. One of our other beta testers uses something of a hybrid. Aaron generally uses mostly battleships and little else. All of these work, they just take various amounts of time to accomplish.If you'd like a different style game, but don't wish to go off normal mode, you might try matching optimal start. This provides both alliances with three earthlike planets to begin with. It's a subtle change, but it makes a large difference over time.The game takes a while to really understand. Our beta testers were hitting around a month or so before they hit their stride, but once you begin to see what your preferred playing style is, the game can be very rewarding. Then you switch difficulty levels, and you have to change I'll warn you, I know with me at least, going up difficulty levels forced a complete rethink of strategy. Take care,Jeremy URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/449596/#p449596 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates As to playing against other players online, this would require a server, which right now, isn't something we're able to do. It's something we would like to pursue however, and we're investigating how best to go about it.Shane, unfortunately, currently the answer is no. Dentin is working on this, but it's been low priority thus far, and he's got limited time to spread among his various projects at the moment. We would like to implement paypal support at some point, and it's possible, that you might email Dentin at Guidedog and ask if he'd be willing to handle a paypal transfer. I know he has done so for Alter Aeon. This isn't a guarantee, just a possibility.I'm glad people are enjoying the full version of the game. Dark, I don't look at game duration, I look at game turns. 40 is a good game. Just judging from your comments, and your stats, you might try going up a difficulty level or so, but you might want to play a few more games on normal first. I have finished a tutorial document, but it's currently being reveiewed by the beta team and Aaron before we post it. Once they're done I'll put it on the web site and link it up. Take care,Jeremy URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/449499/#p449499 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates SLJ,Honestly, when I prepared the quickstart section, I did it under protest. I knew there'd be people who would want to start with little or no preparation, so I tried to cover the basics as best I could. That said, you're right, it doesn't give enough information, hence the note at the top of the section about the rest of the documentation having much more information. I will try and put together a how to play step by step document that starts with the beginning of a standard game, and post that to the EKS web site. I have to do some work on the documentation today, and that's a worthwhile addition.Dark,I'm glad it's coming together more for you. As to the self-voicing and GDG issue, I agree it's a matter of opinion and people are emotionally tied up in the GDG argument as well. Dentin's choice of the name was to make it clear who the target audience was, and for the significance of guiding people to the games they wanted more than any stereotypical ideas about dogs.I personally dislike the use of guide dogs, and have issues with them, so I am not a fan of the name, but I think it encapsulates what the point is quite briefly.In answer to your scattered fleet issue.If you know what ships were in the fleet, you can search for them with the go to menu or with the y and s commands to find them and give them new orders. I find a method that seems quicker for me is to scroll through the board using the control arrow keys. I go to 0,0 with home and page up, then use control right arrow to see what is on the top row if anything. If the arrow announces merely 0,0 then there's nothing of interest revealed there. I then go down to 0,1 and do the same thing and so on and so forth until I get to 0,19. By this time I've found all the ships, and given them new orders based on their local conditions. Scattered individual ships from fleets sitting around without orders are not completely useless, but this is hard to see in a lightning game. They actually perform two very useful functions in a big game on one of the other modes. First and foremost they make good observation posts: you can see some enemy fleet movements, sometimes find new planets, and generally locate what's within their scanner range. Second, they draw enemy fire. The AI doesn't like ships in its section and goes after them. This often reveals where the AI is, where it is strongest, and places to avoid in games of higher difficulties where the player is often at a disadvantage.I'm not arguing that fleet scattering is fun. I hate it just as much as the next person. However, it isn't the disaster it might seem in every case. Take care,Jeremy URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/449433/#p449433 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates Rashid,As to scattering, that's why battleships are the way they are. I've hit that destroyer fleet issue many many times myself, and I hear your cries. As Michael said, I usually give up on a fleet at that point. If I have a fleet that is that important, that it shouldn't scatter, I invest in at least one battle ship and suck up the fact that it'll be slower. If the hazard doesn't scatter a fleet all across the map, in that situation, I usually build three or four smaller destroyer fleets and send them on to a rendezvous or on to their destination depending on what the purpose of that fleet was.As to the documentation, good point, that's something that should be added. It was simply an oversight. I'll make sure to add that some time in the next few days.Take care,Jeremy URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/449349/#p449349 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates SLJ,This might not help you, but I'll post this for anyone else it might.When you first begin the game, placing your entire defense fleet on Earth is a good move.The first few rounds you should purchase primarily colony ships.If you hit the h key, you find Earth automatically. You can use the n key to see what planets are nearby, or you can scroll two spaces to the east or west or north or south and scroll back and forth in five block lines with Earth as your central point. In this example, if Earth is at 3,3 then you would start at 1,1 go to 5,1 then drop down a line, scroll back to 1,2 then do the same thing until you are at 5,5.Then to look at the surroundings of the other two colonies use k and go to each planet in turn and look. You want to send colonies to your nearest planets to those three colonies. If you don't see any, which is possible, but highly unlikely, send colony ships out in a random direction. You will find planets eventually.If you then wish to check progress on your colony ships in later turns, you can hit y until you hear colony ships, then hit s to scroll through each ship. V will show you the autonav destination on the ship if you have set one, n will show you what is within two squares of that ship. In any menu, such as nearby, detection, goto, etc, hitting enter on a destination planet, ship, or square will take you to that location. You're not the only person that has had this trouble. We had one beta tester who dropped out because he had similar problems. I skyped with him to try and over come the issues, and I'd be happy to correspond with you privately over email or skype chat if that might help. Strategy games of this complexity are not for everybody, and if it's giving you trouble, it's possible it's just not worth your time. Alternatively, wait until someone videos it, and try it again.I tried to make the documentation as clear as possible, but I designed the game, and no doubt did not explain things in the best way for all people. I hope this helps someone later.Michael included a list earlier, but let me again list the hot keys I use most often:escape in menus to rehear what ships I have left to place or that I have purchased.Arrow keys to explore. Shift arrow to move ships and fleets.shift a for single ships and fleet or control a to autonav ships or fleets.c and shift c for composition of fleets. c is for your own, shift c for enemy fleets.d for the detection menue for the fleet management menu.f and shift f to cycle through fleets.h for homing to capital planetk for cycling through coloniesq for cycling through ships and fleets on a squaret for seeing current progress v to see where a ship or fleet is going.y followed by s to locate specific ships and what they are doingz to see currently set mission and victory conditions as I play a lot of random missions.If you add n for nearby scan and m for more information in there for newer players, I think that gets the vast majority of hot keys you really need for the game. There's a lot of other functionality that is useful: control g to go to a specific square, r and shift r to see and go to largest concentrations of enemy or your ships, the shift v and control v keys Michael mentioned.Take care,Jeremy URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/449277/#p449277 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates Snow, When last I had looked I hadn't seen your email. We'll be sure to get on that asap.Supersayan,Oops, I forgot to look at your spelling of your handle before I started, my apologies. We take it seriously, however, we also committed to this course for good reasons. We also know that a number of people are fine with the self-voicing option. Having both options creates double the code work for very little return. Since there's only one of us coding, this will delay games even more, and for very little gain most likely. That said, it's not off the table, it is just not something we have chosen to do in any of the four games released thus far, other than partially in Yellowbonnet.As to the GDG usage, again, we have good reasons for using it. It is a work in progress, but I believe if you look at a number of other game companies payment systems, it's no worse nor no better. If you don't like either the voice nor the internet connection, then you're free to vote with your feet. I'll be sad to lose someone who plays the games, but this point has been raised, and argued each time, and like religion it's mostly a matter of opinion. If you want to play while in a car, internet connection is a problem. If you want to have Sapi self-voicing is a problem. Otherwise, they aren't issues.I hate to be blunt about it, but frankly, it is what it is. Aaron didn't put hours of work into the voicing not to use it. We don't really wish to spend extra months writing in extra Sapi commands, and GDG connection accomplishes a number of things that we would otherwise have to use crappy hacks for. Dark:Lightning game can result in combat and in a greater AI challenge on higher difficulty levels. If you'd like I can play a lightning game on insane mode and show you the differences. Lightning mode is perhaps not the best demo for combat, but the other short one is close quarters combat, and that one would be a slaughterfest for a new player. I felt it would be too discouraging for players to play the demo and immediately get taken out. If players want to be immediately taken out, we can possibly add that as a second demo option in a later update.The only other real choice would be to allow a game on normal mode and shut it down after 10 or 15 turns, which would be most unsatisfactory to me. one of my biggest complaints when I played Time of Conflict's demo was that I would just start to get somewhere then hit the 100 turn limit. With all of the above issues excluding Snow's, all of these issues are places where compromises had to be made. Compromises by definition don't please everyone.Thanks for the feedback, it's appreciated.Take care,Jeremy URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/449232/#p449232 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates I'm posting this because I think it might illustrate some of the points I'm wanting to make. In the game I just played, I was repeatedly attacked by large fleets, mostly composed of battleships. the AI loves battleships. It was actually this AI strategy that got me more interested in using them. This game was played in ouch that’s not fair mode. This mode gives the AI two of every type of ship on each of its three starting planets for a total of 36 ships. The AI also gets a multiplier of 2.5 times the normal credits in this mode each turn. I began play with Earth, Terra Nova, and Einstein Station. This gave me an initial starting income of 32 credits per turn. I got extremely lucky with my placement. Zion was two squares south of Earth, Vesta was two south and two east. Darling was one north and two west, and Gehenna was three north. With my other two planets, not so lucky. Bubba was two north and one east of Terra Nova, but Einstein station was on the edge of the board and only 3 west and 1 south from Terra nova. My strategy was to build nothing but colony ships for the first 8 turns or so. I spread out quickly, and managed to have about 100 credits a turn and 8 or 9 planets by the end of turn 10. I had started defending Terra nova and Earth by then, placing battleships, cruisers, and other ships there. I continued expanding, though as I got more credits, I began escorting colony ships as I was seeing enemy fleets by this time. During the last quarter of the game I found Bolivar, but was only able to launch one aborted attack on it. By contrast, the AI found Earth and launched 5 attacks on it. I managed to repel all of them, but it was a near thing in one case. He also occupied several of my planets which denied me the credits from them. I reached colonization victory condition and kept pushing to try and colonize new planets, or at least frustrate his movements. I managed to colonize Ultima Station on the last turn of the game, and he did the same with planet Bubba. However, since both of these occurred in the last round, they were not able to become full colonizations and therefore are not reflected in the statistics below.Game Statistics for Playthrough of VGA Expanding Known Space, Version (21).The player beat the game! woohoo!The game lasted 45 minutes and ended on Tuesday, July 16, 2019 at 6:12 AM.The war between you (the solarian federation) and the enemy (the interstellar union) started in 2850 and ended in 2856 (27 turns, with the solarian federation victorious.Game was in ouch that's really not fair difficulty.Military victory condition was assigned - was not metColonization victory condition was assigned (60%) - the solarian federation met this condition with 60% for 4 seasonsEconomic victory condition was assigned (60%) - was not metCapital Control victory condition was assigned - was not metThe enemy was in normal mode.the solarian federation finished with 24 colonies (60%) with the most ever held being 25. the interstellar union finished with 7 colonies (17%) with the most ever held being 9.the solarian federation colonized 0 of 1 asteroid belts, 3 of 7 space stations, 3 of 3 ice planets, 6 of 7 volcanic planets, 2 of 4 ocean planets and 10 of 18 earth type planets.the interstellar union colonized 0 of 1 asteroid belts, 1 of 7 space stations, 0 of 3 ice planets, 0 of 7 volcanic planets, 1 of 4 ocean planets and 5 of 18 earth type planets.At the end, the solarian federation was making 224 credits for 58% of the total income, the interstellar union was making 200 credits for 20% of the total income.the solarian federation made a total of 3983 credits, the interstellar union made a total of 4536.the solarian federation spent 0 on intelligence gathering, the interstellar union spent 130.the solarian federation purchased 114 interceptors, 87 destroyers, 18 frigates, 47 cruisers, 63 battle ships and 35 colony ships for a total of 364.the interstellar union purchased 51 interceptors, 8 destroyers, 35 frigates, 7 cruisers, 142 battle ships and 16 colony ships for a total of 259.the solarian federation lost 27 interceptors, 32 destroyers, 6 frigates, 9 cruisers, 10 battle ships and 7 colony ships for a total of 91 (87 lost in combat, 4 lost to hazards).the interstellar union lost 25 interceptors, 7 destroyers, 9 frigates, 5 cruisers, 78 battle ships and 4 colony ships for a total of 128 (118 lost in combat, 10 lost to hazards).the solarian federation lost 0 ships to changing loyalties, the interstellar union lost 1.you have won 0 military, 1 colonization, 0 economic, 0 capital control and 23 mission victories and you have lost 0 military, 0 colonization, 0 economic, 0 capital control and 9 missions for a total of 1 wins, 0 losses.A couple of things to notice here. I didn't bother with gather intelligence in this game. I do use it, but it's best when you have five credits left overe, and no real
Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates Snow,Please contact us using our email form on the web site, give us your gdg user name and any messages you're getting about the account not being activated, and we'll talk to Dentin and make sure this gets straightened out.Also, your suggestion about labeling fleets was made during beta test. We had this in our bucket list until late in the process when the beta testers suggested that they didn't think it was necessary after all. It is definitely something we can easily put back into the mix as a possible update. Firefly: I understand the frustration with the voice, and can only say that we like using it and refer you to the FAQ for our reasoning. This is going to be a large turn off for many people, but for now, we're committed to staying with this.Dark: Glad you got it working at least on a pro tem basis. As to your suggestion about first events that's a possibility. Fleet scattering already gets notified as it's only caused by hazards. However, point taken, and we'll discuss it.SLJ:Thanks for giving it another try. It is an extremely complex game in some ways. As I said elsewhere the demo is a good way to show how the game works, but it's not indicative of a full version game. Lightninng game focuses on colonization, and the fastest way to play it is to buy only colony ships and spread out as fast and as far as possible ignoring enemy ships. In the regular game, this is a viable solution for about the first 8 or 9 turns, but usually by ten or twelve, the AI has begun finding your forces, and if you haven't been escorting ships, or at least building up defense fleets, things will get hairy very quickly.One last side note:There's three places in the documentation where a subset of hot keys are listed. A very subpar set imo is the one in quickstart. That is enough to play, but not much more. The one in tips and tricks number 17 is much better. The hot key section itself, while it is long, could be copied, pasted, and cut down to just the ones you want to use a lot. For us and the betas, we had to get used to hot keys incrementally, and as shown by my unawareness of the extra functionality Aaron had coded for shift a and control a, there's some things that not all of us were using. Great suggestions, and we appreciate it. i'll be interested to see the reaction of people who have purchased the full game and completed a full game outside of lightning mode.Jeremy URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/449185/#p449185 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates Ok, see it's so good, the designer didn't even know about this. lol.Ok, Daark, I was rereadingthe documentation, and in a section Aaron amended, I found this, which will somewhat answer your rendezvous question in a different way than I did.Shift+A and Ctrl+A are intercompatible from any number of locations, but to a single destination at a time. You may select all ships on one square using Ctrl+A or Shift+A, then add more ships from other locations using shift+A and or ctrl+A. Once you've got all units you want selected, pressing enter at their destination will set them all up to convene there. When setting various ships and fleets to more than one destination, it is necessary to mark the ones for a single destination, then press enter at the destination before marking another set and pressing enter elsewhere.I hope that helps somewhat. I've been doing it the hard way Take care,Jeremy URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/449129/#p449129 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates Ok, let me respond to a few of the issues. Although, Michael it looks like has been doing my job for me.SLJ:I know this isn't the same thing as what you're asking, but you can modify how quickly the voice pauses between words in the settings menu. Perhaps not 100% helpful, but I find that once I set the voice settings differently from the default settings, I like them better. As to the messages, the most important ones can be reviewed with the d hot key in movement phase. This will tell you ship detections, hazards your ships hit last round, planets the enemy has colonized that you possessed, and a few other items.Unfortunately, creating a review of each item command would slow the game down a lot in a big game. We had a text log being created for beta testing purposes, and the performance did go down significantly with that activated. That said, it's something we'd be willing to implement again if enough customers want it, and we could probably arrange an option to use it or not in settings.Dark:It is a learning curve. It took our testers a month or so to get the hang of it, though they didn't have all the tools in the final version of the game. Michael's suggestions about fleet scatter are useful as his suggestions about v and shift v. As to ships awaiting orders.The system I use for this is to group ships for different purposes, and this is actually partialy how the AI handles things. So for instance, I might group ships on a planet to a fleet, use that fleet as a defense fleet. The next ships I buy on that planet, I group together as a fleet to go colonize the next planet over. So on and so forth. It isn't perhaps as elegant as your o shift o idea, but again, in a long game you can run into thousands of ships on the board. A lot of the logging/saving information things are the best compromise we found between performance, playability and smoothe operation.As to the sound scape issues: I strongly encourage anyone who wants a larger sound scape to play a game of eks set on the highest difficulty they can manage, then to play it on military victory condition only, and defensive mode for the AI. I think this will illustrate why we didn't go this route in the best way. Colonization sounds could be added, and wouldn't be a big deal. However, explosions or other things at the end of battles or when fleets are disbanded can be very annoying. If you've ever had 100 destroyers scattered by a hazard then had to wait through dozens of reports of what happens to them and where they end up, along with the hazard noises that inevitably accompany this, then you will understand. We're not opposed to adding more sounds, but we consciously avoided this for the player's benefit, not to deny you an audio game. In answer to your rendezvous question there's no way to tell multiple ships all over the board where to go currently. However, if you have say three ships close to each other, you can use shift a or control to make them all go to the same place, fleet them up, gather up the next set, etc. Shift a allows you to choose a destination then hit enter at the destination making a selected ship or fleet go directly there. Control a allows all ships in the square to go to the same location using the same format control a then enter on the destination. Your lightning game looked good. Lightning game made a good demo mode for the game, but it is not indicative of how the whole game plays in the way I would have preferred. However, it avoids giving you a good start on a game, then stopping and saying neener neener buy the game, which is also annoying.We are listening guys, and we are discussing the issues brought up.As to GDG issues, I"m not sure what that could be other than your Windows Defender messing with the Guidedog client. I hate to suggest it, cause you're already having so many issues, but you might try downloading the client again, reinstalling, and putting it in with your audiogames and see if that fixes the issues. Annoying, but I personally don't have a clue beyond that. Course, I"m not the computer savvy part of this team.Thanks again folks, we appreciate all the feedback negative and positive, and we like that people are taking an interest. I hope a few people try buying it and see the fuller game experience. I might play through a game and post stats and highlights here. Also, if any ambitious users do buy the game and want to post a video of the play, it might be very useful to others. As I said in the tips and tricks section in the documentation, you don't need all the hot keys, but a number of them are useful, and learning those dozen or score are really helpful.Jeremy URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/449090/#p449090 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates Aaron here.For Dark, have you been launching the games using the shortcuts, or via the launch what ever.exe file? E.g. Launch_eks.exe? The launcher is what starts Guidedog Client. You may run ExpandingKnownSpace.exe directly but if Guidedog isn't running it won't be able to access it. You should be able to sign in during or shortly after the game if it is behaving as intended, but you would receive a notification about that. Your stats show up as a Lightning Game, so I wonder did you pick that manually, or did you have to hit escape on the activation screen and skip all the way past that process.Oh, on second thought, thee escape to continue thing would be the same if you haven't purchased yet, and so not so obvious.Sorry, I haven't woke up properly today.Lastly, the last line of your stats are all 0's because it was unable to save the win or loss to the account, as you explained.As for your suggestions, some good ones here. We'll definitely consider these, especially since some of this was already on the road map but we had to side line them or else we wouldn't ever get this crazy thing out. Fleet scattering is definitely a, well, you know what lol. The battleship will help prevent that in most but not all cases. The hazard that caused it will be reported in detections review menu, so the d hotkey will probably list it and you may press enter there to visit the location where it happened. Ideally, the scattered ships are nearby, but if they spread out all across known space, as Jeremy said, your sensor net just got grown, may as well either write them off or plan something different for them.Thanks for your interest! URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/449083/#p449083 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates Aaron here.Very pleased to hear you got a solution. We definitely wanted you to be able to give it a go. No idea why the normal VGA folder didn't work out, especially with Defender set not to scan it. Could it be the exception didn't stick?The other strange thing though is that I'm not losing any of the other games while also using defender, and I don't set it to not scan my folders because I won't know if people are going to be losing it if I do that. Latest defender definitions running Windows 10 1903. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/449038/#p449038 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates Dark, when you looked in your program files folder and tried running the .exe file from there. Did you only have launch_eks.exe? You also need expandingKnownSpace.exe. If it's not there in the same place, then it's being deleted. The one file to update may be that one.If you don't have it even after you run launch_eks.exe after having allowed the vga folder in Windows Defender, perhaps running the game's installer again will help. It includes that file, so if it's gone right after installing, something is still being delete happy.I was having trouble with this too until I checked windows updates and defender got a new definition file. I get a windows notification though when the file is deleted by Defender, so I just basically hit enter on VGA Expanding Known Space on the desktop and then got a notice about the main executable being missing or damaged, which does not sound like the same thing you got.Aaron URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/449030/#p449030 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates Dark,Yes, it is fixable, and Dennis is going to try and knock it out tonight. He found a bug in the GDG client this morning and tried to fix it temporarily. I'm sorry that you're having the issue. It should be cleared up asap. Thanks for the report.Jeremy URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/449020/#p449020 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates Snow,As Michael suggested in his post, this was a conscious decision, primarily to limit needless input to the player. My largest game of EKs involved over 5,000 ships, and I was having usually a dozen battles a combat phase in that one. We could have handled it in the way you suggested, however, we consciously chose to go with a sparser sound environment.A second reason to have used this method was just to improve performance. The more sounds you add, the more ships you add, the more calculations you add, the slower and less responsive the game grows. One of our concerns was to make sure the game was as responsive at the beginning as it was near the end of a long and large game.Third, you say it might as well be a text game as if that is a bad thing. All computer games in the world started with a text game, and that game is still fun and playable 45 years later. My favorite rpg game of all time Fallthru was a text game and had 0 graphics.That said, I get why people are disappointed in the sound scape, but with strategy games, my focus is on the decisions the player has to make, not the bells and whistles. In a long game of EKS as noted earlier you can be managing upward of 40 or 50 fleets, watching 20 planets to make sure they don't get overwhelmed, and trying to find or destroy a capital planet. In a situation like that, some players find extraneous noise a distraction and a bother. Rather than fool with having to make a lot of optional switches and other things to avoid that for those players, we chose a sparse audio environment.We had considered adding more sound, and when we release an update to the game, it would not be difficult to add in sounds, probably with toggles. I don't promise this, but it would be possible.Keep the comments coming, we like constructive feedback. Take care,Jeremy URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/449005/#p449005 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates First off as some people might have noticed, we accidentally left an extra t in one of the web links:the correct address for purchasing the game is https://guidedoggames.com:7081/games/5Neither of us caught it when we proofread. Bad bad game developers.As to the voicing, we use the self voicing for various reasons. If you're interested in why, you can look at our FAQ on our website at www.valiantgalaxy.com.Thanks for the interest, and we appreciate the feedback.Jeremy URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/448943/#p448943 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates
Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates Valiant Galaxy Associates is proud to announce the release of Expanding Known Space, the third title in our flagship line of science fiction games. The year is 2850 and the freedom-loving frontier planets of the interstellar Union are about to launch a pre-emptive strike against the encroachments of the authoritarian Solarian Federation. The First Interstellar Wars are beginning, and it is up to you to win the war quickly and with as little loss of life as possible. Expanding Known Space is self-voicing and uses recorded human speech. The game, like many of our other titles, features both map and menu modes. The map is 20 by 20 and features 40 planets and 40 static hazards. The map is different for each game. Over 50 hot keys have been added to aid in navigation and information gathering. However, most players use about a dozen regularly. The game features five difficulty modes, four victory conditions which can be customized, five AI modes, and allows for manual or automatic selection of the player’s initial planets. Besides these options, nine missions have been included which change starting conditions or victory conditions during the game. These include such options as starting with only your capital planet and no ships, a lightning mode which allows for a quick game focused on colonization and is used for the free demonstration, and a total war mode where all planets begin play colonized and garrisoned and the player must win through a military victory. The game play uses a phase system similar to many board games to handle game play. Purchase phase allows the player to build units to replace those that might be lost in the coming turn. At this time random events occur that help or hinder the player’s war effort. Movement phase is a map phase and allows the player to survey the situation and move forces to accomplish goals. Combat phase resolves any combats resulting from the movement phase. Placement phase allows the player to use map mode or menus to select where and how much to place on his planets. Several automatic routines have been added to aid players including an auto damage routine and an automatic placement routine that places ships as evenly as possible on all planets. The game features other innovations such as an autonav option, the ability to group ships in fleets, and the ability to send ships on an automated scouting routine to find undiscovered portions of the map. Further, the game can be saved and loaded later. If you wish to try the game, the mission lightning mode which allows a ten turn game where you race to outcolonize the computer is available. Simply hit escape once the game tells you you are not logged into guidedog once you have started a new game. If you wish to purchase the game, you can use the links below. The game retails for $19.99 U.S.To read the documentation visithttps://www.valiantgalaxy.com/eks/documentation.htmlTo download the game visithttps://www.valiantgalaxy.com/eks/Expan … taller.exeTo purchase the game, visithttps://guidedoggames.com:7081/games/5 URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/448914/#p448914 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates
Announcing Expanding Known Space from Valiant Galaxy Associates Valiant Galaxy Associates is proud to announce the release of Expanding Known Space, the third title in our flagship line of science fiction games. The year is 2850 and the freedom-loving frontier planets of the interstellar Union are about to launch a pre-emptive strike against the encroachments of the authoritarian Solarian Federation. The First Interstellar Wars are beginning, and it is up to you to win the war quickly and with as little loss of life as possible. Expanding Known Space is self-voicing and uses recorded human speech. The game, like many of our other titles, features both map and menu modes. The map is 20 by 20 and features 40 planets and 40 static hazards. The map is different for each game. Over 50 hot keys have been added to aid in navigation and information gathering. However, most players use about a dozen regularly. The game features five difficulty modes, four victory conditions which can be customized, five AI modes, and allows for manual or automatic selection of the player’s initial planets. Besides these options, nine missions have been included which change starting conditions or victory conditions during the game. These include such options as starting with only your capital planet and no ships, a lightning mode which allows for a quick game focused on colonization and is used for the free demonstration, and a total war mode where all planets begin play colonized and garrisoned and the player must win through a military victory. The game play uses a phase system similar to many board games to handle game play. Purchase phase allows the player to build units to replace those that might be lost in the coming turn. At this time random events occur that help or hinder the player’s war effort. Movement phase is a map phase and allows the player to survey the situation and move forces to accomplish goals. Combat phase resolves any combats resulting from the movement phase. Placement phase allows the player to use map mode or menus to select where and how much to place on his planets. Several automatic routines have been added to aid players including an auto damage routine and an automatic placement routine that places ships as evenly as possible on all planets. The game features other innovations such as an autonav option, the ability to group ships in fleets, and the ability to send ships on an automated scouting routine to find undiscovered portions of the map. Further, the game can be saved and loaded later. If you wish to try the game, the mission lightning mode which allows a ten turn game where you race to outcolonize the computer is available. Simply hit escape once the game tells you you are not logged into guidedog once you have started a new game. If you wish to purchase the game, you can use the links below. The game retails for $19.99 U.S.To read the documentation visithttps://www.valiantgalaxy.com/eks/documentation.htmlTo download the game visithttps://www.valiantgalaxy.com/eks/Expan … taller.exeTo purchase the game, visithtttps://guidedoggames.com:7081/games/5 URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/448914/#p448914 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing release of Interceptor by Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing release of Interceptor by Valiant Galaxy Associates Jeremy here:Pitermach,Having splash damage on more ships was another thing that was discussed. Originally it was something Aaron added in on the sly to mess with me lol. We kept it cause it made a lot of sense. Thanks for the suggestions. Take care,Jeremy URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=224716#p224716 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing release of Interceptor by Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing release of Interceptor by Valiant Galaxy Associates Jeremy here,Themadviolinist,Darks suggestion about how much more of the differences can be seen in longer duration and longer range combat with higher class ships is valid; the obvious counterpoint of well yeah, but they need to die right now is also valid.Concerning your remarks about the user guide being more specific: that is quite probably a good observation. You are not the only person who has noticed shortfalls in this area, and as I am the half of the team responsible for our documentation I am currently whipping myself with an old USB cable until I learn better. In all seriousness, Ill have a look at it again, and see where I can tighten it up; the nice thing about using online documentation is I can update it and everyone has the same documentation immediately.Rockets do ignore deflectors in all cases except one, and this point is brought up in an oblique way in the documentation. Rockets do not arm until after app roximately 10,000 meters. Thus, if you fire a rocket too close its just a big hunk of metal that the deflector then intercepts. As to the optimal strategy discussion: There is a post I made earlier in this same thread about a strategy I tried of using a rocket to damage opponents, then pot shot them with the particle beam from farther out. This worked well enough, except when ships were too close for whatever reason. In those cases, I defaulted to the smash the deflector and blow them up strategy. I think there are other ways to play it, but I agree that unfortunately, its appearing more and more, as we hear from a larger group of players, that this was a place where the code could have been better designed. This is a definite place well revisit if we update Interceptor.As to telegraphing to the player more of the difficulties the opponent is having from damaged systems: Im not sure how to really t elegraph this either without more descriptive text. Their systems impact them exactly the same as the players systems impact them; for an example that is easier to track, destroy a ships waste disposal system, then give it time to take damage from it. Youll see cockpit integrity, life support, and the reactors all suffer gradual damage. Some other examples are damaging rocket pods cause them to eject disabled rockets, etc. Some of the effects are very subtle and difficult to see, even if you know they are there. For instance, I have a good idea of how damaged targeting computers have to be before fighters start missing significant amounts of time, but that was a matter of trial and error and playing hundreds of games in the beta testing. If anyone has good suggestions on this, Im all ears.There are differences between the different classes of ships, both in system layout and in complexity of AI. This is not at all very obvious to the player however, and some of it comes from playing a lot of games, and some of it comes in seeing a fighter use more intelligent tactics. In beta testing I came to loathe betas. I always had the most trouble with them, Im not sure why. As to the ECM suggestion, we actually have played with adding this, and its one of the features in our if/when we update/do another Interceptor style game file.As to simultaneous pops of ships, I agree. When we first designed the game, frankly, we had no ideas on how to manage this. Now that we have done more, we have some ideas on how to tackle this, and intend to try it out when we get a chance. Itll be a ways down the road though. Theres still technical issues to work out.As to your surmise about how we are tracking distance you are correct. Again, a limitation of the state of our abilities at the time we started on the game. By the time we could have fixed this, the game was too far in development to really make changing it viable.As to how to handle the maneuvering, that would obviously require some combination of the factors you suggested. This is doable, and its something that we will definitely revisit.The Mad Violinist:Is it a bug or a feature that there are times when I can hit enter and countermaneuver against the opponent approaching or evading, and there are times when I cannot? Jeremy: It is a feature. If the ship is merely maneuvering, you are not given a chance to cut it off. In a perfect world, you could have done so; but again, our state of knowledge did not equal our desires at this point. The only time you can cut it off is when the game announces name of ship evading. This is the signal that the enemy ship is trying to gain distance to repair.The Mad Violinist: Is it a bug or feature that the mother ship repairs systems without having to disengage from combat, so that a deflector I knock down in one shot is back at 100% when Igo to hit it again?Jeremy: That is a feature, and a very annoying but fun one. As to the computer assisted shot issue. I agree except for one thing. If you factor in smart sights, smart weapons, and greater
Re: Announcing release of Interceptor by Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing release of Interceptor by Valiant Galaxy Associates Jeremy Here:Dark, All good suggestions. Im not really happy with the scan costing a move as it does now. I chalk it up to the it was a good idea at the time syndrome.As to the other suggestions, all are worth exploring. I have a couple of ideas on how to tackle this as well. One thing, that is not as obvious to the player generally, is that weapon effectiveness drops fairly rapidly after certain points. If the particle beams drop was even more gradual than it already is, and the neutrino cannons drop steeper, this would also help ranged combat. Ill be more than happy to hear other suggestions as well. I find that with this game, as with many deceptively simple games, everything is great until either I mess up, or the computer gets lucky or smart. In one of the games I posted here as an example, I had an epsilon hit my deflector first shot of the game. That heightened tension q uite a bit. Having been struck by three rockets in one game, I can assure you it changes your priorities quite rapidly. That said, the game can stand quite a bit of improvement, and I suspect that this will be an ongoing project for us. We are making notes as per usual. Thanks again,Jeremy URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=224599#p224599 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing release of Traders of Known Space
Re: Announcing release of Traders of Known Space Hi from Aaron.I was trying to do a little code work on the upcoming minor update to TKS, and got a little distracted to say the least.Statistics for Playthrough of Traders of Known Space - a free game from Valiant Galaxy Associates, on Version 6 BETAThe game lasted 3 hours, 43 minutes and 47 seconds and ended on Wednesday, July 15, 2015 at 6:17 PM - The player beat the game! woohoo!In a career spanning 53 years (unlimited mode), the player accumulated 6286341 credits.At careers end, the envy of all space merchants was trading in a vessel with the following capabilities:Integrity: 10 / 10Engine: 22 / 22Gun: 6 / 6Deflector: 10 / 10Cargo hold: 5180 / 5180Final score: 6437141! URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=224269#p224269 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing release of Interceptor by Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing release of Interceptor by Valiant Galaxy Associates Jeremy here:Luis, good to see that you managed to purchase the game. Im glad that you managed to make the system work. Thank you for buying the game, and we hope you have a lot of enjoyment from it.Take care,Jeremy URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=224202#p224202 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing release of Interceptor by Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing release of Interceptor by Valiant Galaxy Associates Jeremy here:Luis,De nada about the language. I wish my Spanish extended further than that and yo no recuerdo mucho Espanol. That said, that gives me a lot more information to work with. Ill let Dentin know about this issue, and well see whats going on. Im sorry that youre having this issue. Take care,Jeremy URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=224048#p224048 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing release of Interceptor by Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing release of Interceptor by Valiant Galaxy Associates Jeremy here:Luis,De nada about the language. I wish my Spanish extended further than that and yo no recuerdo mucho Espanol. That said, that gives me a lot more information to work with. Ill let Dentin know about this issue, and well see whats going on. Im sorry that youre having this issue. Im also sorry, that I didnt see Aarons response until after I wrote this, however, its still important to emphasize that we are committed to working out issues that anyone is having who want to purchase the game. We have spoken to Dentin about the Paypal support issue. As Aaron noted, Dentin is having a major set of rl issues right now. That said, this problem is known about. If there are more issues with credit cards being refused or odd behavior such as Luis called our attention to, please let us know. Thank you,Jeremy URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=224048#p224048 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing release of Interceptor by Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing release of Interceptor by Valiant Galaxy Associates Jeremy here:SLJ,In the attack submenu there is 7 options:Fire port rocket podFire Starboard rocket podFire Particle BeamFire Nutrino CannonFire Particle Beam Computer AssistedFire Nutrino Cannon Computer AssistedRamThe two options that you want in this case are fire particle beam computer assisted and fire neutrino cannon computer assisted. When you select one of these youll hear the scanner operate, then either the message scan failed, or a beep and then a menu with enemy systems and energy listed. Select the system you wish to target by scrolling to it and hitting enter. If a fighter has a deflector, destroying the deflector first makes a huge difference. I should probably make this clearer in the documentation, since it has come up several times, and you are not the only person to have asked.Take care,Jeremy URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=223857#p223857 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing release of Interceptor by Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing release of Interceptor by Valiant Galaxy Associates @luiscarlosgm, hello from Aaron.Ive emailed you at the email address you have at the bottom of your forum messages. Please post here and let us know if you dont receive that email.For the record, were committed to working this out. We were unable to really do much today because Dennis is going through some life changes. Well post again here on the forum when weve got things sorted out. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=224013#p224013 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing release of Interceptor by Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing release of Interceptor by Valiant Galaxy Associates Jeremy Here some more:Thanks for the input on the mother ship.While it can be a cake walk, as you both described, Ive had those other experiences That said, we worked really hard to make the mother ship difficult, but not impossible. If you ever get hit by one of those gun batteries without a deflector youll appreciate the power of the ships more. Aaron and I are discussing ways to possibly change this up.I know several people have suggested a longer game with more levels. This might be a possibility for an expansion later down the road. We wanted the game to be completable in roughly half an hour to an hour. Right now were hitting that goal with the ten level version. However, if enough of our customers ask for deadlier mother ships and more enemy fighters to risk getting killed by, who are we to argue?:)Interceptor updates are right now a way off. We have two projects that were working on right now, and we havent decided which one to take up first after we release version 6 of the free game Traders of Known Space. This new version will not be that different in terms of game play, but it will include some nice additions from Yellowbonnet such as keyboard hooking, ability to reset scores, ability to name your ship, etc. Theres also some infrastructure changes we made that are invisible to the player, but makes the code happier. Once thats put to bed, we have a large scale project and one that at least plan wise looks smaller. After that, we might revisit Interceptor. As Ive mentioned elsewhere, we have 3-6 Science fiction games in note or outline form, another 9 or 10 in rough notes form, and a number of games for other genres kicking around. A lot of the process tends to be whats good for the company, as well as moving into more challenging territory. One of our projects might become a sidescroller. This is something Aarons wanted to do from the beginning, and were studying the issues with it now to see that we make the best game we can.Take care,Jeremy URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=223987#p223987 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing release of Interceptor by Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing release of Interceptor by Valiant Galaxy Associates Jeremy Here:Luis,Can you give us any more details? I get that youre hitting purchase, but after that Guidedog gives you only a blank page?Sorry for asking again, but any information that you can give us about what exactly took place will help us to troubleshoot what happened. Thanks, and sorry youre having a hard time with the service,Jeremy URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=223986#p223986 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing release of Interceptor by Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing release of Interceptor by Valiant Galaxy Associates Jeremy here:Sneak, Im responding here too as well as in private message, in case other people are trying to reach us.We are apparently experiencing a server side mail issue. I responded to Sneaks email, but the message was never sent. Aaron has been alerted to the problem, and well try to get it straightened out as soon as possible. My apologies to anyone getting frustrated at a nonresponse. Take care,Jeremy URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=223680#p223680 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing release of Interceptor by Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing release of Interceptor by Valiant Galaxy Associates Dan,That is very high praise. That was what I originally strove for with the original game when I first programmed it in high school. My favorite bit of Starwars when I was a kid was the big X-wing battle at the end. Take care,Jeremy URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=223789#p223789 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing release of Interceptor by Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing release of Interceptor by Valiant Galaxy Associates Jeremy here:Luis,We are looking into the issue with the purchase page. Thank you for letting us know about it, and I hope we can clear this up so you can get the game.Take care,Jeremy URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=223788#p223788 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing release of Interceptor by Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing release of Interceptor by Valiant Galaxy Associates @luiscarlosgm this is Aaron from VGA.Would you tell me what your account name is? Send it in a pm or an email if you prefer to keep that private. Well get you straightened out as soon as we can figure out what went wrong. By account name, I mean the user name you use to log into guidedog, probably should send that privately Id guess. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=223787#p223787 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing release of Interceptor by Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing release of Interceptor by Valiant Galaxy Associates Jeremy Here:Dark,Special conditions were something that were originally included into the game design, but were abandoned due to difficulty of development. Although Interceptor is our third game released, it was actually our first game in design and development. A number of things we wanted to do initially we did not have the expertise to manage. Since Interceptor, weve worked on three other games (one of which is temporarily shelved for those of you counting and trying to figure out where the third game is) but each one has taught us more about how to overcome some of these difficulties. The mission levels that we originally tried to integrate into Interceptor were going to introduce a lot of complicating conditions such as environmental concerns. That said, we havent abandoned that notion. We are contemplating, further down the road, either an expansion, or a whole new game that uses the Interceptors combat mech anics, and possibly TKS map mode. If we do this, several of the ideas that were abandoned in previous iterations of the game will also find the light of day again. We never throw anything away: you never know when a blind alley will end up being a great idea later.Im not sure what your hot key issue is, unless it is indeed what Pitermach suggested.Pitermach, thanks for the critique of the speech buffer issues and the suggestion for later levels. When we first designed the game this was the best speech buffer system we could come up with. Were working on improving it, and if that happens, Interceptor could see an update similar to those weve done for Yellowbonnet and Traders of Known Space. Again, you hit the issue of were still learning the best way to cope with a problem. Dark,As to the demo mode: I see your argument, and well continue discussing it; its possible our position o n this might change. There was a lot of debate between ourselves and our beta testers on this issue as well, and so it was never as set in stone a decision as it might appear. However, the games only been out three days, well four now, and we want to see if there are more issues. If we change things, wed like to change enough things at once to make it worth it. Any day were updating code is a day were not working on a new project. Thank you all for the suggestions and critiques,Jeremy URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=223679#p223679 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing release of Interceptor by Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing release of Interceptor by Valiant Galaxy Associates Jeremy here:SLJ,There is some luck involved. Having a look at the tips and tricks portion of the documentation might help as well. The strategy that many on the forum have already noted of flying in as close as you can, aim for deflectors (assuming the ship has any) and then attacking a vital system works well. There are a few exceptions to this rule, most notably the tanker ship. However, this might help a lot. If youre already doing this, and still having issues, my suggestion is to fly out from the enemy and repair some when you need to. HTH,Jeremy URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=223741#p223741 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing release of Interceptor by Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing release of Interceptor by Valiant Galaxy Associates Jeremy here:Just to give a counterpoint to the conversation thus far, I just played a game where I tried, as much as was practical and possible, to depend on rockets and the particle beam. I had a bit of a scare when the first epsilon of the game blew my deflector up, but I survived. This is unusual for me, I usually use the up close and personal approach many of you have been discussing. Statistics for Playthrough of the Interceptor Game, on Version 20 (normal mode)The game lasted 1 hours, 7 minutes and 14 seconds and ended on Sunday, July 12, 2015 at 9:41 AM - The player beat the game! woohoo!5 epsilon, 10 delta, 4 gamma, 2 beta, 3 alpha, 1 tanker, 1 command and control and 1 mother ships were destroyed, for a total of27.The interceptor destroyed 7 vessels with just one attack, and 10 with two. It fired 47 shots and 30 rockets.The interceptor took 85 turns, traveled 1194125 meters, consumed 3318 energy and its reactors pro duced 1881 energy. Opponents took 46 turns.Final level reached: 10, final score: 285000!I got very lucky in several particulars. Level 9 was composed of 3 deltas and a gamma for instance, and though I had 3 alphas on level 7, two of them were cowardly and gave me a chance to repair. Im not sure I would adopt this as a primary strategy, but it was a different game playing this way. One immediately noticeable thing is that I was forced to give up a lot of the bonus points associated with quick kills. However, I did gain a number of bonus points from needing less replacements. It looks like it balanced out, though the bonuses for number of ships destroyed probably contributed far more.Take care,Jeremy URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=223705#p223705 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing release of Interceptor by Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing release of Interceptor by Valiant Galaxy Associates Jeremy Here:Hi Dark,The particle beam is the longer range weapon, and it is somewhat weaker than the neutrino cannon. Further, range impacts all weapon systems damage output (except for rockets obviously). As a rule, I use the particle beam on badly damaged systems at range if the deflector on an enemy fighter is destroyed or nearly destroyed. That said, the particle beam can be a good chip away weapon, especially if you want to keep your distance.Alphas are significantly nastier than most of the other fighters, one reason why level 7 is sometimes more challenging at first. Its often the first time a player encounters an alpha, and so provides a rather steep learning curve. That said, I suspect you got very very unlucky. Enemy rocket fire is the thing that always makes me clench up personally. However, with the manned fighters they can occasionally take more intelligent computer assisted shots, and those ar e nasty, especially when ones deflector gets knocked out.The manual does have a tips and tricks section that has some info, but I dont recall if I put a weapons comparison anywhere in the manual specifically. Theres some discussion scattered through, but thats not the same thing. Might be something to remedy.Take care,Jeremy URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=223537#p223537 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing release of Interceptor by Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing release of Interceptor by Valiant Galaxy Associates Jeremy here,Sneak,Its good to have finished the game. I didnt look at the mode you were in but im guessing from the low number of ships you probably were in quick mode. Either that, or just got extremely lucky/unlucky depending on your point of view.Generally for a successful game scores Ive seen have ranged from about 250,000 points to around 330,000 points. A lot of it depends on ships destroyed, what sorts of ships they are, how many bonuses you get, etc.The more manned fighters one faces, obviously the score increases. The number of one attack or two attack kills can run up bonus points as well. If you can get away without repairing your ship you can get bonus points at the end of even numbered levels by refusing replacements. There is a large bonus for a high number of ships destroyed. If you can destroy the tanker, command and control vessel, and mother ship in the fewest shots poss ible you get large bonuses as well. I know this is rather vague, but I dont want to completely rob the fun of other people in discovering where and how to rack up bonuses. However, Id say 279,000 is good, but not the best you could probably manage.Further, for those of you who have tried quick mode, normal mode is a slightly different experience:) Theres a lot more possible ships for instance. HTH,Jeremy URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=223563#p223563 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing release of Interceptor by Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing release of Interceptor by Valiant Galaxy Associates Hi, Jeremy here.Sneak,We havent seen anything new other than automated mail since late last night. Ill check again tomorrow morning. If it hasnt gone through by then, try again. v...@valiantgalaxy.com is the correct address though.Take care,Jeremy URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=223649#p223649 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing release of Interceptor by Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing release of Interceptor by Valiant Galaxy Associates Jeremy here one last time for today:Thank you all for your feedback, critiques, suggestions, questions, and comments. We appreciate it, and often they spark evil ideas in our pointy little heads. You guys give a lot of thoughtful and awesome feedback, and even when you have negative things to say, they usually have a very good reason behind them. Thanks again, for both the support and the critique. Theres a reason we credit you guys in two if not all three games documentation files:)Take care,Jeremy URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=223618#p223618 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing release of Interceptor by Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing release of Interceptor by Valiant Galaxy Associates Jeremy here some more:Avidgamer said:i love the game but can i use NVDAThe best bet is to play with the speech settings as Dark suggested. We dont plan to add SAPI or other screen reader support any time soon, but that might find its way into an update. Hth,Jeremy URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=223617#p223617 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing release of Interceptor by Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing release of Interceptor by Valiant Galaxy Associates Jeremy here,Dark said:Btw, the shortcut keys dont work at all, which is a pain sinse I keep having to go and look at the distance menue to see how far away the enemy is, also I cant check number of moves left. Jeremy:Im not sure why this is Dark. It might be something to do with your screen reader. Have you tried turning off the keyboard hooking? That might fix your problem. If it doesnt, you can turn it back on with f8.Dark said:it seems that getting a one hit kill on any ship with a deflector is impossible to one shot, indeed you always seem to need to destroy the deflector directly first before doing any even vaguely sygnificant damage to other systems. Jeremy:With energy weapons it is virtually impossible unless you encounter a damaged fighter whose deflector is already down to next to nothing. Rockets can do it sometimes with a lucky hit. That was why we included bonuses for two attack kills in the first place. Our beta testers got annoyed with us:)Dark said:btw, sometimes it seems the enemy get more actions or less, which is odd, particularly on higher levels, also sometimes I seem to get fewer, which is why Id like to check the number of actions Ive got if possible to know more easily what is happening. Jeremy:The initiative system depends heavily on engines, cockpit integrity, life support, and I hope thats everything. If any of those three systems are damaged you are less likely to get initiative on the enemy and get say two turns in a row. However, sometimes you just get lucky, or they do. Each turn consists of 3 moves. Its easy to sometimes lose track of the enemys turns as sometimes the AI tries to do something the fighter cant do and it has to retry. If it is forced to do this too often, the AI skips that mo ve. I suspect thats why you have trouble tracking their turns as easily. Even with two turns of 3 moves each, I often get lost in my count and am like is that their fourth maneuver, or their fifth? HTH,Jeremy URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=223614#p223614 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing release of Yellowbonnet from Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing release of Yellowbonnet from Valiant Galaxy Associates Hi from Aaron.Nice stats there Connor. Hope you very much enjoy the game. I wouldnt mind updating Yellowbonnet again sometime in the future, but it looks like it might be a few months, got a couple of other fun ideas in the works in the meantime. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=223620#p223620 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing release of Interceptor by Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing release of Interceptor by Valiant Galaxy Associates Jeremy here again:Sightless Kombat SaidI must admit that while Ive tried the game and enjoyed it, the demo is severely limiting and subjectively speaking not going to sell the game that well. This is simply because you can get the first level, in normal mode or otherwise, completed in roughly a minute. I think adding the second level, which Ive heard is harder and takes significantly longer to complete, would allow more of the resource management aspects to be taken in during normal mode and the fun factor to be driven home in quick mode.Additionally, I believe that if you can add paypal support it would be of great benefit to those who cant (for whatever reason) use a credit card with your system. I mean having a credit card is fine and all, but Paypal and other equivalent systems will probably be a better alternative to offer to people.I do like the game, but implementing the above suggestions if possible I think would convince me to buy it outright, whereas Im currently sitting on the fence.As to the demo mode question, were not planning on expanding it right now. We might revisit that decision in a month or two. Darks point about getting lucky or having fewer ships on level 1 is valid, but since you can restart the game and replay a number of times, its not insurmountable. Also too, the 2nd level, while you can encounter Delta class fighters is much like the first. Aaron and I just didnt feel it would add significantly to the experience of the demo.As to the Paypal issue, it is currently being worked on by Dentin. Its apparently very complicated, and involving a lot of work on his part. We hope to have that ability soon, but how soon soon is, were not sure. Dentins in the midst of real life changes that may disrupt things for a while.HTH,Jeremy URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=223615#p223615 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing release of Interceptor by Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing release of Interceptor by Valiant Galaxy Associates Jeremy here:Im very glad that people are enjoying the game. Dan, if you continue to have problems let us know, if its something that is GDG specific well try and figure out whats going on.As a teaser and goal to strive for, I am including a game stat block sent to me by someone who bought the game. This person and I had a friendly rivalry going, and his subject line to me was I own you. He does indeed:)Statistics for Playthrough of the Interceptor Game, on Version 20 (normal mode) The game lasted 2 hours, 56 minutes and 14 seconds and ended on Thursday, July 9, 2015 at 9:17 PM - The player beat the game! woohoo!7 epsilon, 5 delta, 6 gamma, 2 beta, 3 alpha, 1 tanker, 1 command and control and 1 mother ships were destroyed, for a total of26.The interceptor destroyed 12 vessels with just one attack, and 10 with two. It fired 46 shots and 8 rockets.The interceptor took 48 turns, traveled 956400 meters, co nsumed 3547 energy and its reactors produced 1324 energy. Opponents took 23 turns.Final level reached: 10, final score: 307000!Take care,Jeremy URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=223427#p223427 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing release of Traders of Known Space
Re: Announcing release of Traders of Known Space Hi from Aaron.Tks already includes a pretty hefty portion of Guidedogs services. Those who installed the original release and later self updated it to the new release simply by launching the game after the update was made available were making use of one of Guidedogs major advantages.We are going to link tks to guidedog so that you can save your settings online and retrieve them on other machines by logging into guidedog with the same account, but the game is not going to bug you like Interceptor and Yellowbonnet do if you dont use the client. The game also will cheerfully save your settings locally in the event that it doesnt have online access.GeneWarner, I dont know anything about steam, but Guidedog is really small, and uses virtually no system resources while guidedog client is running. Additionally, no background services are used so when guidedog client is not running there is no affect what so ever on the machine. Guidedog is downloaded and installed during the first run of the first game that you have which uses it, and that process takes just a few seconds even on a slower connection. The point being that if your past experience with such services being more trouble than theyre worth has to do with complicated install procedures and lots of system resource consumption, that should not be of concern at all with Gidedog.The new version of TKS will launch guidedog client when it is started, but if you close the client TKS will run fully without it. I may be able to work out a way to optionally start the game without launching the client at all, but not sure about that.Having said that, we all have the freedom to decide to or not to use a product based on any aspect of that product. It helps to be informed most of the time though. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=223320#p223320 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing release of Traders of Known Space
Re: Announcing release of Traders of Known Space Word of caution:Most of the changes to TKS will be quality of life changes and some imports from Yellowbonnet, such as the ability to name your ship and your captain. A number of the more sweeping changes that have been suggested on this forum and in other places will find their way into the commercial version of TKS which is projected to be larger, more complex, and use different mechanics for a number of elements. That said, we welcome all suggestions: what we dont use for TKS 6 will find their way into the commercial game. As to comparisons to other games: I honestly cant speak to that; Ive read up on Smugglers, and once I have enough money to buy a copy intend to try it, it sounds neat. I vaguely remember Elite, but I dont remember if I actually played it, or again, just read about it.TKS was meant to emulate games such as TaiPan, Egypt Trader, and the like in a science fiction setting. It got much more compl icated than most of those games, and some elements took on more prominence than I had intended. The combat is one aspect that many players wanted to have as a larger part of the game.Aaron and I are both gratified that it has achieved what little notoriety it has; it was a labor of love. Aaron wanted to use it in a technology camp he was helping to organize, and I wanted to put a free game into the market to show case some of the ideas inherent in our setting. Thank you all for the responses, the criticisms, and the suggestions. They made TKS 5 a lot better and will improve TKS 6 as well. When big brother comes out, I hope that it will satisfy and show off your contributions to your satisfaction.Take care,Jeremy URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=223268#p223268 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing release of Traders of Known Space
Re: Announcing release of Traders of Known Space Jeremy here:Gene,Good suggestions. Some of these are ones we are pursuing, and some are not. Thanks again. Dark,TKS suffered from speed development. A number of the mechanics, economics, etc were made much simpler in the interest of speeding up development and coding. One reason we want to develop a larger commercial version of the game is to correct our own dissatisfactions with the game as well as those expressed by players and critics. We never liked the economic system for instance, and the end-game/early-game issues were things that bothered us as well. For what it is, TKS is a good game and a lot of fun. However, to compare it against a large scale game with a lot of story elements is like comparing Lunar Lander to a fully fledged game that involves a combat landing on a planet. I hope the commercial version will address enough of the issues, and do so in an engaging enough way, tha t it is not merely another take on territory already well covered by others. We will see what comes of it.:)Take care,Jeremy URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=223269#p223269 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing release of Interceptor by Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing release of Interceptor by Valiant Galaxy Associates Jeremy Here:The major difference between quick mode and normal mode is that quick mode does not integrate as many of the system interactions that occur when a system is damaged. In quick mode, damage is more a matter of concern primarily with weapons systems and critical systems. A few systems, if damaged, have obvious negative impacts: engines for instance. However, overall, quick mode is much more forgiving than normal mode. I just played a game in normal mode where my deflector, port engine, and particle beam were all destroyed in the same level. The deflector being destroyed meant all damage was directly applied to the system aimed at. The port engine not only impaired my chances of evasion for repair, but also impaired my chances at gaining the initiative. The particle beam being destroyed was worrying because I was low on rockets, and my nutrino cannon was also damaged. Before I could replace destroyed systems and repair I had I believe 8% on my electrical system which impacted weapons strength for the energy weapons, 3% on the navigational computers which impacted how well I could maneuver toward or away from the enemy, my targeting computer was damaged which impacted my accuracy, and my reactors were damaged which impacted my energy output. The point defense was at 2% which meant rocket attacks became even more dangerous. Overall, it was scary:) In quick mode, most of that would have been scary, but less so; the reactors, electrical system, and navigation computer would all have ben critically damaged critical systems. The other systems would not have impacted play as much as they did in the normal mode. I hope this helps to explain the difference. For those of you who wonder how the game turned out, I managed to replace all destroyed systems, repair to almost new condition, and survived long enough to beat the game. I ended with a score of 275,000 points . The randomness comes in four major places:First off on each level, except for levels with special ships, there are random numbers of fighters. This is actually also true of the level including the command and control vessel.Second, except on some levels early in the game, there are random chances to get different types of fighters. Once you reach higher levels of the game, the chances are weighted more heavily toward manned fighters; early on it is weighted more heavily toward drone fighters. Third, any ship in the game can appear with damage already inflicted, presumably by other interceptors in your fighter wing. These sometimes present opportunities for quick victories.Fourth, the damage to systems changes from game to game. While the basic factors of the game are always the same, those four random factors make each game quite different. Ive been play testing the game for three years, and have worked out, what is to my mind, an optimal strategy, and I still routinely die playing the game due to random chance. I also routinely beat the game, due to my knowledge of how to minimize the randomness. I still find it an enjoyable game though, and it has a lot of potential to grow. One long term plan, mind you we have no date for this, is to introduce mission based interceptor or perhaps mission levels into a revamped interceptor. We have notes for the missions, information about rewards, perks, and other things to make the missions worth while. Thats a ways down the road though. We want to update our free game TKS this summer, and then begin work on a larger project.Hope this helps to clarify, if not, continue asking questions, well be happy to respond.Jeremy URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=223266#p223266 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing release of Yellowbonnet from Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing release of Yellowbonnet from Valiant Galaxy Associates Jeremy here:Kai,Thanks for the offered help and the words of encouragement. We appreciate both. Its good to hear a favorable comparison with Steam as well. I hope you enjoy the games,Jeremy URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=223230#p223230 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing release of Traders of Known Space
Re: Announcing release of Traders of Known Space Hi from Aaron here at VGA!We just released Interceptor, and Yellowbonnet, a western style game we developed in the meantime, was released shortly before. We are now planning to update TKS in the next couple of months. Do you folks have any more suggestions for it? Weve pretty well got things planned out, but just checking. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=223231#p223231 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Announcing release of Interceptor by Valiant Galaxy Associates
Announcing release of Interceptor by Valiant Galaxy Associates Valiant Galaxy Associates is proud to announce the release of our first commercial science fiction game Interceptor. Interceptor puts the player in command of a space fighter in a do or die mission to save its mother ship. As waves of alien fighters attack, the player must battle them, level by level. On certain levels the player will gain other targets such as alien supply vessels, alien command and control vessels, and possibly even their own mother ship. Interceptor has two modes: normal in which you must play strategically and worry about resource management, and quick mode which takes out many of the complicating factors and can act as a practice mode. In normal mode, not only do you need to worry about fuel consumption and ammunition levels but also about how damage negatively impacts your fighter. A hit to a vital system might destroy your fighter, a critical hit to a nonvital system might make your fighter a sitting duck. All systems interact, and choosing when, and how much, to repair is as important as where and who to shoot. Interceptor is completely self-voicing. The game is menu-driven, and there is no need to worry about being able to place your mouse in an exact position. Documentation is included with the game itself, and you can access our online documentation from inside the game. The game is forgiving, and if you must take a phone call or step away from your computer, your space battle will be waiting. With ten levels of regular play, and a high level of random chance, the game is extremely replayable. The game takes 30-60 minutes to play and costs $10.00 U.S. Like Yellowbonnet, our first game, Interceptor utilizes the GuideDog Games service. GuideDog is a revolutionary games distribution service designed to act as an interface between game developers and visually impaired players (similar to Steam). The service is operated by Dennis Towne, owner and operator of Alter Aeon, and uses the same credit card encryption and account management system that Alter Aeon uses. Once you have an account with GuideDog, you can purchase any of our future games through it with no trouble. Account creation is quick and easy, and purchasing a game from start to finish takes about five minutes. WARNING!!! Gray fighters incoming—are you ready to face them?Check out the documentation herehttp://www.valiantgalaxy.com/intercepto … ation.htmlDownload the game herehttp://www.valiantgalaxy.com/intercepto … taller.exePurchase the game herehttps://guidedoggames.com:7081/games/2 URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=223223#p223223 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing release of Yellowbonnet from Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing release of Yellowbonnet from Valiant Galaxy Associates This is Jeremy:Ill make two posts, a general response, and then one addressing specific issues raised by Dark.Thank you for trying out the update. Im glad it is an improvement:) We may very well release other updates later. For instance, with TKS last year we released a similar update after the game was released, and were planning another this year to bring in some things we liked from Yellowbonnet.It is possible there are some bugs with updated material. We tried to test as extensively as we could, but we were trying to work quickly (Aaron had farm-related things going on during the first part of July) and its possible some things slipped past us.In answer to Crashmasters request for more material, there are plans afoot to return to Yellowbonnet and environs for future releases in this mini-game series. At this point, some of these plans are nebulous, but our hope would be eventually to releas e a small series and be able to sell them separately or bundle them together. In response to the comments about expanding the game, making it larger, having something more detailed: Aaron put a lot of work into making the game do just this. A lot of the code is very portable, and were discussing taking time out to create a generic game creation engine that I could use to create more titles that use similar mechanics and ideas to create other games that might use this format. This is still very tentative: a lot depends on time, what we have going, and need. Further, I like to expand on what I do design wise when I do something new, and this sounds like a good idea in principle, but could lead to YB in just different time periods. Thats not a bad thing necessarily, but it strikes me as stale after a while.Again, we appreciate the feedback and support. Were hoping to have Interceptor out before the end of July. bsp; With three games under our belt, were starting to feel like real game designers and stuff:) Also, again as a teaser, if you tried TKS last year, our next project is going to be a greatly revised and expanded version of that concept. Using a lot of ideas suggested on the TKS forum last year, as well as several suggestions weve received from players since then, were going to rip the game apart and start from the ground up to redo not only the size of the map, but rework the way the economy works, the opportunities for avoiding/lessening hazards, creating business opportunities outside just standard trading, engaging in criminal trading, and other things. Word of caution: this is likely to be a long running project. I suspect it wont have the kind of 3 year cycle Interceptor had, but its likely to take us a lot longer than the original TKS or YB. We will probably be establishing a mailing list in the coming months to give fans of the games more info. Take care,Jeremy URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=222331#p222331 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing release of Yellowbonnet from Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing release of Yellowbonnet from Valiant Galaxy Associates Here is Jeremy again:As promised, a more detailed response.1. Update oddness. Dark, this is odd, the game is supposed to announce downloading files and then give an update periodically. Im not sure why it didnt in your case. Ill call Aarons attention to it.2. More hot keys. This is something that might happen in future games. We like having the menu and the hot keys for some activities, but one to mention is inventory has the hot key tab. Im not sure now why we didnt make it the I key though. Theres I believe 19 hot keys in game now, and we were trying to avoid making too many and overwhelming the player.3. You diagnosed the broken bottle issue yourself. The broken bottle is a weapon without value. I wanted to make weapons fairly easy to get without money since tough hombre starts with barely enough money to get surgery and medicine. In the origin al iteration of the prices, surgery and medicine were more expensive, so weapons were more important to find. When we did sell back options, the bottle was of course left off.4. Your revolver issue is more worrying. That suggests a bug. We have not reproduced this one up to now. Ill work on seeing if I can reproduce, and if we can figure out the cause, well fix.5. The man going by the handle of thing is either a bug (a gender referent not being translated correctly) or an oversight. By the time we were doing the clipboard text, it was late in the process. My gut instinct is that it is an oversight. This should be an easy fix. The only other possibility, would be user error in setting gender, but I suspect you didnt make that error. Well look at it.Please continue calling our attention to issues and bugs as you find them. Thank you all again, and take care,Jeremy URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=222332#p222332 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing release of Yellowbonnet from Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing release of Yellowbonnet from Valiant Galaxy Associates Jeremy here:Dark,I detest this kind of space colonization game as well. Its one of the things that has bugged me with Sound RTS. If we do a space colonization game expect that to be different, perhaps not as detailed as either of us would like, but different:)As to YBs random map generation. Agreed, that could have been more random, how ever, with a modern town, the business district will always be in the same place. We talked about several plans to randomize the map, and we didnt like our alternatives. So we went with a simplified map.As to the nested maps, thats precisely what Im wanting to do with TKSs expansion. I.e. a galactic map with star systems marked, once you click the star system a solar system map. In TKS thats as far as its likely to go, though theres a couple of intriguing possibilities with places to go further from that. With a p irate game, I could see maps for overall area around the ship, islands, towns, individual ships and houses. A lot of it depends on our ability to fool with randomizing maps within certain parameters and letting the game juggle multiple map settings. Thats something we have an idea for, and we have a couple of games that might utilize it. IF the TKS expansion works out well in that regard, we might try another minigame that uses a different map strategy and then move on to pirates. All of this is very nebulous. Aaron and I have not plotted our future beyond the winter. Take care,Jeremy URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=222353#p222353 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing release of Yellowbonnet from Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing release of Yellowbonnet from Valiant Galaxy Associates Jeremy here:Oops, forgot to address one point I missed.Your suggestion of a space colonization game is actually one I have notes for in my VG main line notes folder. We have outlines for about 15 or 16 games in that folder exploring different aspects of science fiction and space opera conventions. The colony game is one I want to pursue, but it needed to wait until we had a way of doing what I wanted with the map situation. If this TKS expansion does use the map conventions I want to use, then that will become a lot closer to reality. Now, given Aaron and mys glacial development pace in some cases, it might not see the light of day for many years, but it is thought of and lovingly fiddled with. Take care,Jeremy URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=222348#p222348 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing release of Yellowbonnet from Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing release of Yellowbonnet from Valiant Galaxy Associates Jeremy here:Dark,Agreed. My reservations on the generic engine come from just such a concern. However, that said, The generic system was to be more flexible than that. For instance, jobs might be quests in a different setting or missions. The generic nature comes more from how the game handles characters, objects, rooms, etc. In some ways, YB is a minimud and uses some of the same ideas.As to Yb expansion, funnily enough both your suggestions have been considered. One idea was to explore some sort of resource management game, perhaps a farm or ranch based game though mining is also a possibility. I had actually thought seriously of just such an outlaw hunting game. Theres others as well. However, one idea weve played with is just expanding the map for future games. So Yb is the center of a larger map, and just such interactions are possible further out. As to the generic term in the copy and paste text, if this isnt a variable misfiring, we will probably adopt something of the sort. Roustab is pretty good. Ive encountered a lot of fun ones like that myself in the past, and youre right theyd make good names for aliens or monsters. Another favorite I always had was creating a fantasy game where all the features were named after pharmaseudicals: the Benedrille forest, the Tylanol Mountains, the spam river, the city of Zolaf and so on and so forth. Just some of those names are so nonhuman:).Again, with YB a lot of the issue just comes in terms of scope. The new TKS expansion will be a different animal. Of course, for one thing, TKS already had possible infinite expansion in terms of length of career built into it. The other thing is were thinking of using a different map approach with this one, and if it works itll be a fun departure. One thing we try to do with any new project is to take what weve learned from other projects and apply it. Interceptor gave us a lot of our BGT vocabulary as far as menu-driven possibilities were concerned. In addition, Interceptor allowed us to explore a number of AI models and other issues that have come up since then. With Expanding Known Space, a strategy game that we have in development but have discontinued temporarily, it provided the map structure and way of displaying objects that led to TKS. A number of things we created specifically for TKS found their way into YB and YB itself provided a spring board for approaches to the next game. We freely admit that we are still learning. We accept advice and help from other developers who have more experience, and we listen to players who, also, often have more experience:) Further, we do try and learn and expand each time we take on a new project. One last comment: the pirates. Of your suggestions, Ive played in games that explored all three though I have to admit, I find Zombie Apocalypse games fairly boring myself. I ran one for a short mini campaign in my table top game, and while it was fun, I dont see the fascination personally. However, the pirates. One mini-game idea we had on the cards was a pirate game. However, after I revisited the idea, its one I think Id like to expand. It might see the light of day again after TKS expansion hits the market. Some of the same ideas were experimenting with in TKSs expansion would lend themselves to a larger scale pirate game. Take care, and as always, thank you for thoughtful feedback.Jeremy URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=222344#p222344 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing release of Yellowbonnet from Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing release of Yellowbonnet from Valiant Galaxy Associates Valiant Galaxy Associates is proud to announce the release of version 9 of Yellowbonnet. After receiving some feedback from purchasers, beta testers, and people who tried the demo version of the game, we have made some extensive changes:1. Added a lot of sound material both as ambience and for specific characters. 2. Added introductory and closing text to the game. 3. Added new hot keys J to check number of jobs left, s to search, and o to open look menu.4. Added an inventory menu with a brief description of weapons in statistical form and a note that other items are of no practical use implying they are best sold.5. Cash spent no longer penalizes score. However, found items do add to the score.6. All characters fought, and all hazards encountered, are now tracked.7. The copy to clipboard text is radically changed.8. Attempted to eliminate odd strings in combat where snakes were blocking blows with arms.9. Changed encounter text on mobile hazards to make it clearer what happened.10. The burglar no longer appears if the deputy does not have a job for the player.11. A number of other minor bug and string cleanup changes were made. For full information see the change log. Current customers do not need to do anything. Once you start Yellowbonnet again, the game will automatically download new files and update itself. This update is completely free. As usual our beta test team were amazing, and we believe we’ve squashed all known bugs. If you find any, please notify us. We hope you enjoy the game even more now. Thank you for the feedback and support.To read the documentation go to http://www.valiantgalaxy.com/yellowbonn … ation.htmlTo download the game go to http://www.valiantgalaxy.com/yellowbonn … taller.exeTo purchase the game go to https://guidedoggames.com:7081/games/4 URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=222081#p222081 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing release of Yellowbonnet from Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing release of Yellowbonnet from Valiant Galaxy Associates Devon,I appreciate your input and opinion on this. Unfortunately, were a small company. In fact, were basically two guys that met on Alter Aeon and tried to put together a BGT version of a game from an extremely old version of the same game that I developed in Basic in high school in the 80s. Aaron doesnt use IOS products except in the past phones, and other than my phone, I dont either. Neither of us can afford the extra equipment or time. I think the best solution for the Mac and audio games problem that I hear about more and more from friends online and from people like you who are upset on forums that there are no games for your platform, or not the games that are coming out and being discussed, is for either a group of Mac users to get together and find programmers willing to take on the project, form a kickstarter, give that programmer an incentive, and see what comes of it. The other option would be to get a few enterprising Audio gamers/programmers who use Mac to develop new games. In a perfect world, thered be cross platform support for all programs, but currently, this is a far from perfect world. Now, that said, if anyone on forum wants to give me say 10,000 dollars so I can buy a Mac, take some courses, and learn what I need, I would strongly consider converting our games into IOS. No guarantees though, I need groceries first:(. Take care,Jeremy URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=221946#p221946 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing release of Yellowbonnet from Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing release of Yellowbonnet from Valiant Galaxy Associates Stefann,You might try making sure if youre using an anti-virus program that it knows both Guidedog and YB are allowed exceptions. I doubt if this is causing all of the issue, but thatd be my first gut instinct idea to try. Ill make sure that Aaron who is the technical whiz part of this company knows about this and perhaps he can suggest more. I hope this helps,Jeremy URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=221943#p221943 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing release of Yellowbonnet from Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing release of Yellowbonnet from Valiant Galaxy Associates Steffanne, Aaron here.Can you give us more info? Were not really reproducing this problem on our end. A lot more detail on your part might go a long ways.It would be nice if you could tell us which version of windows youre running this under. Are you running it in a virtual machine?What sort of internet do you have, do you use anti Malware utilities? One of those could be blocking the game from having access to the guidedog client, and so if you can allow the game and the client that may solve this difficulty. It would be great to know what the anti malware utility is if that is the case.Last question, which screen reader if any are you using? We had someone on our test team with issues while running Window-Eyes but managed to solve that, turned out for them it was their anti malware too but it was messing up Window-Eyes enough that they couldnt tell that.Thanks for your patience. You should be able to get a refund if you truly cant get it to run, but I suspect it is something that can be solved. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=221985#p221985 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing release of Yellowbonnet from Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing release of Yellowbonnet from Valiant Galaxy Associates Jeremy here:Ok, I had to post this playthrough of YB just to prove that developers get killed too.Statistics for Playthrough of the Yellowbonnet Game, on Version 7 beta The game lasted 1 minutes and 5 seconds and ended on Saturday, June 20, 2015 at 12:22 AM - The player lost! wee willie weirdo, (a tinhorn), defeated 0 hazards, completed 0 of 6 jobs, moved 0 times, and finished up with 30 cash to his name. The player spent0dollars final score: 30!I stepped off the stage coach and got hit by a run away horse. Call the hearse and Mortimer Underhill.Take care,Jeremy URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=220721#p220721 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing release of Yellowbonnet from Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing release of Yellowbonnet from Valiant Galaxy Associates Jeremy here again:SLJ,Assuming we didnt break anything merely starting the game will update it when new files are available. The game will say new update available downloading files and then pause for a while. It should give a report of progress in terms of percent completed. Aaron can correct me if Im inaccurate in any of the major details here.As to the ammo command youre right a will track that. As to switching weapons. We considered that as an option, but, in the interests of simplicity we decided to have the game use your best (i.e. most damaging) weapon first. This does mean sometimes youre using the revolver when it might not be as advantageous to do so. I think theres two ways of looking at that though:Even a rattlesnake, one of the weaker critters on game can do some damage. The revolver can often kill this beastie in one hit. If you do so, yes, you have to go b uy more ammunition if you want a full cylinder, but youve avoided damage.Or:You wasted a bullet on a critter that isnt really worth it.Just as a note in this regard, bullets are 1 dollar each. Medicine is 3 and surgery is 12. For certain settings the revolver is always a better choice to my way ofthinking. However, that said, as I noted in an earlier post, the tough hombre is probably better off with the night stick, knife, or scalpel. Im going to copy and paste my section on items from the documentation update here to help explain this possibly a little more clearly.Thanks again for the questions and feedback. We appreciate it all. While we dont always agree for either code reasons, game design reasons, or philosophical reasons with all points brought up here, we value your input and feedback.Take care,Jeremy URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=220307#p220307 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing release of Yellowbonnet from Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing release of Yellowbonnet from Valiant Galaxy Associates Jeremy here again: Heres the relevant section of the new and improved documentation, once we get it together enough to post. I apologize in advance if I missed any html tags.Yellowbonnet contains two classes of items: decoration items and weapon items. Weapon items are meant to be used by the player in combat; decoration items are meant to be sold for extra cash. A brief discussion of each type follows.Weapon items can be classed roughly into four groups:1. Punch: This is the weakest weapon in game, however, the character comes equipped with it from the beginning. A high strength score might add to punch damage.2. The broken bottle, the razor, the knife, and the brass knuckles are marginally better than punching. A high strength adds to melee damage with these weapons.3. The scalpel, night stick, and hammer are all the most superior melee weapons. A high strength contributes to their damage.< /p>4. Deringer and revolver are both pistols which use both the reflexes of the character as well as a good eye to hit targets. Their damage is distributed over a wider range than the melee weapons, but they can potentially do more damage in a single hit.Decoration items fall into roughly three categories: cheap items, mid-range items, and premium items.1. Cheap items include the leather pouch, the lace handkerchief, the bit of chain, a pack of pins, an Eastern newspaper, a horse shoe, a package of cookies, a slate and some chalk, a dime novel, a clasp knife, and a ladys fan.2. Mid-range items include the axe head, the pocket watch, the Bible, the fancy book, a ladys parasol, a fancy pen, a fancy lariat, and a silver belt buckle.3. Premium items include the set of fine glasses and the set of gold cufflinks.Cheap items are worth 1-3 dollars, mid-range items are worth 4-7 dollars, and premium items are worth more. End of d ocumentationI hope that clarifies things a little better on the item front. Its possible that unless youve played the game a lot and searched obsessively that you hadnt found all of these items. Some of them are sold in various places on the map, but most are hidden on the map. Some, such as the leather pouch or night stick, are always in the same locations while others, such as the silver belt buckle, are randomly placed. It is possible to get multiple items in the same square as well. Take care,Jeremy URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=220308#p220308 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing release of Yellowbonnet from Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing release of Yellowbonnet from Valiant Galaxy Associates Jeremy here:Dark,Aaron and I are working to implement some of the suggestions already made in the forum in the update I mentioned earlier. For instance, inventory menu is definitely going to be in. As to tin horn getting a raw deal:1. The tin horn is better at searching.2. The tin horn does have a better chance to avoid hazards than either of the other two.3. The tin horns better perception makes him or her better with pistols than the other two.The tin horn is meant as a more challenging setting. My advice to anyone trying the game for the first time is to try new hand for a while. Feel free to experiment with the other two, but tough hombre and tin horn are meant as different challenges to play style.As to the hp status, Aaron and I are still discussing this one. Hidden hp of enemies I think is a good thing, it brings home the danger more. Having your own hp flashed as part of combat is problematic. To some players its a necessary item, for others its extra unwanted slow down to combat. The l key gives your current health and works from the menus. That said, its still up for debate, and were debating and taking into account things said here as well as other comments made to us from other points of contact.As to the money spent mechanic. I think it does add a certain challenge to the game: you can either be a miser both of points and money, and try to finish the game with the most of either. Or you can use your money for various items: whiskey or haircuts to increase your courage, bullets, better weapons, or surgery to improve your combat. I understand the frustration involved, but really, the most money I ever managed to spend in a single game was I believe 75 dollars. When your score is measured in terms of thousands of points, a negative of less than 100 doesnt seem as huge a probl em to me. For a successful game, just as a comparison, the scores I have seen have ranged from approximately 29,500 to 33,030 or so. That said, while were revisiting other aspects of the game, well look at the cash spent mechanic and decide what we want to do with it. I am not so sure I agree with your being hit twice for it: yes it does impact your score both for not having that cash, and for being penalized, but my feeling is that given the amount of benefit you get from spending it its worth it. However, Im one person, and my play style isnt the same as everyone elses, and neither are my scoring tastes. Thanks for the feedback again, as always, we appreciate it.Jeremy URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=220305#p220305 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing release of Yellowbonnet from Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing release of Yellowbonnet from Valiant Galaxy Associates Jeffb and turtlepower17, This is Aaron again.Thanks for bringing this up. You cant test this in demo mode because demo obviously wont continue anyway. Just thought that should be said in case anyone is trying to determine exactly how our online requirement works while using demo mode.Im glad you folks got more detailed about your concerns with this, because it has shown us that we may be missing some information about how our guidedog integration works. Youve expressed concerns about losing your progress in a game because youve lost internet. Id like to assure you that this is not how the system is supposed to work. If anybody out there experiences problems where playing the game and losing internet causes the progress you had in the game to be lost, please post about it.The way this works is, every time you try to move your character in Yellowbonnets case anyhow, the game negotiates with GDG to establish whether the g ame is activated. If you have internet and are logged in, the result should come back positive, and play should continue just fine.When the connection has dropped, or you have logged out or closed the Guidedog client mid-game, the game will freeze when it notices that it is not activated and you should hear a recorded message, something to the affect that this game is not activated, and some basic instructions on what to do to continue. If it has determined that Guidedog client is closed, it should ask you to start the client. If it thinks you are not logged in, the Guidedog client window should take foreground focus, and now in the background, the game should ask you to log into your Guidedog account. If you have lost internet, the likely state this should result in is that Guidedog client is no longer logged in, and so the game will want you to try to log in again.In any of these cases, once the situation is taken care of, the game should immediately resume where it was. In my testing using this with each movement of the player, my experience is that when I disconnect, and then try to move, it tells me to log in. I can log back in again and as soon as I do, I hear the character take a footstep in the background, and what ever the room the character just moved to is read out and so on. So I just alt+tab back to Yellowbonnet and resume playing.Interceptor is going to work pretty much the same way except that it checks if youre activated before going to the next level. So if you do lose internet with Interceptor, you will be able to keep playing till the end of the current level then itll lock up and request that you log in.By the way, when the game is in this frozen state, you can press escape or alt+f4 to close the game if that in fact is what you really want to do. However, if you want to stay where you are in the game, you can do so. I havent actually tried this, but Id be surprised if you could break that by hibernating or putting the computer to sleep even. You should be able to leave the game window open until such time as youre able to fix the issue and be confident that itll pick up right where you were.One last note, this applies also when logged into a guidedog account that has not purchased Yellowbonnet. When I tested that by deactivating myself and then playing until I hit the demo limit, I got the prompt wanting me to purchase the game to continue or press escape or alt+f4 to exit. I pressed enter and simulated a purchase of the game. As soon as the simulated purchase completed, the game which was still running in the background immediately noticed that it was now purchased, and continued right where it had left off.I put a lot of effort into trying to make that as stable as I could figure out how. Im hoping it works out well for you folks. As dentin put it to me once recently, figuring out the protocols for situations like that can be tricky.Work is under way for the free update that addresses some of the customer concerns and fixes more issues that we left as they were in order to make our initial release deadline. Interceptors initial release will be hopefully not too long after. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=220234#p220234 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing release of Yellowbonnet from Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing release of Yellowbonnet from Valiant Galaxy Associates Jeremy here: Dark,Ive completed the game on tin horn using melee weapons and encountering the burglar and Big Joe Keene as jobs. That said, it takes a lot of health watching and carefully timed strategic retreats. Ive included an items section to the documentation to address some of these issues, but one thing needs to be cleared up here:The game picks what it thinks is your best weapon. In general, the revolver is the best weapon, but if you run out of ammo, the game defaults to your best melee weapon. You can buy more bullets at the general store. If you want to increase your final score, fighting is a good way, but you have to be careful how you approachthem. The tips and tricks section has some words about this, but the main thing is to check health after each hit (the l key will do this). Another thing to keep in mind is, as I said before, and as it states in the documentation, the three character types are not traditional difficulty levels. Each character type presents a different set of challenges. Youre right that to complete all the jobs, the best way is to avoid fighting. However, if you want to really rack up a score, you have to turn homicidal maniac and kill anyone you meet in the streets. Unrealistic, and we will have to see about making the sheriff and deputy more proactive in later versions of the game. As to the hp status indicator, youre not the first person to request it, one of our beta testers made a similar request. Im sure I didnt hit all your points here, but Ill be happy to give it another round.Take care,Jeremy URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=220255#p220255 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing release of Yellowbonnet from Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing release of Yellowbonnet from Valiant Galaxy Associates Jeremy here:No, the Guidedog Games service is separate from our company, and is open to other developers to use. Word of caution here though: Dentin is one guy, and it takes a lot of work to get GDG and a game talking nice to each other. Aaron and Dentin spent a lot of time developing the wrapper program we use. For those who are using BGT, the wrapper will be available in a modified form for them to use. Part of what has taken so long was building the GDG system, figuring out how to communicate from games to it, and vice versa. As many people have latched on to, GDG is not up to its full potential yet: thats understandable, Dentins been working on it for most of the last year to 18 months, and it requires more work. Besides maintaining GDG and Alter Aeon, Dentin is working on his own new game Stellar Aeon which is a science fiction game. Add to that that he is a programmer and makes his living doing work for other peopl e on deadlines, and his time is not always his own. Other developers may have to spend the same sorts of time with Dentin that we did. Dont expect thousands of games to appear on GDG overnight. That said, Dentin is trying to work with people as they come in to the best of his and the developers abilities. Also too, as certain problems are conquered, the process goes faster. Hooking up Yellowbonnet to GDG was less of a problem than we had getting Interceptor talking to GDG. The same will hold true for other games in other programming languages. Right now, a lot of the problems people are seeing both with the GDG system and with our games are problems of scale as Aaron noted in his earlier post: Yellowbonnet was not meant to be a superb multiplayer online experience; it was a minigame to showcase some of the things we had done. Interceptor will not be a full-fledged first person shooter audio game. Its a menu-driv en space combat simulator. Its a fun game, and it gave us a lot of experience learning to do things that are necessary for later games. Eventually, a more fully realized audio game style version of Interceptor, or another game in the same universe that uses the same assumptions, may come to pass. In the same way, GDG is a potentially explosive game changer (pardon the pun) but it is still in the process of being built. I know this is a long-winded way of saying, yes GDG is open to any developer but, however, I wanted to give a truthful reply. Any project like this is an ongoing process, and will take a while to complete. I hope that answered well enough,Jeremy URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=220044#p220044 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing release of Yellowbonnet from Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing release of Yellowbonnet from Valiant Galaxy Associates Jeremy here,Dark, Some of the things you mentioned are on the hit list for a free update we are going to put out soon for YB. As Aaron mentioned above, we had a few things that we just didnt manage to squeeze into the beta cycle. The last weekend before release neither of us got much sleep. That said, some of the wonky things are already on the hit list. Others, such as look or search dumping you back into map mode or being triggered from a hot key are currently being sized up as possibilities. If anyone else whos purchased the game wants to suggest other issues, please feel free. The stats situation is a tricky one. We can narrativize that more (is narativize a word? it is now) but the real problem with YB is just that it doesnt have a huge number of stats to track. The way the game handles hazards makes tracking them a little tricky. Were still wrestling with how to do that in a meaningfu l way besides tracking number of hazards over come. As to stats for items, I think a comparative section for weapons is probably in order. For the new hand or the tough hombre, generally melee weapons are better than missile weapons, assuming I remember the formulas correctly. For the tin horn, a missile weapon is better. The cash spent is just a way of limiting the score somewhat. Theres no reason why it couldnt be changed, but also, theres no real need to change it. If you want to walk around town, and not spend any money, the game is playable at that level. This is very disjointed, but, essentially:1. Were glad for the input about the game and its issues. Please keep that sort of critique coming. It helps not only with this game but with others.2. Some of the issues are known about and being fixed, some are tricky and may not be fixable in this iteration of the game.Finally, I love the hows the war going idea. This is one I intend to stand on Dentins virtual desk and scream at him about. Take care,Jeremy URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=220113#p220113 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing release of Yellowbonnet from Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing release of Yellowbonnet from Valiant Galaxy Associates Hi from Aaron.*Grin* want us to raise the price a bit? Maybe thatd make it more worth having to be online to maintain your activation status? Lol, just joking, of course. No seriously, Im kidding, for real! We are pleased that there are folks out there who care enough about our work to comment on it, good or bad. To be honest, I tend to agree with the person in the previous message, but thats where things start going in circles.Were interested in lower costs in the hopes that we get larger volume of sales, so were pricing these at the minimum we think we can afford. Something like Guidedog that allows for what we hope is increased security on our part and on the customers parts is good in a way, because we can drop costs a bit on the assumption that the customer vs. company experience is good enough that the customer will be purchasing them with more ease. To put that simply, were guessing that Guidedog makes it easier for yo u to buy it, which means more volume, and lower pricepoint for us. On top of that, the extra security we hope for should mean that more people who are using the game are actually paying for it, so we like to think we can charge less because a greater percentage of the play time is actually payed for.Granted, a portion of this goes toward the Guidedog service, and that it should be. We get to write our games, spend a few hours hooking them up with Guidedog after were finished developing, and were allowed to basically sit back, take a deap breath and go [[wow]], we did it! Whats next? and turn around and consentrate on something else while Guidedogs services are handling your typical customer issues like I cant get it to purchase! or I want my money back! Were able to consentrate on the in-game experience more, and to me personally, thats worth a lot.Remember about 15 years back in this message where I said things started going in circles? I want to finish up this major misjointed ramble by closing the circle. Oo, see what I did? Anyhow,, the prices are a bit lower because thats the whole concept we had in mind when we started trying to hook up the Guidedog service idea. Possibly wed be charging a bit more if it wasnt for Guidedog, because wed probably not sell as many copies and wed be working harder to handle various ordinary customer requests directly.I didnt really answer the question there did I. Point is, Yellowbonnet is literally a test run on Guidedog. Interceptor was finished, but we put Yellowbonnet on the front Burner in the meantime and ended up releasing it first because it is a little cheaper. I felt better about releasing it first since it is a smaller, cheaper game, sort of a beta test, but not really in the same breath.I finish this up at last by asking and I mean this in the friendliest way possibl e, how often do you get inconvenienced from playing the game just because you need a small amount of internet bandwitch always available to play it. If we were all still on dialup or if there were more than just a couple of us who had to go to the local Library as the only way to get internet access, Id definitely feel really bad about the whole internet requirement. Btw, while Im talking about Dialup, I havent tried it, but Id be very surprised if Dialup had any trouble handling the data interaction. The data transmitted is pretty dog gone small.At present, we dont have plans to take Yellowbonnets internet access requirement off, but as I said at the start of this here novel, I definitely appreciate the fact that people are caring enough about us and our work to speak up. Thank you thank you thank you! Maybe some day Guidedog itself will integrate a way to get a temporary license that will work for a while with no internet. For now though, if you want to play a VGA game and you really do have no internet, jtry playing a free game like Traders of Known Space. Btw, we are probably going to hook TKS to Guidedog also, but it wont require access to actually play, just being logged in will allow things you do in the game to be stored online for accessing with TKS installations on other computers once youve signed those in. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=220002#p220002 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing release of Yellowbonnet from Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing release of Yellowbonnet from Valiant Galaxy Associates Jeremy here:I’m just writing to clarify Aaron’s post a little now that I have had a chance to discuss it with him and Dentin, and can give a clearer explanation of the pros of this system, since people are pointing out cons. Also too, I am not headed out to hay fields.In the following YB = Yellowbonnet and GDG = GuideDog Games in case that wasn’t obvious. Plus Sides for the Player Base:1. Less hassal. If we had marketed YB without GDG we would have had to provide a registration key, which could have been lost, stolen, shared, and otherwise mangled. By using GuideDog we remove that hassal both from us as developers, and from you as players. I know, having read the Audyssey list and forums here, that loss of registration keys is a real hassal, especially for older games that are no longer being actively supported. 2. One of the advantages of using GDG, which you might not be aware of is Dentin’s commitment to the player base. In his developer contract he insists on having access to installers and game files so that if the developer disappears for some reason, current customers will continue to have access to their games. Again, having read about this problem, this was one of the things that convinced us using GDG was a good idea.3. When GDG gets multiplayer or scoreboard or chat functionality, all things that are possibilities that might be on the table down the road, using a centralized service allows us to moderate and mediate disputes and activities of the few players who would take advantage of bugs or situations and use them to artificially pump their score, or in multiplayer environments make the game less enjoyable for others. If we were running such a thing ourselves, we might not have the tools we would need. With Dentin’s years of doing just this on Alter Aeon, we have a resource that gives us a lot of flexibility in terms of player base management.4. Making refunds faster and less problematic. By using GDG and its log files, we can hopefully return money faster for problem issues, and address those issues more quickly than we could on our own service.5. Consistancy of service and quality of service. Dentin’s been running credit card sales through Alter Aeon for years, his interface is extremely accessible, and gives the customer a good experience. Our original system was going to use Paypal, an email system, and a registration key, all three of which could have messed up. Overall, I think the customer experience is not only safer, but more pleasant with GDG.6. Using GDG and the internet connection allows settings to save to multiple computers. This means not only your voice settings but scores, progress in long games, and other features that might eventually be included in our games. Currently we store high scores locally, but we could eventually store that information online.Plus Sides for the Developers:Obviously some of the above make things easier on us as well. However, here’s the main one for us:1. The game becomes much harder to abuse and/or crack. You cannot run Yellowbonnet on two different systems on the same account at the same time. Because the registration keys are not stored locally they are harder to get at. This provides increased security for our product, and allows us to track player behavior. If someone tells us the game isn’t working for them, but that account logged 24 hours of game play, we can see it. It’s an ugly truth that some people will attempt to get something for nothing, and a smart business person safeguards themselves from that possibility.As the above demonstrates, current functionality, both of Yellowbonnet and of GuideDog do not clearly demonstrate the full potential of either system. YB was a minigame designed to provide a few minutes of fun, not to be a massive multiplayer online game. GDG is still in its infancy. Many of the hurdles that Dentin and we faced were overcome from very close interaction and a lot of nights on Aaron and Dentin’s parts thrashing out complicated code. Rome was not built in a day, and neither will GDG. That said, when it reaches its fruition, the blind community, and those of you who dislike the term can pillary me if you wish, will have a service that not only guides you to games, but allows you to play against others, compete against others on scoreboards, chat to others about your experiences, and share game information etc over the servers. When we reach that point, many of the doubts and problems with the service may appear less critical to most people. Take care,Jeremy URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=219780#p219780 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing release of Yellowbonnet from Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing release of Yellowbonnet from Valiant Galaxy Associates vsmiro, Aaron here, the one from VGA obviously.Heading out to the hay fields here shortly if the folks ever finish gossiping out there in the kitchen, lol. Anyway, the question of why an authorization system that requires one to be online has come up a lot. In fact it was a concern of mine when we started this whole Guidedog Client idea.Anyway, now that I gave up waiting on the folks theyre now ready to go and wanting me to come on. So Ill make this quick for now by saying it is better for our security, and the integrity of any communities that may start up around this. If you know anything about Swamp and Jeremy Kaldobskys reasons for coming out with his Kaldobsky gamer accounts, thats one of my favorite ways to explain it. Also, we can offer you registration based on your account, instead of on your computer. That on the whole should be more convenient to you since even if you have 20 computers you can run it on any one of them so long as yo u dont try to run it on two at once.I may follow up with more later, but in the meantime, hope that helps. Oh, and the answer is, no we do not have a version of this that does not require internet access to use. Traders of Known Space is our only game right now that doesnt. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=219767#p219767 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing release of Yellowbonnet from Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing release of Yellowbonnet from Valiant Galaxy Associates Hi, Jeremy here.You can download the game from http://www.valiantgalaxy.com/games.html Theres also a link on that same page to purchase the game that takes you directly to Guidedog Games where you can set up an account and purchase the game. I hope you enjoy it,Jeremy URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=219637#p219637 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing release of Yellowbonnet from Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing release of Yellowbonnet from Valiant Galaxy Associates Jeremy here:Thats a fair critique as far as it goes. Yellowbonnet, however, doesnt have a whole lot of stats to output. As an example of how we used this in another game, and as a teaser for our upcoming release Interceptor (which should be out in a matter of weeks barring natural disasters), I submit the following:Statistics for Playthrough of the Interceptor Game, on Version 19 beta (normal mode)The game lasted 40 minutes and 44 seconds and ended on Thursday, June 11, 2015 at 11:31 AM - The player beat the game! woohoo!6 epsilon, 5 delta, 4 gamma, 2 beta, 3 alpha, 1 tanker, 1 command and control and 1 mother ships were destroyed, for a total of23.The interceptor destroyed 11 vessels with just one attack, and 7 with two. It fired 37 shots and 8 rockets.The interceptor took 47 turns, traveled 624500 meters, consumed 2738 energy and its reactors produced 1394 energy. Opponents took 24 turns.Final level reached: 10, final score: 257000!If youd like to see yet another example, you can check out the forum about announce traders of known space here on ag.net, or download the game and try it for free at http://www.valiantgalaxy.com/games.htmlThanks for all the interest, insights, critiques, and responses,Jeremy URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=219674#p219674 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing release of Yellowbonnet from Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing release of Yellowbonnet from Valiant Galaxy Associates Jeremy Here:Just because I havent seen anyone post here, and to me the copy and paste statistics feature is one the games best points.Statistics for Playthrough of the Yellowbonnet Game, on Version 6The game lasted 5 minutes and 11 seconds and ended on Wednesday, June 10, 2015 at 3:44 PM - The player beat the game! woohoo!bob, (a new hand), defeated 1 hazards, completed 6 of 6 jobs, moved 63 times, and finished up with 32 cash to his name.final score: 30532!That actually made it to position 9 on my high scores menu. Good luck to those of you who are trying the game. Take care,Jeremy URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=219589#p219589 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Announcing release of Yellowbonnet from Valiant Galaxy Associates
Re: Announcing release of Yellowbonnet from Valiant Galaxy Associates Given that this entire name conversation is taking place on a forum called audiogames.net, I find the entire objection to the name silly. Marketing targets the market it wants. Black Entertainment Television, here in the U.S. was not targeted at Latinos or Asians or Caucasians. GuideDog, while it will eventually include other material, and was picked by Dentin for both connotations of the word, has an obvious connection to the blind community. Finally, if associating an organization or a company with the blind automatically disqualifies it, then those of you in the U.S. benefitting from the Americans with Disabilities Act should refuse to accept accomodations based on the fact that that law was achieved, partially through the efforts of the American Council for the Blind and the National Federation for the Blind as well as a number of other organizations who represent other disabilities. I dont expect anyone to give me handouts, but I dont look to buy a white cane at a sporting goods store called the Birds Eye View either. While my personal views are abundantly clear from the above, one thing Id like to suggest is that this discussion of whether GuideDog is an appropriate name for a service that currently at least caters to the blind gaming community go to another thread. Its (at least to me, and admittedly, Im biased) very subsidiary to a discussion of Yellowbonnet and its merits or faults as a game. Thanks, and take care,The VGA Executive Staff URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=219428#p219428 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
