Update#93 : Baby Steps and Baby Leaps

Just a couple little points here! Easy stuff while I work on a few certain important things...

1) I've basically decided on the numbers and pricing for buying STAR so when I get my current set of web pages re-stabilized on my newer versions of PHP then I can throw together a store/donation section.

2) I've finally got a remote server set up for hosting the website, so when I feel ready (hopefully by the end of the year!) I can give out a public URL for people to visit and start looking around at all of the things that I have and don't have ready yet.

With regards to that store/donation section, I want to make sure it all works perfectly and keeps good and proper records before opening it for other people. PAYPAL will be the main method of payment for the first while, since it's so easy! I'll also be trying to accept payments in Bitcoin and Litecoin.
 
I intend to keep good and persistent records of all payments, so that all donators and alpha/beta players will have a sum attributed to their account or email address ... specifically so that when the server gets reset over and over and over during continued early development, STAR purchases will be remembered and carry over to resets and eventually the final open game. Anything less than that would be rude, wouldn't it?

Update#92 : Home Again, Happy Again

After a long period of illness, contracting one infection after another, several attempts of curing and removal...

The primary web development computer for The UNIVERSE Project has made it home, clean and refreshed, with web services running normally and all system resources available as they should be.

I am happy today. The next few days will probably see me focused on restoring all my of little options and software and media.

With this development, exciting page construction and code developments will be able to start moving forward again, and The UNIVERSE Project will once again creep closer and closer to reality.



PS: Adding to last week's topic, I think we'll also accept Bitcoin as a payment option for STAR.

Update#91 : Currency Events

Currency Stuffs (more)

Just because Paypal makes it so easy, I've decided that UNIVERSE - when set up - will initially accept 6 currencies for the purchase of STAR:

- Euro
- US Dollar
- British Pound
- Russian Rouble
- Canadian Dollar
- Australian Dollar

I'm sure I'll have to adjust prices a bit once in a while but they would probably remain fairly stable, so people who use any of these as their preferred currency for online purchases will be able to use them and not be surprized by conversion rates! Depending on how popular the options are I could expand the options to include more currencies, because - like I said at the start - Paypal makes it so easy!

In the game, STAR could be spent on account perks and investments as its main purpose ... However, realizing that STAR represents real money which has been paid into The UNIVERSE Project it could go beyond in-game functions and potentially extend to other things. Other things could include items like merchandise or project donations or charity donations, or anything else like that once they became options.  Why not? If I can make it work, I will!



Current Events (other)

My main development machine has been sorely infected with (apparently) various maladies which has hampered serious website construction for a long time. Right now that is finally being dealt with and next week I'll finally have it back and in good working condition, which will enable me to really get back to work building the website and not just doing theory and design. I'll admit though I'm glad for the non-construction design time because I've been able to refine a lot of plans and ideas before they went too far and couldn't easily be changed later.

As for time, however, pretty much the same time that I'm getting my machine back I'll also be starting a new job that will take most of my time. I really need the money, though, so I guess it counts as a good thing. The credit card needs a bit of paying off, and I owe a smidge of moneys to friends and parents, and I'd like to buy a new computer for both gaming and construction/experimentation purposes.



Top of the To-Do List

Once I really do get back to the site construction, before I get back to adding new features there are a few things I want to take care of:
#1) I want to get comfortable with restoring the game from scratch out of a backup, so I'll probably do that a few times after I get the main computer reformatted and before I get on to other things.
#2) I want to get the in-game store for STAR finished and working perfectly.
#3) I will adjust the star-system generation procedures to distribute resources according to my new plan, and also add the new resources into the game.
#4) As the game will gradually move forward into a stage with more people helping with testing, and observation and testing of all kinds will be required - and surely the game will be broken some times - I want to create a script that I can use to rest & initialize the universe without manually repopulating tables in the database ... because resets will be needed many times I'm sure, and it would be good to have the system able to handle it semi-automatically without me shutting down the dev/test server for several days at a time while I break and refix everything.



These devlogs should also start getting more frequent as I have more noteworthy events to report on!

Update#90 : The Word Money

The Word Money ... doesn't look right if you stare at it and say it too many times. Or at least that's my experience within the past 2 minutes of starting this post.


I finally managed to get a paypal account linked to my bank account. I won't get in to details, but it should have taken 1-5 days, and it took a month!

BUT NOW THAT THAT'S FINISHED it's time for me to make a purpose for it. Buying stuff in the game! What could you possibly buy? Well I'll tell you what you can't buy in this game: an easy win!

The main items you might be buying in the game would be semi-passive account enhancements, such as increased research speed for science and technology, or the ability to see a bit more in the maps, and probably a few other things I can't remember... they're in a much older devlog I'm 50% sure but right now I can't remember it all.

Whatever the items are, they won't be bought directly but they will cost various amounts of a secondary in-game currency which will be tradeable in the market like other resources. This will allow players willing to spend money the ability to trade these special credits for helpful resources, and those who have some excess resources or can't spend the money will be able to acquire the special credits through in-game trade.

Below will be a stream-of-thought babbling and typing of name ideas for this new currency; it was sparked up now while trying to set up a Paypal button to buy this currency, and part of it is "Item Name" and it made me realize that there is no name yet for the item being bought! Duh..


Private Sector Contract = PSC
~ I think PSC would be more applicable to just the research buff

Special Investment Grant = SIG

Super-Imperial Grant = SIG

Super-Imperial Favour = SIF

Old Relic Donation Endowment = ORDE

STAR = Special Trade and Advancement Reserve

.... I think I like that STAR. For now, that's going to be it, I'm satisfied by STAR. I'll come back if I become dissatisfied and feel the need for another brainstorming session.

Also, for the main game currency COINS I'm shortenning it to [COIN, Currency of Interstellar Negotiation] because it just feels better (to me) as an acronyzed name.

Alright, now to play with some Paypal settings...


PS:  This is officially Update#90 but it's actually my 100th post here! \o/

Update#89 : Good Ol' Rock. Nothin' Beats Rock!

Among other things I've worked towards a finalization of my desired resource processing. The exact numbers are subject to change and at this stage are unimportant, but the concepts and general ideas of the processes are solid as rock. Listed and described below are the 'Raw Materials' and the 'Production Materials' followed by their related processes.

Raw Materials
(VI) Volatiles : Volatile Compounds, generally liquids and gases and other chemically interesting substances
(OS) Oxysilicates : Common Minerals, often used as building materials
(LO) Light Ore : Low-density ore containing useful concentrations of metals such as aluminum and copper
(HO) Heavy Ore : High-density ore containing significant quantities of dense metals, primarily iron
(UO) Uncommon Ore : Rock and ore containing hard-to-find precious metals like gold
(EM) Exotic Minerals : Unusual and exciting minerals which contain very rare substances

Production Materials
(Atm) Atmosphere : breatheable atmosphere, necessary in large quantities for building long-term habitable structures
(Wtr) Water : clean water is required for life support and many industrial processes
(Rct) Reactants : chemicals used in the production and purification of many other substances and materials
(Con) Concretes : solid moldable thermal-tolerant materials used in virtually all construction projects
(LtM) Light Metals : lightweight metals with a variety of unique properties and always in demand
(StM) Structural Metals : heavier metals (most commonly iron) which can be used to make very strong structures
(PrM) Precious Metals : these metals are not common but can be applied to excel in certain applications
(RaM) Rare Metals : in addition to being very difficult to find and extract and purify, they have highly unusual and useful elemental properties

Processes
Atmosphere & Water & Reactants <= Volatiles
Concretes <= Oxysilicates + Water + Reactants
Light Metals <= Light Ore + Water + Reactants
Structural Metals <= Heavy Ore + Water + Reactants
Precious Metals <= Uncommon Ore + Water + Reactants + Light Metals
Rare Metals <= Exotic Minerals + Reactants + Light Metals


Note that these resources stand in addition to the Currency Of Interstallar Negotiation and Sales.


Another area of resources I've been toying with on paper is populations. People are a very important resource - no, the most important resource - in any civilization or empire. I'm not completely sure I want populations as a resource type for people to manage, but I think it would be interesting to have various 'types' of population affecting various aspects and requirements. For example, out of a city's total population there might be an employable fraction and that 'employable' population really helps to boost the economy, but then you also have the option to take some of that and give them military training to prepare them for military service so you can later put them into a starship or army if you need them. Having populations as a meaningful resource also opens the possibility of having slaves among the population and taking prisoners from conquered enemies. Slaves could provide some economic benefit, while having other drawbacks based on moral implications; the least of which being that other players will know that you allow slavery and might dislike it, especially if you've captured any of their citizens...

For the record, I'm completely against real slavery. This is just a game and great empires in history did allow the keeping of slaves, I'm recognizing that and just considering adding it as an option to the game. If anybody takes it as an excuse to enact real racism they will be punished for being stupid and offensive.


I have very recently started making a new setup of paypal and bank accounts that will be 100% dedicated towards this project; reaffirming my seriousness to continue work on The UNIVERSE Project.

Having mentioned that, I'm also really considering doing some reasearch into further requirements and promotional avenues which might eventually lead to something like a kickstarter effort. Development doesn't need much, but having help getting a more modern computer and maybe a dedicated internet line would be awesome. I don't expect to try anything like that terribly soon, but I'm now open to the possibility; I wasn't before and I don't remember why.


My final little note for this posting... August 9 is my birthday. August 5 is my oldest friend's birthday.
Happy Birthday to Me and Friend!

Update#88 MILES PER HOUR !!!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY 

to

THE UNIVERSE PROJECT

(Build3)

We've reached 3 years old! Due to RL busy-ness and issues the development is slow, but certainly not stopped or forgotten! In this post, I would like to babble about various visions and features I have for UNIVERSE.  Also, I love Back to the Future and that wasn't the planned title of the post but it took over in a hurry.  Revealed: Lots.



Reality-inspired formation patterns for solar systems and galaxies

This one is already largely completed. Solar systems - the planets for a star - are designed according to several rules and varying factors, so no two systems will be the same. There are several improvements I'd like to make, but for now it is fairly adequate. Galaxy and cluster formation is not yet completed, but will be comparitively simple to construct. At the current point of development for the game, specific formation patterns of star clusters is not a matter of priority.


Asteroid Mining, Resource Management, Internet Spaceships!

I am imagining a game where people will have their home base that provides a lot of what they need, but to really build and advance a lot as an entity in the game by building more and bigger economy and ships, they need to harvest more resources which will be available from asteroids. Many peoples' homeworld will probably be on moons and asteroids.

Ships won't be mere clones and data counters, they'll be sophisticated constructs. Each one will matter, at least to the one who owns it. They'll be built with a purpose, for a purpose, and in service of who built it it will be an improvement to the whole of their empire. They can be ships of war, freight, or colonization, or hybrids of any kind. There will be some pre-set ship designs that players can use to build ships to perform certain essential functions, to give you an idea of what might be necessary or useful... but the freedom to custom-design ships will be a core feature of UNIVERSE.


Valuable Military Conquest

There will be conflict. Battle between empires with their mighty starships will probably be the focus of most people playing the game. That's pretty much the genre, after all. Bases will be able to contsruct masses of powerful stationary defenses, fleets can have any sort of composition, and powerful rules of targetting priorities will be available. Glorious internet spaceship combat will rule the day.

But it won't be everything.

One day, armies and special forces will be carried on warships. Hundreds or even thousands may one day be deployed to planet surfaces, break in to space stations, and invade asteroid colonies. Special operatives attempt to quietly and quickly usurp control of asteroid mining colonies, while mechanized infantry might engage enemies across fields to conquer enemy strongholds with the assistance of orbital bombardment. Beyond that, large engagements of ground forces could be supported by aerial units fighting to claim air superiority and large mechanical monstrosities of war will deliver ever heavier weapons to the field than can be mobilized by convential vehicles.

To the victor, either a new source of resources or a denial of them to your enemies.


Lore-based factions and histories

Different people place a different emphasis on story in a game, but for many it can be an attractive factor in a game. I am one of those people, and I enjoy storywriting, I enjoy history, and I enjoy the complex reality of how various situations come about. There's so much history to our own human history here and now on Earth in just a few thousand years, and now so much more is happening and being recorded than ever before.

At this moment, I'm seeing the habitable worlds of the galaxies already well colonized and self-goverened, certainly well-defended and often allied with each other, but some times not. They will probably host some trade centers, where players will be able to bring items and materials to trade safely in neutral territory.

There will also be dead worlds, or others in a state of civil unrest, and others who are not so well apparent. Some civilizations will be aggressive, brutal, sneaky, mysterious; you won't see them all, but they'll be there. Not only will they be there, they'll be where they are and who they are for a reason. History.

I know I also want at least one solid 'lawful' faction to act as a kind of enforcement power. I don't really want to control people in the game, but there need to be boundaries at times and it would be good to have an in-game mechanism to enforce necessary boundaries.


A nice smooth 3D map viewer

Using standard Javascript - compatible with almost all internet browsers - I'm making a map that will show stellar regions and solar systems in 3D, with (hopefully) intuitive controls to look around at the surrounding areas: panning, rotating, centering on targets, displaying essential information. Solar system maps will also show planets and fleets and anything else of significance in the system, and again with a simple javascript field that should work on almost any internet device.

You'll be able to see that the space in this game uses three-dimensional space and distances; this instead of a flat or arbitrary mapping system, featuring two dimensions or less.

In addition to having SO MANY spatial dimensions in Universe, distances and sizes in UNIVERSE will also be modelled on reality.


Player Trade

As mentioned before, players will be allowed to trade resources and eventually items between each other. Compared to most other games of the genre - where trading of any kind tends to be strictly forbidden - this should add a level of interest to the game by creating an inter-player economy. Of course, exploitation of this feature will be strictly punished.

Trading resources will allow people to raise money to buy other needed resources, or help newer players in your alliance build up their empire more quickly, and sooner join and contribute meaningfully to the efforts of the greater collective.



That's All For Now

I ran out of thoughts that I wanted to put into this, I'm sure there's more though. Hopefully you have found this an interesting insight into what I'm envisioning for the future of the game. Some is new, some is old, but never before have I put so much into a single post or conversation. I might even look back on this one day for a feature list, hm...

Feel free to contact me any time about anything. Even if you're limted to the comments below, I'll be happy to answer any questions!

Update#87 : Sailing on (brain)Stormy Seas ... Will We Be Sufficiently Resourceful to Survive?

Well whatever I was trying to remember from the end of the last post is probably long gone. Unless it's one of the things that will come up here! Which is possible, as it could get a bit wordy...

Time really flies when you're having fun, and otherwise keeping busy. I think about the devlog often, and I somehow tricked myself into believing that I had posted something in February.

"So, what's been cooking lately?"


ASTEROIDS

In the future of humanity, asteroid mining is likely to be a massive boost to large-scale construction and industry. That's just what happens when much-needed resources become much more accessible: massive growth. It's not just human nature, it's nature-nature!

It's also true (in theory) that precious metals that we find on earth are almost certainly not part of the earth's original formation material, but were actually deposited long ago by meteors and asteroids falling to the earth in late stages of formation.

Tangent
Why does this seem to be a solid theory? Why can't the gold we find be part of the early planet?  During the middle-ish stages of planet formation when the planet was almost entirely molten rocky materials, heavy metallic material would have been mixed in with the rock all as a molten liquid mass during which any heavier-than-rock (heavy metal!) material would sink to the bottom of the gravity well, aka the planet's core. Over millions or billions of years, the early heavy metallic contents of the earth's mass would have sunk to the core while rocks remain on top. The molten phase of the earth is also why it's believed that most of earth's water and atmosphere came from asteroids and comets: at those temperatures the water and gasses would have been extremely light and volatile, allowing them to be boiled, ejected, and blown away.  With such conditions present it leads to the conclusions that water, atmosphere, and precious heavy metals could only be present for us to find in the earth's surface if they were deposited after the crust had cooled and hardened enough for asteroids to [crash] land on without sinking and melting in with the rest of the mantle.

SO! With asteroids being sooo theoretically and probably important, shouldn't they also be important in the game? Well, I thought they should! So they will!

But how, exactly?

When I first put my mind to the idea I wasn't sure how to do it in a way that seemed clean and natural and not a forced gimmick. I wanted asteroid importance to really be a part of the game, especially after watching this video which reminded me about the significance of asteroid mining. It also taught me there are actually people right now in the real world who are really actually laying the first foundations towards very real asteroid mining! Anyway.... I couldn't come up with any resolution about asteroids for a long time, until a few days ago when it just hit me while I was cleaning: surface-to-space launches.  As in reality, launching rockets is expensive, and the more weight you want to lift into space the more it costs!  UNIVERSE will mimic this in some fashion, roughly, by having an appreciable cost to launch materials and ships directly into space from a planet. What this means for asteroids is the value of asteroid mining comes with large-scale ship production, through the concept of logistics. Moving large quantities of material from asteroids to orbital shipyards will be much more practical (cost, time, volume) than launching from a planet to its orbital shipyards.

But that's not the only gold nugget we'll find in asteroids.

Going back to that idea of planetary formation, it's probably fair to suggest that most asteroids live in - or come from - asteroid belts. If we run with the idea that precious resources on planets (and large moons) come from asteroids, and asteroids come from asteroid belts ... then perhaps planets closer to asteroid belts might receive more asteroids, and solar systems with more asteroid belts might see more resources deposited onto their planets. Hmm, yes, perhaps...


RESOURCES

One of the aspects of UNIVERSE that I honestly believe will make this game work and keep working and evolving for a long time is the matter of simplicity. Other games of this genre are too simple, and so after months or years of playing the game people eventually get bored and leave, ultimately because it's simple and there's virtually no room for being creative or clever. Once you've done everything there is to do and seen everything there is to see, there comes a point where investing a lot more time just doesn't pay off like it used to. UNIVERSE will combat the rot of simplicity, and it will do so by maintaining a mild level of complexity.

A long time ago, I said that there would be four resources. I recently decided to change that, and am now deciding on a few more resources, splitting the concept of the previous resources into a few more varieties. The spread of base resources I'm imagining right now might look more like this:
- Volatiles

- Light Ore
- Heavy Ore
- Precious Ore
- Rare Minerals
- Oxysilicate Minerals

These 'base resources' would actually count as raw materials, which would then be processed (often in some combination with each other) to produce other resources which would then be used in other production and manufacturing. For example, "Volatiles" alone represents various substances which could be turned into things like "Atmosphere" which your starship crews might appreciate, or water and other chemicals necessary to refine ores into their respective products like "Light Metals" which might be used a lot in aircraft or "Structural Metals" which would go well into building large structures and starship armour plating. The list of significant 'production materials' that I'm imagining [while typing on the verge of passing out] looks something like:
- Atmosphere
- Water
- Reactants
- Concretes
- Light Metals
- Structural Metals
- Precious Metals
- Rare Metals

These lists aren't finalized, but I do know for sure that I'll need to revisit the formation of solar systems, at least touching on resources and asteroids. The general formation strategy that I spent several painful weeks perfecting shouldn't change too much; though I do want to look at tweaking stellar and planetary masses to base them on real units instead of the vague arbitrary units I have in effect right now.

I'm not implementing these new resources just 'for the fun' of making things more complex. I also like to try modelling a bit of realism into the game, and more than that, I want/expect the inter-player economy in the game to be lively and meaningful, and having a variety of resources to need and produce and exchange will contribute toward this end.


MODULES ..?

I'm also playing with the idea of another form of starship construction, which would probably come as a later addition to the game: modules. Modules would be pre-built sections of a starship - such as weapon systems, engines, power plants, armour plates, and shield emitters - that players could trade in local markets. It would probably be a separate market 'zone' than resources as they would be more complex, but it would allow players to try specializing in some technologies and developing very low-cost or high-power modules and selling them in markets. On the other side of that coin players might choose to specialize in some technologies by intentionally neglecting others, trading with neighbours for certain modules instead of building their own.

With modules, you would be able to make interesting or useful items that you could trade with others, or perfect to your own standards for your own ships. I would even consider giving some cost advantages to modules, saying that a 'mass production' operation producing a module would cost a bit less than custom-building the equivalent piece into a ship.  It's all just an idea, but it's an idea that I like and hope that others will also enjoy.


AND

With a lot of stuff going on around me right now, it's hard for me to make updates regularly, as has been the case for the past year. I'm not happy with having basically missed the 2nd birthday, and with not having a playable beta yet, but life... That being said, I'm trying really hard lately to work through things and am hoping to start scheduling - on a calendar - regular blog posts starting in April, even if it's only once per month I really want to do at least one per month. Also, I have the birthday on my calendar so I won't miss that. I'm really hoping and really working hard at it... I'm going to try getting more MORE re-focused on the project around the time of THE THIRD BIRTHDAY (which would be April 20) and really honour it well. The third birthday of the third build of The UNIVERSE Project...

Wish me luck!  o7