Update#96 : Astronomical Timelines

 Happy Birthday!

I've been too quiet, as it's been some busy years. The project is not forgotten, but there is little visual progress to describe. Not only have I been busy, but I also let a lot of ideas (maybe too many?) get into my mind and there's a lot I want to change, like how the stars and planets are created. That's probably quite unnecessary but a corner of my brain seems quite determined, hah! I guess we'll see. Wish me luck!

For anyone who see this, I hope you've been responsible and kept well.

One more year and we'll mark a full decade since the offcial start of the project, I hope I can share and show some nice progress by then!

GL to all of us o7

Update#95 : Rebooting Systems ...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

to

THE UNIVERSE PROJECT

 

 

Amazing, a full year has come and gone already!The last year and a half I've been really busy with various life duties and busyness. One of the more significantly project-obstructive factors has been the attendance of a 'real' job which pays more immediately for work done. It doesn't pay particularly well, but it pays for real and in a shorter term, and I really needed that.

 

Of course, I'm not too busy for a commemorative birthday post!

I haven't completely forsaken the project, though. I haven't done a lot of coding, but I've done more design work, which is important too! While on work breaks I would often think on the project, advancing system design and creating lore. While relaxing after work, playing other games, I gather inspiration and ideas for adjustments to make and details to add.

So, to anybody actually reading this, I'm still sorry for the lack of progress and updates for the last couple years. Hopefully I can put some good time into progressing the project in more visible and reportable ways, starting in the near future. Maybe some of the stories and such concepts... maybe.

Always dreaming. Never stopping.

Update#94 : Celebrating Six Months of PROcrastination! I mean..

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

to

THE UNIVERSE PROJECT

My ability to put things off is legendary!  Alas, here we finally are, and I bring with me some meaningful and possibly exciting information! That's worthy of an anniversary post, right?

There are a number of things that I want to babble about here, now that I'm sitting and writing to you again. HOWEVER. I need to make more posts as time goes on, so this time I'm going to give you information about some (hopefully) interesting choices you can make about the nature & structure of the empire that you'll be building. The combat details will be released somewhere within the next 6 months, probably within 3 months actually. Lots of details still need to be finalized.


First, a note about the setting. There will be at least one (1) large NPC faction (still unnamed) which acts as the policing force and also a focal point for some of our history and events. Where you begin is as a colony which has been released from the larger faction and granted nearly full autonomy; it is there that your story begins. As for that nearly full autonomy, your income will still be lightly taxed by the greater faction, as a general fee for services. Such services include limited protection along with recognition of legitimacy and territories - maps telling the world that you own what you own! Different empire types and options will have different tax levels (added to your total upkeep)


Player : Empire Types

As the player of your account and the leadership of your stellar empire, the story of your civilization is yours to write. The attitudes and type of people, the form of government, the reason for why they do anything; it's all up to you. However, in the grand picture, there will be a few hard distinctions implemented that might influence some of your choices; either your vision will lead you to which 'empire type' you choose, or the options available will lend direction to your empire's fate. It should also be noted that they are not permanent selections, though changing from one type to another may have certain requirements.

We'll probably be starting with three (3) options which will be descibed below.


Independant Colony

The default type for all players. As described above, you're a colony which has been granted autonomy and self governance from the greater united body. Independant Colonies benefit from having the lowest upkeep and tax levels, and have the option to operate under 'protection' (new accounts are 'protected' by default) which disallows other players from attacking your fleets or cities. However, Independant Colonies are not allowed to formally claim or hold territory, except for individual asteroids upon which they have built a settlement.

About Protection: Naturally, you also can't attack others while being protected. There is a 5-day transition period when activating or deactivation protection, to prevent people from taking cheap shots and then picking up invincibility. You are not allowed to begin activation if you have recently attacked anybody, and you are not allowed to attack during the activation process.


Sovereign State

Transforming your independant colony into a fully recognized Sovereign State, you relinquish any remaining protection possibilities from the galactic government thing and are granted permission to claim planets and moons and even entire solar systems as your own sovereign territory. A Sovereign State also has the option to join nations and alliances with others, becoming part of a larger and more powerful group.

These groups will be able to have their own message boards, collective territorial indication, and certain levels of automated information sharing. They may also be able to assemble dedicated National fleets owned by the alliance body itself (not owned by individual players) and construct super structures whose strategic and prestigious value would be worth the immense cost.


Sovereign Corporation

Establishing a Sovereign Corporation can be an advanced option for some players who don't mind a little extra regulation in exchange for a boost in their growth potential. Generally, a Sovereign Corporation operates almost identically to a Sovereign State, with the only exception being that the corporation may not engage in simple unregulated trades or gifting like states and colonies can. This is to prevent abuse of the primary distinction of a corporation compared to a state: the option to accept investments from other player entities. Sovereign Corporation has the choice to be one of three different subtypes: General, Private, and Public.

General - This is the default subtype whose only specialty is the option to change to other empire types (State, Colony) or other corporation subtypes (Private, Public).

Private - A 'private' corporation has the option to accept monetary packages from other players, with some sort of contracted agreement about the returns. The idea being that the investment would be used to accelerate the growth or financial position of the investee, and one day the invested money (plus growth) could be returned to the investor, leaving both parties more wealthy than before.

Public - A 'public' corporation would be issued into a number of shares whose collective value represents the estimated value of the corporation at the time. The corporation can then sell these shares to raise money (aka investment) in exchange for the shareholders owning a portion of the corporation's profits and assets. Shares can be traded at will by any shareholder with the in-game stock exchange which would look the same as the other markets in the game. Shareholders would be issued a fraction of the profits of the corporation, and can sometimes be involved in important decisions and actions of the corporation.


I think that's enough detail on that topic for now. I could elaborate on the details of the public and private investments, but... basically, if you already have an idea how things like that would work, then you already know roughly how they'll probably work in this game. If you don't like the ideas about it, then don't worry about it, and if you're interested then please do some more reading in the topic.



Next time, we can look forward to a pile of details about how combat will work!

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

Update#86 : Little Big Reveal & HAPPY NEW YEAR

I hope everybody else had a good year! I know I did, though it could have been better. Still, a pretty good year, the next one should be better! Hopefully for all of us!

The main thing I wanted to share in this post was the idea I had for ship design, which would be one of my favourite aspects of the game.

Inspired mainly by my first big space-empire MMO which I loved to death - SPACE: Glory Through Conquest - because I never came across another such game to do it: as stated in the previous post, players would design their own ships. There would be some 'basic' designs (blueprints) available so players could make ships without having to learn about designing ships, but you would have the option of creating your own designs through drop-down value selections and options, which would affect various attributes of the ship. For example, increasing the 'hit points' of a ship would generally make it larger and more durable, but also less quick and maneuverable, and you could add thruster power to somewhat counteract this (but it might never be as evasive as a smaller ship) and naturally the more you add to the ship, the more it will cost. Ship sizes/classes would probably have a limited number of slot-points to build a ship, to represent it being bound to a certain size class and the range of values within it.

I'm probably not describing it very well right now, but for fans of the genre, it's really satisfying and cool to design your own ships and then actually use them with and against other players!

An advanced option I'd want to add in the future would be to make another page in which you wouldn't even have drop-down menus for everything, just a few limited things (like weapon types for weapon systems) but otherwise you would manually design all of the main attributes and stats yourself (such as hit points and armour and speed and weapons) and the page would report the cost and results of what your design is.

I'm actually down with a cold right now which is making me reeeeally tired, and if I had any more thoughts of what to add to this babbling I've forgotten it! Hopefully there's something and hopefully I'll remember soon!

Have a nice day and a Happy new year =)

Update#85 : Back and Forth about SPACESHIPS

It's only been a few months now, yeah? Yeah...

Anyway, I've dropped that idea of an EVE application within the greater whole of my website. At first I was just going to drop the idea of a shared login, but the totality of having a whole extra database and a moderately complex system there, and then finding a website that already exists to do what I wanted to do... it just didn't feel like it's worth making.

That said, for UNIVERSE development I can say that I haven't made any real progess to the game in a little while (sorry!) due to being busy with people and jobs.

I have made one important breakthrough for the project: I have confidence now that even with a total system loss I can restore a backup from scratch onto a fresh computer. This is good also because the current host system is mildly crippled by a virus I picked up a while back [don't worry no threat to you] which has been gradually sapping resources and performance capability from the machine, which I therefor may soon reformat or replace.


SPACE COMBAT ~ SHIP ATTRIBUTES

I don't think I've mentioned much about the game's combat system yet, so I shall gift thee all with some details that have been swimming in my head for a long time. Besides, if you've read most or all of the devlog, you deserve it.

Mass & Volume: These physical attributes affect things like speed, evasion, and detectability.

Structure: The main HP of the ship. As the structure takes damage so too do various ship systems. On-board weapons, evasion, and sensors will be reduced along with the structure HP level. Once reduced to zero, the ship is fully incapacitated and damaged beyond repair, effectively dead.

Armour: Yes I spell it with a u. The armour attribute of a ship will reduce incoming damage by the 'amount' of the armor equipped; as the ship takes damage the effectveness of the armour is reduced by a factor dependant on the damage recieved. For example, a large powerful shot would pierce and severely compromise that area of the armour plating, allowing a percentage of future shots to completely bypass any armour.

Energy Shields: Who doesn't like energy shields? First to mention, they would be an advanced technology not available to starting empires; that's okay though because they would be expensive, too. Energy Shields would function as both additional HP and armour. The shields would have a threshold, a max HP, and might regenerate a bit through the battle. The shield threshold would probably be something like 10% of the current shield HP; an attack whose damage is less than or equal to this amount will be completely absorbed by the shield HP, and if the damage is higher than this then its damage would be reduced by the threshold amount and then what remains would hit the ship armour/structure as normal.

Speed: There would actually be a few speed ratings; one would be a battle maneuvering speed, one would be a cruising speed for travelling within a solar system (too fast for battles but too slow for interstellar flight) and one would be an FTL drive for travel between the stars.

Summary of Weapon Types: Laser, Projectile, Missile, Particle Beam
Laser: Good Accuracy, High Power Demand, Shields are not very effective, Least damaging type
Projectile: Medium Accuracy, Medium Power Demand, Shields are normal effective
Missile: Excellent Accuracy, Very Low Power Demand, Shields are highly effective
Particle Beam: Good Accuracy, Very High Power Demand, Shields are normal effective, Significant damage & tech cost

Additionally: Projectile & Missile weapons might have a moderate & high upkeep cost (respectively) for ammunition, while lasers and particle beam (P'eam?) weapons have very low upkeep cost...

Summary of Weapon Systems
When designing your ships, you get to create whole weapon systems (if any) your ship will be equipped with. Larger ships are permitted to install more weapon systems. A weapon system will probably include 3 attributes for you to control: Weapon Type, Power, Shots .. and maybe a 4th for accuracy ... Small ships will be limited to one weapon system, medium ships will be allowed two, and large ships will be allowed up to three weapon systems.



NEXT TIME
More about designing your space ships... (coming soon!)

Update#84 : EVEn More of a Website

Less than a month since the last update! Woohoo! Anyway..

Some people may know, there's a game called EVE Online and it's a pretty neat game. Check out that website to learn more because if I try to tell you about it I'll ramble on and on and on and on because it's really really really really big.

Anyway, I can admit that some aspects of UNIVERSE were created with some inspiration from EVE Online, either direct inspiration or through several tangent thoughts... I'll stress that I'm not copying anything; they're completely different games so it wouldn't work anyway!

Am I rambling? Because that doesn't look like actual information!

I'm a big fan of EVE Online, and the developers who build that game offer an API system to allow people to make their own web sites and applications which can fetch data from within the massive EVE universe, to help them manage their in-game businesses and assets. I would like to do that too!

So, with that in mind, I'll gradually or eventually build a second part of the website which will employ EVE API and other information supplied by users, to make a nice set of data... some of it should be open for those who want to use it, but some tools will be very powerful and their use will be restricted so that only myself and my friends will be able to use them.

To serve the needs for accomodating that as well as anything else I might decide to concoct in the future, I'll be rebuilding the login function of the website. Users will have a general account login/access for the site, which would then grant access to all of those areas they might be interested in and keeping the same identity for all, which is relevant for game/forum access, and thus also prevents imposters.

I have no idea when I'll set up a forum, but I'm sure I will some day.

... Yeah I think that's all for now. Ta~!

Update#83 : Shadow and Flame

Seven months?!
I knew I was being neglectful but I thought I was still posting at least once every other month!

Apologies! Apologies everywhere!

As is always the case I have been quite busy; apparently even busier than I knew. Last weekend I visited the AnimeNorth convention for the weekend, and for much of the past few months I even had a job! Just a temporary contract thing, but still, real money!

I haven't stopped working on this project, though the pace has been forced to slow down. I've been working mostly on back-end improvements (still!) to ensure that the best future is built on the best foundation.

Here's a few of the more recent things I've been working on.

Names : To help prevent unwanted name overlap and simplify management, all names of significant entities (planets, stars, empires) will be collected into a single database table. A name which is currently in use cannot be used for something else. I believe I have stated in the past (or otherwise written somewhere) that there would be an exception to this, that a planet and its star could have the same name; while I thought it was a nice idea, it would and add unnecessary complications to navigation for both coding and player experience, so instead I'll just skip that option and say there can't be any overlap.  This no-name-overlap policy will not apply to ship designs and names, and only might apply to outposts/cities. Having name management centralized into one table also allows for easier monitoring, to make sure people aren't abusing the name feature and check for inappropriate labels and messages being applied in names.

Logging : I toyed with the idea in my head for a while, and originally I wasn't going to do it but now I have decided to... After observing in various other games and platforms how useful the data can be, I've decided that I want to install basic logging in the site. Basic logging would just record when someone loads a page, how long it took for the page to load, maybe report little page or data errors, and really just give a bit of statistical data that would allow me to monitor how the game is being played, where people spend their time, what pages need optimization, and anything else like that. Such logging would eventually extend into transaction records when the market gets together, collecting economic data. It also has applications for things like account security.

Resources : I'm very much considering adding some tiered resources in the future; that is, resources produced by combining/processing basic resources. Right now the list is only 4 long, consisting of [volatiles] [minerals] [light metals] [heavy metals] ... I'm thinking these could comfortably be refined and combined, calling those metals ores and having a list of 'usable resources' which might look like [water] [simple chemicals] [complex chemicals] [crystalline compounds] [soil] [structural metals] [heavy metals] [active metals] and those would be the resources used to actually build things (list not finalized!) and some other products could exist, like [rations] which is another idea playing in my head, as supplies are really a big deal in large-scale warfare.

NPC Factions : I know I've mentioned that long ago somewhat, but I'm closer to having some identities for such things. For example, some might be outright aggressive raider factions which attacks players seemingly at random, while another might be some sort of semi-benevolent nation who tries to enforce peace (by punishing violence) between others in its territories.

Tools : Devising and building tools for admin (and users) is an important part of safely managing complex systems.

Stories and Lore : Any game with depth has a background story, so I've been putting some thought into the history of things in the UNIVERSE. Right now I'm leaning towards a core theme about something like ... some sort of civil war and a general crumbling of humanity occurred some generations ago, a few major organizations survived [which would be represented by NPC factions] but most colonies have been decimated or abandoned or lost or whatever and we - the players - represent those who have survived and grown to a point where they are ready to join the interstellar community and establish themselves as a power of their own.


I'm really sorry for the long period of blog neglect, and I hope this has been enough of a glimpse to convince everybody that I haven't given up! No promises, but I'll try to make my next posting somewhere in the near future; if you get tired of waiting, feel free to poke me through the internet!

Alright, off to bed...

Update#82 : Current Seas

This little post is about ... currencies! (See what I did there? If not, too bad)

First of all, I'll share an idea which is NOT new to my plans for the game. Tokens. There will be tokens that you can purchase to upgrade your 'playing experience' or whatever, but really they will make things more convenient. This can include things like extending the span of galactic space that you can request to download at once, renaming** a star or planet or increasing the depth of your construction/research queues.

**You can rename your homeworld and any moons that it may have at least once for free. I realize that renaming planets is usually a freely available option in most games like this, but in UNIVERSE it will be a big deal as it can affect gameplay.

Originally I was thinking that tokens would have a simple price of 1$ or 2$ but with various conversion rates it still seemed like it could get a bit complicated. So, to simplify things, I've decided that I'll just go with the idea that I resisted for reasons I can no longer remember! I'm going to make an additional in-game currency. Instead of just buying tokens directly, you would buy some amount of that currency and with that you could buy the tokens. Both tokens and this new currency could be traded in the market, or exchanged between players.

By implementing this additional currency, it will keep token prices more simple and easier for me to add new tokens and other such features.

I don't have a name for this currency at the moment, but I'll be working on it.

Update#81 : Orbital Inclusion

While doing a bit of cleaning the other day, I thought a bit about orbital bodies again... and it just clicked, how I could implement objects - both fleets and planetoids - having tilted orbits, and also ellipsoidal orbits!

However, I won't implement these fancy orbit functions until some time after there's a bit of game to play, which is still a little further away than I'd like it to be.

That's all for now. Still working!

Update#80 : Somewhere, In the Distant Near Future

The weeks just keep slipping by...

I'm really getting to be more decisive on some of these annoying-to-decide plans and things, so hopefully I'll actually get back to regular reportable progress soon. I'm not going to make any claims or promises like before though since the time keeps getting sucked out of me and new indecisions are always popping up.

That said, I do actually have a new idea or two to report. In my head I've been toying with this idea of contracts in player bases. The idea is, for your factories and mines to keep producing resources and items, you (the player) need to issue 'work contracts' to the relavent things in your cities, which might last 50 or some such number of hours.

For example, you might assign for some of your Industrial Zones to produce some bunches of tanks, so you make contracts to your facilities to make it happen. Factories not in contract will instead 'work' for civilian purposes, increasing economy... which was already going to happen, but in the case of mines, they won't produce resources unless you issue the 50-hour-or-whatever contracts. You could queue one 'level'? of contract on top of another so that when one ends the next begins immediately.

The idea is to have 'that thing' which tries to be your reason for logging in with some regular frequency.

Update#79 : Busy As Ever

Welcome to August!  The 9th is my birthday, which really doesn't matter here but I still like to mention and celebrate it.

Yes, I did just barely but truly miss making posts through all of July. I don't have much excuse or explanation for that except that I've been busy. Busy busy busy! Busy and indecisive; the visual and interactive layout of various areas has been annoying for me to make final decisions about.

Again, I'll be trying more to update here more actively starting in the near future.

Update#78 : Debate unto Fate

Yeah sorry the title doesn't make any sense, it's just a rhyming of 'ate'

MORE SORRY for the fact that my only June post is this one, at the very end of the month. I have been quite distracted by many things in this past month: helping people move things, looking for a job, playing EVE Online and League of Legends, trying to help friends with various things, dabbling into other project ideas (only in the role of support or contributor) soooo busy! Thus I haven't been very mindful of the devlog.

For game updates, the only major thing that I can think of is about the coordinate validator pop-up tool that I mentioned in the last post will not be happening. I eventually realized that making it as convenient as I wanted would add a lot of data to each pageload which wouldn't be used often enough to justify it, so the validator tool will be a separate page in the maps area.

Update#77 : Playing With Coordinates and Mapping

Today I came to a decision, to do something which was contrary to what I wanted to do for a long time.

With regards to in-game messaging... My hope was to let the mail formatting system automatically handle the detection and linking of spatial coordinates. As I approached this task, I realized that there was a flaw in my strategy, due to the fact that I would allow proper names to be used in coordinates, to make things nice and easy for users. The problem showed itself when I realized that names could contain spaces, which would be problematic for efficient detection methods...

So, the solution for which I was hesitant but have now embraced, is to use 'tags' in the messages - like BBCode - that players can put around the coordinate that they are trying to share. While this does take a bit of manual work (for which I will try to make a shortcut/action link) it will allow you to link your friends to exactly the position and view level that you want to link them. This is significant because a single point coordinate could be valid for several map views. For example, a basic planet address could be used to view the planet's overview page OR view the planet's surface map. The overall solution carries one further advantage: by using tagging instead of scanning, it helps to avoid some of the processing effort that would otherwise be required to [do all of that stuff].

This brings me to another bit of news regarding mapping and coordinates, with relation to players. I realized that I could make a small expandable icon/link/popup/app-thing... it would be a coordinate validation tool. It would normally be just a small button/icon in teh corner that isn't much, but clicking on it would load a mini-page containing the validator, which you would use to make sure that the coordinate that you're looking to use (or share) is allowable and will work; and also provide various links and transformations for the location.

The validator doodad will also help me a lot with testing and development.


Revealed: A location might have several methods by which to address it. For example, you could refer to a star or planet by either its coordinate OR its given name. It might sound complicated, but you'll enjoy it when you can address your planet by name instead of a collection of letters and numbers!