8Dromeda Blog

Soilnar July Update Part 4/4

As I'm terribly slow in writing these posts, I'll try to wrap rest of the progress here so I can continue devving the... Next Things(tm).

• So I happened to add rocks to plain grounds. And made them pushable because colliding into them was stupid. And made them fall to the side of the road if pushed continuously to make them even less annoying. End of story.
• Originally and until now, drilling ground in Soilnar worked so that a ship would first remove the tile, and then move to it, and repeat for the next one. I modified this so that drilling straight works in a continuous way, the ship driving into the tile as the tile breaks down. It's relatively nice now, and I don't indend to work on it further.
• ...I need to rebalance drilling speeds at some point though.
• I reworked the ore system, which was a lot of work. Ore processing and minerals (that the ores refine into) are still missing.
• Trying to think how all this will balance itself out is kind of hopeless. I need to set up an alpha server as soon as possible so I can get my hand on actual player experiences and the dynamics resulting from player interaction.

To set up an alpha server for Soilnar, I need to implement a couple of things that are required for a fun semi-persistent sandbox game world.

Currently one is able to move around, mine and trade. The global chat works. Some very simplistic base building and fighting also works.

You can for example go mining stuff, travel to an interplanetary hub to sell the ore, and mine more. Or you could mine a lot of ore, leaving the ore in place, hopefully not reveal the place to anyone, go buy a large transport ship and use it to sell all the ore at once. Or you could search for a place with naturally broken ore and skip the mining part. You could go blow up players, or fortificate your mining site with laser turrets. However, things are missing.

One crucial thing is transferring money between players. Once it's in place, You could sell rare ore to a fellow player, or buy a transport ship, load it with stuff and go sell it directly to miners. Or pay someone to do something.

The second crucial thing is that ores cannot be used in any way - the only thing you can do is sell them as-is. Refineries, factories and stuff like that needs to be added. They will be purchaseable or buildable by players. In general, especially for the alpha, more things must be buildable and purchaseable by players.

After this, I will add password authentication and from then on, I'm planning on having a Soilnar alpha server online.

When the alpha is online, I'll start working on base building, fighting, corporations, stealing, security statuses, further industrial operations and such. You will be able to build factories with other factories. Also I'm planning on some kind of a blueprint system, which will allow having intellectual property in the game.

I now welcome everyone to hang out on IRC at #8dromeda @ freenode.net.

- A of 8Dromeda