Re: Starlanes: Audio only MMORPG for Amazon Echo
Holy crap! I had this page loaded for the last week, but totally failed to notice there was a page two. My apologies for not replying sooner!
I'm glad you are enjoying StarLanes, and find it one of the most engaging games for the Echo. One of the points of writing it was to prove that the Echo could be a games platform. Unfortunately that hasn't been as enthusiastically welcomed by Amazon as I had hoped. But I'll stow my ranting and try to stay focused on your questions.
Sounds like you are in Futatsu. (I am too.) We have a nearby pocket of space you can get to from East Grinstead at high tide. I am aware there is a gameplay problem where the space near the start is rather entrenched and the number of players isn't high enough so that one side can mount the flotilla necessary to change ownership. I have a ton of ships in Tidworth waiting to unleash fury on East Grinstead, but I can't port enough on one tank of gas. Solutions I'm looking at is having ship count degrade in systems that don't have regular faction visitors. Also, the first companion game will be StarSquad, where you can send in squads to "take out that field generator", and sabotage the specific builds on a system that make it hard to fight.
Fuel does regenerate over time. It's about 12 hours to get a full tank. Note, though, that you only need fuel if you are carrying drones. If you are empty, you can always transition. The bonuses you earn can buy fuel. Just say "buy fuel" and it should guide you through it. The currency is not yet available for purchase for real money. That's a feature for 4.0 that is being worked on right now.
StarTrade is one of the companion games in development. It adds trade gameplay to the universe. Turns out those worlds you see in StarLanes are just the main worlds of each star system. There are, often, other worlds in each system. The jump beacon is only on the main world, and si nce StarLanes gameplay is focused on strategic warfare, that's all that matters. In StarTrade you can move between the planets within a system, trading in the basic commodities: energy, minerals and biologicals. You can purchase transport between systems.
StarScout will be another companion game with a focus on exploration. Turns out the only planets you see in StarTrade are those with colonies on them. There are other planets that you can scout out and survey. There are also other systems that your scout ship can get to without a jump beacon. You can explore those too and even work up to deploy a jump beacon there.
The four games are really one game, with different types of gameplay. However, since the audio interface gets a bit cluttered if you add too many commands, they are being released as separate games. They all affect the same universe. If you take down a ion shield in StarSquad, that helps drones attacking that world in StarLanes. Moving resources around in StarTrade also helps production of drones in StarLanes, and faction ownership in StarLanes gives better prices to faction aligned traders in StarTrade. Exploration in StarScout will allow new colonies to be made, opening up new markets for StarTrade, and placing a beacon in a new system can dramatically alter the strategic landscape in StarLanes.
So big things are planned. But progress has been slow. The lack of options for promotion has hit the player base hard. The game works much better with lots of active players. And there aren't quite enough Echos out there for word of mouth to really help promote the game. Most of the news stories about the Echo are commissioned by Amazon, who don't see gaming as a focus. As far as what I can control, I am currently doing a big refactor on the code as a grounding for the companion games. Additionally, since Google has announced that their Google Home product will be open to 3rd party developers, I'm abstracting the cod e so that I can port it to Google Home as soon as they publish their SDK. Hopefully they will see it for the opportunity it is, and give it some promotion. Or at least let me buy some advertising!
You ship can be both configured and upgraded. Say "configuration" to see what you have. Hmm. "Help configuration" doesn't list the types. I need to fix that. Basically you can optimize for range, carrying capacity, or fuel capacity. When you buy an upgrade, your max range/carrying/fuel go up. Not dramatically. But even a little range boost can really change the landscape. "set configuration to corvette" is the normal ship. "runner" is the max range ship. "carrier" is the max capacity ship. There is also "scout" which is high range with a small capacity.
Resetting? Hmm. We had a "rewind" bug a while back. I thought I had finally fixed that. I really hate intermittent bugs. What would help me a lot is if, as you played the game, you jotted down the date/time each time it happens. Post it here, to the forum, or mail me, when you have a few. I can examine the logs and try to work out what the freak is happening. Note: there's a 500 talent bounty for all bugs found. :-)
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