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Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Simulator Enhancements (03/13/24)

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Author Topic: Starsector 0.6.2a (Released) Patch Notes  (Read 214873 times)

OOZ662

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Re: Starsector 0.6.2a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #75 on: December 06, 2013, 02:05:09 PM »

From reading the old dev blog on it, flight decks affects the turnover of fighters, not how many there are. Essentially how many and how fast a carrier can churn out rearms and reinforcements, and thus how many fighters it can support on the field. If the last fighter on the map for a squadron dies and the carrier isn't in the process of preparing another for launch (being too busy with other squadrons), that wing behaves as if it has retreated.
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Megas

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Re: Starsector 0.6.2a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #76 on: December 06, 2013, 04:12:07 PM »

The advantage the Astral will get will be an easy source of many flight decks per Logistics.  It may not beat the current Gemini, but acquiring six or more Gemini is too hard without luck, grinding, or resorting to shenanigans.
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Cycerin

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Re: Starsector 0.6.2a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #77 on: December 09, 2013, 07:33:02 AM »

You know, a blogpost featuring the new ships would be the perfect thing to ease the suffering of going through my finals. cough
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ValkyriaL

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Re: Starsector 0.6.2a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #78 on: December 09, 2013, 07:46:55 AM »

I would love...a new launcher.. that features the main page of this forum with updates or perhaps a newsletter/daily updates or changes.

and something that checks if you have the latest update and so on, like all those fancy MMORPG launchers have. ::)
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Megas

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Re: Starsector 0.6.2a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #79 on: December 12, 2013, 11:15:58 AM »

It just occurred to me that if the Astral and fighters keep their current logistics cost, a Leadership (and Fleet Logistics) score of 3 or 4 will be required for the Astral and six wings of fighters.  30 for the Astral alone (20 for ship and 10 for full crew), and 3 or 4 per wing of fighters.
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Gibbatron

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Re: Starsector 0.6.2a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #80 on: December 12, 2013, 01:55:54 PM »

I don't think that's so bad. It IS a captial ship after all.
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Ryan390

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Re: Starsector 0.6.2a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #81 on: December 13, 2013, 01:58:49 AM »

Are there actually going to be new features with the upcoming release, or just more "tweaking"?

Obviously different star sectors was one of the newest features to be introduced, are we going to see another addition/game play element being added?


-----

Personally I feel the combat system is fine as it is. However it seems like everyone is obsessed with all the small stuff and not really interested in what you can actually "do" in the game..

It's just frustrating seeing such an amazing product getting de-railed and generally taking the wrong direction..

I can understand all the small improvements/re factorings allow for a more stable/balanced foundation for which to build the game play on.
I really do, but it just feels like we are still "tweaking" the hell out of a game. IMO I don't really care about any of that, I want to see the core game play being implemented.

Game play is always the most important aspect for any game, mainstream or indie.. It doesn't have to be amazingly complex or graphically awesome!
(This game looks great and has a nice level of complexity anyway)

 


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Bjørn_in_the_Sector

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Re: Starsector 0.6.2a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #82 on: December 13, 2013, 02:42:31 AM »

very supportive and open first post, by the way. Love how you show just how much you like this game and support its development.
you could always, you know, help. Mods are a great way to get a different take on SS while it becomes more and more refined, and besides, this is ALPHA. If it looks, runs and feels this good in alpha, my opinion is hang in there - it's come a long way and - I have no doubt - will go much further.
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Ryan390

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Re: Starsector 0.6.2a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #83 on: December 13, 2013, 03:12:56 AM »

I've supported Star Sector already by purchasing several copies of the game.
(Have it installed on my laptop, work laptop and home PC  :))

Also with regards to Mods - I've played a few of the top-ranked mods and indeed they are very good.

Some of the new ship design and weapons/effects are quite impressive.
There are even small game-play additions on some of the mods, however they only really provide a temporary distraction.

The only ''Mod" I'd be interested in developing is the actual game play mechanics.
There's enough people out there churning out some amazing ship designs, and adding plenty of fantastic content that way. I'm not really an artistic person, but I can code..

My point being, I'd be more interested in actually developing the core mechanics of the game. The place I work we try to use agile practises and principles, and release features early and often.
(Unless you work at a waterfall style culture!  :D) - We should be moving away from this mind set!
Usually we aim to release as soon as a feature is implemented, passed QA + signed off.. We then hit a button which kicks an automated build script and pushes the binary files out from Team City onto the live boxes..

Agile tries to focus on what's important first, and worry about sugar coating much later on.
The most prominent/risky bugs are usually from the main features/new features not from the tiny implementation details. I guess you could call that the "balancing" - which is important, but wouldn't be as important as say, having the ability to buy a ship, or, being able to initiate combat.

Using techniques such as TDD and continuous integration, you can get the core features of an application out to the customer quicker and with less defects.
In Star Sectors case it's monthly updates. A lot of places are still waterfall and a project can take months to implement from an idea into live software..
Ideally you would like to be pushing out changes early and often, perhaps on a weekly basis in this case.

It's challenging to get into that position where you can push weekly, but they don't have to be huge changes, bug fixing becomes part of a functional release, rather than an entire release on it's own. It's a shift in culture, practises and also remembering what's really important. What's important for your customer, what do they need?

I don't see why developing a game should be any different from the commercial software development we do day to day?
If anything there's less risk releasing early and often a game with a few "tweaking issues" than a commercial app which can potentially bring a call centre to it's knees and cost thousands of pounds of lost sales..

--------

I do really believe in this game. I'd just like to see a slight change in direction with regards to the focus on what's really important..
I'm sure it will come, but i just don't want to see Star Sector make the same mistakes as Cortex Command for example..  10+ years in development and not much to show for it  >:(

C'mon we are.. 3 years in now and still early alpha? Let's start nailing this!

« Last Edit: December 13, 2013, 03:50:27 AM by Ryan390 »
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Cycerin

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Re: Starsector 0.6.2a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #84 on: December 13, 2013, 05:53:49 AM »

The problem is retaining direction and creative control while also reaching milestones within a comfortable time. Most app development and "commerical software development" you speak of is done by people who, well, to put it in one way, perhaps don't care that much about what they're developing, and whose tasks have been designed by people who do not understand the challenges of development.

Game development is also incredibly challenging because of the push-pull effect of actual development vs. planning, vision and feedback. So the fact that Starsector takes time to move out of alpha is pretty much just a given, seeing as the team creating it is so small and retains complete creative control and control over publishing, etc.
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Megas

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Re: Starsector 0.6.2a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #85 on: December 13, 2013, 08:45:58 AM »

Quote
I don't think that's so bad. It IS a captial ship after all.
I think either capital ships are too expensive or we do not get enough base Logistics.  Before v0.6, the player had exactly enough base fleet points (25) for the biggest ship, the Paragon.  Of course, Astral plus fighters cost more.  Now, player needs Leadership and Fleet Logistics 2 to pilot the biggest ship with full crew.
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Alex

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Re: Starsector 0.6.2a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #86 on: December 13, 2013, 11:17:20 AM »

@Ryan390: First off, hi and welcome to the forum :) Also, thanks for your support!

About releases and tweaking vs adding new features - what I like to do is to have a release focused on new features, and then a smaller follow-up release focused on bugfixing and tweaks, mainly related to those features. In the case of 0.6a, there ended up being two of those follow-up releases (and 0.6.2a is taking longer than I'd like, but, well, that's the breaks.)

So, for example, I agree that combat is in pretty good shape as-is and any further work on it is low priority. The only changes being made here are related to CR, which is the main new feature from 0.6a. (Well, maybe not the only changes, but that's the driver for the vast majority of them.)

There's a balance to be found here. How much work do you put in to making something more polished, vs adding new features? You have to do some of the former if you want to have something enjoyable in the intermediate stages, but if you do too much, then some of that is wasted effort if (really, when) things change.

(A side note as far as TDD - I don't think it's a good fit for game development. The major reason is that you don't know where you're going until you get there, which makes coding tests in advance of features awkward :) There are other reasons as well - have fun writing tests for, for example, whether a particle system looks good, whether certain control mechanics feel right, etc. Agile, well... agile is basically doing what works instead of relying on a fixed process, so I'm on board with that! But as soon as agile tells me I have to make weekly releases, or some such, it's no longer agile.)


It's challenging to get into that position where you can push weekly, but they don't have to be huge changes, bug fixing becomes part of a functional release, rather than an entire release on it's own.

Most features (speaking for Starsector specifically) take a lot longer than a week to implement, test, and at least somewhat balance. If anything, I think a weekly release cycle would discourage working on larger features and would, instead, encourage overtweaking. Anyway, all I can really say is that this sort of cycle (feature -> bugfix/tweak -> feature -> etc) works for me.
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xenoargh

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Re: Starsector 0.6.2a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #87 on: December 13, 2013, 11:33:52 AM »

@Ryan390, Cycerin:

There isn't a fundamental problem with "release early, release often" in games development per se; the big problem is that during certain periods, the game would not remotely pass QA if it tried to set overly-rigid deadlines.

That, and the more "done" a game like this gets, the more sprawling the problems get.  The game's roughly 75% feature-complete, under the hood, but now the scope is pretty huge.  

On the other hand, it's being done right; Alex isn't doing stupid stuff like, "I'll expose things for modding later", which is a very good thing.  But it's slower.  I'm expecting the game will be feature-complete and Beta by sometime in 2014, personally, which isn't too bad for something this big.

@Alex:  I agree: the map isn't the territory :)
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Ryan390

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Re: Starsector 0.6.2a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #88 on: December 13, 2013, 12:51:32 PM »

Good points both!

Feature -> Bug fix/Tweak should be fine, and is a pretty common pattern.

All I would say is Bug fix/Tweak -> Bug fix/Tweak -> Bug fix -> Feature  (or something along those lines, would indeed be quite wasteful)

You can often find, which I'm sure you have, Alex, that often the most obvious changes/tweaks we need to make to our code bases are often only apparent when we come to implement new features.

You talked a little about waste, which is really important, I'm really glad you mentioned it

The techniques/principles that are in the agile manifesto are really aimed at trying to alleviate some of these issues. Your might be right about TDD in terms of games development, but tests really should only be testing behavior, not implementation detail.

The main aim of that is really only to provide a quick feedback loop, and avoid introduced errors into the code base due to changes / new features ect..
Also it has the benefit of allowing you to make fearless re-factorings to your code base - So when you find you need to change things, you have that confidence/coverage..
You may change a line of code but not realize it broke something in the Inventory system.. Running the tests would show a failing test and you can zone in on that code immediately..

You can catch a lot of bugs with a good suite of tests before it even reaches QA, but it's all to easy to write useless tests which don't actually exercise the core behavior..
Often the mistake we made is testing method invocations and testing things like mappers/repositories, but they just end up being brittle tests, they don't test the actual behavior. I wouldn't bother writing UI tests, just the code that exercises the behavior that would effect the UI, for instance.

In any case usually with TDD it's an incremental process, it's more difficult to write tests around legacy code, then it is to write from scratch (no production code)
Your already quite well established, so like you said, probably not to bother now  ;D

----------------------

Do you use source control for SS? What language is it written in? LUA?
I wouldn't mind nosing around or even helping if you ever needed it..  :)

Also, I just want to be clear that I fully support Star Sector, I just wanted to see where your mind set is.
It's a fantastic game, one of it's kind, even in it's current Alpha state I still think it trumps even finished games such as S.P.A.Z, for instance.

I look forward to future updates and will be keeping my eye on progress, but if I can help please just holler.


 
« Last Edit: December 13, 2013, 12:53:54 PM by Ryan390 »
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xenoargh

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Re: Starsector 0.6.2a (In Development) Patch Notes
« Reply #89 on: December 13, 2013, 01:09:29 PM »

It's written in Java.  Check out the modding API sometime :)
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