MicroMade - Modded StarMade

[Batavium]

A bit late but congratulations with your birthday and best wishes with your and your families health.

I'm open to suggestions on block changes. I think there's a lot of room in the game to make the act of getting blocks lead to more interesting things players can do. Definitely feel free to let me know about some of your ideas.

As a general guide without having looked at any specific block recipes. Try not to add to many ingredients per block just for the sake of adding ingredients. Much like filling a three hundred item blueprint near a shop can be a chore. The ingredients for a block should be explainable and some what logic also after you made the block for the x time.

One thing I'm considering, is the default station at 2,2,2 being a massive, neutral hub station. A new player would immediately start a quest, which would involve A) stating how they want to play the game, and B) taking them to a random sector with resources to start off.

The less the server/computer has to deal with the default world. The more players can add to the universe from a CPU point of view. So a massive central hub might not be very handy to load everytime. Also MicroMade hint hint?

Another thing I'm considering is figuring out how I would go about spawning a player on a random planet. Since planets can be bases

Right now Planets are THE thing to avoid. So unless we get something new, not bugged or server killing real soon. Then i would give players a start station. Such a station could also have various blobs of all the different asteroids with ores so they can mine. jontyfreack once made this lovely Cloud Station/Planet think along these lines.

"Someone please give a hint on how you tag example jontyfreack since the message editor has no option to add/tag someone. Or I just don't see it."

Definitely something I want to do, is to give players the option to align with either the Valron Empire or Coalition of Systems. Doing that would have an immediate, practical reward - a noob starship equipped with a jump drive and minimal defenses. This is something I feel is important, but I'm not sure how to work it in.

Talk to NaStral of the Light vs Dark server. He might know a lot about this.

Also the Sun-World server is one of the oldest running custom/block/pirate/config servers out there. If it would be possible to have a talk with one of those guys. Then I am sure they could teach you a lot.

I'm sure people have feelings on how players start the game, so I'd really like to know what you'd like to see. I think the current way of starting the game is simply not fun enough.

Well in the base game the StarMade inventory is already very sparse with giving a starting player anything. So I would give them at least something to deal with right away. Since if you give them practically nothing then the first hour of the game will almost always be the same scramble to get the very basics needed to do anything. It kinda gets old after a while. With a bit more stuff you get diversification right of the bat as each player gets going in his or hers own style.

Great progress so far keep up the good work

 

[Valck]

Someone please give a hint on how you tag example Jontyfreak since the message editor has no option to add/tag someone. Or I just don't see it.

Batavium - simply add an 'at' sign in front of the name of the person, that should send them a notification

 

[Asvarduil]

Week 10 - "Trading Stations"
So, for those concerned - the afflicted family member had roughly a liter of fluid in their lung cavity (!!!). It was extracted with minimal difficulty, and they're doing a lot better. It turns out 1L of fluid in your lung cavity is really not good for breathing. Also, I'm feeling better, and this week's progress post might just prove that. Thank you all for the positive thoughts, they did help.

This week I've been doing a lot of design work - in other words, stuff that can't be easily shown through screenshots or a build. That being said, I have been filling out some of the missing things factions need, like Trade Stations!

Trade Stations
Trade Stations are another piece of having fully-rounded factions. Generally, the point is to be a place of trading - as the name implies - and so other capabilities are either non-existant (shipyards) or not substantial (medbays, manufacturing.) They're lightly armed and shielded, but again don't host any PvE objectives, unless you want to explode an opposing faction's station.



Design Work
Batavium had some good recommendations regarding the questions posed last week. While I haven't conferred with other StarMade modders, I've done some research (playing video games), reading (various threads), and I might have a path forward.

One thing StarMade does try to do is emulate aspects of EVE Online. What I'm thinking of doing, at least in starting iterations of the mod is to have players start at a light, neutral station (it is called MicroMade for a reason!) New ! commands will be added that let players 'borrow' and/or 'return' a ship from the Galactic Bank - the same entity in charge of your Net Worth. In reality, these are pre-defined ship recipes configured in my mod's database to be eligible for borrowing. Player ships are not eligible for borrowing. Borrowing a ship lets you do things, and you can pay off your debt from either your Net Worth, or you Credits. Stripping a borrowed ship, or disassembling it is a bad idea; at best, it'll put you in debt and lower your reputation with the Galactic Bank. At worst, loan sharks will be deployed to teach you not to mess with the house. The house always wins.

Economically speaking, what this setup will serve to do is improve the value of Credits, in general. Borrowing a ship is always more expensive than just building one, but players start with no resources. Thus players will need to immediately find ways to make money, and accumulate resources, but all while having a debt piling up in the background. Overcoming this debt will be a player's first step towards moving out of the early game of low-mass, borrowed ships, and into custom creations, possibly augmented with lessons learned from more advanced borrowed designs.

As you prove your value to the Galactic Bank, or to other factions, your list of ships that you can borrow will be expanded. Usually, unlocking a ship means A) getting enough reputation built up, and B) completing a certain quest.

This means that, my beta will be delayed longer, as I need to actually implement A) new ! commands, B) a reputation system, and C) my quest system. Luckily, the first two things are easy enough. The last part is more challenging due to the limitations of the API we have exposed to us - I may have to seriously school myself on how the /sql_query command works, and abuse it maliciously in order to make some of what I want to happen, to happen.

Conclusion
Making games, is like making chili - you add stuff, taste, and see what else you need to add. It's slightly clearer what I need to add. As always, input is appreciated. Your advice last week was helpful, and I'm looking forward to bringing you a challenging, but fulfilling, way to play StarMade. I'm trying to draw on sources - like EVE Online - that play to StarMade's strengths, while taking them in a better direction.

I couldn't do this without you, and I'd love to know what you think. Thank you all very much. I've got some work ahead of me.

 

[Asvarduil]

Week 11 - "Street Rep"
This week was Thanksgiving in the United States, and I've had a great holiday, with family and good food.

I've also been working on the MicroMade back-end, adding the Reputation system and the start of the ship leasing systems, as well as incorporating these things into the Quest models.

Word, G-Dawg.
Leasing ships is an idea I discussed in last week's progress post. Those who follow the GitHub, will see new models, mappings, repositories, and a new feature DataCore feature test for the Reputation gain.

Reputation isn't something that StarMade tracks, at least in the UI. In StarMade, you can be Allied, Neutral to, or Enemies with, a faction. This isn't good enough for MicroMade, as part of the gameplay I'm adding involves levels of trust with a faction. Thus, you will need to do a few quests with a faction before they count you as trustworthy, more quests before they consider you reliable, and still more quests before they count you as their champion.

Another thing about the mod, is that generally reputation gains will be small numbers. Random quests - like what will be implemented when this is all done - generally gain you one point of reputation with the faction you quest for. Really hard quests might grant you three. At present, there is no reputation 'cap' with any faction, though I'm considering that being around 100 if I do implement it. Instead, I'd prefer to set up 'tiers' - for instance, 'helpful' at 10 Reputation, 'friend' at 20 Reputation, etc.

Reputation tiers are one of the things that determine what kinds of ships you're allowed to borrow. A 'Friendly' ship is generally going to be better than the fallback ship you get access to when you start the game. A 'Trusted' ship will be better than a 'Friendly.' You get the idea.

Lend, Lease.
The other system that is being put in, is the borrowed ship system. Unfortunately, a quick perusal of the StarMade command API shows me that I cannot set a ship as un-minable through just a command line. This has led me to study the /sql_query and /sql_execute commands, as I will need to create Loaned Ships through the relevant / command, and set them to unminable so that players can't cannibalize them.

Of course ships can be beaten up, so the database tracks the schematic's name of the loaned ship. When you do a !RETURNSHIP, your returned ship gets compaired with the schematic. If stuff's missing, it counts as damaged.

The Lend/Lease system isn't fully in the game yet, but that's going to be the bulk of this week's work. Once that's in, it's Quest Engine time.

Conclusion
Work continues. The lessons I learn from putting Lend/Lease into the game, can be applied to all sorts of other facets of the MicroMade experience. At any rate, I'm seeing potential for a much-improved PvE experience, which will have all sorts of implications for the general experience (PvE and PvP both.)

No screenshots this week, as this is boring engineering stuff, unfortunately. Still, thanks for keeping an eye on this. I'm hoping I'll have something more interesting next week.

Also - I'm considering doing livestreams of the mod's development. Is there any interest in this?

 

[xxpowerofsoundxx]

Ncroing, but is this still being worked on? I love the idea

 

[Matt_Bradock]

Ncroing, but is this still being worked on? I love the idea

Sorry to say but it shut down and probably got abandoned due to lack of interest. Which is a damn shame.

 

[JumpSuit]

I knew this was gonna end eventually. That is all I need to say.

 

[JinM]

In my opinion the idea to limit ship size drastically was pretty good.

I just wouldn't have made all the ships, and only provided the server. People can build for themself if you give them a good guidance on how to build.

But judging is allways easy if you are not the one who tried.

 

[Asvarduil]

Sorry to say but it shut down and probably got abandoned due to lack of interest. Which is a damn shame.

There's more to it than just lack of interest.

StarMade does not appear to be set up for the kinds of mods I really want to make for the game; as fun and interesting and hacking error stream outputs are as a messaging system, the fact is that, in order to mod this game, proper modding support is really needed. Documentation is also nearly non-existant; I was able to make a few helpful annotations when I was working on this, but seriously, the kinds of information provided are really not too helpful to a modder. I wanted to focus on writing the mod and building the prefab ships and stations; what I found myself doing was basic technical research on StarMade more than anything else.

Second, while I'm not sure about what all has changed in the Weapons update, when I abandoned this, combat was just plain terrible, to the point of unplayability. I don't know if that's changed, but seriously: what's the point of modding a game where a primary mechanic - shooting other starships - is terribly broken? I'm not sure if I'm going to play more of the game after these updates, because frankly, I got sick of this.

Lastly, the developers of this game have made a really great world-pixel engine. Unfortunately, they seem to just keep doing more building features and more shipbuilding features, which is fine...it's just that there's not a whole lot of game, and combined with the fact that mod support is virtually nonexistant, unfortunately means that really there's just not much of a game to mod at all.

It is for those reasons I abandoned the MicroMade idea. That being said, I have posted everything I had up on the GitHub repository I made for the MicroMade project. You can use Git to download everything I had through my last commit, and keep on exploring this idea.

This is also probably my last post on these forums, since I really don't have any skin in StarMade. It's probably doomed to just sit on my Steam library until the end of eternity (or, whenever the servers at Steam get powered down, which will likely come first.) Thanks for the support on this project, and hopefully someone willing to deal with all the problems StarMade has would be willing to pursue this further - if you do, you're a hero. If you don't, trust me: I understand completely. At present, I consider StarMade a game beyond salvation.

 

[JumpSuit]

There's more to it than just lack of interest.

StarMade does not appear to be set up for the kinds of mods I really want to make for the game; as fun and interesting and hacking error stream outputs are as a messaging system, the fact is that, in order to mod this game, proper modding support is really needed. Documentation is also nearly non-existant; I was able to make a few helpful annotations when I was working on this, but seriously, the kinds of information provided are really not too helpful to a modder. I wanted to focus on writing the mod and building the prefab ships and stations; what I found myself doing was basic technical research on StarMade more than anything else.

Second, while I'm not sure about what all has changed in the Weapons update, when I abandoned this, combat was just plain terrible, to the point of unplayability. I don't know if that's changed, but seriously: what's the point of modding a game where a primary mechanic - shooting other starships - is terribly broken? I'm not sure if I'm going to play more of the game after these updates, because frankly, I got sick of this.

Lastly, the developers of this game have made a really great world-pixel engine. Unfortunately, they seem to just keep doing more building features and more shipbuilding features, which is fine...it's just that there's not a whole lot of game, and combined with the fact that mod support is virtually nonexistant, unfortunately means that really there's just not much of a game to mod at all.

It is for those reasons I abandoned the MicroMade idea. That being said, I have posted everything I had up on the GitHub repository I made for the MicroMade project. You can use Git to download everything I had through my last commit, and keep on exploring this idea.

This is also probably my last post on these forums, since I really don't have any skin in StarMade. It's probably doomed to just sit on my Steam library until the end of eternity (or, whenever the servers at Steam get powered down, which will likely come first.) Thanks for the support on this project, and hopefully someone willing to deal with all the problems StarMade has would be willing to pursue this further - if you do, you're a hero. If you don't, trust me: I understand completely. At present, I consider StarMade a game beyond salvation.

Heh, project got canned eh? I knew it would from the start tbh lol. Should have tried doing a .net style Wrapper version similar to GT StarMade. Work close with Schine and iron shit out. Benevolent27 can do this with LvD as you already know. But eh, ya lose. Shame ya quit.