Sunday, March 17, 2013
Summary
Alright, this week has started out strong...let's hope for an awesome week!!!
First order of business today was wrapping up keybindings / configurable controls. As I mentioned last week (or was it the week before last?) I implemented the internal machinery for formalizing the notion of a key binding, but never implemented any kind of interface support for customizing them. Today I tackled that problem, so now the controls can be modified freely via the settings menu. If Shift-Alt-Z is how you like to thrust forward, hey, who am I to judge Go for it.
I thought a lot about stations/planet locations and player storage today. The problem stemmed from a much simpler one: when you complete a mission, how do you obtain your reward? In Freelancer, the problem is completely skirted, since rewards are only in credit form. Well, that won't really suffice for LT, I'd much rather offer a wide variety of rewards. Maybe you see a mission that has a really nice turret for a reward, the likes of which you've never seen on the markets. Maybe the reward is the ability to call in a favor from a powerful wingman. Varying up the mission rewards will be a great way to keep them interesting and keep the incentives high for running missions, which will obviously be a big part of the game. But suppose the reward is a weapon. Does it get transferred to your cargo when you complete the mission? Surely not. Does it get left at the location where you took the mission? Where? In a postal box with your name on it? Storage space? Hanging in mid-space?
This sequence of thoughts led me to the conclusion that we need to have "storage" on locations (kind of like EVE). This makes a lot of sense: for one, you're going to want to drop off your loot at a station and not have to carry it all around with you. But it also yields a natural and elegant way to accept rewards for missions: they just go into your storage at the location where you took the job! It also yields a natural way to receive whatever goods you buy at the local market (especially if they won't fit in your cargo hold). I believe that I'm going to implement it such that you have to buy storage space, but once you buy it, it's permanent. You can always upgrade your storage space at a given location later for a fee. For example, really busy stations in the middle of heavily-traveled space might charge 1000 credits per tonne of storage (storage and cargo will be measured in mass; we will assume that volume limitations have been overcome by some sort of spatial compression technology), whereas a station on the edge of inhabited space will probably give it away for 50 creds per tonne or so. There may also be a limit to the amount of storage space you can purchase at any given location, dependent on the size of the location. I think this all makes sense. The only remaining question is whether you should have to pay a recurring fee - but I think that introduces too much "non-fun" complexity. I don't want to have to worry about whether my stuff is going to get repossessed because I forgot to make it to the other side of the galaxy to pay my storage fee. Boring. But I do like the idea of not just getting infinite free storage wherever you go. Getting to dump all your stuff at home base should be a reward, not a given! If you have major problems with this system, or you like it, or you'd just like to yell at me for no reason, feel free to do so in suggs.
Now then, with all that out of the way, I have a very somber confession to make to you all. Today, I must admit, I wasted some time delving into a new field of procedural goodness into which I have no rightful business poking my nose. But I just couldn't help myself. It was calling my name...and since I've never, not once in my life, done procedural synthesis of sounds, I had to try it at some point or another. So today I indulged myself. Today I finally did that magical thing of filling up a sample buffer with mathematical goodness, and hearing it come to life via these little vibrating membranes in my computer Man was it exciting!!! Naturally, I can't produce anything of value yet...my sounds are worse that 8-bit chiptunes. But I now know how to create sound with equations, and that's super-exciting! I never should have touched this, because there's just no way that I could learn enough in time to make procedural sound in LT. But someday I will learn how to do it at a high level of quality!
Hour Tally
Coding: 6.03
Composing: 0.29
Internet: 2.91
Testing: 2.14
Thinking: 0.78
Total Logged Time: 12.15
Comments on storage space.
Post
Sun Mar 17, 2013 11:02 pm
#1
Week of March 17, 2013
“Whether you think you can, or you think you can't--you're right.” ~ Henry Ford