Messages

Feel free to check out the blog post on electricity in SpaceSlog over on our webpage. I will make a new thread here each time i upload a new blog.

https://produnogames.com/blog/2022/03/01/electricity/

Hi.
I would love to test and hope you consider me.

I have two machines available, one running Win 7, the other Win 10, both 7th gen i5, 8, 16 GB ram respectively, HD integrated graphics on both. Nothing great but they do the job.

I've a couple a years experience testing and am also credited as a writer (lore), games are a passion, can't help myself. I've also recently gotten into my first programming language as a hobby.

If you need a an extra hand, and someone that will give you a good effort, I'm at your service.

Thanks, you are on the list and i will let you know when i have a suitable build available

I am currently working on the power systems and we have a few choices regarding efficiency.

A generator will burn Uranium. So we can either have a small generator that takes up one tile and generates 1000w of power per 1 Uranium. 1 Uranium will take 3 hours to burn. (These numbers still subject to change)

We can add efficiencies for space used and for burn rate per watts of power. For example, we have a large generator that can produce 5000w of energy per 5 uranium per 3 hours.

So 4 small generators will take up 4 tiles and produce 4000w of power per 4 Uranium per 3 hours.

1 large generator will take up 4 tiles and produce 5000w of power per 5 Uranium per 3 hours. Which means we are producing the same but within a smaller footprint.

We could however take this one step further and add a burn rate. Meaning the larger generator can have a lower burn rate so it burns less fuel per power needed. Example would be it takes 4 hours to burn 1 Uranium rather than the 3 hours the smaller generator takes.

We also have a durability efficiency rating. So the lower the health of the object, the less power it can produce. Which means they have to be maintained well.

Thoughts, suggestions?

I guess the efficiency thing could be some sort of upgrade via research....

SpaceSlog is now on Itch.io. Currently you still cannot purchase the game, though I am hoping to have a playable version at some point this year. At which point the game will release in early access and you will be able to purchase it from Itch.io. I still have not decided on a price but it will be around £15, then increase in price through later builds.

Currently I am still working though engineering contract work to enable me to pay the bills, so if you want to support me to enable me to continue making the game, then purchasing the EA build is probably the best way to do this, inc telling your friends to as well 


Heres the link to the store: https://produno-games-studios.itch.io/spaceslog


I suspect everyone will eventually get a Steam key, though obviously this is not something I can confirm or promise until the game is actually on Steam. Though it seems to be the case that Steam will generally allow you to supply keys to those that have bought the game from other stores like Itch.io.

Win 10
CPU - Ryzen 5 2600
Mem - 16GB
Current GPU - GeForce GTX 750 TI
SSD

No real experience with bug tracking software as such, but I am  quick study. Have tested other games previously, most recently Meeple Station for Steve at Gameclaw, who I still help out with testing patches before release. I have also beta tested a host of other games over the years going back as far as Lineage 2 in 2003 (and I have only just noticed that game is still going) and also doing some pre-release testing on Star Ship Theory for Duncan.

I have DM'd you on Discord

I will from time to time be looking for new testers for the game. As we will initially be releasing on Itch.io, every tester will get a key for this platform. Meaning you will have access to all the newest builds of SpaceSlog from Itch.io forever.
If you would like to become a tester then please reply here with the following information outlined below.


Your OS and PC specs.
If you have any experience with any kind of bug tracker software (Not particularly needed).
Any previous experience testing games.




A couple of notes:

The most active members of the community will be chosen first.
There is a very limited amount of spaces available so do not be upset if you are not chosen.

Thanks for the responses. I ended up with something closer to #2. We may as well do things properly eh 

So each time the room is breached it will alert the player, once sealed it will also alert the player. The room panel will show the status of the room too, so it will display the atmosphere and update in real time including its 'sealed' status.

If the room has more breached tiles than non breached, then the room will be lost completely.

All that is left is to actually cause the atmosphere to 'leak' but that will be done once the atmosphere stuff is finished. As mentioned by Got_Donuts, the room keeps track of how many breaches it has and that will dictate the rate in which atmosphere leaks - though the amount is still to be determined.

I think 2, though aiming to conceptualize the concern. 

Suppose the ship is 2 (col) by 3 (rows) matrix (i.e., 2 dimensional ship).   Under 1, when the first middle row room is lost that makes the previous inner walls, the outer walls.  If correct, the  2nd middle row can now be breached and you end up with two ships.  Also, wouldn't I see now stars when a room is empty (i.e., when the ship moves, I now see relative motion where the room was?   Suppose neither will occurr - then isn't that just 2 (so something is keeping track of individual (x,y) room?   Perhaps the hull is a superstructure that remains of which rooms can come and go.

Perhaps each room is a (x,y, status, assignments): So if status = destroyed you'ld end up with Mike-ODA's blueprint via assignments). 

In the end - I would think of a breach as non-functional space with a memory of prior assignments and the opportunity to reassign.

Currently you create your ship hull, then you place your flooring to create rooms. If the hull or flooring is destroyed then you are correct, they will be gone and you will see space, stars etc beneath them.
There will be issues where the ship can split, though i have ways to work around that. For instance you will need a ship core to build anything other than hull and floors and anything not connected to this ship core will need maintaining much more, ie it will lose health quicker. This will hopefully at least alleviate this issue a little. You can also only have one ship core. These ideas will need play testing though and feedback to see how it works out. So the game will only support one player ship. Any other ideas around this are welcomed though. That's the beauty of being involved whilst we are in development, we get to discuss ideas and possibly work up to something better

Just for clarification though, if you want to 'plug' the breaches, it will require a hull piece being build in that place, and then a flooring. As flooring can only be built on top of hull (Unless it is an external piece of hull then flooring cannot be built here).

So roles do not = skills; a role is simply assigned because a pawn has desirable skills for certain tasks/roles?   

If I get it, skills are then associated with typical roles?  For example quartermaster skills might include:

Efficient Packing (increases amount of cargo; increases viability
of cargo (e.g., preserving ice):

Efficient Loading (decreases the amount of damage from poorly packed cargo due hull breach, attack, and so on).

And a pawn can be assigned the role quartermaster because it has such skills compared to other available pawns.

If so - great!

Yes, exactly! You will want to assign pawns most suited to these roles for optimum output. For example, you may want a pawn with a high social skill to be a quartermaster, this way pawns are more likely to like them and morale may be higher. Maybe pawn traits may play a role in this too.

For now though this will only be viable for hard coded roles. The player made roles are just to keep your crew organised. For instance you can create an 'Engineering' role and assign your engineers to that role to quickly see who can repair or build things.

Feedback on the following would be appreciated. We currently have rooms and these rooms can be assigned to pawns in a similar way to how beds are assigned to pawns in Rimworld, plus various other perks and features. It is also how atmosphere, heat etc all calculate and work.


I had been re-working the building as per the poll results which means we build hull, then we can build flooring over hull, similar to the way this works in Starship Theory.

The question is, how do we want to handle the way rooms works in regards to breaches. We currently have two choices that i can think of. Fyi, when i mention hull breach i mean either a hull or flooring tile has been removed or destroyed, leaving part of the ship open to space.


1. We remove the room and the atmosphere on a hull breach. This is easy to maintain because as soon as we have a hull breach, everything is removed so there is nothing to keep track of. Once the breach is sealed, the game re-creates the room and everything it needs. I suspect this will be annoying to the player though if they have a breach and it continually removes the room including the name and any pawns assigned. Though maybe it will not be much of a problem?

2. The second way is much more complex but may work better. We keep the room and alert the player there has been a breach. Atmosphere will slowly leak until the breach has been sealed. We need to consider at which point rooms will be destroyed though, so we need to keep track of this, ie, if more than 50% of a room is open to space we completely remove the room. Or do we remove any tiles open to space from the room, which could lead to other potential issues.


Any other ideas are welcomed, but from a technical perspective this is a pretty difficult problem to tackle.

There will definitely be unknown planets that will need to be scanned to see if you are able to send away parties, maybe this will dictate what suits they wear etc. Also ship wrecks and derelict bases too hopefully. I would also like to add a fog of war for these possibly using light. Meaning you can only see what your pawns can see. Or have some kind of blipper, aliens style

Welcome new people

It's always nice to see the different walks of life a game can bring together.

Would also be cool to see a super high tech researcher group, if you raid their ships maybe you could unlock research or information on different star systems/planet anomalies to explore. Could be some kind of laser/energy weapon using folks with shields or some kind of other tech defense. Just spitballing ideas into the void lmao

Thats not a bad idea, allowing the player to 'hack' ship systems could be a way to encourage boarding missions rather than just blowing up the ship.

We do kind of have roles that you can apply to crew members. Though this is more for the player to keep things organised and to quickly see who they have for what.
Other than that we have skills which will dictate how good a certain pawn is at something, then when paired with an object, say the navigation panel, it will increase various different things - or decrease if they suck at it

Just more ideas to spitball out there, hope these aren't getting annoying lmao.

Nope, keep them coming! Ship weapons will be something i need to look into. I want something relatively realistic, possibly not lasers though.

Lots to think about here! For now i have just used red alert. We can add more in the future. Though still feel free to discuss anything else you can think of here regarding ship alerts. We can certainly add more in the future and improve functionality.