DEATH
Mon, 11/16/2009 - 21:55
How is death handled in the game?
Ie is it just a case of reloading your last save game or do you respawn at the station? and are the ship equipped with escape pods?.
Thu, 11/19/2009 - 09:39
#2
DEATH!
What a scary topic title! Reminds me of Terry Prachett somehow!
We'll let Beta Testers decide about this as we don't have a clear preference. We want to give the player as many options to try and survive as possible, and so personally I am leaning towards quite a punitive death experience... But I understand others may not agree with me.
How about allowing a player to customise that when they start a campaign?
What do you think about that?
What are your preferences?
You certainly will not be able to go back to the "last save" which was done at any point as that will not be a feature that we implement in the full game.... We will have pause and resume etc. but what I mean is that you saving just before a big combat scenario is NOT an option! You will, however, be able to go back to your last major station visit....
Thu, 11/19/2009 - 20:54
#3
Preference
That remains me,must get Prachett latest book :)
Well Iam a big fan of the GTA games so my preferences is for that method,so failing a mission does not mean a game over screen or in the event of the players death you find yourself back at the nearst station.
Have you read Peter Hamilton Commonwealth Saga in the books if someone dies they can be given a new clone body and then there memory and personitly is download into it.I think this is a perfect way to integrate the GTA save game feature into this type of game.by way of a short animation.If the player is killed.
Fri, 11/20/2009 - 15:46
#4
Game Over....
The way we had envisaged it at the moment was that the game was driven around your character, so that would still fit with your suggestion..
Although some of the "funner" and newer ideas we've put into the game rely on you being caught without your ship sometimes.. Either by ejecting during combat, or being tricked when on EVA. We are toying with the idea of having you experience being taken by pirates or other races and sold into slavery..
Some of this would require that you stay as you for these sections and we'd try not to encourage people to get killed so they can reset their situation.. rather we'd like them to try and think their way out of it...
Fri, 11/20/2009 - 21:31
#5
Captured
Being captured by pirates or sold is a brilliant idea,I can see the player haveing to do
a series of missions for there captives.But how would the player gain there freedom again,
also if the game keep track of the player reputation would it effect it?.
Fri, 11/20/2009 - 23:35
#6
Now that would be telling.... and dog figthing.
Without going into too much detail, as it's something we are still working on so nothing is set in stone, there are a couple of scenarios where you may be stuck in a ship in a situation you can't get out of... or you can... but that's how you get your freedom back.
Or even the beginnings of our ultimate aim to bring some more first person feel to later expansions by sticking you in a cell which you need to hack / bribe your way out of.
These and other scenarios are story-boarded right now, and will make their way into ArcNebula over the point updates we will do during the life of ArcNebula1.x. One of my tasks is to get the UI into shape to make sure that our pilots understand what's going on and can enjoy the problem because they understand it fully.... It's challenging on a device with such a tiny screen.. but great fun.. and you learn a lot about how to shape controls for people playing with a device wholly contained in their hands.
By the way : We did some dog fight testing earlier today and I actually felt space sick when I put my iPod down for a break as we'd literally been flying round a moon battling away for about 20 minutes non-stop on each run through.. We learned a lot about the control system we have, and what we need to do to make it even better.. I am half way through a blog post with some pics about that at the moment.. and we hope to have the Combat Alpha ready for people to test soon..
Some of this will become more clear in the next teaser trailer... To be honest we are a bit behind our planned schedule at the moment, but we kind of expected that, and made a decision as a team that these new ideas are worth doing right...
Mon, 11/23/2009 - 18:51
#7
Space sick
Awsome :)
Sound like you have some good update planned for the game,looking forward to seeing the next vid for the game.
Mon, 11/23/2009 - 19:35
#8
Next Teaser..
Doc Bungee may have a heads up for us on the EVA suits this week.. So the rumour goes... and the suits play a big part in the next trailer...
Wed, 11/25/2009 - 15:32
#9
A deep thought.
One of the possible explainations of keeping the "clone scenario" whilst maintaining the feeling of urgency to stay within your current emobodiment--should include some sort of communication jam. So that the nearest Settlement or space station would have no news of your demise, and would thus neglect to re-fabricate your avatar in the event of your termination.
Something similar to this was used in the book *Incandescence.* (a great read, and one I reccomend to any hard-scifi fan.)
The basic premise is that your existence as a living entity is solely energy, so it is possible to inhabit a digital form in memory banks of a computer system, or to be embodied in a physical form in the "real" world. However, if your body is destroyed and your are not transferred to the appropriate node, you would then suffer a very real and substantial death.
This also allows for some interesting back-story on certain races. There could be physical humanoid races from the DNA panspermia--descendants of people not unlike ourselves, who evolved over millions of years through Darwinian natural selection and adaptation; as well as the descendants of AI who originally substantiated in computer systems, creating an entire universe within "scape space." Both of sides of this coin are able to meet and communicate, because of the technological advancement of the story setting, and are able to conversely inhabit each other's reality.
Also, such a story arc can allow for interesting character customization, as the AI descendants--though now embodied and taking part in OUR existence, would be naturally more logical being... and most likely more adept at cyber weaponry, fiber optics, and digital warfare. They could have extremely advanced jamming, warp dampeners, and missile defense... basically if you chose them as a race, you wouldn't have to spend money on anything that had to do with computing... like targeting... for example.
Now if you choose DNA based life forms, bonuses could go toward things like maneuverability, fire power and mining skills....
Just a thought, although it seems to get more scattered the more I talk about it. I'm starting to make myself a little dizzy with the amount of detail this could all go into. I guess my point is, there's are any number of ways of justifying any plot, or event, or even a character build with the right amount of creativity--- and I have faith in you.
-A
Thu, 11/26/2009 - 11:33
#10
Quite reminiscent of Battlestar Galactica...
We are big fans of the BSG reboot, and one of my inspirations for some of the visuals we are putting together is the style of camera work in BSG. We are hoping to go that way with some of the sound / music also...
Which brings me to your post. Your interesting post. :) If you look at some of the character classes Doc Bungee has outlined (one in particular) you can see we are already going down this route to some extent... We also plan to have a lot of computer / terminal related hacking, and see where we can go with that...
There is, of course, no reason why we shouldn't allow some kind of download to happen with any player class.. I have a feeling that some of our more esoteric EVA suits may play a role in this kind of thing too.
Thu, 11/26/2009 - 19:54
#11
Avatar
Make a good EVA mission,if you are outside the ship collecting alien artefacts when BANG you find yourself in
some alien VR simulation.Then have to get out of it.
Sat, 11/28/2009 - 21:41
#12
VR....
Hmmm.. Not so sure about that, but perhaps humour us and suggest a scenario... :)
Mon, 11/30/2009 - 21:47
#13
Alien VR
Well I think the obverse one might be that The player might not realizes that they are in an alien Virtual reality of the solar system they are currently in Althought there should be some clues like the ship looking different,alien letters in the hud.Big one would be they could not
jump out the system they are in,it might be a dead system in the real game,but full of life in the Virtual reality,which could lead onto them interacting with any character they meet to find out how to get out and what happened to the aliens,which in turn could lead
to some special alien tec in the game.
posted in wrong place