As I mentioned in the last post about Tech Trees, exploration will not only reveal the storyline and provide the player with new encounters, it will also provide a means of advancement via Research Points.
Research Points will come from the player doing and finding new things. Science and Science Fiction have both shown us that there's a lot of really cool things out in space. In Starcom: Nexus, celestial phenomena will not merely be cosmetic, but potentially offer research points as well as game play effects.
For example this week I added nebulae to the game,
a staple of science fiction space. All nebulae will reduce player (and enemy) detection abilities, which may be used to a tactical advantage. Some nebulae may have additional effects, like energy discharges.
 |
| Player admires a pretty sunset created by a mix of nebulae. |
 |
| The player fires lasers blindly in the direction of a recently spotted enemy. |
|
| Player jumps to a star at the edge of nebula. |
I like all these environmental enhancements you are designing here for exploration and such- it all fits well. I just hope that ship designs and entities in Nexus still feel the way Starcom did. I am typically skeptical towards people using aliens in universes because they are often shallowly designed with mere differences in appearance on a humanoid frame and color schemes to make them "unique" along with funny names and possibly some language in there too. Aliens never feel advanced enough in universes where they are so distant and beyond us, humans still find ways to evenly match them despite our technological inferiority. I don't know, aliens are difficult to do well, but there are some ones that I have liked quite a bit in sci-fi universes for their actually clever design. Halo did aliens well(humanity was being obliterated for a majority of the conflict), Mass Effect did them pretty well too, and there was a reason behind the technology being so similar and all between species. Still, humanoid frames. I find that human conflicts in space often don't make sense(You'd figure we'd all work together) but there can be story and lore behind it that makes it work and human conflict never fails at being engaging and interesting(Colony Wars is an example there). Makes diplomacy a real option to explore as well- I like humanity and one would think cooperation would greatly outmatch dissonance and war in advancing humanity in space. It doesn't seem like there is too much feedback that you get here. (My examples are rather well known, being popular titles and all but I am through and through as fan of imaginative things rather than a name on a box) Starcom was fun to me, one of the better flash space games out there in my opinion, and I'd really like it to be Starcom and not something unrecognizable. I'm rooting for this.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the reply! As you may have noticed, there haven't been many updates recently-- basically development stalled after some setbacks. While the game was progressing, I didn't have a clear demonstration of a full, fun experience. I don't want to start a Kickstarter until I'm 100% confident I can deliver a quality experience with the resources I have.
DeleteHopefully I will have a clearer path forward soon that will deliver a Starcom people will love.