Void Runner - Bringing Construct to its knees...

We have been making a TON of progress, and I don't think I could spam the boards any harder, so I've created a website and a chatroom to post our progress on. The website is here.

I've set up an IRC channel on irc.esper.net, in channel #voidrunner. Those of you unfamiliar with IRC can use this link to get to it.

All future progress will be discussed and/or shown in these two locations, I will refrain from posting in this thread anymore save to answer questions.

Hi, i just started making a rougelike and wondered where you learned how to use seeded random. Do you have any guide or so to recommend where i can learn more about how to use it?

I'm very impressed and inspired by this game and i'm looking forward to the finnished product.

Jonatan

Great work on the game. Looking forward to playing it

We have been making a TON of progress, and I don't think I could spam the boards any harder, so I've created a website and a chatroom to post our progress on. The website is here.

I've set up an IRC channel on irc.esper.net, in channel #voidrunner. Those of you unfamiliar with IRC can use this link to get to it.

All future progress will be discussed and/or shown in these two locations, I will refrain from posting in this thread anymore save to answer questions.

Somehow I've missed this thread up until now. That video's fascinating, the way the ship's constructed, etc. Also you're talking about air scrubbers. Was any inspiration taken from the game Space Station 13?

Bump! Any progress in the last couple months. Hopefully you guys are still working on it.

Yeah we had a bump in progress due to some personal stuff going on, and our progress was so intense that we didn't want to burn out. We're back.

I've found a simple way to model atmospherics in enclosed spaces, to model decompression and stuff. I'm going to be implementing the atmospherics system over the next few days to get back into the groove of things.

We are also trying to flesh out the data system of the ships, which is turning out to sound like an extremely simplified version of visual scripting systems, like you'd find in Garry's Mod Wiremod, Minecraft's redstone, Engine of War (look it up), or UDK Kismet.

Right now I'm working with this system conceptually - bear with me for a moment. Every object in the ship has a data module under it. Modules come in three forms. Data sources, data processes, and data yields. Sources are where data is "harvested" for lack of a better word. A microphone would be a data source. A data yield would be where data is utilized practically, like a speaker. A data process is where data is modified in some way.

Modules have a series of I/O nodes around the outside of them that you hook the wires to. Data comes in many different types: Audio, Video, Binary (on/off, for switches and stuff), Sensory (further splits off into sensor types), and Diagnostic (further splits off into ship components). The I/O nodes around a module are colored and shaped differently to show the player what data type they require.

That's it. That's the system. Here are some examples of it in use. A microphone has one node: an audio output. A speaker has one node: an audio input. Hook those together, and you have an intercom. An audio detector is a process module, it has an audio input, and a BINARY output. If it detects noise, it will output a true. An alarm has a binary input and a audio ouput. When true, it makes a lot of noise. Using these four objects, you hook a microphone to an audio detector to an alarm to a speaker...and you have an alarm that will sound when noise is detected by the microphone.

Gravimetric sensor has a gravimetric sensor data output node, which you connect to a gravimetric sensor input node on a gravimetric analyzer. The analyzer has a video output, which you connect to a video input on a terminal. Now you have a terminal that displays a map of planets and stars.

We're still ironing it out, but that is where we're at.

Ever since the line object came out I've been dying to try a node system.

-line(pv) = on

--line set start point sprite image point (a) x,y

blah blah bla

Sounds pretty cool, keep it up.

Arsonide, that sounds like something that could result in two things: A great game, or an abandoned game. The second one seems to be the most likely, but I'm hoping for the first one.

I'm practicing "agile development", I guess. These aren't grandiose long term plans, they are what I am actively working on/completing. After internals (air, power, data) are done, sometime shortly after, I'm going to make another build available. Power is done, air is almost done, planning data.

Also we've been working on this game for three years already, so abandonment is unlikely. Perhaps pauses, but it's kind of a dream project.

I hope you're right, because I'm in the same situation as you! Have been working on my dream project for about three years, but rarely have enough time. I've never felt like I'm going to abandon it even if it sometimes goes months without me touching it.

<img src="http://content.screencast.com/users/Arsonide/folders/Jing/media/9caa1314-4c76-4056-97e0-1b15584b9a62/2010-11-18_0507.png">

This is a pretty simple version of data in its infancy. I am hooking up a fan to a diagnostic console. In the future the console will show if the fan is on or off, which is useful when you have 20-30 fans running that all require frequent repairs and maintenance. We decided to simplify the data system a bit, more for the player than anything. Wireless connections will open up the possibility of hijacking enemy signals and messing with them, as well as other possibilities.

This is looking so awesome Arsonide, I want to play it! Love where you're planning to take the gameplay. I've also been making heavy use of your perlin plugin in my project, its a ton of fun. Thanks a lot for sharing it!

Spent the last day or so redoing the generic walls and floor tiles we had. They now look a lot better. Was pretty rough getting this to play nice with the generator.

<img src="http://content.screencast.com/users/Arsonide/folders/Jing/media/fe032cf8-6809-4c30-bc13-01ab2d4a64ba/2010-11-23_0601.png">

The ship internals are in a beta state, we're going to spend time working on adding machines for a while, things like the engines, artificial gravity generators, crafting equipment...stuff like that. We can't really flush out the data system until we have more "things" to work with. But speaking of gravity - I have made the player a physics object, and made gravity affect him. Good times were had bouncing around the ship in zero-g.

We've been working on generating persistent ship traffic. (Procedural AI ships that stick around in a sector for a while, and then move on.) Been having some trouble generating the external model of the ship, but work is progressing slowly.

I am replying now because we have had an internal discussion on whether we want to move to Construct 2 or not. We are one of the few large projects that would be impacted by the transition. Since C2 will have no backwards compatibility, we would have to restart from scratch - however, a lot of the code concepts we are more familiar with now, and all of the art is complete...so it would likely be quicker. That is the downside, but the upside is obvious...with the universal formats being used in Construct 2, the Linux crowd will show up and start pumping out some sick plugins, which could REALLY help Void Runner in the long run. Of course, the downside is pretty huge for a two man team - we were fairly disappointed with the decision to drop 1.0 after so much discussion of it. We had no compulsion to migrate up to 2.0, as we assumed all the quirks of 0.9x would be worked out at some point, but obviously things have changed.

Our decision was to keep a close eye on how the community surrounding Construct 2 evolves, and to familiarize ourselves with the program itself, but to stick with Construct 0.92 for the moment. It's the version we've been using since we started. If the community flourishes, we will begin a painful migration process...if not, we won't.

can I get the cap for this in construct classic? thanks I'd like to learn from your project