Looks fantastic. New features are great and I have nothing to critizise at all!
I'm sure we all have a million of ideas and great features we'd like to see implemented.
But after all I think for now Josh will just need to continue work.

Personally I'm dreaming of using all the proceduralism to build certain universes. And then build handmade storylines etc for them.
You could do everything... Freespace... fighting Shivans... continuation of Freelancer story... original stories... everything!

Awesome!

Really nice improvments. And I really like the fresh take on mining.

And I agree, the Ice needs work. But I don't think they need to be more transparant, if anything less transparancy!
I think they should be more white, relfective and, defused. Think of Icebergs. Like on the south and northpole. That's how large ice-chunks look. Small ones can be transparrant.
The ice could also "glow" more when light goes through them. And there should be a bit more noice/variance in the texture. Expecially when you see them up close.
And I don't know how I feel about mixing an asteroid field with an Ice field...

Have you though about having prospector-drones with small weapons on them? Could make mining in dangerous and competitive areas very interesting. And would also make for a nice dogfight tactic.
You could carpet an asteroid with armed prospectors and then just circle around it while your enemy chases you. The roid would protect your from the enemys weapons, whilst he gets hammered with hundreds of small lasers.

I'm presumably going to still use the automated signature catalog, but the scanner display is definitely far more useful now!

It now has the potential for different resolutions (smaller bars, bigger bars) as well as narrower / wider focus without any need to adapt the display for the bars, and will be easier to remember for most people.


As for the sticky drones: Do you think that you could make it so that your game can detect the smallest linear distance, 2D surface and 3D area(s) a "colored" / "id tagged" group of them encloses - maybe allowing an arbitrary number of colors / tags for each type of drone?

It sounds to me like that would be an interesting way to disable a drive on a ship, or mine asteroids, if it is done right. Just surround the relevant area or volume of either with drones, maybe adhering to some maximum distance constraints indicated by coloured lines between drones, and trigger the drones when they're all set up.

It'd be a pretty versatile functionality: For example, if multiple drones be fired in a pattern and possibly even home in on nearby points on their own, they also could deploy a trap "wall" of sorts in an asteroid field, placed so that -say- it goes active almost directly behind your ship where you will be in 1.5 seconds of flying straight ahead.

Or you could make bulk mining areas for asteroids be determined by deployable stations that enclose an area (maybe those wouldn't be "drones" fired from far away, but really something you deploy... but the mechanism would use the same area detection and maybe the same visuals to indicate whether stations are linked and which area they're active in).

Or... you know, we might just definine highways or matter transport networks with loading/unloading areas or something like that this way.

Victor Tombs wrote:This looked more like Freelancer than Freelancer does

Now that is just what I wanted to hear from you Victor

DynamixBoon wrote:Any chance of some nice hi-res images of the current game. My desktop background needs an update

You can click the ones on the KS post to get high-res version!

Poper than the Pope himself. Not bad, kid, not bad...

Best Update Yet Josh!

I have two suggestions based on the video:

1. Inefficient mining without mining drones & progression
-The mining drones indicate where juicy high-density pockets of ore can be found. Perhaps this has already been implemented/is planned, but It makes sense that an asteroid with a strong signal would also have some mean density from which ore can be steadily mined at slow rate. The higher the mean density, the faster the transfer rate.
-The ability to quickly locate and extract the pockets should be something that the player has to work towards as progression.

2. Cargo hold capacity vs. inefficiency
-All of the mined ore simply disappearing into space after hitting 100% cargo hold capacity doesn't really make that much sense to me if you are performing some sort of volumetric compression. I think that it makes more sense to have increased compression inefficiency (ore loss) as you squeeze more mass in. For example, your cargo hold could have a "rated capacity" under which you could obtain ore without inefficiency. However, once you surpass your rated capacity, you would still be allowed to mine, but the mining would not be as efficient.
[A formula could be: at 0-100% rated capacity, 100% efficient; at >100% rated capacity, (rated_capacity/current_cargo_mass)^n; --- as you go farther above the rated capacity, you get less and less efficient, if n=3, current_cargo_mass=200% of your rated capacity, then your ore gathering efficiency is (1/2)^3 = (1/8) = 12.5%. Better technological variance could result in a lower n]

Okay so I've loved following the DevBlogs on Youtube and this game looks seriously amazing so I finally decided to make an account on the forum. So with the preface that it may have been discussed and decided upon before, one of the things I wanted to comment on/suggest about this week's update is that maybe instead of your cargo mass affecting your ship's top speed, I think it would make more sense if it affected its acceleration and maneuverability. I think this could be implemented in a way that in combat you would still be at just as much a disadvantage as if you had a top speed cap because it still wouldn't be as practical to maneuver around at such high speeds when being perused. Pursuers would still be able to catch up to you more easily if they were in a lighter ship, but if you were lucky you could still escape after hitting the actual speed cap at a distance from your enemy. Not saying that for a game like this you wouldn't still need a speed cap for gameplay purposes, but I think this might be something to consider.

Anyway loving the game and looking forward to new updates!

Great first post! Welcome to the forum!

Ashenraynor wrote:Cargo hold capacity vs. inefficiency
-All of the mined ore simply disappearing into space after hitting 100% cargo hold capacity doesn't really make that much sense to me if you are performing some sort of volumetric compression. I think that it makes more sense to have increased compression inefficiency (ore loss) as you squeeze more mass in. For example, your cargo hold could have a "rated capacity" under which you could obtain ore without inefficiency. However, once you surpass your rated capacity, you would still be allowed to mine, but the mining would not be as efficient.
[A formula could be: at 0-100% rated capacity, 100% efficient; at >100% rated capacity, (rated_capacity/current_cargo_mass)^n; --- as you go farther above the rated capacity, you get less and less efficient, if n=3, current_cargo_mass=200% of your rated capacity, then your ore gathering efficiency is (1/2)^3 = (1/8) = 12.5%. Better technological variance could result in a lower n]

This is a really nice idea, in my opinion. +50

The only problem is, how are "large" objects handled? Say I have a cargo capacity of 200 kg, and I'm trying to tractor the survivors of a wreck that are floating in space into my hold, each of them at 100 kg. I can fit two just fine, but what happens when I try to fit a third? If I did manage to fit a third, I would be at 150% of rated capacity, so with n=3 I would have a "gathering efficiency" of (2/3)^3 = 29.6%. Does this mean there's a 70.4% chance that the third survivor dies if I try to compress them into my hold? Also, is the survivor dead or alive before I observe my cargohold?

Edit: Changed maths because I can't maths.

Just_Ice_au wrote:Indeed.

The ship design, still placeholder as it may be, was remarkably better than anything we've seen before.

Shiny!

This.

After seeing the latest update, I'm tempted to make comparisons with EVE Online, graphics wise. There is a certain similarity in the ice fields, and like in this development update, EVE's stations sometimes have weird but very good looking shapes

JoshParnell wrote:

Victor Tombs wrote:This looked more like Freelancer than Freelancer does

Now that is just what I wanted to hear from you Victor

I am only sorry it has been such a wait for you Josh. Believe me I try really hard to turn your words into images but I can't do it. The end of the month video is the only way I can assimilate all the pieces gleaned from your dev logs and comments.

I am absolutely impressed.

I can not express just how much this update blew me away.

The scanner is perfect. The mining, is perfect. The prospecting is awesome. The ice, even better. And the new ship/station design was more than icing on the cake.

My *only* minor complaint is that when you took your ship up close to an ice-teroid, that you couldn't see the reflection of the ship, but that's minor and I'm guessing it will be coming.

Another question, since we know space is cold, would it be possible to mine the ice-teroids for hydrogen or any other solid forms of some gases? It almost seems like a waste to have such pretty things there that I can't do anything with.

But man, like Victor said, this is looking more like Freelancer than Freelancer did. Kudos. WELL worth the wait.

Congrats Josh! Great update, well worth the YouTube hassle.

I agree with all of the sentiments, especially Victor's "looks more like Freelancer than Freelancer"(I think it may be the ship, which is very reminicent of a Hammerhead in which I spent many a pleasant hour!). It's shaping up incredibly nicely.

At this point, I think I'm sold on all parts of the game that are visible - and for those bits that aren't yet visible, I'm totally confident that Josh is going to deliver. The only uncertainty remaining is AI, which is incredibly difficult to convey through a video.

I hope that through March we're going to see AI-focused dev logs. Because if the AI is half decent, LT is clearly going to be something really special.

Oh yeah, one more thing I thought of... We need search lights. The lighting is perfect, but when you're on the dark side of an asteroid, dynamic lighting is the last piece.

DWMagus wrote:Oh yeah, one more thing I thought of... We need search lights. The lighting is perfect, but when you're on the dark side of an asteroid, dynamic lighting is the last piece.

+1

Though I'm hoping that when Josh implements windows and generic ship lighting, that might suffice to give a nice, warm glow as you approach an asteroid.