Starfighter General News

I don't want to post this, but Unity has bugs that are preventing me from releasing the patch I wanted to release days ago. This has nothing to do with my code, or my ability, and I don't post things like this unless I know for a fact a problem is not on my end. This is not the first time a product has abysmally failed, I saw the Pentium Bug live. My MMO I was working on in the 90s, went from 486 to a 586 and rounding errors meant I went from a working game to a game I had to fix things by testing ranges. I was told all my life that the computer was never wrong, but it was wrong then.

Unity has a major major major problem with it's new "Scriptable Build Pipeline". Unity is trying to get creative, fancy and overly complicated in how to build standalones. The problem is... It no longer does the absolute most basic case: Just building a Windows.exe out of the Editor version. No lie, I spent 500 absolutely wasted hours trying to get standalones made because of these Unity Bugs in the "Scriptable Build Pipeline", it's not all of the user's fault, it is a complete and utter failure by Unity.

I'm encountering this problem again. I spent over 100 hours, yes 100 hours, just trying to get standalones working for you guys in the past two weeks. Unity has introduced several new bugs. I thought I was close to release today, but I am 10 hours into simply just making a standalone today and I'm exhausted. Unity has brought me to the brink of absolute human exhaustion because I want to get these patches out to you, but their software has so many errors. My code is immaculate. I've been coding & gaming non stop since 1981. My code works perfectly in the Editor. Somehow, Unity is unable to take the editor code and make it into a standalone .exe for you guys to play.

I'm going to beat this challenge. I'll be patching... It's just, I have no clue what is going through Unity's CEO's mind to think it is acceptable to make all these random experimental packages, yet throwing away very core functionality such as: Compile to a .exe standalone. It shouldn't have taken me 5 extra minutes to do this, but it's taken over 500 hours and counting... Despite these absurd challenges that face me from the bad decision making that tech leaders make, I will keep fighting on. I'm going to get you the MMO one patch at a time... It just happens that this patch is being delayed against my control.

It's tough too, this patch coming up allows you to acquire a Capital Ship schematic to start researching and building the Gatlisk, the one with the gatling guns on front.


Please pray for me,
Jim

Yo, we want to take the effect you see in space movies where stars whip past... Except we want them to be the proceedurally generated galaxy around you... When you see a blue star in one part in your sky box, it ends up in a different place after you warp to another sector... So you can navigate the stars just by sight and aiming towards systems you want to explore... We'll give different categories of drops and encounters with visual clues to stars, so you'll be kinda like exploring with intent...]

I don't think anyone's done this... See the position of a star, then make a graphic out of it, slap it on sky box, and in warp remove the skybox and shift everything around you. We want this as a very early tech.

Also I am working on: Rally-Zteam, which is a crossplatform server I'll rent to anyone making card games. It allows Steam logins on Android/iphone/xbox/psx/nintendo/linux/mac/windows and cross play... Rallys all the information together, and allows other indie devs to use it too.

Hello,

If I can't give you a game patch update each day, I'll give you an announcement. This announcement is announcing announcements coming soon! Heh, seriously tho, here's what is going on.

1) I had to walk 5 miles in 87 degree weather today to get my car, get back to my science job. I'm happy I have my suv back!

Some pending updates for the game in rough order:

A) We had to remove item drops from this patch. It was bugging on standalone. I want that in asap.
B) Once drops are in, we want some stations you can sell to for $ or credit.
C) Then we add the character creation tool.
D) More client side enemies you hallucinate when sanity is low.
E) Skybox backgrounds.
F) Better generated zones
G) Attach weapons. thrusters and decals at custom angles.
H) Chat box in
I) Process networking data tweaks
J) Quests and story line

I want a patch every week, or so many days or even once a day... But I want to announce something every day I don't patch.

There ain't much new in this foundation patch, but it allows us to add new stuff once every three days, or once every day if we feel spelunky.

Every tech for the MMO is doable, but we need to database in everything slowly.

In order to do this properly, we will radically change the universe you play in until release, but preserve your character progression. That's right, this alpha/beta whatever will NOT reset your character when final comes out and the updates after. Again: Your character will never be reset, but maybe roll back in case of server error. This character you have now, your base, stays with you as long as you play.

That said... You'll probably just want to check in each patch see what is changed and go "Hey neet", lets see what happens next... Eventually though, it will start getting good, and you'll play more. And if you think it's about to get good,

Again, this long awaited patch is boring! Hooray! Jim, you spent a year on getting a boring game out! What's with you! Well, its about long term progress. This is a solid architecture by which we make a space opera universe bigger than anything out there, easy to pick up, and always some new stuff to do and explore.

Enjoy the boring foundation patch!

,Jim

Hello,

Today, I hit a milestone of coding, one that I've been trying to make a MMO before they were known as MMO or even existed: 1992. I've been coding MMOs for more hours than anyone alive likely even though I have not released one I had working publicly. So I'm releasing the foundation code, which is the base of which a strongly architected MMO will be built upon.

Most game developers are fly by night slap dash coders who look for effect and cash in. As they try and update, they realize their code was not ready for it and they have trouble patching. They build akin to a house of cards on top of a stack of jello. I've been coding since I was 3, and I have been through that, and now I'm a grand masterful renaissance style software engineer and designer. Many who know me know me as the greatest of skill in playing video games #1 in a lot of video games I played world even prestigious ones. But not a lot of people know how much this translates into the insight of the core of making video games and what they are about... So I have a foundation... The foundation is humble, and so is my creator, but he's bestowed upon me some really outrageous creativity and software engineering skills. I'm bragging on my creator in hopes he helps me create this new universe.

That said... Your character progression will be saved. The dimensional alignment (change until the Prime Dimension is focused and stable) will have you go through strange realms. As you collect items and level up your character(s), your progression stays into live version. There is no reverting in this beta unless serious database corruptions happen.

This makes things exciting! It's like the old RPG that you could carry your character into the next... So you spend weeks grinding just so you're stronger for the next patch/update/world. We have this going here.

I'm going to give it to you straight: LOTS of features are stripped out. Your fun might be just you logging in, checking out the new world, collecting some gear and waiting for the next patch. And this should be fun since the space zones will be wild to look at, at least. I want to be pushing patches every day or about that... This is a target I know I'll stumble from time to time as life hits me, but this is the plan.

Expect the first world tomorrow. I could launch today, but I want to make some sort of zone that is pretty neet at least. All the working techs for the game are in as of this hour... I put about 5000-7000 hours into this game so far depending on metrics... And it is all investment for the long haul, a strong foundation, and you can build on it for a long time. I want this to be an MMO you play casually or hardcore for a lifetime, and for it to grow into the original vision and beyond.

Take care, and I hope to have a patch out tomorrow, assuming life doesn't hit. I could bust tail and get one out tonight, but I want to take it easy for a bit. Thanks for following along this long, shooting for the moon is fun, for even if you miss and get sent out to the stars, you're going really fast and its a rush!

,Jim