At long last the aptly named “Significantly Insignificant” update is live! Whew.
So I ran it through randomtest.exe about 600 times, plus quicktest.exe once. Everything passed, so there shouldn’t be any errors. That said, I haven’t play-tested it myself yet so, please please please let me know if it breaks!!
To those of you who are new to this: Hi! Welcome! Thanks for clicking on my forum thread!
Why are you running away? No- Wait! I have Demo link! Demo Link!!!
The Battle of Hoag’s Object (or BOHO for short) is a sci-fi space adventure game which pits you, a rebel alliance agent against an evil empire (totally not a cliche, I swear).
The unique thing about this game is that you will (eventually) be able to travel to any planet of any star system in an entire galaxy limited solely by my own heavily-abused imagination!
Please give it a try, I worked way too hard for what little I have!
For those who have seen this forum before: Hi! Welcome back! I promise I’m not dead yet and neither is this game!
Here’s a quick summary of what’s been changed since the last update in case you haven’t been keeping up with the thread recently:
Added a level/difficulty scaling system to keep the challenge consistent throughout the whole game. (You won’t really notice this at all right now). ((hence the update title))
Changed Ship-Combat a bit: Your ship now only has one weapon for you to maintain, all ships have 100 health, and ship armor reduces a percentage of any damage received during combat (currently only affects the Gamon-Class ship).
Added an option to render the stat-heaviness of the game largely obsolete. This is for people who really only care about narrative: it doesn’t get rid of stats and stat-checks, but it does allow you to complete the entire game using only level-1 gear. (This option affects nothing right now since you only have level-1 gear for the demo) ((again hence the update title))
The demo mission (Reavers of Lima) is now complete in full. Both the “good” and “evil” paths are fully written out and ready to be played! (This is like, the only thing any of you should really care about lol)
Besides all that, a few tiny tweaks, typo-fixes, and bug-squashes. Nothing notable.
As always, thank you so much for playing and please give some feedback if you have any! Constructive criticism very much welcome! (Just, ya know… don’t be too mean lol)
I actually am more excited about storymode-lite since I’m not a big fan of game overs (though I dunno if they were actually going to be game overs or just mission failure).
So, Death would normally mean game-over, however at any time where you die, I allow you to “load” a previous checkpoint so that you don’t have to start over completely. These checkpoints are placed specifically so that you are able to leave and come back with better equipment (well, for when I actually write-in better equipment) so you can have another, more successful go at it.
Mission-fails are when you screw up but don’t actually die. This will affect the story, but it won’t lock you into a game-over. Failing can be just as interesting as succeeding! Narratively speaking, anyway… no one likes failing.
Yeah, pretty much. I mean I could maybe code a no-death version in but, honestly I feel like that would take away the threat of loss from the game. I mean if you can never “lose” you don’t really have to try that hard to win, you know?
Edit: it’s not so much “easier”, you just don’t have to worry about what equipment you have as much. You do still have to be conscious of what stats your gear does give, whether you choose to change it or not.
Well, I’m always trying to win. But sometimes I just don’t really know what to do in order to win, or don’t know whether I actually can be successful with my current stats or not.
Though, perhaps I could try to fail the prologue mission and see what happens…
EDIT: Ok, I think I prefer the outcome of not failing the prologue mission.
I try to keep it fairly transparent what you need to do. I’m thinking “Reader Mode” may also include very obvious hints at what choice uses what stats.
Well I did a quick skim and already found one glaring bug, so that has been fixed, along with a couple more typos and a much smaller bug. I think I’ll be going to bed now… hopefully no other issues are there.
So I am dumb and, one of my bugs actually cut-off randomtest from getting to 60% of the evil path’s lines (literally the only stuff I wanted it to test) so… it’s currently broken. But I will fix it first thing tomorrow.
I didn’t even notice since I was not even trying to test the evil path, lol. Nearly every time I play a soldier MC he’s somehow incredibly kind, selfless, and honestly rather naive, despite being very stoic and focused due to having seen everything already.
I say more stuff on the ship. You’ve given us indicators that we’re supposed to be able to do stuff on the ship, but there isn’t really much to do. Some options are locked, and the ones that aren’t don’t actually have much content yet. I like that we can visit Max in medical if we save him, but the only thing we can do there is talk to the doctor, and not actually to Max, even though he overhears us. It just seems odd for that to be the only interaction. You also tell us where Roy is, but we can’t talk to Roy yet so that seems like a strange thing to indicate. Especially since you don’t indicate that we can do any of things that actually are possible.
The options there are “locked” because they just haven’t been fleshed-out yet. I leave them visible as more of an indication that “this is a thing I’m working on”
There absolutely will be more interactions with the crew (especially Max, who will be recruitable as a squad-member in the future)!
I just haven’t gotten to it yet.
The poll is meant as a question of what I should work on first: everything will be added in eventually!
As promised, work has begun on the ship’s features.
I just finished adding some content for Roy, and have uploaded the changes to Dashingdon.
It’s still fairly limited, but a lot of dialogue will be dependent on the progression of the story, which, since there’s only one mission… well, you get the idea.
Roy does have some different things to say depending on how you dealt with the Reavers. You need to finish the whole mission before you can ask him about it, however.
That said, if you take a “break” at the checkpoint of the “evil” path (you’ll know it when you see it), he should have a comment about your decision to be “evil” when you go to him.
Also worth noting, if you want to learn/review info about different characters, there’s a “people” tab in the databank (stats menu) that will give some background info on any significant people you meet.
More content inbound soon.
Who would you prefer to see more dialogue for next?
Celia Delanos now has a place on the ship. Complete with a small assortment of dialogue options, not unlike what was added earlier today for Roy.
Just FYI you actually need to recruit her first. Doing so is a bit expensive though so, after you’ve given the game at least one run-through, I recommend using the “developer console” to give yourself enough cash to actually hire her so you can actually get to her new stuffs.
I think my next target to work on will be Max. After that, probably Penelope.
Argyle will take some time to consider. I haven’t put as much thought into his story; he’s just not that involved in the game as a character.
Besides all that, the only other things I have planned for the ship as of now is the captain’s cabin, a communications room so you can take your primary missions directly from Rebel command (and debrief with them afterwards), and some fun interactions between the different companions, which will play out at random times (really they’re activated via a somewhat complex random number generator subroutine that occurs every time you click on the galaxy map).
Once that’s been established enough, I think it’s time for a new mission.
Now, I have a mission that’s already very-well outlined and pretty much ready to start being written immediately. The catch is, it’s the official “end-of-demo” -last part of the main story I’m willing to share- mission. So, even though writing it means I’ll have a new mission out sooner, it also means I’d kinda be spoiling the end of the demo relatively early. So… poll time again?
Would you guys prefer I write that mission, or get started on one that isn’t so close to the limit of the demo’s content? Keeping in mind, starting a completely new mission means it’ll take longer before I have an update out to feature it, as opposed to the one I already have outlined.
Write the mission you have already outlined
Write a completely different mission that isn’t so close to the end of the demo’s content
