Spacenoth: New Year's Alpha released!

[Maeglin Dubh]

Now that Spacenoth, or at least, a rudimentary form thereof, is available on the Campaign Server, I'd like to open the floor for anyone who's used it so far to offer feedback. Balancing, art, terrain, faction identity, anything and everything. Have a ball.

[Eleazar]

Now that Spacenoth, or at least, a rudimentary form thereof, is available on the Campaign Server, I'd like to open the floor for anyone who's used it so far to offer feedback. Balancing, art, terrain, faction identity, anything and everything. Have a ball.

I played a few levels.
Some of the art was rather nice: planets and stary background.

There are of course plenty of things that could be improved, but that one doesn't expect to be perfect at this early stage. My biggest complaint is the lack of variety in ships. The difference in the first two types i was given felt more like the difference that would be between 2 members of the same branch in mainline Wesnoth.

However, i wonder if it can really be as fun as wesnoth with so much less terrain variation. I counted 3, plus "castles" and "villages". Unless perhaps it's supposed to be strategicly more simple, and that's simply not my preference.

[Maeglin Dubh]

Terrain types are a work in progress.

The trees were built around the art, and are therefore not set in stone. The fighter theme is actually a result of us lacking the artwork necessary to create the larger ships this project had intended to base itself around.

For a better idea of the factions, try playing an MP game against yourself and take a look at the recruit lists.

[ILikeProgramming]

For some reason, I am unable to find Spacenoth on the campaign server.

[Elvish_Pillager]

- The Unknown Vessel's lasers do solid damage.
- the plasma guns on the Vendeeni Eagle and Warhawk do particle damage, but the plasma guns on the Vendeeni Bomber do solid damage. Also, they're all named differently ("plasma gun", "plasma guns", "Plasma guns")
- the Space Fighter violates RIPLIB!
- so does Pilot Max (since he has 70% in asteroids at level 1.)
- oh yeah, and the fights get boring quickly...

[Eleazar]

Terrain types are a work in progress.

Might i suggest asteroids be divided into 2 types of terrain, the current type and "dense asteroids"? "Desnse Asteroids" would provide more defense for some ships, and completely block the passage of larger, less manuverable ships.

Also you could have "deep" and "shallow" gravity wells. These would be regions surrounding planets where movement would be slowed, and defence decreased. Unfortunately gravity is invisible, so you'ld have to arbitrarily choose a couple colors. (explain this as a function of the ships HUDs) This would logically lead to 2 (or 3) types of planetary "villages", small 1 hex planets that don't have the gravitational movement penalty, and the multi-hex planets with a movement penalty.

You could also include stars with dangerous radiations fields, but that's more a campaign thing.

[SkeletonCrew]

I just played Spacenoth but I ran into some trouble. The text spoken by the unknown ships gives an utf8 error in the 1.2 branch and only an empty dialog is shown. The trunk crashes on this error. (but updated today).

The show enemy moves and the moves you can do yourself are hard (almost impossible) to see. (I can understand the reason why and why it might be hard to solve...)

I like the game and look forward to a new version.

[Maeglin Dubh]

Spacenoth Demo version 0.1.1 (011) is now on the Wesnoth campaign server.

We consider this to be the Alpha 1 Demo release, and look to expand from here. Several things still being worked on....

-Capital-scale units
-Increased terrain variation
-Faction balance (Particularly Vendeeni. They were designed as a capital faction before DP's work on fighter-scale ships became the norm, and the stats were carried over directly.)
-Development of one final faction for the Beta release, the Arakaan.

Comments and suggestions welcome, either here or at the Spacenoth forums.

Spacenoth

[Ragwortshire]

That was fun . I'm not registered on the other forums, so I might as well comment here.

- While the Planet/Village flag on your planets is a cool satellite thingy, it defaults back to a flag for enemy planets. Possibly this was intended, but I thought I'd mention it just in case.
- I would reduce the frequency of twinkle animations; at times it became quite disconcerting.

Other than that, I liked it. The high number of low-damage strikes made it quite an interesting variation, and the graphics looked pretty.

[Oreb]

That was fun . I'm not registered on the other forums, so I might as well comment here.

- While the Planet/Village flag on your planets is a cool satellite thingy, it defaults back to a flag for enemy planets. Possibly this was intended, but I thought I'd mention it just in case.

Well, the only way to change the flags for us so far, is to replace the current flag icons. It's the same with the crown.

I would reduce the frequency of twinkle animations; at times it became quite disconcerting.

Strange, I don't find it that at all.

[Maeglin Dubh]

According to initial reports, about 50 downloads have been made so far. Anyone else with comments?

I'll be waiting about a page, then cross-posting this to the Spacenoth forums, as well as linking to here, from there.

Jetryl, any art advice is appreciated.

And if any of the MP Devs could compare and contrast the existing MP factions, that would be incredible.

[ILikeProgramming]

- While the Planet/Village flag on your planets is a cool satellite thingy, it defaults back to a flag for enemy planets. Possibly this was intended, but I thought I'd mention it just in case.

The flag is supposed to be team-colored, but something's not right. (Dreampilot can fix it, so hopefully it'll be posted soon). As for now, it'll look horibble if all teams had green flags.

[BloodIssyl]

I played a couple games of it.

The first was on the second 1v1v1 map, me as the Iildarii, computer as Terrans, computer as Vendeeni.

I was winning throughout the game, but near the end the terran leader was weak so i atked him with a lvl 2 fighter and my leader (who was now a level 3 fighter). I ended up losing becuase the ordeal weakened my leader, and the Vendeeni computer just killed him with a grappler.

The second was a 1v1 on the 1v1 map of course, me as Vendeeni and computer as Space Pirates. Once again, i dominated throughout the game by stealing both of the center planets. I held his units off and built up my forces at an asteroid field outside his base, and then just bum rushed and atked his leader.

I like the game, but i dont like how there arent very many units (in the vendeeni and iildarii, at least) with special abilities. As Elvish Pillager said, the fights get boring quick....

Anyway, its well packaged and has GREAT art and a new terrain set which is very cool. I look forward to more maps.

I liked it, not a lot, but i liked it.

[ILikeProgramming]

That was my reaction as well when I was working on the first demo.

I think the main reason is lack of terrain variety. But I have no idea what new terrains should be or whether their are enough letters left for them.

[catwhowalksbyhimself]

So I guess you can't replace the regular terrains in just a single compaign or map?

Some terrain suggestions:

nebula
Gas Giant
Floating Debris--this could perhaps be created by the battles. Maybe not, but it would certainly be different. Say, a % chance of a dead craft changing space terrain to debris, based on the ship's size
Comet

Perhaps as a variety, there could be something other than planets as a resource. A mineral-rich asteroid, perhaps?

Some more far-out stuff

Energy webs--defensive networks left behind by an unknown race. Ships can move through it very slowly. Larger ships may even take some damage
Gravity wells--hard to move through, except for scout-type ships.
Space Crystals--A brittle substance Easy for big ships to smash right through, but little ships have problems with it.
Wormholes--throw ships to a different wormhole
Subspace corridors--Only certain ships can use these, but if a ship can, if can move VERY fast while inside one. Perhaps one race can have most of ships able to use them, giving it a very distinctive flavor, while other races would have only a few. The would act as normal space to all other ships.

It would be nice if some of this terrain could actually move around and do stuff. That would make it interesting. That would also require a separate install and fork of Wesnoth, which would be a good thing for this project, but that's probably a long way off.

Hope this post isn't complete rubbish.