SPM development update 25/03/2014

[Nacho84]

Hello all,

I hope you're well. As promised, here's an update on the development of the next patch for SPM (version 0.7.16). As I mentioned in my last report, we're working on several major features, one of which is the addition of more mission configurations for existing manned programs (Mercury, Gemini and Apollo) and the addition of the manned Soviet programs. We've also modified the list of goals by adding a set of "high-level generic goals", such as 'Man in Space', 'Extra-Vehicular Activity', 'Three Crew spacecraft' and 'Extended Duration III'. These high-level goals will be indirectly achieved by more specific goals (e.g., achieving the 'Mercury orbital flight' goal automatically grants you the 'Man in orbit' generic goal, which in turn grants you the 'Man in space' generic goal). The generic goals will become useful in the 'race the Moon' campaigns in order to determine which faction achieves a 'first' and, thus, gets granted the most prestige.

My original plan was to release a subset of the aforementioned missions in the next update. This requires the creation of several support assets: mission data scripts (the ones that determine which mission components, flight controllers and astronauts are involved for every mission step, along with the % of involvement for each), string files (the ones that define the name of every mission step), mission steps diagrams (the ones that depict a high level view of the mission with buttons for each mission step) and modifications to the master spreadsheet (addition of new missions components and goals, tweaks to the goals dependencies, etc).

At the end of last week, I decided it would be better if we release all the new manned missions as part of 0.7.16, so that your feedback is more meaningful and we can start iterating (and hopefully arriving!) at the final values in the spreadsheet. Today we've finished with the mission data scripts, the string files and the mission steps diagrams (we have a set of internal tools in order to check for consistency, and all the test passed! [:)] ). In the next few days I'll be tweaking the spreadsheet and then begin some internal testing in order to address any major bugs before releasing the patch to the early adopters. I'll post another update at the end of the weekend to let you know how everything is going.

Regarding the other areas: Mauricio is working on the models and renders for the Soviet missions. At the moment, he's working on the launch pad and the environment for the Soyuz rocket. Boris is working on the 3D models for the american space complex which will be used in the 'race to the Moon' campaign. This means the game will ship with three unique complexes: GSA, Soviet and American! [:)] We'll post some screenshots of the american space complex soon.

Last but not least, some members of the community are also giving us a big hand with some background tasks, such as researching information on the soviet manned missions, creating entries for the Buzz-opedia and tweaking the mission animation files in order to improve the existing missions. Once all the major changes in the code are in place, I'm sure we'll be able to release updates more frequently, like we used to do during the first stages of the EAP. Bear with us, there's a lot of foundation work to do, but once that is over everything starts going smoother.

Feel free to ask any questions and I'll try to address them as soon as I can.

Cheers,

[wolf14455]

Nice, cant wait for the new build.
Good work. [:)]
cheers

[kentcol]

If there's a way I might have missed it. Any way to keep going if you don't meet your goal by the goal date? Maybe put a penalty in effect but allow you to keep going. A lot of wasted effort if the game ends there.

[jjknap]

Thanks for the update!

Any plans to look into the suggestions concerning the Mission control screen?

[Nacho84]

ORIGINAL: kentcol

If there's a way I might have missed it. Any way to keep going if you don't meet your goal by the goal date? Maybe put a penalty in effect but allow you to keep going. A lot of wasted effort if the game ends there.

Accomplishment of the long term goal cannot be 'negotiated', so to speak. It's analogue to JFK's commitment to land a man on the Moon before the end of the decade: it needs to be done and there's no way around that. Short term goals, however, can be missed at the risk of a penalty loss. We believe this provides the best challenge, since you'll need to decide which short term goals can be 'sacrificed' in case you cannot accomplish all of them.

Cheers,

[Nacho84]

ORIGINAL: jjknap

Thanks for the update!

Any plans to look into the suggestions concerning the Mission control screen?

It's in the list of tasks, yes. We'll get to that at some point, but we need to get the basics out of the way first [:)]

Cheers,