NEaB Today

We can see other ships!

Fri, 03 Sep 2010 21:52:03 -0700

Long time since my last update. Well just to say I'm really a bit overloaded lately, anyhow I'm still working for Nebula Rider (as well as other things).

Nebula Rider can now (in our internal version) show other players on the maps, and you see them moving around. Yet you can't chat nor can't really interact with the others. At least it is a first step in the MMO direction. Other works have been done like a start to making the interface customizable (color wise yet). We will certainly offer customization and I was even thinking to let players decide where to place some stuff like maybe moving the HUD around or such.

You may ask now, when will we see all those? Well, the question is simple, the answer is not. Basically I'm reluctant to put an intermediate version which wouldn't offer that much more to you, anyhow I hope to update the preview version the coming week.

Along this, I'm talking with an artist to let you players have a customizable avatar face, (doable only once!) and that others will be able to see. And as the game may attract yet more people, I'm thinking about changing our old forum software for something new and maybe in house made. Reasons are that the current forums don't deal well with many sub categories, nor offer many features.

More and more flesh

Thu, 08 Jul 2010 07:37:14 -0700

Things are going forward, and more and more tools are reaching what we could consider as usable tool. For example, the mission browser now will show past and current missions, allows to switch from one mission to the other and more. Also the target system (green arrow) will try to point you at the next thing you must do. New mission types have been implemented as well, and other small things are slowly improving too. Well overall I start to be really pleased with this project.

Now, as things are reaching some maturity we must choose how we will design the stories, either full coded, or via some admin tools. We didn't choose it yet, but we may end up having some sort of mix. What's clear is that players will not be able to create quests, and this for the simple reason that if we want to offer a good story we can't simply mix 200 or more different story lines. Sad news for those hoping to work like they was doing it in NEaB but as one main complain was the story quality we must do something better for this new game.

BTW just to give an impression of the code size, our code is growing slowly about 300 lines per day... and we have now 17131 lines of code.

Note: our ETA for the beta shifted a bit (due to personal holidays), count still 2 months before you will have some sort of playable game.

Success!

Fri, 02 Jul 2010 00:46:37 -0700

Game state does indeed save! That means this huge show stopper has been bypassed, and we can now basically work on both the story and continue the work on the server side support. I'm really pleased this serialization issue has been fixed, as it would have been a real shame to not be able to save the game state and therefore stop the game due to something like that.

To celebrate this, I worked on more funny things like "system voice" which gives you hints about what happens (shields down, enemy destroyed etc...) however even something that simple in theory took some time as I encountered unexpected issues like lack of support for some MP3 settings. So we MUST use 44kHz sounds and not some less resource demanding one. Too bad.

Serialization

Tue, 29 Jun 2010 06:32:15 -0700

As we are moving forward, one mandatory feature is the persistence of the game, which means, you can leave the world, and when you come back you should return with all the items and stuff you had last time you played... or at least, without losing all the progression.

To do that, we need to "serialize" the game status, which means, we need to transform all the game objects into something we can send back to the server, and store it, and then when you enter again, load it back, and restore the status of the whole thing.

Sad news for Silverlight programmers, serialization in Silverlight is quite limited... and doesn't actually fit our needs. So which options remain? Well, not many besides coding all the required facilities ourselves. And I can assure you it's not fun.

Hopefully, after this huge work, we will be able to keep your game status (with missions, system ships and more), otherwise the game will be... a failure. But as our prototypes seem to demonstrate, we should be able to code it, it's just matter of time.

I can speak!

Thu, 10 Jun 2010 21:02:28 -0700

NebulaRider continues to gather most of my attention, we worked hard to make NebulaRider able to use00 multiple languages, and this without re-coding the game for each of those. So we will definitively support multiple languages at least as text.

Besides that a few additional changes have been made, for example system handled ships are able to avoid planet / star / asteroid collisions, the framework has been improved to facilitate the coding, and much more work.

Next step will be the implementation of the missions, and see how things works together.

Let me customize it please!

Wed, 02 Jun 2010 11:21:40 -0700

Game features slowly appear in our code. Slowly as it's never as fast as I would wish or actually as the potential beta tester would like. Anyhow here is how it goes:

An initial galaxy is there, populated with 100 different star systems. You can trade different resources between the space stations as not all will offer the same prices. The cockpit has been re-coded to simplify our tasks, however it's still not up to par with what we would wish for its final look. Finally, the framework for the ship customization started, and we will soon implement options in our space stations to buy / sell ship parts.

On the side things, a loading screen has been implemented despite our "client" only currently being 600Kb and the loading is extremely fast, and finally, we checked and tried to improve performance on Linux, even if it's not top speed, at least it should be playable in the end.

So be assured we work as fast as possible to come with something playable, but still our plans are to be somewhat ready for a beta in 2 months and a week.

A Shift

Fri, 14 May 2010 21:21:11 -0700

After 5 years, NEaB reached a point where all what I could think of as been already done. Some times in a good way, some times not so, however we do have so many features that it's simply overwhelming, both for new players as well well as old one and specially for those which should touch the code. Also, as project NEaB offer less and less "fun" for a developer, as too much as been already done, and the code is as messy as possible. Finally, even after all that work, what new players see is the "poor art" and disappear without even trying it really.

Now, honestly I did all I could with the technology used. I cannot speedup more the map, I cannot cache more the tiles, and for the art, we (Zorich, me and some others) worked as hard as possible with our own skills to bring a good compromise.

For all those reasons, it's time for me to switch a bit my time to something new. At least it will cleanup my mind. That doesn't mean I will kill NEaB nor that I may never return to work on it. Simply, currently I need a fresh new project.

So what is it? Well, the new project will be as different from NEaB as possible. And here is what I have in mind currently:
- It will be a space trader / fighter game.
- You may have missions
- You may travel inside a huge universe
- You may trade between space stations
- You may kill some bad guy
- You will see each other and maybe combat against other players
- Your ship will be under your control, where you can customize it as much as we will be able to code.
- The game will require Silverlight but will certainly work on Windows, Mac and quiet certainly on Linux as well.
- The game will be real time
- The game will be full graphic with sounds effects

Currently Iya and Nasrudin shown interest to help me with the new project, and we shall see how far we go. Be assured you NEaBian will be the first informed once we have a beta to test!

PvP is there and some other goodies

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 00:38:47 -0800

The first part of the PvP battles are in. And it seems to work so far. Yes it's odd but it works and I can assure you it wasn't a small thing to make. Now remains to code some scoring system and implement the clan PvP. Seems my todo will never decrease.

On the "other news" side, some drop downs have been replaced with a good chunk of JavaScript. The goal is to remove those ugly and barely usable drop downs we had with something which allows you to search inside and maybe offers some grouping for example for the items you have with you. Maybe it can be further improved but so far I don't know how.

On the map making side, I tried to make the smart draw automatically make the transitions between water and grass (without the need that you make the sand), but epically failed. Yes that happens.

Finally (for today post), as Croesy had to step down for a while, I had to find some backup as I simply cannot handle all by myself, and found great help in the persons of Kerrik, Jones and Zonneschijn. Many thanks to them to accept this work, as it will certainly help me concentrate more on the development side, and remove a bit of the work load produced by all the admin work.

A week with a huge surprise

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 23:25:54 -0800

This week was a special week. Why? Because LadiC sent out some of her own performance and we placed it on our beloved game. It wasn't something I was expecting, and she proposed herself to send me the music. I must say I was impressed and the music is just perfect for the game. I hope she enjoy the fact that many many players will enjoy and listen to her performances.

A little pause

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 22:40:21 -0800

From time to time I need to cool down, and this is one of those time. So for a little while (I believe until January) I will not work on the combat system and will quiet certainly not add new features to the game (beside a few tweaks here and there that's it).

Those down periods help me make up my mind, and regain all the mental energy which allow me to develop NEaB even after 5 years. Yes I know that some of you are really waiting on those changes, but well, allow me to be more lazy than usual at least from time to time.

On the other side, I do have a lot of side going project like the miniNEAB engine work and others... which means I'm not actually sleeping, but instead shifting my priorities for a little while.