AI in this game is what people tend to want after an ‘Empyrion-like’ survival experience and stability fixes across the board. This is the same camp I’m in. Honestly I don’t think this game has much room left for stability improvements in the current engine, so I don’t get too hung up on that, and if I want an Empyrion experience, I’ll try playing Empyrion again.
AI is one of those areas that could really open this game up even more. Having that kind of built in foundation for even slightly autonomous grids could also help in areas Keen hasn’t even considered.
There have been a lot of scripts and mods to help bring AI features and functionality into the game, but between modders not maintaining their mods through major updates, and others simply moving onto other things, there’s rarely a consistent long term solution that works for everyone or addresses every need.
For myself, I’d like grids I’m not piloting to be able to follow grids I am piloting, perform specific maneuvers, and for smaller AI grids to be able to launch and dock along precise paths. There have been scripts that attempted all of this, as well as some being worked on and maintained right now, but the technical problems can come in torrents. Making certain functionality a part of the base game should make scripts and mods involving AIs work better, more consistently, and with less of a performance impact.
However Keen goes about this, the modding community is going to carry that foundation as far as this game engine and the game’s API allows. That’s what I’m really excited about. First Keen releases something new and interesting, and then the modders take it to the next level. It’s great and I can’t wait to see how that manifests the next time around.
Community Guides
I’d love to try my hand at making mods or even scripts for the game, but admittedly that’s a bit beyond my skillset right now. The more guides, the better.
DLC Price Increase
The fact that all DLC in this game isn’t free makes a surprising number of players really mad for some reason, so seeing a 1 dollar price increase (justified by the increasing amount of content contained in those dlcs) is probably a bad sign. I can’t look at a Keen news update or watch a stream without someone whinging about these kinds of things.
You hate to see it.
Closing
I didn’t see any bad news here or anything worrying, so the amount of complaints I saw, both on the dev blog, and on Steam, were frustrating. I get that the game’s got plenty of problems, but hey, they’re hiring! It’s everyone’s chance to try and get in there and improve the game and get paid doing it.
That was a bit facetious, but I’m also being slightly serious. There are way more avenues these days to try and address problems in our favorite games, and we’ve got more direct lines of communication with them. People are using that to whinge constantly instead of being proactive and productive. It’s sad to see.
As far as I’m concerned, bring on the AI! If and when I understand things enough to contribute more than just grids and mechanical designs, I will.
I was only able to participate in the last hour of Clan Battles today and there were two particularly good matches I was in. As usual, taking naps in the afternoon is kind of useless for me. I need to remind myself never to bother.
Anyway, the first interesting match was one of those rare nail biter wins where there wasn’t a single ship left afloat on either side. The other one was more of a personal challenge with me stuck behind an island on Neighbors and being chain radared and hydroed for the first ten minutes of the game.
All I can say about that hilarity is that Daring is a very good DD and I’ll definitely be recording that replay for later.
That’s about all for now. I’ll try to get back to the normal pace of things this coming week.
Today’s another short preview of something we’re trying to finish before 0.9.0 update drops, a co-op mission!
I love it when Vermillion goes the extra mile. I’d love to be a part of a team like this … or even build one myself.
Anyway, to the actual post.
Co-op is something I’m looking forward to far more than anything else in the multiplayer updates. While we’re probably only going to have the one map/mission combo to play with a for a good while after the update, that’s a lot more than we were promised. Looks nice, too.
While it’s been a long wait, that update’s probably going to get here before we know it, so I’m hoping to find some time to finish up at least one of my M.A.S.S. units in time.
I’ve got a personal holiday coming up so there isn’t going to be much info going up over the next few days. I’ll still be posting like usual, just nothing beefy or otherwise time consuming.
That said, I’m still mainly focused on the following:
Outlining Artorius and Remnants
Lydia’s Golden Treasury Chapter 2 1st draft
Cosmo Messer workshop upload
For June the goal’s to make serious headway on all of these (and to complete the latter two).
I set aside a little every month for a few book purchases, and for this month I picked up another three.
Legacy of the Force #1 Betrayal by Aaron Allston
Legacy of the Force #2 Bloodlines by Karen Traviss
A Throne of Bones by Vox Day
Star Wars, like so many other megacorp IPs, is basically dead, but for me, it only makes the Legends continuity that much more attractive. That’s not to say everything in Legends is good, but Legends is more to me than just a treasure trove of ‘content’ ranging from okay to fantastic. Legends is the eventuality of a beloved franchise being constantly worked on for decades.
That’s worth delving deep into and trying to understand.
As for a Throne of Bones, I started listening to this gem as an audio book over a year ago, but I’m well out of that phase now. I just can’t listen to stories while I’m doing other things and enjoy it anymore. I don’t even enjoy reading stories off of computer screens or tablets unless it’s manga or something similarly slanted toward the artwork.
For novels, I just really want to have the thing in my hands and not glowing, you know?
At some point I’ll start on these and get back to the blog about them.
