Player Starting Positions

Hey Crew,

I need some feedback and ideas on player start positions.

I just added a new GUI screen that lets the player choose his/her starting position in the game. The screen pops up the first time the player enters the game and asks for a choice of starting position. Each start position has an HTML description file associated. (We needed the feature to give beta testers a way to jump forward to test specific feature sets.)

This start screen also gives us a way of creating customized starts for the player. For instance, the player could begin with a full complement of mining related ships and and enough cash to begin prospecting and mining.

Each setup can be very different. For instance, we can vary the faction standings of the player. So in one start you could begin in the Sultanate and be in conflict with the Leung Empire and in another you could be a Leung Empire privateer and be in conflict with the Sultanate. Each start also begins with inventory equipment, a player starting ship, a selection of wingmen (or none) and starting location. So almost everything could be customized.

One thing that is missing is a way of setting the player tone and expectations for each individual start. We don't have the resources to build a start cutscene. But what we could do open the Library screen to a short story that sets the tone. The story could have some hyper links to help files describing the career that each start is meant to represent.

I don't propose we do this for the USpace release. But I wanted to get you thinking about where in the cluster you would like to see some starting positions.

Desperate Times, Desperate Measures
Deep in the farthest reaches of uncharted territory, you were flying escort for a prospector. Upon discovery of one of the largest ore-laden asteroids you've ever seen, the prospector suddenly turned on you; before you could even turn to face his ship, a withering hail of PBC fire damaged your vessel's fusion ring and ruptured your capsule fuel tank. Seeing your vessel drift helplessly, the prospector left you for dead and absconded with your personal effects that you had stored aboard his larger vessel. For days you laboured to fix your damaged core, until with a rewarding hum the vessel began to sustain fusion. You breathed deeply as the fresh air began flowing through your small vessel once again, but the hot wash of pure, indomitable rage quickly set in. You were still stranded. You needed fuel to get out of the system, and without a credit to your name, you recalled the ancient words of a Lost Earth gangster: you can get more with a kind word and a gun than you can get with a kind word alone.

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"Important Note to Purchasers: This is a 100% matter product; in the unlikely event that this merchandise should contact antimatter in any form, a catastrophic explosion will result."

That's the idea! Aside from starting easier positions, it would also be fun to start in harder positions. On the run from the law. Etc.

One feature, easy to code, would be to add a unique string of email and news for each start position. We added this generically in Unstable Space, but there could be unique items for each start. Hot4Darmat had asked if we could not put some "context sensitive" email items in the game, such as "when the player arrives in system X send email Y". Which is not hard to do. With only a little effort, each start position could be rather unique. And then the game would be much more replayable.

That's a great intro. These can be churned out quickly from my end as well. How many do you think is a reasonable number? One from each major faction? How many different career path options do you think is reasonable? Let me slap together a few different things and send them in...and you can take it from there.

Hey GranpaTrout, I wonder whether we couldn't enlarge the video you are showing in the start screen? It would be cool if it could fill the background behind the intro text. Then we could have a looping scene based on the starting position currently selected. Would look snazzy. Likely impossible to get working though.

And that is a cool intro. I look forward to seeing what you can come up with Hot4Darmat.

Hot4: Hang on before spending any time writing intro stories. I think we need some work first to figure out exactly which starts we want to support. And then what each story should convey.

It might be worthwhile to use the start stories to teach people a little bit about how to play the showcased roll. (50% story 50% tutorial). Which might make the stories longer, but much more meaningful.

Here are a few other ideas worth discussing. Ship names. The names of the ships that get placed at the start and the player ship can be customized. So it would be possible to make each start set of ships actually match the story items. (Much like the movie of young cal drops you into the game with young cal).

I might be able to customize the names of the crew as well. So essentially, you could be playing the characters in a story.


Cambragol: The video is a side effect. It is the spinning planets that are behind the main menu. There is no code control over them. Sometimes they show up behind the menus.

Starting a cutscene is very easy. I added code that will play a specified cutscene for a start if the cutscene is specified. Not that we have the resources to build cutscenes, but it is there.

The other option is that we embed screenshots or other art into the intro story. That worked very well for the web posted stories.