This week’s update is going to again continue discussing changes to the Nexus. It’s also going to discuss a few new features for the new Ally AI type announced last week as well a some more changes to mission pop-up dialogs.
As I announced last week, I’ve been working on a new AI type known as Ally. From the base concept, I’ve expanded Allies quite a bit. One of the biggest changes was the addition of Faction Allies. Faction Allies are like regular allied AI but with a few special exceptions. Firstly, they’re aligned with either the Earthforce Cadets or Volcom Pirates (for those of you who don’t remember, the faction you choose from when you create a new character). Secondly, a faction ally will still attack players of the opposing faction but will never attack players of the same faction. Thirdly, a faction ally will only assist players of the same faction. Finally, a non-attackable faction ally can still be attacked by players with the opposing faction.
This leads to some really interesting stuff we can do in the Nexus now. For example, we are adding a roaming Cadet and a roaming Volcom that are both faction allies to the Nexus. These allies will automatically help players out! They’ll no only help you kill mission AI, but maybe even more useful, take care of those pesky flies outside Janitor’s Outpost. It also let me rework Whiskey Outpost so that you can never shoot ships on the players ‘side’ — but still allows players from either faction to participate in the missions at the same time! This fixes what was perhaps the single biggest issue with trying to do an epic space battle mission — so you can be sure that you will see some more of them in the future.
I’ve also quite a few other changes to improve mission flow through the Nexus; the biggest of which right now is the removal of Cadet Academy. During testing it was noticed that nothing really happens in Cadet Academy at all. There are some drone training missions, which are kind of lame by the time you get to them but really, all it served as was a mission hub and an extra jump to get places. So it’s been removed. We’ve renamed the initial galaxy on the Cadet side to Cadet Academy, and Earthforce Trading Outpost to just Earthforce Outpost now. This enables us to have a very nice mission flow where players get guided from their starting galaxy into the Nexus with no backtracking.
As for the pop-up dialogs that I am sure everyone hates at this point (due to the bug this week)! I’ve made a few more changes to the way they work. Firstly, the annoying space at the top that used to only read ‘MISSION AGENT’ has been revamped. Instead of the static image, that area now contains the title of the mission. This has let me move that title out of the text box on the dialog. I’ve also changed the animator that ‘types out’ text for the pop ups. You can now click on it to instantly finish the mission text. This will be extremely useful for those who don’t feel like waiting. The typing text animator also now autoscrolls if the text is too long for the text box to make it easier to read.
That’s it for this week’s update! Progress on the Nexus has been great so far and I’ll be back again next week with another look at what’s going on with the revamp! As always, questions, comments and other feedback are appreciated!
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