Space Clouds

Calypso Update 4.21.14

Much like the last few weeks, this week’s update will continue detailing changes to the Nexus as well as a few new mission features that will be coming with the early game changes.

nexus_volcomtesting

I did a lot of work with the the mission system this week after some initial testing. The end result was two new mission goals that should make life a lot easier for newer players. The first of these is the new Proximity Goal. With this, content developers can specify any object in any galaxy as a location that players need to fly to in order to progress their mission. It will then require the player to be within a specified distance of that object and will put a mission marker above it. This pretty much lets us do ‘hey, fly over there and check out this nebula’ type missions that we couldn’t do properly before. An example of this is in the Fly Dungeon. Instead of vague mission text that says ‘go find the Maggot’, I instead gave a proximity goal to explore the sun he spawns near. When a player gets near, it completes that mission, auto-opens the mission to kill the maggot and spawns him. This hopefully illustrates how useful this goal will be for low level content. It lets us guide new players around galaxies to better help avoid confusion

The second new mission feature is a new mission goal called a Motion Goal. This essentially lets us check for thrust, break or turn actions that the player does and was added so we can further slim down the tutorial bot. Instead of getting the W, A, S, D key information from the tutorial bot when you start a new player, you’ll now get it from a mission. This makes it a lot easier for us to time the actual starting missions (killing a Volcom attacker if you’re a cadet, or proving yourself to the Volcom if you’re a pirate). It also is a little less confusing since you’re getting your information from one source (the mission dialog) instead of three (mission dialog, mission tracker and tutorial bot). Along with this I’ve added a new feature to auto-completing and auto-starting missions that lets us set a delay between the completion of the previous and start of the next mission. This gives the player a little time to breathe between the missions in the movement tutorial missions (and lets us give them mission completion text). Overall, I think the new mission based tutorial will play a lot better and be a lot less confusing for new players.

nexus_rattyrats

Finally, a few of the bosses in the Nexus are going to be seeing some changes, specifically, Rattie Moe and Vorian the Rogue. Both of them were extremely difficult for new players. Vorian was extremely confusing, so he will no longer jump around the galaxy and force you to find him. It was a good boss design, but not for a level 15 player. Instead he will do a new super item translocate. This keeps him moving around, but not in a way that can get players lost! Rattie Moe just did way too much damage for a new player to handle. That’s being significantly toned down.  Between these two though, perhaps most importantly, Rattie Moe is finally getting the robotic-space-rat squeak he deserves. Even doing less damage he’s more terrifying than ever!

So that’s it for this week’s update. I’ll be back again with more progress on the Nexus (and a lot closer to completed). As always, feel free to post questions, comments or suggestions in the forums!

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