Updates 11/27/13

It's been over a month since the last post, most of the work done since then has been mostly behind-the-scenes but there have been a few things that may be of note to players:

- Factories now have an industrial catalog terminal that allows you to purchase packages of materials and components to save you time and effort in exchange for cold hard cash.
- The pre-assembled models of modular chassis starships are almost all done (the five dreadnought variants have yet to be fitted) and are available for purchase.
- Life support modules are now mandatory for space travel without an EVA suit, non-chassis starships are fitted with one by default.
- Changes to the 'gear' command; all uncovered body parts are now displayed, weapon attacks show what damage type they do and weapon attacks show the duration of the attack.
- Improvising with a material now shows only one of each type of material and chooses the highest quality piece of a material available.
- Various vehicles got a speed increase.
- Battlegrounds got some attention- they now clean the battlefields properly, store people's equipment properly, last longer, had the loadouts changed, no longer trap you in the battleground forever and now no longer mysteriously eat people's equipment. They also got a helpfile too.
- Sector centers got a helpfile and some commands to help you round up and manage your civilians.
- Purchases made at NPC-constructed randomly stocked buildings will now pass half of the price of any items purchased there to the owner of the sector center on each daily income tick.
- Robots had some adjustments and new commands to allow players to make them perform actions which didn't work with robots.
- Wildlife (including robots) now have an 'attack' command to make the play as wildlife feature easier, no more having to wait for that muta-chicken to attack randomly.
- Large pirate bases got some new goodies inside them (including large cred-vaults and lockboxes which drop more and rarer gear) to make up for them being so large and awkward to travel through.
- The algorithm behind applying the 'superior' bonuses to weapons (the (!) suffix on weapon's name) has been fixed, it would previously only allow bonuses up to 'level' 4 and now allows bonuses up to 'level'6.
- Putting all of our armor, weapons or gadgets into a container now ignores the items you are currently wearing or wielding for sanity's sake.
- Starship parts and various other components were assigned relatively sane weights and values (in most cases the value is increased significantly, they have all mostly been described too.
- Dismantling buildings will now return the components to you, but will only return around 50% of components if you lack the Crude Planning skill.
- Bleeding is now also caused by bullet/slug shell damage.
- Crafting tools will now check for materials and components lying in the room the user is standing in, this makes the now quite hefty starship parts much easier to use when crafting and can save effort in some cases.

And for new content:

- Black Markets with randomised shops, the shop types are determine upon placement and can be one of six types: Implant, Munitions, Superior Equipment, Starships, Medical or Robots. All of these shop types provide at least some items, objects or vehicles which cannot be found elsewhere.
- Warp-class modular-chassis destroyers, frigates and dreadnoughts, which come pre-equipped with a warp drive as well as the standard weaponry, power, scanners and engines loadout for similar vessels.
- Burns, which are caused by thermal, laser or plasma damage. They will persist for five minutes and are slow to decay, they have a stacking stamina and aggression dice max detriment as well as a stacking reduction to dodge and defense rolls, they can be treated with fungal salve, burn salve or burn patches (in increasing order of effectiveness).
- Implants which provide either static bonuses, damage resistances, actions or the capacity to release a drug are now available from the black market, some require reroll points to install and most will be damaged every time you die and are likely to be left on your corpse when you die. Examples of implants are the Hack-pro implant which increases hacking rolls, the Subdermal impact dissipators which provide damage resistance to impacts and explosions, and the Hemostatsis coordinator implant which can be activate to release a drug that reduces bleeding quickly.
- Various new ammunition packages to be bought from black markets.
- A few new robots to be bought from black markets, a few new control pad commands for robots ('clear' to cancel actions as an example).
- A few new wildlife types to get eaten by.
- A few new artifacts.
- New food and drink items, all older food and drink items have been described and given values.
- New containers in large pirate bases which can drop some interesting equipment.
- Several new fish (some of which are pretty high-value).
- Some new jobs for achieving milestone goals (such as building a sector center or making your first warp jump).
- Food pills and donuts, both with random flavors.
- Throwing wild eggs at people splatters them with egg and reduces their clarity and to-hit.
- Some new modular-chassis starship components.

And one the side:

The player helpfiles available in-game can now be accessed via the website in the guides section, it includes all subjects currently written (and some unwritten).

No pictures so far this month, but if any good shots turn up then they'll be posted here.

Updates 10/22/13

* several bug fixes
* blueprint items now display valid module install targets and other detailed information when viewed from a crafting tool
* official mascot of the central complex mr jingles has been retired.  Replacement: Catbug
* Official HellMOO crossover extravaganza!:

* Midnight CST:

Bio-Engineering Preview

THE SOURCE

Life among the stars is strange & different, but most lifeforms are the kind with skin.  Skin or hide color determines the genetic sequence color you receive from a dead lifeform.  Different colors correspond to dice pools, health points, limbs, and general appearance of the creature created with bio-engineering.

Red strands: Increase the aggression dice pool of the engineered creature.
Green strands: Increase the maximum health of the engineered creature.

You can also recover rare strands of genetic material that come with a bonus and a drawback.

Mutagen-13 strand: Increase maximum health points by 10, decrease stamina dice pool by 1.
Radiated red strand: Increase aggression dice pool by 3, decrease maximum health points by 25.
Unlinked Q-Strand:  Dice pools are shuffled every 3 hours.

THE TOOLS

* Bio-Organic Synthesis Tool *

This advanced tool can blend, shred, analyze, and sequence genetic material.  It is used to craft advanced reagents, complex cellular scaffolds, and incubate the final results of bio-engineering.

The synthesis tool includes the SCRAPE command.  Scraping harvests a genetic sequence from a corpse, if one is available and in good condition.

THE PROCESS

To bio-engineer a creature, a player needs both a scaffolding and a set of reagents to manipulate a collection of genetic strands.  To create larger or more complex creatures, a larger scaffolding and extra reagents are required.  The genetic strands are combined with the scaffolding to create the prepared genetic sequence.  A complete genetic sequence can then be incubated via the synthesis tool.

THE RESULTS

The different colors of strands impact not only stats, but the appearance of the creature, such as size and weight, number and configuration of limbs, and maximum dodge and health.  These attributes, especially limbs and size, determine the available attacks the creature can use.

Creatures will follow and assist you until they die or are lost - if lost for too long, the creature will escape into the wild and possibly ruin the nearby ecosystem.

Updates 9/17/13

* New transit menu

Belated 08/20/13 Updates

Alright boys and gals, it's been a while since anything new's been up on here and as a result the updates have been piling up ready for publishing. Here goes:

- NPC pilot routines are now functional, applications for these routines are in the works.
- Civilians are no longer randomly aggressive towards their colony owner, or any members of the faction that owns their center (if a faction owns it).
- Faction reputation mechanics are now in place, even non-aggressive NPC factions will attack you on sight if you're below a threshold reputation (-1000 across the board right now), and aggressive ones won't attack you unprovoked (and less aggressive ones will be more forgiving) if you're above the upper threshold (1000 across the board.). All faction chapters under each name will handle the same reputations respectively, negative reputation also decays over time.
- Faction reputation tasks are now in place, the delivery task is available at the contract office which should be present next to each NPC faction's sector center. This task requires you to deliver an otherwise useless quest item to a certain member of the faction for rep and cash, if your rep overflows above the upper limit (5000) the overflowed amount is multiplied by five and added to the cash reward.
- Killing an NPC faction's members and destroying their buildings will reduce your reputation and likely make them aggressive towards you.
- Discounts at NPC faction owned shops for people with high positive reputation are in the works.
- The travel command is fully serialized and now relies on coordinates instead of room objects, all the AI processes (a LOT of processes, mind you) I had tied the travel command into have been changed as a result. Some features of travel have been polished to handle invalid or no input better.
- Several new NPC-constructed buildings including pawnbrokers, pharmacies and more.

- Gas giants and fuel scoops to harvest fuel from gas giants are now working, there's no gas giants in the current four systems but when the universe is exploded and reborn there will certainly be some.
- Dust cloud zones containing various materials in the form of coalesced bodies of dust are also working but not currently present.
- Numerous updates to starmaps including new symbols to account for new solar bodies and an updating mechanism which can account for the (relatively) rapid turnover of asteroids and gas/dust clouds, as well as any changes in solar systems.
- Solar system generation routines are much more flexible and allow for hugely variable solar system biomes
- Moon and planet hibernation routines are now more flexible when new planets or moons are introduced.
- Two new moon dungeon types, containing all-new hackable containers and stuff.
- The planet maps on the wayfar1444.com website such as that for FROG-1322 are now much more efficient and will load faster now.

- Several models of pre-made modular starship are in the works.
- A handful of new drugs, including a broad-spectrum vaccine for common alien diseases and three drugs for increasing dice pool and dice regeneration of each type of dice.
- Several new other medical items, including two new medical kits containing previously unused items and a coagulant injector for quickly reducing bleeding.
- A few new robot types.
- A new swimming/drowning mechanic in which you are allowed to spend roughly 180 seconds swimming in an ocean before beginning to drown. You will receive progressively higher damage when drowning for prolonged periods until it outdamages any possible healing. Wearing diving gear will maintain your swimming stamina until the gear is used up.
- Various updates to flavor items.
- Several descriptions of creatures and items amended.
- Trophies and trophy cabinets have been reworked and several new trophies are available.
- Refining processors now announce to their containing room when people add things, mass-add things and when they are finished processing.
- NPC indoor pathfinding is now more refined and NPCs no longer freak out or get stuck (as much).
- Slot machines (the house always wins)!

Oh and I made a tutorial/chargen too.

I didn't even document most of the more trivial bug fixes and changes, and I still need new wrists after writing this.
Keep tuned folks, there's more to come.

23/08/13 Edit: What is this? A moon in front of a spinning WY-1444?

Background stars and zooming function?!