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Hey guys, in case anyone missed the news post or the Star Sonata 2 trailer, Star Sonata 2 beta sign-ups are open, and you can see the Beta trailer video on YouTube here: http://youtu.be/rEmwDZvXByg?hd=1 I would love to here any comments or questions about the trailer or the game if you have any. |
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Star Sonata: Beta Sign Ups Begin for Star Sonata 2
News Discussion « General Discussion 8/29/11 8:32:34 PM
Your character and all your ships carry over between universes. Players "pack up" their bases and redeploy them in the new universe which is re-randomized every 3-4 months. The universe reset is one of the most exciting aspects of the game -- it's like an Oklahoma land rush -- and keeps things from getting stale. |
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Star Sonata: Beta Sign Ups Begin for Star Sonata 2
News Discussion « General Discussion 8/29/11 6:02:32 PM
I'm not sure that I agree with that. One of the major features of Star Sonata is that there is a huge universe, much of which is randomly generated, and players may colonize and build bases almost wherever they want. It is up to the players to decide where to build, how to defend it, and where to set their robotic trade slave ships to run trade routes. All of this is entirely non-linear, unscripted, and open to players and their entrepreneurial instincts. In the current Star Sonata main server, there are 9161 different galaxies, a significant percent of which is open to building, which yeilds emergent politics, wars, and economic realities. If you look up "sandbox game" in Wikipedia, you get this article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_world), and I think it's a little bit narrow to say that because players may have an artificial restriction in one facet, that the game is not open in style. Yes, Star Sonata does have classes, but the 36 "class" related skills are a minority of the 127 total skills to be found in the game, and an even smaller minority of the skills that any individual player will train, since the class skills are distict in that they are mutually exclusive from each other. There are still nearly infinite combinations of different class skills with the other skills. |
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Star Sonata: Beta Sign Ups Begin for Star Sonata 2
News Discussion « General Discussion 8/29/11 1:45:57 PM
You can control the tilt of the camera and put it in top-down mode if you'd like. While it is *slightly* easier to control yourself in pure top-down mode, it looks a lot better at an angle and you can see a little bit more, so I personally prefer keeping the camera tilted. It plays just like the old arcade game Asteroids, or Star Control 2 and games like that. |
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We added paid name changes a little while ago after not having it for years, and it's proved to be quite popular. |
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I would suggest some sort of freemium model rather than straight up donations. A lot of times, players will view buying extras or bonuses in a freemium game as donating and do so partially because they want to support the game and partially to get the bonus or whatever. It would help to encourage the "donations" and also reward those who donate. It is a bit more work, since you have to somehow integrate the payments with your game, but I would guess that the increase in donations/payments would make it worth it. |
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We're using Irrlicht for Star Sonata 2, and it's working well so far. I chose it because it seemed the easiest to mod for our own purposes. I chose Irrlicht over Torque and Ogre, but not too familiar with Unity. |
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Star Sonata 2 is finally getting close to being finished. We're "sort of" in alpha right now, with about 30 people having access to the SS2 test server and more to be added to move into the full alpha. Here are some YouTube links to the latest SS2 vids: |
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For anyone who had problems with lag before, I just want you all to know that we've upgraded our server to use Amazon's cloud computing and the lag is really a thing of the past. We're smoking on an 8 core instance with our database split out three ways and distributed. Also, we're getting closer to releasing Star Sonata 2. You can see information and videos about it here: www.starsonata2.com
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No, once you pay and go over level 20, you have to be a current subscriber to play. Otherwise someone could pay for a month, power level up to level 100 and then stay as a free-to-play level 100 forever. |
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There are a lot of things to do while level 20 and under. We have some people who have played free for 3 years. |
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It is $9.95 per *MONTH*, not week, and you can also subscribe with a buy 3 months, get the 4th free deal. |
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It costs $9.95 per month or you can choose a sign up deal that gives you 4 months for the price of 3. |
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Yeah, I think our game play is excellent. Now we have hired a contractor to make a new front end with better graphics. After all, flashy graphics are just a technical challenge and anyone can make good graphics if they put in the time. Game play is the really tough part to get right. |
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Go Hellspreader. =) |
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It's because the OP posted a link on our forum, I believe. |
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Sci-Fi and Alternate Character Slot Ideas
MMORPG Game Concepts « Developers Corner 7/27/07 7:02:31 AM
Interesting idea. One thing to watch out for is a game mechanic that requires people to spend time on several alts in order to have a competitive main or crew. At that point, the alts wouldn't really be alts, it would just be that your crew is really the same as a character in any other game. |
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lol - that's how it is now, but none of the players at all want universe resets, so we end up having to dictate arbitrary resets instead of letting one team create the reset as originally designed.
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Communal survival is an interesting idea.
In my game, we have to have periodic universe resets to clear out the universe and we re-randomize a new one. It keeps things fresh and interesting, but the players generally dislike it because they all have economies and bases that they've set up and have already explored the map. One thing I was thinking about adding is alien invasions, where each day or two there is a big spawn of aliens who try to kill everything they see and make their way to the center of the universe. If they make it, then the universe would be reset, which the players want to fight, but each successive spawn will be more powerful than the last so the aliens are destined to win eventually. The thought is that the players will band together to fight each incoming wave to try to preserve the universe. |
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"In the real world, money represents work. I work x amount of hours for y amount of dollars. Therfore, 1 dollar is worth some measure of time spent working."
This is false. Marx was wrong, no reason to repeat his mistakes. Only if everyone is equally productive does money represent work. The fact is that people are not. Money represents production and the value of production is strictly contextual and can not be measured in hours worked or costs involved. If I need a particular service, I am willing to trade a certain amount of my time (in the form of money I've accumulated) in exchange for that service, but I don't care how long it takes another person to perform it. I am ambivolent between hiring one guy who will take 10 hours or another who will take 5 or yet another who is very smart and can do it in 10 minutes because of some invention of his. What matters is production, and all I care about are the results, not the sweat that went into it. "heavy inflation is inevietable in anything other than the most simplistic and heavily regulated representations of an economy" I don't think this is the case. Didn't UO have heavy deflation as goods became more and more rare? I believe the inflation is more dependent on a closed economy vs. a faucet-sink economy. But even in a faucet-sink economy, if there are enough faucets and enough sinks, then an equalibrium in prices and money supply should be reached eventually. Anyway, do you really think people want to play a mmorpg where mere survival is the goal? That is what we do outside the game. In the game, we want to explore, socialize, kill, or become all powerful and achieve an efficacy we can't in the normal world. |
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