My co-developer, Jesse, and I love coop games. Playing as a team is far more fun than playing against a game by yourself. If you win, you BOTH win. Nobody loses (unless, of course, you both lose 🙂 ).

Twenty years ago, we did this with Sim City and Railroad Typcoon, sending each other the saved game (via modem) and playing a proscribed lenght of time before sending it back. Nothing like being handed a city to manage where the nuclear plant just cracked open.

Anyway, I had the idea last week to do this with Solar Trader. I’d start the game, go into the spaceport, pick up a cargo (and suffer my little adventures). Then I’d lift ship and make my run. If I made it to port (and didn’t land with the gear up or antenna out or simply just crash), I’d toggle open the hanger bay door and…

Send the game to him.

And then he’d work a cycle and send it back.

I noticed that on Facebook, I have a new entry and a new data file waiting for me. This is great. It’s like live fiction, where what happens happens to you. So tonight I’ll be playing my round.

You can follow our efforts on the GRID SIMS FACEBOOK PAGE. Who knows – if you ask nice, we might even let you coop with us.

And I think our next game (likely After the Fall, will have live coop built in.

After all, a friendship is too good to waste.

Been working on Solar Trader recently. Got all of Jesse’s new location setting code plastered over my adhoc placement routines used for the various space missions. After all, it stands to reason that most astoriod missions will be “beltward” and that if “Christ on a Comet” is going to direct you to one of those icy balls, it will be one they’ve been tracking on its whip around the sun, one coming roughly this way and ready to receive lambs. Also, FedUp missions are better timed, and if you step lively, you can actually run inner system delivery missions now.

Further improvements – there is now a lockable fannypack available (to ward off pickpockets) and reflective longjohns (to lower the deadlyness of rooftop laser-snipers). And since snipers are drawn by your freetrader fame, so will those with cargos that need prompt shipping and “no questions asked”.

We’re going to playtest for about a week (I’ve got one specific bug I’m chasing) and then we’re going to be putting NPC shipping into play. And that, I figure, will make it a whole new solar system.

Keep watching this space for details!