So last week Robert finished up his coding and handed the ST code back to me.  Unfortunately, I’ve been under the weather, and made no progress so far.  The good news – I’m finally feeling better, so I’ll be working tonight.  Be prepared, soon, Space won’t be so lonely.

Now that you know Beta 1 is coming out, here is a preview for the many ways the game can end in Solar Trader. I’m including a screenshot with the results of my games over yesterday and today. Yes, I played 9 games, but as you see – it didn’t take long, I didn’t make it very far in any of them.

The city game can be tricky. Some times bad events happen (mugged, ran away, didn’t get back in time to get my ship out of dock and got impounded).

Some times poor choices are made (robbing the free trader of his fuel chit seemed like a good idea at the time, but when the cop team showed up, I was sent straight to jail).

Some times to avoid one bad end (got off earth with a cargo without getting impounded for delays), you take a risky chance. My cargo was a FedUp mission from Earth to Uranus. Range of my ship 175 – range to Uranus 175. I almost made it – I did my orbital insertion to Uranus with enough fuel to land, enough power to last 4 more days, but no air. For 3 days I was in orbit trying to line up on the sub-orbital platform with the air gauge on zero. I needed 2 more turns and I would have made it. Alas, the end was Aphix (Asphyxiation)

There were also lots of suicides – generally after asteroid strikes that damage the ship and morale at the same time, though one was due to a solar flare that hit me just as I was doing my deceleration burns – had to burn or I’d miss the planet, but 3 days in the radiation were just too much…

And if you think this is hard, just remember, right now space is empty. After Beta 1 is released and as you are play-testing, development will continue on adding non-player spaceships to the solar system. Some will be friendly (space tugs to tow you back to port), but most will be unfriendly (MaoCorp freighters taking pot shots at you if you get too close), and some will be downright hostile (pirates and assassins).

Click on the picture to see it clearly:

Robert’s post announcing Pits of Seth 2 doesn’t do it justice.  He came up with a number of very clever additions that make it much nicer than the original.  Here are some of what I like the best:

1. Sound – It adds a lot to the atmosphere of the game.
2. New room types – POS had rooms and corridors (stairs and traps too), but they all looked alike.  Now there are special room areas (shown by wide corridors) that have a unique feel.  Explore all the levels to find them all…
3. No instant death – A quick tweak to prevent that unlucky roll that takes you from perfectly healthy to perfectly dead in one blow.
4. New game modes (runs) – The original approach was renamed campaign game and quick one run through the dungeon modes were added.  Multiple modes each with their own special characters (elf, dwarf, wizard) are available in this mode.
5. New start screen – Yes it’s just a pretty picture, but what a pretty picture.  And cool opening music too.
6. Reduced distraction view – POS2 automatically hides the Excel tool bars and ribbons, letting you focus on the game and almost forget that it is really being done in Excel.

Give it a try here

I’m not sure why people kept signing up to be subscribers on our site – they all looked to me  like automated hack attacks.   All subscriber users have been deleted and the site settings changed to not allow folks to register automatically.

If you are a real person and want to register, let me know via a comment on this post and I’d be happy to add you in.

Well, I’m supposed to be working on Solar Trader, but Robert sent me his latest draft of Pits of Seth 2 and asked me to try it out…  It’s fun.  If you liked the original, you’ll love the new version.  If not, you’ll like it, but may not appreciate the differences.

It’s close to being ready to be posted.   I found some minor issues that Robert will be tweaking and then I think that’ll be up soon.

Be warned, it’s addictive.  Once you start, you want to go just a bit further.  Now if only I can stop playing POS2, I’ll go back to SolarTrader and try to finish my next round of work there.

After an extended hiatus from coding Solar Trader, I’m back on the job.  Tonight I’m working on how to place objects given some general parameters – how far from a reference point – sunward, belt ward, outward, etc…

Once this is done, I’ll go back to working on the space encounters.   Trust me, be grateful that the current version doesn’t have pirates chasing you.  Space is dangerous enough to navigate without enemy ships pursuing and attacking you.

As Robert’s last post mentioned, we are close to ready to release the alpha version of Solar Trader .  So as a teaser, I’ve removed the password from the Solar Trader page.  Now everyone can take a look at the description and a bit of the artwork.  Check it out here.