Psi Rangers (was: PSG)

[dsheroh]

OK, it's not quite ready to show yet, but my current project (in a format shamelessly stolen from another post):

Name: Psi Rangers
Genre: Space trading/combat to start, with broader economic play, exploration, and possibly empire-building to eventually be added
Theme: Spaceships teleporting through the void

Description: Players start out as psychic adepts, recently graduated from training on their homeworlds and given ships which allow them to "shift" through space to engage in trade (or piracy).  There are six fields of psychic ability (translocation (shifting), psychokinesis, ergokinesis, biokinesis, telepathy, and clairsentience) and, as adepts, player characters are capable of using all six.  Eventually, players will be able to hire NPC psychic savants whose abilities are limited to only one or two fields to join their crew.

In addition to the psi-ships, there are also NPC mundane ships around, but they serve primarily as high-capacity freighters and, in the event of war, heavy assault fleets; as they are limited by the speed of light and the energy requirements of reaction drives, they can't begin to approach the speed or flexibility of psi-ships.  On the other hand, however, large concentrations of mass interfere with psi abilities, so psi-ships are much smaller.  In military terms, think of mundane ships as conventional troops, while psi-ships are special forces.

As game development continues and player characters become more established in the game world, they will be able to go beyond simple raiding and trading to construct or purchase manufacturing facilities, space stations, or even entire planets.  NPC ships will be available to be hired or purchased to carry out trade or combat missions on the player characters' behalf and player characters will be able to explore new star systems and colonize new worlds.  Ultimately, I hope to have the ability for players to found their own political entities (call them "empires" if you like) through economics, exploration, conquest, or any combination of the three.

Time: Primary game play is continuous time, or you could call it "tick-based" with one-second ticks if you want to be picky about it, with turn-based combat resolution.  Currently, travel between a planet and its moon takes approximately five minutes, interplanetary trips take fifteen to twenty minutes, and combat rounds are ten seconds.  I haven't really gotten anyone else's feedback on game pacing, but, based on my personal impressions, I'm considering increasing general travel times, while reducing combat rounds to five seconds.

Game Status: Movement, combat, and buying/selling trade goods are all up and running, however both movement and combat are slated for overhauls which will amount to near-complete rewrites of both:

- The current movement system will be replaced with a more generic out-of-combat action queue and, in the process, be reworked to take translocation skill into account and to better reflect the game's backstory.  (The current movement implementation was written before I added the psychic element, so it's geared more for abstractly modeling conventional spaceflight.)

- Although I like the current combat system in principle and it does produce results that I like, the process of getting there feels very slow and non-interactive.  I'll be replacing it with something based loosely on a card game I wrote many years ago which I still feel to have been the most fun and engaging game I've ever created.  I expect it to be a major improvement, even if it will be a fair bit of work to craft.

The next feature coming up on my agenda, though, is resource production.  Trade orders are currently appearing randomly in the various markets and I need to replace that with having each planet/moon produce and consume trade goods, placing orders based on their supply levels.


Feb 12 Edit:  I've decided to call the game "Psi Rangers" and updated this post to reflect this rather than using the "PSG" placeholder name.

[Harkins]

Time: Primary game play is continuous time, or you could call it "tick-based" with one-second ticks if you want to be picky about it, with turn-based combat resolution.  Currently, travel between a planet and its moon takes approximately five minutes, interplanetary trips take fifteen to twenty minutes, and combat rounds are ten seconds.  I haven't really gotten anyone else's feedback on game pacing, but, based on my personal impressions, I'm considering increasing general travel times, while reducing combat rounds to five seconds.

The best advice I can give is that you think about what you want a play session to look like. If travel time is a few minutes, players are encouraged to start moving, leave a browser tab open, and check back in a while. Nice for office workers. If travel time is measured in hours, people will start a move and return to the game in a few hours. Nice for students and the busy.

[dsheroh]

The best advice I can give is that you think about what you want a play session to look like. If travel time is a few minutes, players are encouraged to start moving, leave a browser tab open, and check back in a while. Nice for office workers. If travel time is measured in hours, people will start a move and return to the game in a few hours. Nice for students and the busy.

Good point.  "Set course, leave the tab open, check back in a bit" is what I've been doing while testing thus far and is pretty much what I was going for.

The main reason I've been considering increasing travel times is so that people attacked in transit will have more time to be notified that they're being intercepted (optional email notification, possibly also Twitter/Facebook notification options down the line) and get back on to participate in the battle instead of having to rely on the combat AI to fight on their behalf and, logically, the time required to intercept someone should be related to the regular travel times.  On the other hand, though, players can't be attacked when in port and making it take longer to get there means they'd be vulnerable for longer, so I suppose it balances out in the end.

I also like the idea of trips being quick enough that people would stay on and chat, browse markets to plan their next trade run, browse player profiles for potential targets, etc.  So, yeah, probably best to leave it about where it is, at least until someone complains about it.

[dsheroh]

As of yesterday, Psi Rangers is now open as a public alpha at http://psi-rangers.com/ with instant username-only trial account registration.  The current version is 0.006-002, to give you an idea of how complete it is(n't), but you can fly around the solar system, trading and fighting.

Any and all feedback is welcome, but you might want to take a look at the roadmap first to see what I've already got planned.  Most significantly, I know that the combat can be kind of slow and boring, but I'll be rewriting it into something completely different for v0.007, so keep that in mind if you have any combat-related comments.  (In very broad terms, you could describe the new combat system as something like a card game, using 'cards' generated each round based on your character's skills.)

[Chris]

As a player the biggest personal disappointment was the theme, I would love classic space ships without "magic" psi much more. I could accept psi level of Dune's guild navigators, but no more. Purely personal, but feedback is feedback

A quick layout enchancement would be changing link colours to non standard ones (this alone would greatly increase the game gorgeousness).

Eventually, players will be able to hire NPC psychic savants

Give a standard, weak one at the start. Do not keep the goodies after later.

As game development continues and player characters become more established in the game world, they will be able to go beyond simple raiding and trading to construct or purchase manufacturing facilities, space stations, or even entire planets.

Why not allowing stations at the beginning? Or maybe even discarding combat and making stations and economic growth the focus of the game?

(In very broad terms, you could describe the new combat system as something like a card game, using 'cards' generated each round based on your character's skills.)

Sounds leghtly and unplayable to me. I have a bad experiences with such systems and would stay away from it...

Register button would be nice This trial-thing is really troublesome (since you can not login again), I think you went far overborad for "quick access", it does not feel like trying if you know yoiur progress will be lost immediately you close the browser...

The ingame interface feels OK and is very intuitive, stick to it.

Map is very needed (could be txt links), just so you click parent/child/sibling and traverse them. EDIT: found it, I suggest making it more visible.

Why there are no price estimate (like "this selling price is high/low/average")? Very few non conosle games use this and it is a real waste since it really helps new players (and it is not unfair advantage since old players know all the prices by heart so it does not matter to them).

I do not know where to travel to buy cheap and sell high the initial cargo. You want to have this info spoonfeeded to new players Just one or two recommended routes...

[dsheroh]

As a player the biggest personal disappointment was the theme, I would love classic space ships without "magic" psi much more. I could accept psi level of Dune's guild navigators, but no more. Purely personal, but feedback is feedback

Classic spaceships, probably using a variation on inertialess drives for FTL, was my original idea, but I got stuck on what to call it and, while brainstorming for ideas, I remembered a hex-grid game I had in high school called something generic like StarForce which had psychic ships doing interstellar teleports (it's where I got the term "shift" from as well) and doing combat primarily by trying to "randomize" (teleport to a random location) each other.  It's something that I haven't seen done before other than in that one specific (and obscure) game, so I decided to go with that rather than Yet Another Classic Space Game.

Even so, I'm trying to keep it from being purely "magic" psi also, by cooking up some pseudoscientific gobbledygook about reshaping the fabric of spacetime to put behind it, I just haven't written any of that up yet.  And it will have effects on the game, it won't just be backstory - things like reducing the effectiveness of your psi abilities when you're in a more massive ship or carrying a heavier load of cargo, making it easier to shift to a location where someone else is already shifting, etc.

A quick layout enchancement would be changing link colours to non standard ones (this alone would greatly increase the game gorgeousness).

Yeah, true.  I'm primarily concerned with functionality at this point, but that would be quick and easy to change and I do have to admit that the bright orange followed links all over the screen are pretty garish.

Eventually, players will be able to hire NPC psychic savants

Give a standard, weak one at the start. Do not keep the goodies after later.

As game development continues and player characters become more established in the game world, they will be able to go beyond simple raiding and trading to construct or purchase manufacturing facilities, space stations, or even entire planets.

Why not allowing stations at the beginning?

Both of those "eventually"s are in the sense of "I'll eventually write the code to make it possible".  Once that code is written, I do intend for those things to be available immediately (or at least as soon as players can scrape the credits together to afford them).

Or maybe even discarding combat and making stations and economic growth the focus of the game?

I've mentioned to you before that I'm an old Avalon Hill grognard and complexity doesn't faze me in the least, but it goes beyond that...  Whether it's online or a tabletop RPG or whatever else, I'm not so much a game designer or GM as I am a world builder.  With Psi Rangers, I don't want to decide what players should focus on or design a specific experience for them, but rather to create a rich enough setting (backed by flexible enough software) so that players who want to trade can trade, those who want to fight can fight, and those who want to focus on building up industry, exploring new systems, or colonizing worlds can do those things.

Besides, what's a space trading game without piracy? 

(In very broad terms, you could describe the new combat system as something like a card game, using 'cards' generated each round based on your character's skills.)

Sounds leghtly and unplayable to me. I have a bad experiences with such systems and would stay away from it...

I've done it before with a swordfighting system I called "Biting Blades" back in the early 90s.  I've revisited it a few times, but never finished an implementation after the original one, mainly because I kept loading on too many extras.  That first one, though, was easily the most engaging game I've ever created.

More to the point, I find the current Psi Rangers combat system to be lengthy (I've often seen battles against the AI run 10 minutes or longer) and boring (most of that 10 minutes is spent just watching stats decrement and occasionally switching to a different tactic with a better current skill rating).  The new system will involve more player choice and skill, making it (at least in theory) more interesting, and I expect that fights will be over faster as well (I'm a lot more comfortable with dealing out large amounts of damage in response to a player choice than I am with doing so when it's a purely random function that the player has little or no control over).

Register button would be nice This trial-thing is really troublesome (since you can not login again), I think you went far overborad for "quick access", it does not feel like trying if you know yoiur progress will be lost immediately you close the browser...

My session cookies never expire, so you'll still be logged in when you re-open the browser. 

More seriously, that's another "I'm going to do it, I just haven't yet" thing.  It's on The List for v0.007.  I'll still have the uber-quick trial accounts, but "Log Out" on the sidebar will be replaced with "Register" when you're on a trial account.

The ingame interface feels OK and is very intuitive, stick to it.

Good to hear!  I wasn't sure whether it actually worked as-is or if it just seemed that way to me because I wrote it.

Map is very needed (could be txt links), just so you click parent/child/sibling and traverse them. EDIT: found it, I suggest making it more visible.

Yeah, the entire Navigation screen could probably stand to be redesigned.

Why there are no price estimate (like "this selling price is high/low/average")? Very few non conosle games use this and it is a real waste since it really helps new players (and it is not unfair advantage since old players know all the prices by heart so it does not matter to them).

I do not know where to travel to buy cheap and sell high the initial cargo. You want to have this info spoonfeeded to new players Just one or two recommended routes...

Anywhere that trade goods are listed, clicking their names will bring up a list of the five best places to buy (lowest prices) or sell (highest prices) that item.  So the information is there, I just haven't made it obvious enough how to find it.

Thanks for the feedback!  I'll be adding some things to my to-do list based on it.

[Nox]

I like the magic idea, at least it will be from some part different from the millions of space games.... I would vote for exactly the opposite -> use this element as much as possible

Layout could use some work (I know it's alpha) - for example the left upper sections is currently just a mess and needs to be cleaned, separated, better layouted

What is cumet? I have now access to just a basic web dictionary and it remains silent

Chris

Why not allowing stations at the beginning?

So that players have something to look for?

[dsheroh]

Layout could use some work (I know it's alpha) - for example the left upper sections is currently just a mess and needs to be cleaned, separated, better layouted

Any particular suggestions?  I probably won't have the content in that section changing when players are in combat after that's rewritten (I expect to need a separate "Tactical" screen to provide room for displaying the cards), but I'm not sure of how to improve the layout of the information that's currently up there.  Or did you think that some of that information isn't particularly important and should be removed?

What is cumet? I have now access to just a basic web dictionary and it remains silent

I don't remember where I picked it up from (Star Frontiers, maybe?), but it's cubic meters.

I know that, traditionally, cargo capacities tend to be listed in "tons", but I'm concerned with both the mass and the volume of cargo and using "tons" to refer to both would just be confusing.  I suppose I could take the Traveller approach of using "ton" for mass and "dton" ("displacement tons") for volume, but that's still a bit too similar for my taste.  Giving cargo volumes in liters would be technically correct, but talking about hauling 3,000 liters of machinery just doesn't sound right...

Anyone have other suggestions for resolving this?  Or should I just make a point of defining what a "cumet" is?

[Nox]

At least play with distances, make a space above "docked at Earth" to separate character stats from location info.
In character info (I mean part above "docked at Earth") make larger space between each item (where item is key and value) to distinguish each one better

XL 5.00 PK 5.00 EK 5.00 TP 5.00 CS 5.00 BK 5.00

=>

XL 5.00  PK 5.00  EK 5.00  TP 5.00  CS 5.00  BK 5.00

or

XL5.00  PK5.00  EK5.00  TP5.00  CS5.00  BK5.00

to get the idea
...em, probably rather the first one

Put a newline after name (especially since resources are not so connected with name, classname, guild name or something could be on the same line)
Given the circumstances I'd make the font all the same size (in this area) with the exception of name
---
Thanks

[Hawkins]

This game sounds similar to Pardus but with magic or "psi" it sounds really fun

[dsheroh]

This game sounds similar to Pardus but with magic or "psi" it sounds really fun

I hadn't heard of Pardus before, but it does sound like there are a lot of similar concepts, yeah.  I'll have to give it a try; thanks!

[dsheroh]

I've just updated Psi Rangers to v0.006-003.  The primary change and purpose for this update was to give players the ability to set passwords on their trial accounts so that they can log back in after logging out or if their session ends for any other reason.  To do so, just click the "Upgrade to Full Account" link in the sidebar.

Trial accounts now also expire after 24 hours and are deleted if not upgraded.  So, if you have previously created a trial account but lost access to it, just wait until tomorrow and you'll be able to re-create it.

Aside from that, I also made some minor user interface changes (improvements, hopefully!) based on feedback received so far.  Changing the link colors improved the look way, way more than I had expected - thanks for suggesting that, Chris!  Nox, I did insert a little vertical space for grouping in the nav panel (upper left section), but ended up leaving the font sizes alone because, although I do now see what you were talking about there, everything I tried just seemed to make it look worse.  I will be experimenting further with it and hope to find something better for v0.007 (if not sooner), but I didn't want to hold up release of the trial account upgrades.

[Chris]

Next playing session:

Link colours still sux, but seen worse

Trading panel needs upgrades, I managed to forget how to buy stuff till last play... Just put more "Buy" buttons next to commodities on more pages. Generally it is OK, but more of these (redundant ones in various places). You might also make the quantity/prices with descriptions. I was able to decipher these, but only after thinking.

I was unable to navigate to desired planet (ended up docking on Earth...) Since it is my second play I consider it a UI flaw. Some "Go to" buttons maybe?

Timers. I loathe these game's cooldowns, so I'm not the target audience, but still these are most annyoing ones I ever seen (Travian ones seems friendly compared to this). What is the point in making me wait 2 minutes to dock on some planet? Do people really play these games? To what kind of audience is it targetted to? If you are an office worker you have like 10 minues break to play, so wasting it for 5x2 minutes clicks is pointless. If you are one working on excel sheet then like 5-10 minute breaks would be more reasonable. I simply can not see the target that would be happy with constant 2 minute play intervals. At the first glance it looks like Travian system, but it is not. In Travian you have progressive times, so first buildings only make you wait a few minutes, then hours then days. Much friendlier. But here, it seems I will be stuck these stupid 2 minute breaks forever and ever since docking is the basic action that will be used forever and ever.
Check PiratesGlory, it has similar system but they made instant travel points (regenerated daily) which could be used as alternative to regular time based travel.

[dsheroh]

Link colours still sux, but seen worse

I figured I should go with something dark because there are so many links on the page, but not black because that would make it unclear what's a link and what's not.

But, yeah, there's a reason I tell people to call me  a "programmer who usually writes web applications", not a "web developer".  I make no claim to having graphic design skills.

Trading panel needs upgrades, I managed to forget how to buy stuff till last play... Just put more "Buy" buttons next to commodities on more pages.

Do you mean multiple buy/sell buttons for the same line/order or that more things should be available for sale at a time?

If the latter, that's something I've been thinking about lately anyhow...  The current system, with each market generating buy orders and sell orders for quantity X of item Y at price Z came about as a way to ensure that you'll always know the price you're going to be buying or selling at without having to worry that someone else just slipped in and bought up 90% of the water on the market, so the price doubled between when you loaded the price listing and when you pressed "buy".

After Hawkins' comment, though, I checked out Pardus and I see they do a more direct system where you can buy or sell any commodity at any location that deals with it at any time (assuming there's some available to buy/sell, of course), but they also adjust the price for every unit bought or sold and, in practice, I'm finding that I'm generally not bothered by the slipperiness of prices changing before or during a transaction, so I'm considering switching over to that kind of model, although I really want to avoid having to have two separate markets, one for commodities (buy/sell anything available, only trading with the market itself) and one for ship systems or similar items (buy/sell only to fill someone else's request, can trade with other players).  If players have the option of either selling their water on the open commodity market at the going price or putting it into the other market as a sell order so that they can choose the price they want to sell at, then that just makes it even messier, since it creates two places to look for essentially the same thing...  Maybe I'm better off sticking with only the order-based market after all.

You might also make the quantity/prices with descriptions. I was able to decipher these, but only after thinking.

Do you mean a better explanation of the "Best Order" vs. "All Orders" distinction or something else?

I was unable to navigate to desired planet (ended up docking on Earth...) Since it is my second play I consider it a UI flaw. Some "Go to" buttons maybe?

Not quite sure what the issue there would have been, but I do agree that it's a UI flaw.  You should have an "Engage" button on the navigation screen when viewing any solid planet/moon to "go to" there - although, yeah, "Go To" would probably be a better label on the button than "Engage".  The three conditions under which the "Engage" button should not appear would be:

1) Your selected location is a gas giant, asteroid belt, or interplanetary space.  You can't land there, so you can't currently go there.  I will be adding a "Patrol" function which should help with this because you'll be able to go to any location and Patrol there, so there will still be a navigation button present regardless of whether you're viewing a dockable location or not.

2) You have a ship upgrade in progress.  If this is the case, there should be an "upgrades complete" countdown in the upper left near the "market" and "shipyard" links.

3) You are in combat.  While I could come up with an in-game excuse for why you can't change destinations while in combat, the real reason is because it corrupts the data structure storing your route information and disallowing it was the quickest way to work around that bug.  My plans also include a complete rewrite of how route information is stored to turn it into a more generic action queue instead of being travel-specific and the underlying issue will be resolved at that time.

I will be adding text in the next update for all three cases to clarify this by explaining its absence and the reason why you cannot set course for that destination.

If the button is absent under any other conditions, please report it as a bug.

Timers. I loathe these game's cooldowns, so I'm not the target audience,

We've already established here and elsewhere that our taste in games differs substantially, so just let me say:

Action points.  I loathe games which rely on them.  "I engage in a five-minute flurry of activity, then can't so much as lift a finger until the next day" feels so artificial and limiting to me.

What is the point in making me wait 2 minutes to dock on some planet?

Moving from point A to point B takes time.  Two and a half minutes for docking is, of course, completely arbitrary, as are all of the movement times at this point, but, at least for now, that's the amount of time it takes.  To go from, say, Titan to Earth, you move from Titan to the space around Saturn, then move to the space around Sol (interplanetary space), then move to the space around Earth, then you dock.  (Unless you want to patrol Earth's space, but, again... Patrol isn't implemented yet.)

Do people really play these games?

EVE Online uses basically the same pacing (although admittedly with lots of pretty graphics to look at, other users to chat with, and way more markets/items to look through to give you something to do while in flight) and, as of December 7, 2009, their peak user count record was 54,181 players logged in simultaneously, so, yes, people do play something similar, at least.

If you are one working on excel sheet then like 5-10 minute breaks would be more reasonable. I simply can not see the target that would be happy with constant 2 minute play intervals.

That's a user interface issue rather than pacing per se.  If I had made the navigation interface more clear so that you could have made the trip to your desired planet, it would have been somewhere in the 10-20 minute range.  The Titan-to-Earth trip that I used as an example above would take 15:30 (13 minutes to reach Earth space, 2:30 to dock).

Check PiratesGlory, it has similar system but they made instant travel points (regenerated daily) which could be used as alternative to regular time based travel.

I haven't looked at PiratesGlory (yet), but one of the uses planned for Focus will be to move more quickly.  So far, I've been thinking about it as being a 90% reduction in the time required to complete a single shift (a planet-to-planet trip is currently two shifts, plus one each for starting from or ending at a moon), but I could see giving a greater speedup than that - instant shift, reduced time for all remaining shifts in the current trip, reduced number of shifts required, etc. - based on how PiratesGlory's system feels to me.

Thanks again for the followup!

[Chris]

Do you mean multiple buy/sell buttons for the same line/order or that more things should be available for sale at a time?

More Buy/Sell buttons, on more pages. Sometimes I see a commodity and don't know where to click (Market) to buy it. There should be an option to buy it without visiting Market (or a buy link that links to market).

You might also make the quantity/prices with descriptions. I was able to decipher these, but only after thinking.

Do you mean a better explanation of the "Best Order" vs. "All Orders" distinction or something else?

"Commodity XXX@YYY.YY" sure, I was able to guess what it is, but only after thinking.

[dsheroh]

Do you mean multiple buy/sell buttons for the same line/order or that more things should be available for sale at a time?

More Buy/Sell buttons, on more pages. Sometimes I see a commodity and don't know where to click (Market) to buy it. There should be an option to buy it without visiting Market (or a buy link that links to market).

You might also make the quantity/prices with descriptions. I was able to decipher these, but only after thinking.

Do you mean a better explanation of the "Best Order" vs. "All Orders" distinction or something else?

"Commodity XXX@YYY.YY" sure, I was able to guess what it is, but only after thinking.

Thanks for the clarification!  I've added those to the to-do list for the next update.

[dsheroh]

Version 0.007 is up.  Release notes at Psi Rangers 0.007: The Psi Who Shoved Me.  Main points are a complete rewrite of combat and a corresponding new skill list.  Also added a tips sidebar to help with introducing new people to the game and a "command-line" style interface via the chat system.

The game itself remains at http://psi-rangers.com/