That was Embarassing

The AI player development is coming along pretty well. I just gave it basic survival and attack instincts and decide to play a game against one of the AI players. I am embarassed to say the battle was a draw.

To be fair, his fleet was a little bit stronger than mine : two LCS's and two HCF's to my two LCS's, one MCC and one DCD. So I had a Corvette and a Destroyer vs his two Frigates.

The battle came down to one of my LCS's and one of his and we both ran out of ammo. (Which reminds me, I need to have the system detect a draw -- as it is, there is no way for the game to end in this scenario).

I am really surpsised it was a draw. Maybe I wasn't focussing 100% on the fight and paying more attention to making sure the AI was behaving as it should, but still. The AI doesn't even use decoys or mines at this stage and still was pretty good. That gives me some hope :)

On another note (not at all related to the fact that I almost got beat), I have nerfed the LCS's a little bit. I made them a tiny bit heavier so they won't be able to turn as quick. And I made all the missiles (Falcon, Hawk and Eagle class) turn a little better. I also made the missile launchers have significantly higher muzzle velocity. Originally, missiles (not mass drivers) were launched with almost zero velocity relative to the ship. They would rely on their own acceleration to gain speed. Now they will launch with a good bit of initial velocity so they won't take so long to catch up to their target.

You Got Schooled

Ok, ok I know I am supposed to be working on the AI Players, but I am surprised at the number of early-adopters that have signed up and I am a bit concerned about losing them because they can't figure out how to play.

No one has complained yet, but I can imagine that at least some people have found themselves lost but are too shy to ask questions in the forum.

So I have whipped up a quick tutorial. Please check it out -- it is pretty sparse so far, but it covers everything you need to know to get a game started. It is a bit wordy (as is my style), but it contains a lot of information too.

Incidentally, if any of you want to contribute to the fleet combat wiki, feel free. All you have to do is sign up to wikidot (sorry, there is no way to integrate the login with FC) at this page. I will get an email and approve your account and then you can start editing and writing wiki pages to inform the hordes of players that I am sure we will soon have ;) about every detail of the game.

Fake Players

I have started work on computer controlled players. I had intended to have working AI players before ever launching the game because of their value in testing -- two AI players could complete an entire game in 1 minute rather than the days it takes us humans. But I got too excited about getting feedback from people so I launched the site anyway.

The AI players will help a lot in tweaking the balance of the ships. The AI could be set up to run a battle of large ships against small ships 100 times and record the statistical outcome. Then we could use that information to re-balance the ship classes.

I have never coded an AI system before, so this one will probably be pretty simple, but it will know how to attack and defend itself. When complete, you will be able to invite AI players to your games just as you can invite regular players. I hope to have several AI players to choose from with different play styles.

The AIs will be just like regular players in every respect. They will have player profiles that you can view online and see their win/loss ratio and the number of command points they have, etc.

The AI will not cheat. They will use the exact same game information that you have access to in your browser, they don't have access to "privileged" information. They will submit orders to their ships the same way you do, they will not be able to issue Load and Fire commands on the same turn for instance. This may handicap them because people are smarter than AI (especially AI programmed by me), but you could always handicap yourself by limiting yourself to fewer command points, or by taking on two AIs at once.

I *hope* to have the AI done next week, but we'll see how it goes.

Forum Problem

There was a problem with the forum that I discovered and is now (hopefully) fixed. You are supposed to have access to the forum automatically when you sign up and activate your game account.

Apparently, people were going to the forum site and not being able to login, so they were registring for a separate account on the forum. A separate forum account is not required. Once you have activated your game account, you can use that same login info on the forum.

If you created a separate account for the forum, you don't need it anymore, just login with your regular game account info. If you tried logging in before with your game account and couldn't you should now be able to.

Ooops

There was about 12 hours of downtime which has just ended. I added some features and fixed some bugs. Then when I published the application to the hosting service, everything died. I am not sure what happened, but I couldn't fix it. I opened a ticket with the hosting company and they fixed it right away. But I had to recompile and republish the application which took some time (well, that and sleeping). So everything is back up.

The cool new feature is Messaging! You can now send messages to other FC members. There is also an experimental auto-complete feature when you go to type in the members name. So far it seems a little flaky, but it is definitely a nice feature to have as long as it is reliable.

I also fixed a few small bugs like the "start time" of a game always being blank and there was a small exploit that could allow you to add more ships to your fleet than you should be able to.

Thanks again to the testers!

Oh, one more little thing. The www.fleetcombat.net URL is now live. This blog is now relegated to blog.fleetcombat.net...

A few small bug fixes

During play testing it became clear that small ships "pwnd" the larger ships. Particularly small ships with mass drivers. Those mass driver rounds have no warhead, but their great speed gives them an incredible amount of energy. Large ships like Frigates and Destroyers were going down with one shot from a mass driver.

So I have increased the hull strength of all the ships, but particularly the large ones. I have also increased the damage done by the non-mass driver weapons so they are not completely dwarfed by the mass drivers. This fix does not affect any games in progress, but will affect all games starting from now on.

Also, you will now be refunded your command points when you remove a ship from your fleet. So you are not stuck with your first choice of fleet composition. I have refunded all missing points.

I also made changes to the chat lobby and the in game chat to make long winded messages less likely to be cut off.

Thank you to the testers for finding these issues! Now on to more testing...

War is Hell

Fleet Combat Online has entered "beta" stage. I am now looking for players to test things out. Let me know by adding comments here if you want to help out (if you already have before this blog post, then I have already been in contact with you).

In honor of this occasion, I have recorded a full battle and put select screenshots of it up on Flickr for you all to see. This way you can see the battle unfold and see how tactics might take an important place in this game.

You can see the slideshow here

Please let me know what you think either with comments here or at flickr.

I hope to be able to play a bunch of games with real people over the next couple of weeks to refine the game play and incorporate feedback. So let me know what you want to see! We are getting close.

One more thing to check off

The web site is done, well at least all the core features. I am not putting it up yet, because I am not quite ready for people to sign up and start creating their own games. I will need to do more testing first and most of all, I still need to add a lot more content: ships, weapons, etc. Right now there are only a couple of ship classes which won't be much fun.

Som people have had trouble signing up for the forum and some don't want to have to sign up for WikiDot just to be able to use the forum. So I think when I launch the web site, I will put up a new forum that is integrated into the game's database. This way, game members will automatically be forum members and the screen names will all be the same. So don't worry about the bad forum software right now :)

So I am off to try to be creative and make a bunch of new ship and weapon designs. Maybe I will make a public web page where people can create their own in order to flesh out the ship list... We'll see how motivated I am.