Any updates?

[FrobozzDaMad]

Just curious what progress has been made, yadda yadda... hasn't been an update since July. Any screenshots yet?

[Schmendrick]

Things kind of slowed down.. a lot. Serious as it is, Ironseed is still a "side project" for most of the developers, and other things have intervened in our lives. For myself, I'm going to try to start putting more effort in (currently still hinging mainly on officer/crew effects) but the holidays are bound to be at least a little distraction.

I'll try to be more active on the forum. Did you have any specific questions?

[shaddam]

Things kind of slowed down.. a lot. Serious as it is, Ironseed is still a "side project" for most of the developers, and other things have intervened in our lives. For myself, I'm going to try to start putting more effort in (currently still hinging mainly on officer/crew effects) but the holidays are bound to be at least a little distraction.

I'll try to be more active on the forum. Did you have any specific questions?

hello first and thanks everyone for working on the remake/sequel...
don't want to annoy or even disturb the developing process, but maybe some update in form of some pictures, artwork, small report on progresses & problems ...would be very liked by the forum community
maybe, this might be helpful for the process by getting some feedback or ideas or even some help?!

[Schmendrick]

Well, right this second I'm hammering out some of the internal formulae for the way(s) that Skill, Performance, and Sanity will affect crew member labor. One of the changes we'll be making is that instead of having static values for S/P/S, those attributes will actually ebb and flow over time, so that a really keen micromanager might schedule "grunt work" tasks for times when a crew member is running rather low, and research (or important construction) work when they are at peak performance.

Two of our guys are currently in the process of getting physically settled -- moving, marrying, that sort of thing, and they won't really be fully operational (in terms of Ironseed) until spring.

I'm no artist, and I as far as I know we haven't had a lot of interaction with artists yet, so I'm afraid there's no eye candy. I could MSPaint some ugly mockup drafts for you, but I don't think it'd be what you want to see.

[nuke_bloodaxe]

Whoops, looks like things slowed down a bit too much.

So, what is currently happening? [ if anything ]

[Solar]

Hopefully things are still alive. I keep checking the boards now and then in hopes of updates

[Schmendrick]

"Alive" might be too strong a word. "Cryostasis" is probably more accurate (which the 50-day delayed response should already tell you). Adept has had a number of changes in his professional life (you know, the computer work that pays the bills), some of the programmers we hired on got mired down with academic life -- and then professional life.

Me, well, I'm just stupidly ADD, and with nobody to crack the whip on me (adept) I only think about Ironseed every few weeks, at best. (But I do still think about it.) Unfortunately, "thinking about" is a far cry from "hammering at design docs," and I don't check this forum nearly often enough (I do miss the energy we had here); it's kind of a vicious cycle though, because who wants to post to a dead forum? Thanks for continuing to stop by; it's good to know I'm not the only one.

Maybe if I check in here and find people complaining, the loyal fan base can crack my whip instead of adept.


As mentioned before, they're hardly design docs, but most of my thoughts drift on crew AI simulation. The encode/egosynth concept was a really cool one, and I'd like to have a believable system for it.

As far as getting crappy "damn it, Jim, I'm a programmer, not an artist!" mockups for parts of the game, the last "this is an important part to get right, and it's a little daunting right now" element was in designing the weapon game mechanics. The tech tree will be different each game, depending both on some random factors and the mix of officers you choose. I need a weapons system that is

• Modular enough to robustly support randomization (and automatic game-balancing of that randomization)
• Comprehensive/complex enough to support most 'reasonable' weapon types without oversimplifying
• Easy to (algorithmically) convert to a manufacturing pattern with components that both seem reasonable-sounding for the weapons and are somewhat randomly determined themselves (random tech tree, remember?)

I haven't really gotten much past copying the stuff over here into a text file and mulling it over periodically.

[Solar]

Entirely understandable. Life always comes first. I wish I could help, as I've always loved Ironseed. Sadly, I fear my programming and art skills would hinder more than help. And my ideas, though are often good for my own projects, are random and hard to come up with outside random thoughts at odd unrelated moments XD

[Schmendrick]

You could always go over to the weapons subforum and start posting ideas for weapons (again). Try to keep them more or less in line with the original IS. But the more examples of weaponry there are, the more likely I can come up with a modular system for describing them.

For example, I got kinda crazy in that thread trying to come up with a billion "damage types," and for some reason only JUST NOW realized that we can probably shrink it down to only a few types of damage (though probably more than the original 4) and then add "descriptors" or effects, which are separate (like poison, mute, darkness, etc. in a fantasy RPG). So if you have any weapon ideas, or game mechanic implementation ideas, go ahead and post 'em. I'm a programmer, I get to say "no, that's not doable," because I'm (one of) the one(s) that has to implement it and make it jive with the other systems, but... anybody can come up with ideas. And I welcome that.

[shaddam]

You could always go over to the weapons subforum and start posting ideas for weapons (again). Try to keep them more or less in line with the original IS. But the more examples of weaponry there are, the more likely I can come up with a modular system for describing them.

For example, I got kinda crazy in that thread trying to come up with a billion "damage types," and for some reason only JUST NOW realized that we can probably shrink it down to only a few types of damage (though probably more than the original 4) and then add "descriptors" or effects, which are separate (like poison, mute, darkness, etc. in a fantasy RPG). So if you have any weapon ideas, or game mechanic implementation ideas, go ahead and post 'em. I'm a programmer, I get to say "no, that's not doable," because I'm (one of) the one(s) that has to implement it and make it jive with the other systems, but... anybody can come up with ideas. And I welcome that.

Great that there is progess!

[Schmendrick]

"Progress" may be a strong word, but, yes, Ironseed is not completely dead. At the very least, I've put this thread (and a few others) on e-mail notification so I should at least be more responsive on the forums. Adept is a little harder to get ahold of these days, so I may be the only "official" developer that check the forum, but... well, I'm better than nothing.

Seriously though, any posts in the forum are a little jab at me (us) to try to redirect more attention to the project. So pretend Ironseed is Tinkerbell, and clap (post) like her life depends on it.

(Sorry if nobody got that reference.)

[shaddam]

ok, lets redirect some attention! *clap-tinkerbell*

beside, what about other forms of interaction and involvment of the IS-community?

opening the project to a broader audience (Ironseed 1 artwork and sources) may be stimulating for the progress of IS2... (is karynax still working on patching IS1? or someone else do?)

there are some very successfull examples where this leads to an growing and vivid community and project... e.g. warzone 2100 http://wz2100.net/ or Descent http://www.descent2.de/

(PS: about reference... should i read peter pan? only know the film )

[Schmendrick]

Well, a year (or was it two?) ago, adept had some elements of the game that he definitely wanted to keep under wraps; we all had to sign an NDA about those things. But... that was two years ago; he may have changed his mind about how tight he wants to keep things; I don't know.

For the most part, the NDA covered some of the "substructure" of the universe. We're going to have a technology tree that changes each time you start a new game, and the details of the way we're going to go about that were something he wanted to guard pretty strongly. I feel the same way about the way we'll be the handling personalities: crew and aliens, and their interactions; probably best described as a hybrid between simple artificial life sims and relatively sophisticated chatbots.

Unless and until adept (who does after all own the original IP, and it's ultimately his project) decides to release these things to the general public, the best way to contribute is with suggestions for what kinds of things you'd like to see in the game (specific technologies, alien types, interactions with the crew, etc.). Having a few targets will help us design the systems with that in mind.

As for Peter Pan, I know they included the Tinkerbell clap thing in the Mary Martin one, but I don't know if they had it in the Disney animated one. It's been a loooong time since I saw that.

[shaddam]

Well, a year (or was it two?) ....

interessting.... personally I found the crew chatting very important for the overall game atmosphere, to put again an focus with AI & life sim here is an idea I like

ok, to sign NDAs sounds pretty serious about the game ...so it might be realistic to hope for good progress and release some bright (but not so far) day

[Schmendrick]

interessting.... personally I found the crew chatting very important for the overall game atmosphere, to put again an focus with AI & life sim here is an idea I like

I haven't yet talked with adept about it, but I think you may have a very good point. IS(2) will be released into a world with a fair amount of similar gameplay out there; IS(1)'s main strengths were in its "hard" science fiction feel and its emotional atmosphere. Classic science fiction (Asimov, Bradbury, Clarke...) has always dealt with the psychological possibilities of technology, and working with -- or around -- a mentally stressed crew focused on survival is a great way to enrich it.

Now, sophisticated chatbots are difficult, and earlier in discussion we've been relegating to the "later on, if we have the time" pile. I'm starting to think they might be worth prioritizing a bit higher -- if we do a good enough job, they may be the most notable characteristic of Ironseed and even make it popular outside its niche.

That said, the game won't be a Sims In Space... but if (and I know it's a big "if") we can create engaging dynamic dialogue, combined with the different-each-time technology tree, we'll have a pretty spectacular game with boundless replay value.

Let's drum up some excitement.