dcfedor's blog

Hey Folks! Figured I'd post again just to keep you updated on progress. As usual, I've been skipping news most days to get the extra half hour of work, unless there's a screenshot I can use worth seeing.

And today qualifies!

Hey Folks! Not a lot of visible progress the last several days, so I've been using the normal blogging time for both work and meetings with devs until there is.

Today isn't much of an exception, but it might be a good time to talk about where things are with AI.

Happy new year, folks! Hope everyone had a good holiday season. We stayed in town, but we still visited a lot of friends, and had a generally merry time. I also resisted the urge to tinker over the break, hoping the time away would recharge the creative batteries.

And I think it worked! I was definitely excited to get started again, and I feel the extra time thinking before acting again was important.

Hey Folks! Still working away at the social tactics feature. Lots of sharp edges to file down, and things to add so it's more engaging.

A fair amount of data editing has been going on, as we find nonsensical or missing replies. Some moves were not coming up at all. And we still need to make sure AI responses seem more plausible.

Hey Folks! Been a few days of silence here, as I try to get some progress that I can show off.

Today's screenshot shows some of that progress, in the new social tactics UI. It's a lot like the old one, except now we start with a nearly empty list of status effects on them. And as we talk to them more, it reveals information about their state of mind.

Hey Folks! It's been a busy week in the wake of the trailer! A good busy, but still busy. Hard to get actual dev work done.

In what time I could cobble together, however, I was able to make some progress on the social combat system. Now known as "social tactics!" (Combat was growing a bit too narrow a term, as a lot of non-zero-sum stuff is in here, too.)

Hey Folks!

Got a treat for you today: a new teaser video!

So what's new?

We found this dusty old UVD on a derelict sitting in an asteroid shadow. Parts of it are irrecoverable, but the shipboard RST console was able to playback this portion.

Ostranauts Teaser #2

Hey Folks! Some of you may have seen my recent tweet, which includes the screenshot above. And since that shot encapsulates what we've been up to this week pretty well, I figured it was worth talking about it a bit more.

As part of our social loop work, we've been trying to come up with more tools for the player to use during social combat. We want these social "moves" to serve a couple of purposes:

Hey Folks! Hope everyone had a good week(end). We had a very busy week of seeing friends, eating variations of Thanksgiving meals, and playing games. It was a nice change of pace, and break from the usual. Though pretty exhausting!

Back at the office, work is still a bit slow as I handle some admin tasks for a good chunk of each day. In my actual dev time, I'm brainstorming social tactics players and NPCs can use in conversation. And that list is getting pretty interesting.

Hey Folks! Tomorrow's Thanksgiving here, and I hadn't had a chance to post yet this week, so I wanted to get something out there to keep everyone in the loop before I was off.

It's been a crazy amount of admin work lately, and unfortunately that means little new stuff to show. Most of the fruits of my labor include conversations, spreadsheets, PDFs, and chat logs. All important stuff that should hopefully yield cool stuff in the future, but not much to look at right now.