Going Outside
Posted: Thu Apr 11, 2013 2:36 am
Hello there,
so, i have been reading up on these forums, went almost through all of them, in search for mods or notions that would give me the FTL experience i was hoping for when getting the game. "Infinite Space" comes close, gameplay wise, eliminating the annoying notion of a minigame, and manipulating the saves manually gets me some actually satisfying experience. But thats not enough.
I want to customise my ship. I want to choose where my systems go. I want to build my ship, i want to haul around more stuff than 4 miserable items, having other loadouts ready. And stuff. I want to get the firefly space roaming feel.
Sadly, i found that many of these things are simply not feasible with the game.
Boomer.
However, seeing how much stuff that works _outside_ the game can do... I cant help it but feel, what if we went outside the game engine and treat it like the minigame it actually is?
The idea is running FTL inside another application (sandbox-like), that
1) Makes it more awesome
2) Is actually modable
How would that play?
I start a new game and am thrown into the space, by myself, getting some story stuff, i am in a sorry-ass tiny ship and i roam around, trying not to die, exploring the universe.
After some time, i bump into a station. I collected some resources and done some quests, one of which uploaded into my computer a new ship hull. The station offers selling and customising some ready-made ships, but i want to use the one i "unlocked" with the quest.
I spend quite some resources to have it built, and get an awesome but empty ship. It is a big ass ship and can potentially carry quite a lot of stuff, but having it built, im down on cash, so i just outfit it with a more powerful generator, storage units so i can haul more stuff, and finaly some crew quarters, so i can hire me some crew. With the last couple of bucks, i head into the station bar, hoping to bump into some kind of a hitchiker.
Now how the hell would that work?
Ok, so we got all those tools. Imagine for a second that a sandbox-like enviroment runs ftl within itself, monitors your input and the games output. Whenever i perform any action that is outside of the ftl frame of modability, it exits the game, saves it, offers you appropriate choices, modifies the savegame or game core, and starts up the game again, when im ready to fly around some more.
I started the game with a launcher. This launcher is running the same resolution as the game itself. I had an option to start a new game, along with loading an old one. When i went for the new game option, it gave me options to customise my character, generated continue.sav based on my choices, and started the game, either bypassing or original start screen, or covering it and clicking "continue".
For some time, the launcher kept track of what i was doing, keeping tabs on what i collected and did.
When i bumped into a station, which is actually just a renamed store, the launcher did quit&save and thrown me in its own station enviroment, giving me all the awesome choices moders can come up with. When i was finished outfitting my ship, it re-compiled the game files, generated new continue.sav and launched the game again.
What this comes down to is a nice gui that would incorporate the principles modding tools work on into the game itself, running it just as an app within itself.
By catching the data from ftl and feeding it reprocessed stuff, it would be immensely modable and would encounter very little limits. Moders could come up with new systems (replacing unused ones on the fly) or even system upgrades. Events could do much more, and so on and so on.
I know, it sounds a bit chunky for its purpose, but im pretty sure it could be well optimised.
What do you guys think?
so, i have been reading up on these forums, went almost through all of them, in search for mods or notions that would give me the FTL experience i was hoping for when getting the game. "Infinite Space" comes close, gameplay wise, eliminating the annoying notion of a minigame, and manipulating the saves manually gets me some actually satisfying experience. But thats not enough.
I want to customise my ship. I want to choose where my systems go. I want to build my ship, i want to haul around more stuff than 4 miserable items, having other loadouts ready. And stuff. I want to get the firefly space roaming feel.
Sadly, i found that many of these things are simply not feasible with the game.
Boomer.
However, seeing how much stuff that works _outside_ the game can do... I cant help it but feel, what if we went outside the game engine and treat it like the minigame it actually is?
The idea is running FTL inside another application (sandbox-like), that
1) Makes it more awesome
2) Is actually modable
How would that play?
I start a new game and am thrown into the space, by myself, getting some story stuff, i am in a sorry-ass tiny ship and i roam around, trying not to die, exploring the universe.
After some time, i bump into a station. I collected some resources and done some quests, one of which uploaded into my computer a new ship hull. The station offers selling and customising some ready-made ships, but i want to use the one i "unlocked" with the quest.
I spend quite some resources to have it built, and get an awesome but empty ship. It is a big ass ship and can potentially carry quite a lot of stuff, but having it built, im down on cash, so i just outfit it with a more powerful generator, storage units so i can haul more stuff, and finaly some crew quarters, so i can hire me some crew. With the last couple of bucks, i head into the station bar, hoping to bump into some kind of a hitchiker.
Now how the hell would that work?
Ok, so we got all those tools. Imagine for a second that a sandbox-like enviroment runs ftl within itself, monitors your input and the games output. Whenever i perform any action that is outside of the ftl frame of modability, it exits the game, saves it, offers you appropriate choices, modifies the savegame or game core, and starts up the game again, when im ready to fly around some more.
I started the game with a launcher. This launcher is running the same resolution as the game itself. I had an option to start a new game, along with loading an old one. When i went for the new game option, it gave me options to customise my character, generated continue.sav based on my choices, and started the game, either bypassing or original start screen, or covering it and clicking "continue".
For some time, the launcher kept track of what i was doing, keeping tabs on what i collected and did.
When i bumped into a station, which is actually just a renamed store, the launcher did quit&save and thrown me in its own station enviroment, giving me all the awesome choices moders can come up with. When i was finished outfitting my ship, it re-compiled the game files, generated new continue.sav and launched the game again.
What this comes down to is a nice gui that would incorporate the principles modding tools work on into the game itself, running it just as an app within itself.
By catching the data from ftl and feeding it reprocessed stuff, it would be immensely modable and would encounter very little limits. Moders could come up with new systems (replacing unused ones on the fly) or even system upgrades. Events could do much more, and so on and so on.
I know, it sounds a bit chunky for its purpose, but im pretty sure it could be well optimised.
What do you guys think?