So basically what we do is we put you into the map, we spawn enemies in like a trickle. There's three simple enemies in the first wave, and then we add a couple more waves that get progressively harder, and then you start getting to the boss guys. And right now you've got two friendly wingmen who are helping you out on it. They seem to be doing a pretty decent job and haven't died yet, which is good. Last time I played they died. It was very sad. These guys, these are the easy guys, so I don't allow myself to use any missiles in the first place.
Alright, so on the Hornet, the test Hornet, as it's called right now, you get two lasers in your turret, which fire wherever your head's looking, and then the chain guns try to track your target. And he is dead meat. Now we're waiting for the next wave to roll in.
After the hangar, which, I mean, the hangar was a big achievement because it got our engine out there in front of people. Now it's time to play with it.
Man, it is looking so good. I mean, the important thing right now is that we are having a lot of fun playing the game, which means we think everyone out there is going to have a lot of fun playing the game. We're getting the last few glitches fixed up here and there. A little bit of tweaking, a little bit of cleanup and polish. But right now, I think people are going to have loads of fun with this game.
So for the first one, we're going to go with just pre-configured ships. We're looking at some of it's looking at balancing and all that kind of thing. So to start with, pre-configured, and then we'll quickly add on the ability to use other weapons on those ships.
Well, we did actually take a good long look at that, and we made some quick adjustments so that they're a little more balanced. You'll find that the missiles on the smaller ships actually are better than the ones on the Hornet, but the Hornet has more. So, I mean, it's reasonably close for the differences in the ship's abilities, but the Hornet's still a pretty strong ship.
So I think the concern there, and don't you worry, is that if you can't get your Hornets, well then how can you fly in dogfighting? So the test ships, if you have access to any of the three, those will be the first ships you see in your hangar. So you have nothing to worry about. Everything will be fine. Next to the helmet. You can't play. Do not forget your helmet.
Don't fly without your helmet. That's how you kind of access the Arena Commander menu system, through the helmet, so you've got to put that on first. That'll come out with a how-to and the documents we're putting together for that, but you heard it here first.
Can we discuss? So it's a very quick discussion. There's not any in the first iteration. We've got a lot of the stuff in place to get that rolling. It's just we don't want to do anything to destabilize the build at this point. Let's get this out the door.
It's bug fixing and a little optimization. I mean, it's fun because we have multiple studios working on it and they're all in the main branch. So we branched last week and we have intermittently stable builds. And so now we're getting more and more stable. So adding features would be bad at this point.
So we're going to add some rooms. There will be a lot more coming on the room system. There are rooms for rooms. Separate from your ships in your hangar.
So, yeah, we're going to be putting that in. There will be many rooms. As you said, once the asteroid hangar comes out, that's the first iteration of the room system, and we'll have a bunch more stuff coming online. Some we don't want to say yet, because there's some really neat stuff I think they're going to like. But that's post Arena Commander.
Well, actually, one of the things when we first were talking about the hangars that we likened the discount hangar to was the stacks of cargo crates at the shipyards in Seattle. Just towers and towers of boxes stacked side by side. But there are going to be a bunch of different starting planets for players to choose from. I think we're talking about maybe eight. I'm not sure what that number will be at the end. There will be a bunch of large hangar complexes that people fly out of. Now, you won't necessarily see every single hangar represented physically in the universe, but there will be a lot of places to choose from, so it won't be that crowded.
TL;DRA head-to-head Arena Commander match would be fun but isn't happening next week because of a trip to a Squadron 42 summit; it might suit the new community show, and a retrospective show is planned instead.
Yeah, I don't think that's going to work. I mean, maybe that's something that maybe the new community show could engage in. I mean, I know we're going to have some of that stuff. I'm sure Ben's got some of that up his sleeve. But all of those people, well, half of those people will be in the U.K. at a Squadron 42 summit. So we're going to be leaving this Friday to Manchester, and we're going to be talking about what we need to do to make Squadron 42 happen and how that ties into Persistent Universe and all that other gobbledygook. So we will not be able to make that happen, but we are going to have a really cool show, kind of a retrospective look back at the creation of Wingman's Hangar, its twists and turns.
The answer on this one was yes. He didn't expound upon it a lot, but he was talking about the different versions of ships over the years, which happens with cars. Everything evolves, so why should we be any different?
Yeah, the idea here is that the game is going to always be growing. We'll always be adding things in, so that means technology and that means everything will be changing over time. New stuff to discover.
Honestly, the planet in Arena Commander, it's too small. So we are planning on having much bigger. Now we are working on some background technology that will make that possible. We're talking about double precision. Yes, double precision. So we are going to have actual bigger planets in the final game. There should be some variation in the planets as well. They won't be quite life-size. Can't quite pull that off. But stars are a little different because you never get close to a star. So you don't need to waste all the polys on a giant star.
It's actually something that, when we send emails about HUD items and everything, there is a lot of discussion of, that you can't have just one type of feedback. So for instance, when something is damaged, we want to make it blink on the HUD and not just change to red. So we're aware of it, there are some small things, and it's something that will kind of evolve over time, we'll continue to add different options. And eventually, we want to be able to customize the HUD, so maybe you could even change out the color palette if you're having trouble distinguishing.
Well, the standard things we've talked about, whether you're gunner or whatever, but one of the specific things they asked was about whether they can run your factory node, and that's kind of the way it works. You're sort of the upper-level management of a factory, and you kind of pull the levers and decide how it's going to run, but then the NPCs do run the factory. It's not like you have to be there on the floor walking around smacking people in the head.
TL;DRCustom organization uniforms are a cool idea that wouldn't be available out of the box, would need CIG approval and art skill, and might be considered in the long run, with file-size concerns.
Actually, that was Chris's response, too, was that's a really cool idea. Standard caveats of if we do this: A, you need to be pretty art savvy to get something in our game, B, we have to have CIG approval of anything that goes into the game.
Right, and also, anytime you do texture changes or things of that nature, it adds to the size and footprint of the game on everybody's machine. So I'm sure we'll have to figure out a system where either if you share globally, everybody has to get that patch, or if you just share it with your guild members, maybe there's a batch file you can drop in there. It's like a choice or something.
So we already have the distortion cannon. That is a very different effect. The idea that it messes with your pipes and changes the heat or the power that's flowing through them rather than just physically damaging your ship. There's the idea of EMP weapons as well that may or may not happen early on. But the other thing, they're talking about the physical impulse provided by a weapon to move things around, which A, is not always fun when it's against another player. But B, everything in your game has an impulse to it. When you fire a projectile at someone, it is imparting its momentum to the ship. It's just a small mass versus a large mass, so it's not a significant move. But we don't have any specific plans to do that kind of weapon.
Oh, yes, the crazies. There will be human opponents. There will be other opposition than just, as we currently have it, the Vanduul and pirates. There's corporate raiders and that kind of thing. And we may have some crazies. It depends on what those crazy writers of ours decide to do.
So that sort of covers it, the question itself. Yes, you can have a secret compartment and carry goods that are not necessarily legal in a place. There are also ways to prevent cargo scans, or at least try to prevent them. The counterbalance to that is that the Advocacy or the police in the local system would continually try to up their scanning technology so they can get past that and find your stuff. So yes, there will be checkpoints. Yes, there will be ways of sneaking past them. I'm not sure I can give much more detail than that right now.