Furthermore, amazingly, this site is now on the first page of the Google UK search results for "space exploration", crowding out various real-world space probes. I feel almost a bit guilty about this. (And Metal Beetle's site is on the second page for "beetle".) The algorithm seems to have taken a liking to my sites.

Anyway, I've been playing with Firefox search plugins for a bit, which it turns out are very easy to make yourself. Just write a short XML file and plonk it into the appropriate folder.

I've made two plugins I find quite useful:

• Google & Wikipedia uses Yubnub to display a split frame with the Google results on the left and the salient Wikipedia page on the right. For example, searching for "kittens" yields this. Install via Javascript
• Google Translate translates any word or phrase entered, taking a guess at the language used. For example, searching for "Katze" yields this. Install via Javascript

The other useful thing about search plugins I've discovered is that if you click on the search plugin selector drop-down on the top-right of you screen, there is a "Manage Search Engines..." option. There, you can set keywords for your search engines. These keywords allow you to select a search engine by typing them into the location bar. So if you choose "t" as your keyword for the translate engine, you can enter "t <some words>" into your Firefox location bar and get an instant best-guess translation. Which is fairly neat.

While a lot of people were happy with this idea, a lot also had their reservations. The reason for this, as far as I can tell, is that a number of large game publishers are abusing the idea of "episodic content" to more or less fleece their customers: They release a game, and then pump out dozens of minor add-ons which they hope people will buy.

For example, two people mentioned a case where Bethesda Softworks released a $2.50 add-on consisting of nothing but armour for your horse. Other examples mentioned are Half-Life, where the first episode was "meaty", but the second one was not - and cost the same as the first. Another one is Spore.

They appear be to thinking: "If we do add-ons, we can chop up the gameplay into lots of little bits to sell to the customer at a higher price, and end up with more money for no extra effort. And we'll just keep on cranking out more content until no-one buys it anymore."

This is not what I want to do.

In the rest of this post, I'll explain why I want to use the "expansions" model for selling SE:SS, but first some promises:

1. Even without any expansions, the full game will be entirely playable. There won't be nearly as many encounters, so they'll start to repeat themselves rather quickly, but there will be no game features (as opposed to content) that are only unlocked by buying something.
2. The expansions will be few, and meaty. Each of them will take me several months of work.
3. If I do feel the need to release a minor expansion or add-on, it will be free.

So why the expansions?

I've spent about half a year of development time on Space Exploration so far. I expect to spend another three months or so on the game itself, and then maybe another three doing nothing but writing encounters for the first expansion. I will then release the game and the expansion. If the expansion does well in terms of sales, I will start work on another expansion. If not, I will move on to another project. Assuming people really like the game, and I have enough ideas, I might do three or four expansions, spending maybe a year of my life doing nothing but writing content for the game.

So I could spend that entire year up-front and release all of the content rolled into one release people can buy, and which costs about as much as the three or four expansions put together. (That is, about as much as a normal shareware game.) But if the game proceeds to sell badly, I will literally be unable to buy food, and will have thrown away a year of my life. Which is a rather depressing outcome.

So I want to have a dialogue with my customers that goes something like this:
Me: "I made this game, do you like it? If you do, I'll spend more time making more of it."
Customers: "Yes!"
Me: "OK, I'll go and make more."

or, alternatively:

Me: "I made this game, do you like it? If you do, I'll spend more time making more of it."
Customers: "No!"
Me: "OK, I'll go and make something else you might enjoy more."

For the customer, the end result of a game with expansions is the same as if I'd done a single big release, or a small release followed by free upgrades. Customers get X amount of enjoyable game playing time for Y money. The difference is just that with expansions, it happens in instalments of say ¼ X game play for ¼ Y money.

The biggest change is the way crew is handled. Instead of being just a number, each crew member now has their own name and set of skills. This adds a lot to the game, with your crew's skills and mood affecting the outcome of encounters, and the options you have.

The other big change is that the time limit has been removed. Instead, you now receive more limited fuel at the start of the game, and have to periodically report back to base to ask for more fuel. Your performance in the game so far affects how much extra fuel you are granted. This results in more interesting strategic decisions on where to fly when.

Beyond that, I've fixed various bugs, simplified the user interface a bit, and introduced a new tutorial you can access from the main menu, replacing the old in-game help pop-ups.

Combat, too, has had some minor alterations, mostly to clarify things. It will get a major revamp in dev 10, though.

As always, I'm very interested in any feedback you can give me, either by email, or through the handy web form.

Anyway, download the new version and give it a try.

Beyond the crew management, there are some other user interface improvements in dev 9, along with speed improvements and bug fixes. One thing that isn't going to change in dev 9 is space combat. That's what dev 10 will be all about.

With this release, the engine of the game is nearing completion, baring minor features and more optimisation. From now on, we'll be concentrating on massively upping the number of encounters, and writing the first expansion.

Download it, discuss it in the forum, or have a look at the press release.

Feedback is as always highly welcome, via the forums, or via the feedback form.

About a year ago, I wrote a rather angry article on diamond wedding rings. I've now found a very good article on the trade and popularisation of diamonds. (Via Vertical Blue, via Sociological Images.)

Since the article was published in 1982, the de Beers cartel has lost some of its hold on the diamond market, but the ideas it imprinted on generations live on. It's a long article, but well worth reading. So, I reiterate: do not buy diamonds. Just don't. Especially not now, with the world economy in the state it's in. There are much better things to spend money on.

Of course, someone will say that we must keep on buying diamonds because some people's jobs depend on it. But if there was a factory that killed babies, someone would say that we must keep on buying tinned baby to support the factory workers. According to that logic, we are not allowed to stop buying any product.

How convenient.

So assuming a novel is 50 000 words, and you'll be sleeping / doing other things 8 hours out of every day, that leaves you with 48 hours to write the novel - 1042 words per hour, 17.4 words per minute. Of course, I would never try this, since I struggle with RSI and this would be a certain way to permanently damage my hands. But I couldn't resist seeing how much "story" I could write in five minutes. So, to the amusement of my friends, I set myself a timer and started typing. This is what I wrote:

SoapQuest 1024 is now available online, as a Java applet. Go and make soap. Then download the standalone version and fiddle with the game rules. That is all.

(You have to click on the applet to make it notice your keyboard input.)

The aim is to prevent the feeling that you're just "doing one thing after another". Instead, you and the game should construct a little narrative each time you play. You make meaningful decisions which affect the rest of your game, and you can see causal links between things.

The number of encounters in the current dev versions is pretty small compared to the number there will be in the release version. (And indeed there will be several months at the end of development where the game engine won't really change and I'll be busy writing encounters.) But even now, I try to strive for a well-connected game. Compare these two diagrams.

 

The first one is a diagram of the connections between encounters in dev 6, and the second is the same diagram for dev 7. (With the encounter names obscured, because there are now some plot-related encounters in there I want you to discover for yourself.)

As you can hopefully tell, the second diagram is much more interconnected and confusing than the first one. (And features such lovely terms as "vvivv' tetetehete".) As I add more encounters, this diagram will become more and more interconnected, and less and less readable, until I end up with a giant tangle of connectivity-wool.

That's what I'm aiming for - a giant tangle of connectivity wool.

SoapQuest 1024 is a small game I decided to write after reading "20 Open World Games" on Gamasutra and coming across Adventure.

It's a very simple tile-based game written in 1024 lines of Java. You can wander around the place, picking things up and using them on other things by walking into them. Day and night happen, and at night you need light sources to see properly.

Play around. Try to make: fire, soap, dinner, a house... Civilisation!

Try it out.