tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-77663626582772409012011-11-27T15:22:31.747-08:00Fleet Combat Online is the future home of the online multi-player startship combat simulator. Watch this space for updates on the live launch.Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.comBlogger651100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-92102689324291887362011-03-09T23:04:00.000-08:002011-03-09T23:04:25.851-08:00

Fleet Combat Online is back!  And it has a new address: www.fleetcombat.net I am sorry it took so long, but we are back. I have sent out a mass emailing to all players, so hopefully most users will see it and we can get back to the battles right away! Thanks for your patience.

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-46533508509907126212011-03-01T22:24:00.000-08:002011-03-01T22:24:12.766-08:00

Well, I still can't get fleetcombat.com back -- someone snagged it and is using it as a domain parking site.  They want $150 for it and it is totally not worth it :) I still own fleetcombat.net, so I will just bring the site up there instead. So keep an eye out in the next few days for Fleet Combat to finally come back! Thanks for sticking around.

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-63164520579843341872011-01-15T13:45:00.000-08:002011-01-15T13:48:20.083-08:00

I don't know if anyone can get to this blog anymore, but in case you can, here is what is up:The credit card that I had tied to my mydomain account for automatically renewing my domains was stolen and I canceled it. Then when the fleetcombat.com domain came up for renewal, they could not charge my card, so they canceled the domain.MyDomain want's $200 to re-activate the domain which is crazy.

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-57822395775362116882010-12-29T15:36:00.000-08:002010-12-29T15:42:15.740-08:00

It is no secret that the site has not been too stable lately. And it is no secret that I have not been making many updates lately :) Real life unfortunately getting in the way of fun as always!The problem with the site crashing is that the game data is stored in XML which is then Zipped up to save space. This was an experiment on my part to see if this would be more efficient for storing lots

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-68252737888076193882010-06-25T14:02:00.001-07:002010-06-25T14:07:41.198-07:00

I am very sorry for the very long outage. It looks like the site was down for about a month -- May 25th to June 25th due to a variety of problems.First, something happened with the hosting provider that meant that the web pages could not access the database which brought the site down. I could not even access the database from my development computer or from the tools provided by the hosting

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-12272681496106735332009-08-06T10:03:00.000-07:002011-07-21T16:57:16.753-07:00

Fleet Combat Online has reached 500 users! OK, that's not a huge number, but still not too bad for a game that has done essentially no advertising. We average between one and two people signing up per day (1.43 to be exact). The game started in February of 2008. So in honor of the occasion, here are some more statistics about the game: 61% of our traffic comes from Google searches 13% is direct

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-91929637518124704022009-05-01T15:00:00.001-07:002009-05-01T15:08:22.099-07:00

A very early feature request in Fleet Combat Online was for ship collisions. Another request some time later was to be able to battle on different "maps" that have obstacles on them such as asteroids and planets, etc.Both of these features have just been deployed. When you create a game now, you have the option of selecting a map to play on. As of now, there are only two maps, but I will be

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-602842439267058212009-04-08T14:31:00.001-07:002009-04-08T14:39:28.522-07:00

I have updated the way that beam weapons work to make them more powerful at longer range, and less powerful at short range. Up to now, the power delivered by a beam weapon has decreased linearly with range. Using a set charge amount, firing at a target twice as far away would do half the damage. This worked ok, but it made beams very deadly at point blank range and almost useless at anything

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-41162429810384993892009-03-10T15:48:00.001-07:002009-03-10T15:50:15.219-07:00

I think, finally we are all moved.Everything was all set for me to just switch the domain name over (so that www.fleetcombat.com pointed to the new address) and get the latest copy of the data onto the new server. Should have been about two hours of downtime.Then in the middle of doing that I found out that the new hosting company had somehow deleted all the permissions settings I had made and

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-44142405548242572412009-03-06T10:01:00.000-08:002009-03-06T10:09:39.664-08:00

Well, not necessarily today, but sometime this weekend, Fleet Combat Online will be moving to a new hosting provider.The host it is on now is pretty expensive ($25 a month) and my account there is running out of disk space fast. They charge an outrageous amount for added disk space. So I found a much cheaper host ($10 a month) that offers more than four times the disk space.I have been moving

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-26867679599615661442009-02-27T14:16:00.001-08:002009-02-27T14:21:04.115-08:00

There is a new feature to add some variety to the game play. Today I have deployed "Advanced Game Rules". When you are creating a battle, you will see a button that says "Show Advanced Rules" on the 2nd page of the "create a battle" wizard process. If you click that, a panel will show up that has a whole bunch of custom rules you can apply to the game. These rules fall into three categories:

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-55476768775950070912009-02-10T13:09:00.001-08:002009-02-10T13:11:16.677-08:00

The site has been down for most of yesterday and today. Even when it was up earlier today, it wasn't really working right.My hosting company changed something about how file permissions were handled, so the application could not write to the file system. This means it could not save any changes to the game data like orders.So, if you have been unable to play for the last 24 hours or so, thats

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-76162519149864938102008-12-12T16:31:00.000-08:002011-07-21T16:58:31.776-07:00

I need more feedback. There are only a small handful of players who participate in the online forum, and they have been very helpful. But I need more information than that. Here are some interesting stats: 354 battles have been played so far. (not counting stalled games that were deleted) There are 171 players who have signed up and "activated" their accounts. 148 of them have only joined

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-81084747181610292982008-12-10T13:04:00.000-08:002011-07-21T16:58:48.264-07:00

The new AI is finally here! It was a lot of work to integrate a whole new AI platform, and I was never sure that I would end up with anything useful, but I am pretty happy with it. The AI itself is only a little bit smarter right now than the old one. But the important thing is that the AI is now completely adjustable and extensible. Each AI player can have its own strategy and tactics and

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-80234963160661059502008-11-20T10:39:00.000-08:002011-07-21T16:59:05.881-07:00

There haven't been any updates lately, I know. But this doesn't mean I haven't been busy. I did update most of the pages in the wiki, and I have been hard at work on a completely new AI system. When I first launched the game, I just needed to get some kind of AI system in place so that people could test the game and play it whenever they wanted instead of having to wait for another real person

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-89354460388867368022008-10-28T14:41:00.000-07:002011-07-21T16:59:26.732-07:00

Formations are now live! I had deployed the formation manager for testing a few weeks ago, which allowed you to create and play around with formations. But you could not actually use them in battle. Now, the missing pieces are in place and you can actually enter battle using those formations. I think this will add a bit of dynamic as well as some "coolness" factor to battles. When you

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-20108289697868946122008-10-01T15:28:00.000-07:002008-10-01T15:34:12.642-07:00

As you may have seen from my last post giving you a sneak peak at a new feature, Fleet Combat Online now (almost) has custom fleet formations. On the left nav bar of the site when you are logged in, you will see "My Formations". This link takes you to a page where you can manage your formations.Formations are not fully functional yet. You can create and edit formations, but you cannot yet use

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-58971847597926890582008-09-22T14:37:00.001-07:002008-09-22T14:43:14.794-07:00

Here is a sneak preview screenshot of what I have been working on lately for the game:It is a "formation manager". Currently, when you start a game, your ships are all positioned in a "line abreast" formation and you can control the direction they all face, but that is about it. With this tool, you will be able to create as many formations as you like and save them to your user profile. You

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-83093912148571004892008-09-05T10:20:00.001-07:002008-09-05T10:30:47.438-07:00

I have just deployed a few small changes to the game logic. The main change is to the FTL jump drives. Players have been using them a little too much making battles hard to resolve. One player jumps so the other player immediately jumps to keep from getting caught in a vulnerable position. This goes on forever and no one gains an advantage.So, the following changes have been made to FTL

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-23949334996469554032008-07-25T10:47:00.000-07:002008-07-25T10:53:55.766-07:00

Well the new Interstellar era has been out for a couple of weeks now and everything looks pretty stable. The log files don't show any significant errors and I haven't seen any bug reports. So either that means the code is fairly clean or people just aren't playing :)Along those lines, I am now going to try to address the issue of players. Up to now I have been purposely not trying to gather a

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-30842667060958678132008-07-11T23:11:00.000-07:002008-07-11T23:23:54.917-07:00

Ok boys and girls (right, who are we kidding). The interstellar era has been deployed. I did a little last minute testing and calibration of the weapon strengths and everything seemed cool, so I just went for it.You can now create interstellar era games!Here are some highlights:1) Carriers and Fighters! They're pretty fun to use. But when you add the carrier to your fleet, it is empty. You have

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-53631149884038934192008-07-01T19:07:00.000-07:002008-07-01T19:12:23.496-07:00

I know things have been a little quiet around here but that is just because I have been focusing on getting the Interstellar era deployed. Once that is deployed, I will be making a lot more frequent small changes to enhance the game and the website.The coding on the Interstellar is done. All the new subsystems and ship types work.Now I am in the middle of creating a load of new ship types. To be

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-15820531454934102972008-06-15T16:26:00.001-07:002008-06-15T17:24:07.208-07:00

I am still working on the new technologies for the Interstellar era of the game. But I thought I would post some screenshots to show the progress. Here is a sequence of shots showing an attack run by two fighter wings against some enemy ships.(Click the images to see larger versions)In the first frame, I have launched two fighter wings (Beta wing and Gamma wing) from the carrier. Each "wing"

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-20465514704357843512008-05-29T15:49:00.000-07:002008-05-29T16:05:02.958-07:00

I have officially started work on the Interstellar Era of Fleet Combat. This will take a while as many new technologies are needed. But the first one I am working on is carriers and fighters.In real naval combat, fighters completely changed the game. Battleships were now irrelevant -- you couldn't get close enough to a carrier group to hit it with your big guns before the fighters and bombers

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-59398363300773070172008-05-21T15:54:00.000-07:002008-05-21T15:58:38.670-07:00

The new development server is built and up and running. As proof, I have just deployed a small bug fix: the game client was displaying "No Deadline" in every game even if it did have a turn deadline.This was because a while back I forgot that the client needed that info so I marked the deadline information so the server would not send it to the client. I have re-enabled this so now it should

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-20573205164793230262008-05-20T10:16:00.001-07:002008-05-20T10:19:39.911-07:00

Just a quick update about the state of my development server. I ordered parts for a new server over the weekend and they all arrive today. So I will be able to build the server tonight and get at least most of the software installed. Hopefully Vista won't give me any trouble and I will be able to easily transfer all the data from the old hard drive without losing anything.So if all goes well,

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-44517312005152766802008-05-16T21:18:00.001-07:002008-05-16T21:33:11.932-07:00

So there have been a few cases lately of old bugs in the game that I had fixed resurfacing. I could look at the code and see bits of it that I had corrected that had somehow reverted to an older version before the fix.I have encountered this sort of thing before. It is usually a problem with Visual Studio and/or Visual Source Safe. Visual Studio is what I use to develop the game, and Visual

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-87888536320376868462008-05-14T16:37:00.000-07:002011-07-21T17:01:29.991-07:00

Fleet Combat Online now has an online player ranking ladder. This is based on the ELO scoring system which is commonly used for Chess, "Go", StarCraft and lots of two player games both online and off. This system uses a pretty well established mathematical formula which gives a weighted amount of points based on the existing skill rating of each player participating in a match. You can see

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-24741534768233734742008-05-02T18:23:00.000-07:002011-07-21T17:01:58.152-07:00

Wow, its been a month since I posted here. Well, I have not been inactive at all, I have been working on some big changes to the game. So without further delay, here is the list of updates: The game now supports Directed Energy Weapons -- Lasers! This was a big development effort, but it is one step to ushering the later "eras" as energy weapons will feature prominently in later times.

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-87706215406570756542008-04-06T23:55:00.001-07:002008-04-06T23:55:58.660-07:00

I have deployed the following changes (mostly bug fixes):Bugs fixed:1) AI players not firing all of their weapons when they have the opportunity.2) An unhandled error in the game client when assigning repair teams to fix a subsystem3) An unhandled error in the game client when deploying a decoy4) When a ship exploded, there was no explosion drawn in the game client (there was still an explosion

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-77477945669819660642008-03-31T20:31:00.000-07:002008-03-31T20:38:22.761-07:00

I have just deployed the "real" logic for Torpedoes. This should make them a lot more deadly (maybe too deadly, but we'll see). They still won't be much good against fast ships, but they will be quite a worry for large ships. Torpedos have a 360 degree field of view, so you cannot break their lock by out turning them. They also have an infinite lifespan, so they will never run out of fuel or

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-20688746574227281142008-03-28T16:02:00.000-07:002008-03-28T16:14:50.230-07:00

Your ships and all of your games have disappeared. This time intentionally! I have deleted all the game data except for the players statistics (Command Points, wins, losses, etc.). Everything else is gone.This was needed because I had to redesign the data storage for the entire game. This site started as an experiment in game logic and I wanted to see if it was possible to set up a web based

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-70193947505592258532008-03-23T19:41:00.000-07:002008-03-23T19:42:16.644-07:00

The in game and lobby chats are back online. This also means that the "player status" indicators in the game client are back and working. So you can play a game with both players online now and everything should work as normal.

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-27292701394759807052008-03-22T23:54:00.000-07:002008-03-22T23:59:48.979-07:00

The lobby chat and the in-game chat are both down right now. This will also affect the "traffic light" status indicators in the game.The problem is that the client and the chat server are written with a beta version of Adobe Flex. Well, Adobe just released the final version of Flex this week and for some reason, they decided it would be a good idea to kill any application using the beta. So

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-82804982322297485472008-03-19T14:57:00.000-07:002008-03-19T15:05:28.006-07:00

There haven't been any updates in a week (since the release of mine fields), and there probably won't be for close to another week. This is because I have decided to rip out a lot of the guts of the game engine. When I started writing Fleet Combat Online, I didn't know if I would actually release it or not. It was just something to play with and see where it went. Since it was just an

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-35955478596858897412008-03-12T16:22:00.000-07:002011-07-21T17:02:50.788-07:00

I predict that the Columbia Class Corvette and some of the larger ships are going to get a bit more popular... I have just deployed a major change that enables mine fields. Up to now, the mine layers have been pretty useless because they haven't created proper mine field. But now they do and they are quite deadly. Please read this wiki article about mine fields as I think it will have a big

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-4819448060155467442008-03-07T18:58:00.000-08:002008-03-07T19:02:24.494-08:00

I have just deployed a change that enables damaged subsystems. Well, the subsystems have always taken damage, but it had no effect until now. When a subsystem is damaged, its performance will be affected proportionally. So if your engines or your reactor is damaged by 50% then your ships top speed will be reduced by 50%.If your weapons are damaged, there is a chance that they will misfire. You

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-3328168878455746462008-03-06T13:37:00.000-08:002008-03-06T13:48:02.302-08:00

I love my people, so I do what they ask :)I have just deployed the following changes which pretty much all come from player requests:1) Spectator mode is now complete. When you are at the game detail page and you are not playing in that game, there will be a "Watch this game" button. Clicking that will launch the game client in spectator mode. The ship control panel will be gone, but

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-87460457015479836202008-03-04T14:56:00.001-08:002008-03-04T15:00:56.668-08:00

If you haven't noticed by now, FCO has a bit of an issue with time zones. In theory, the technology I am using (ASP.Net and MS SQL 2005) should take care of that automatically, but it clearly isn't. Maybe it has something to do with bits of the application being in California and some bits being somewhere in Canada that is in the US Central time zone. This is why when you go to the "Browse

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-12825997286109085112008-03-03T16:12:00.001-08:002008-03-03T16:13:33.872-08:00

I have just deployed some changes. Some of these were suggested by users -- thanks JinnTann and 123 (whoever you are).Here are the changes. Please let me know if any bugs have been introduced with this deployment:1) There is now a "Browse Players" link on the left hand menu. You can see all players and click into their profile. In the future, there will be a search here, but it is not needed

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-76240995272644326202008-02-28T16:05:00.000-08:002008-02-28T16:14:55.660-08:00

The AI player development is coming along pretty well. I just gave it basic survival and attack instincts and decide to play a game against one of the AI players. I am embarassed to say the battle was a draw. To be fair, his fleet was a little bit stronger than mine : two LCS's and two HCF's to my two LCS's, one MCC and one DCD. So I had a Corvette and a Destroyer vs his two Frigates. The

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-81253202339558443172008-02-27T16:45:00.001-08:002011-07-21T17:03:45.947-07:00

Ok, ok I know I am supposed to be working on the AI Players, but I am surprised at the number of early-adopters that have signed up and I am a bit concerned about losing them because they can't figure out how to play. No one has complained yet, but I can imagine that at least some people have found themselves lost but are too shy to ask questions in the forum. So I have whipped up a quick

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-86766961293763969282008-02-26T12:44:00.000-08:002008-02-26T12:52:51.505-08:00

I have started work on computer controlled players. I had intended to have working AI players before ever launching the game because of their value in testing -- two AI players could complete an entire game in 1 minute rather than the days it takes us humans. But I got too excited about getting feedback from people so I launched the site anyway.The AI players will help a lot in tweaking the

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-78227336469292223662008-02-25T11:41:00.000-08:002011-07-21T17:04:14.424-07:00

There was a problem with the forum that I discovered and is now (hopefully) fixed. You are supposed to have access to the forum automatically when you sign up and activate your game account. Apparently, people were going to the forum site and not being able to login, so they were registring for a separate account on the forum. A separate forum account is not required. Once you have activated

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-52902785050223919912008-02-22T12:01:00.000-08:002011-07-21T17:04:36.435-07:00

There was about 12 hours of downtime which has just ended. I added some features and fixed some bugs. Then when I published the application to the hosting service, everything died. I am not sure what happened, but I couldn't fix it. I opened a ticket with the hosting company and they fixed it right away. But I had to recompile and republish the application which took some time (well, that

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-51767496587773561782008-02-19T23:40:00.001-08:002008-02-19T23:45:27.439-08:00

During play testing it became clear that small ships "pwnd" the larger ships. Particularly small ships with mass drivers. Those mass driver rounds have no warhead, but their great speed gives them an incredible amount of energy. Large ships like Frigates and Destroyers were going down with one shot from a mass driver. So I have increased the hull strength of all the ships, but particularly the

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-22468974073992763302008-02-18T16:30:00.001-08:002008-02-18T16:33:46.043-08:00

Fleet Combat Online has entered "beta" stage. I am now looking for players to test things out. Let me know by adding comments here if you want to help out (if you already have before this blog post, then I have already been in contact with you).In honor of this occasion, I have recorded a full battle and put select screenshots of it up on Flickr for you all to see. This way you can see the

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-45084963095817125852008-02-01T14:16:00.000-08:002011-07-21T17:05:05.289-07:00

The web site is done, well at least all the core features. I am not putting it up yet, because I am not quite ready for people to sign up and start creating their own games. I will need to do more testing first and most of all, I still need to add a lot more content: ships, weapons, etc. Right now there are only a couple of ship classes which won't be much fun. Som people have had trouble

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-31528735098339742862008-01-21T23:29:00.000-08:002011-07-21T17:05:20.461-07:00

Fleet Combat Online now has a forum. I don't expect a lot of deep conversation since there isn't much to talk about at this time, but I just set it up so I thought I should mention it. I'll add more categories later, I just wanted to make sure that the software I am using was up to the job. I am getting pretty far along in making the website that will eventually host the game. It will allow

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-52077951628863203252008-01-16T10:25:00.000-08:002008-01-16T10:44:14.844-08:00

I have started working on the main website for Fleet Combat Online where you will go to sign up and actually play the game. I have all kinds of ideas for player ranking and factions and such things, but I am trying to keep it simple to start with. Also, I am not a graphic designer by any means, so it will be pretty spartan :) When it is ready, this blog will move to a new url and the main

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-5293246363121063512008-01-11T10:41:00.001-08:002011-07-21T17:06:08.060-07:00

I have just implemented decoys as a defensive measure against all types of incoming missiles. Modern day fighter jets use two types of decoys against missiles, "chaff" and flares. Flares are intended to confuse missiles guided by infrared detection and chaff is little foil strips intended to confuse radar guided missiles. In space combat, the guidance systems probably won't use IR or radar, but

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-52632001429926659112008-01-07T20:15:00.000-08:002008-12-13T01:39:36.924-08:00

Well, I did a little digging into the issue of the high speed mass driver rounds missing their targets too often. I found out that it had nothing to do with the speed of the round or the guidance system. Turns out it was a stupid little defect: other missiles that I have tested have proximity fuses while mass driver rounds do not. When a missile gets close to its target (within its proximity fuse

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-60243976274162403852008-01-02T14:57:00.000-08:002008-01-02T15:18:33.510-08:00

In en earlier post I promised to post more screenshots of a larger ship battle. I haven't done that yet because playing in that battle brought up some issues that I have been fixing. Mostly just little stuff when you click through each of your ships and giving them orders and then go back and click on one of the ships you already gave orders to, there is no indication that it has orders. So this

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-60388405564300620242008-01-02T14:48:00.000-08:002008-01-02T14:57:00.909-08:00

I don't know why I didn't find this before, but for some reason this site just showed up in one of my Google Searches about star ship combat and fleet operations:www.starshipcombatsimulator.comIt looks to be essentially a modernization and an expansion of the original Begin or Begin2. It even references the original FASA starfleet combat game.I have not played it yet, but it looks interesting.

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-52525225998710150432007-12-22T23:27:00.000-08:002008-12-13T01:39:37.097-08:00

I have been working on that larger battle I mentioned in my last post. I have also been working on the user interface a little bit. The more I actually try to run a battle, the more I find things that are missing or are not right about the UI. Which is good, that is the whole point of testing. In my last post I mentioned that I was going to post pictures of a battle between more starships -- here

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-71859718633028880702007-12-17T22:56:00.000-08:002011-07-21T17:07:07.206-07:00

I have created a wiki for Fleet Combat Online. It will be the home for the game encyclopedia. It will have definitions for the ships and weapons and all the other game objects. It is also another nice distraction to keep me from actually finishing the game :)

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-11580270994875096502007-12-14T15:47:00.001-08:002007-12-14T15:59:42.597-08:00

I have actually been making a lot of progress lately, which is why there have not been a lot of posts. Well, that and the fact that Galactic Fleets is taking up a lot of my time (click that to sign up and I get points! W00t!). I am the type that easily gets addicted to games. I used to play MUDs a long time ago -- I would stay up all night long (after all, that was the only time you could

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-27912487093932237742007-12-10T10:26:00.000-08:002007-12-10T10:34:50.840-08:00

Now that I have several different kinds of star ships and weapons setup, I need a way to get them into a game. Up to now, I have been creating test games by manually editing the XML files that make up a game and going from there. But now I need a web page where a user can create a game, add his or her fleet to the game and allow other gamers to sign up for it. Basically, I need an easy way for

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-45507742448082741582007-12-07T13:57:00.000-08:002007-12-07T14:08:22.834-08:00

Up to now, I have been running my little test games with just one type of star ship and one type of weapon to make sure that the game engine is working the way I want it to. But now I am ready to start creating an assortment of ships and weapons and defensive systems, etc. This is what I think of as the "content" of the game. The engine that processes the turns (ships moving, weapons firing,

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-70739665942659092422007-12-06T10:47:00.000-08:002007-12-06T10:53:09.837-08:00

While doing more research via Google to see what is out there in terms of browser based space combat games, I stumbled across OGame. OGame is a massively multi player online 4X (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit and eXterminate) game that runs completely inside the browser. So I joined a game to see what it is about.I am not sure that I "get it". The game play (at least in the beginning) is very very

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-78125307644408665252007-12-04T10:35:00.000-08:002008-12-13T01:39:37.366-08:00

Here is a closer view of the tactical panel on the left side of the screen. This is what I am currently working on. Helm Control allows you to steer the currently selected ship as well as see its current heading and speed as well as its desired heading and speed. Fire Control (shown) is where your weapons show up. You can load them with various types of missiles and target weapons individually to

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-9568932999652662662007-12-03T14:36:00.000-08:002008-12-13T01:39:37.613-08:00

Here is a very early screenshot of Fleet Combat Online. You can see the basics of the UI and two ships on the battlefield. The blue one is under control of the current player and the red one is the enemy. The dark grey lines show the position history of each ship. The lighter grey lines show its direction of travel and speed. The grid is in 1 kilometer squares. You can zoom in and out and this

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-83625817235455284182007-11-27T10:16:00.000-08:002007-11-27T10:40:27.987-08:00

Well, now that I have written a bit about the foundations for the game, how about a little about the game itself. It is of course, still under development, but here are the features it will have when it launches:Support for any number of players in a game. There may be a practical limit, but there is no real reason that you won't be able to have 50 people in a game if you want to.Players can

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-2787785563921910652007-11-21T10:52:00.000-08:002011-07-21T17:08:25.272-07:00

Since I just registered the domain name fleetcombat.net, I was searching around to see other uses of the phrase and came across this series of blog entries from someone doing a thought exercise on the practical issues of space fleet combat. They are pretty interesting, and the same sort of things that I have been thinking about since I decided to develop this simulation. Basically, given what

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7766362658277240901.post-65743639890665556052007-11-20T10:36:00.001-08:002007-11-20T11:18:42.211-08:00

Fleet Combat Online is (or I should say, will be) an online multi-player turn based strategy game of star ship combat. For now, this site will be a developers blog of the work in progress. I will describe the features that it will have and post screenshots and answer any questions. Hopefully, I only have a couple more months of work to get it live and playable. I set up this site now to put

Fleet Combat Onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07432814621633282788noreply@blogger.com1