Back to PortJump

Having dragged myself away from No Man's Sky for a while I've decided to try and get Port2Jump to a stage that I can release it in beta before Christmas. You get a clue as to what Port2Jump is about by the ship name in the above photo chosen about 2 years ago - the "Poor Man's Sky"! P2J is a GDW Traveller play aid, letting you take a ship from downport to anywhere in the system, and then jump to another system and land on any other planet. However it's all about implementing Traveller rules, not about graphics! Initially all feedback is via the text "COACC message log" and a set of static images which will be cued to your orbit type and the world below. Pretty quickly some of these will be replaced by some WebGL graphics of spinning globes etc.

I had most of P2J working in Perl about 2-4 years ago, but I started last year to port to ASP.NET. All the basic navigation stuff is already working. I'm now doing the table-intensive system and world generation, then once I've got the first WebGL bits in and worked out how to get it up onto Azure I may let people start playing with it.

No Man's Sky - Early Thoughts

Bumpy landing on a hot, watery planet!

Pre-ordered No Man's Sky having been following its development for about 2 years (and hey they're from Guildford!) and been playing it since the day it came out on the PC (and my 2nd and 3rd sessions were playing it on the train to Edinburgh).

It's been interesting/frustrating to read all the negative hype. In most way's I think the game is exactly what I was expecting - just new world after new world to explore. The whole alien story overlay was far fuller than I expected form the original descriptions and does give some sense of an aim, but otherwise I'm quite content to just wander round these worlds - I've only done1 jump so far, but am doing pretty well on my wanderer's badge!

My starting point, poisonous atmosphere, yuck!

Yes the worlds do seem a bit samey after a while, partly the colour palette, partly the "library" of bits, and my most recent planet which actually has trees and flowers is the first one that felt significantly (if not radially) different. Although my first one with a coast-line was a neat experience.

The game certainly has a survival feel. My first trek across a planet to some Heridium and then back to my ship felt quite epic (before I realised how easy it was to recharge life support). Likewise my first dive down to a sunken base - working out how to maximise air and use my jet pack to just keep lifting me out the water on a free boost) had the adrenaline going.

Coasts and islands on the hot water planet

The idea of naming things was great to begin with, but you soon find that with the "always moving on" imperative there is always too much to name! I had a whole list of Vilani names ready to go, but have hardly named anything. In many ways you almost want less worlds and more time and variation on each - and something faster to name them than a console speed keyboard (even on PC).

I suppose I'm now at a bit of a cross-roads. Holiday's are over and time to get back to some serious evening coding, so far less time on No Mans Sky. But I still want to explore, but every time I land on a world I just always want to see what's over the horizon, so it takes me days to get bored with a planet, weeks to get bored with a system. But you do begin to want something a bit less samey.

Big mushrooms appear to be everywhere. Lovely planet backdrops though

One angle for me of course is how this plays out against a Traveller type backdrop - what would it me like to use No Mans Sky as a setting for Traveller adventures, if ever we get multi-user (and thinking of it what would it be like to use our own Fieldscapes for Traveller - and already thinking about recreating the core No Mans Sky loop in Fieldscapes).

First ruin, more alien than the carbon-copy bases

So what changes would I ideally want in No Mans Sky in the ideal world?

- More real variety from planet to planet
- Variation on a planet from place to place (eg polar caps to tropical desert)
- Quicker naming (eg Name Now when discovered)
- Compass or other waypoints to aid planetary travel
- "You are here" on a planetary map, linked to your own waypoints and places you've been to
- True multi-user once I start bumping into people
- The NPC experience is minimal but a nice sense of ships coming and going, you do feel like there are other people there. They alien stuck at a ground station as he needed some fuel was the nicest touch so far. Would be nice to have more of that rather than the cookie-cutter aliens-with-ipads in the bases. And maybe even meet aliens while trekking across.
- Far fewer small cargo containers with isotopes and gek charms. You always feel like you ought to click on them but its rarely worth it.

Just some early thoughts, partly to pull the game in the direction I'd like it to go of course, your mileage my vary. But overall the game IS what I expected, it was money well spent and I'll continue to keep playing it. But it could have some serious competition once Star Citizen and Dual Universe are out.

My first flower! (I didn't destroy it!)

For those interested my album of No mans Sky screenshots is at https://goo.gl/photos/xHf4ziGke9pvczuW7

Pike & Shotte and Hexon

Each battalia is 3 P&S units, 2 of shot, 1 of pike, each occupy 1 hex

Took these as part of article I'm working to see how the Pike & Shotte rules would work on a 10cm Hexon grid - even though it took almost every 20mm ECW figure I had to muster two Pike & Shotte Battalia. I'm tempted to use them in my refight of Barnet though as they may suit that far better than my big battles rules.

Cavalry units of 8 figures over 2 hexes

Pike and Shot ready to receive

Coming to push-of-pike, note realistic variety of actual colours/units!

Dragoons play out the skirmish came in the copse on the flank

Strategy GameCon and Dust

Headed off to Strategy GameCon in Telford at the weekend to see what it was like. The couple of halls of CCG championships were packed, but the "main hall" with a smattering of boardgame vendors and assorted others was absolutely empty - all very weird.

The saving grace though was the stand put up by the STAGS Telford wargaming club. They had about 6 3x3 demo/participation games going on including Tanks, Team Yankee and Dust, and people on everyone keen to explain it all and play a game. We missed the chance to play Tanks! but did get the chance to play Dust, which, not being a Weird War Two fan I mainly wanted to play because a) it had troopers with jet packs and b) used a grid movement system so fits well with an article I'm writing. Jo and Tom beat me but it was a fairly even match.

A nice overview, not crosses for grid corners, and dots for centre points

My hero (on the ground) trying to fend off Jo's flying Valkyrie!

The Team Yankee talk-through almost tempted me to buy the rules (and I would have if I'd realised they were only £15), but as input to my own WW3 gaming rather than to buy into the system.

Battletech Radar Map for air assets

The other neat idea was on the Battletech game next to the table was an "aerial environment" map/scan, where air assets first appear and make their way through a couple of levels, and possibly hostile AA and CAPs before appearing on the table. Must adapt that!

6mm MDF Figures - The Cavalry

A few pictures of the 6mm cavalry from Commission Figurines positioned as line sabot's for my Baccus 6mm metal figures. The French Heavy Cavalry pack paints up as Dragoons or Cuirassiers.

The dragoons.

Side view of the Cuirassier.

As predicted in the Infantry blog post the cavalry don't work quite as well - thin horses and no sense of the riders legs over the saddle, but again viewed from the edge of an ordinary wargames table you'd be hard pressed to tell the difference en-masse.

Computer Based Wargames Rant

OK not much of a rant the latest trailer for Cossacks3 really highlighted to me why I can't get on with any of these type of computer wargames (or at least have not yet found one I can get on with):

1) The gun line is along the top of the scarp and the enemy is directly below them. The shot would either fly straight over their heads or roll out the barrel even if they could depress the gun that much!

2) The infantry behind the gun line is firing through the gun line without taking their own gunners out!

6mm MDF Napoleonics

Back at WMMS earlier in the year I picked up a couple of packs of Commission Figurines new 6mm MDF (!) figures having read about them in MW&BG. I wasn't really contemplating them as a replacement for Baccus, but rather for acting as improved sabot bases to show when my column blocks are in line.

I've just finished painting the infantry and I must say they look great - and certainly at wargames distance you may well be hard put to tell the difference between MDF and metal.

They are certainly going to be ideal for the line sabots - 8 figures per sabot gives me 12 sabots per pack - images to come. It probably takes me 3 days to paint a pack of 96, whereas its more like 6-8 days for the same number of Baccus. Cost wise the MDF figures are £2 for 96, as against £6.60 for the same number of metal. But the metal certainly have more heft and look better close up. I'm currently painting the cavalry (Cuirassier and Dragoons), but I don't think they will look as good as the horses are definitely on the thin, on the way back from Moscow, side.

One thing it did get me thinking of though was doing a whole Infantry Battalion (and possibly cavalry Regiment) at 1:1. It would only be 5 packs and would look quite stunning and be the ideal way to visualise the different formations. A project for the future perhaps.