Hooligan Labs

It's not dead, but I've been months at my new house without internet. Even cell reception is spotty. I'm still working on Unity stuff almost every day. I'll share more later.

Post: New GUI stuff in Unity! http://hooliganlabs.tumblr.com/post/122381583315/overview-of-the-new-ui-system-unity-blog Now that I've learned about this I'm really excited as well to see what they are going to do with this in KSP!

The bad news is that I've delayed putting the build up. The good news is that I have someone helping me a bit with UI now, so it will be much easier to play when it is up.

Those who are on the mailing list at www.hooliganlabs.com will get the first download link. Closed pre-alpha concept. Don't get too excited for a lot of playable balanced content. Doing final checks tonight, hoping ETA real soon.

Wanted to let you all know that I'm at the point where I have a playable build. Getting through some more playtesting, hope to share soon.

Here's a new screenshot: http://hooliganlabs.tumblr.com/post/119270801415/a-little-pre-alpha-gameplay-very-subject-to Right now, when you reach the destination (143 years after launch) you can be graded on what you have on the ship after the voyage. Are there enough people to start a village, a city or a nation... Is there fuel so they don't have to go through a dark age... Etc. Eventually I would want to expand it so first contact would occur very frequently upon arrival.

I think none of this existed when I started, so I hard coded it into the script (see the source code), but there are modules now specifically for animations. Check out the Squad Utility parts, there are lots of them! I copied this one from an antenna: { name = ModuleAnimateGeneric animationName = Deploy isOneShot = false startEventGUIName = Extend endEventGUIName = Retract actionGUIName = Toggle Antenna allowAnimationWhileShielded = False }

I've learned that what I knew of game development, from doing little adventure and puzzle games, barely applies to a full strategy game. This has moved into Blizzard / Valve time, "when it's done" I wish, when I first posted about this, that I hadn't said that I didn't need money. This would go a lot faster if there was a team to experiment with designs. I have been talking to someone who may be interested in modeling buildings, so that will help. It takes the most time for me to model art and try to figure out game mechanics.

Ok, got some concept art up! http://hooliganlabs.tumblr.com/post/118637433920/so-what-progress-has-been-made-lately-on

Generally that already works great on many KSP planets. Specifically for that design, I thought about doing a side deploying design like that. In my experience importing size changing shape keys from Blender (which is how everything is currently animated) into Unity isn't very good. It took about 10 tries to make the Cirrus expand anything like how I intended. Jewel has the right idea with doing animation in Unity, I think that would allow for much more flexibility.

I downloaded it and it worked, the attachment points fixed! Nicely done, JS! Is the download now hosted at Kerbal Stuff? If so I should update my links on the videos. BTW, I noticed with the new aerodynamics that I was practically able to escape the atmosphere with the right balloons. Might be time to update the drag values.

I think all of them. I mostly tried the Octo and base airship envelope. I think the wiki has been updated with the new cfg setup, maybe. The people at the KSPModders channel of esper.net are really helpful for specific questions.

I got to go but I sent you the working files. I think I have it running in 1.0.2! Actually, updating the toolbar is pretty easy. I'd be happy to explain it! Also, can you handle updating the .cfg so the new node configuration works? Right now not every side of the airship can attach to everything.

They were helpful in getting that error to go away (just had to remove the craft and replace it) but now nothing happens with the mod at all, the toolbar doesn't even come up. Jewel, are you sure the source code included in the download is what was used to compile? Is it missing initialization code for the button?

I saw that this has been broken for a long time so I'm working on it. I recompiled the code with the new Toolbar.dll and got most of the errors to go away. Now having something to do with index exceed part module count in cfg. Maybe someone is in the IRC chat.

In Europe for work at the moment, but still working on it every day. I've combined the prototype asteroid city with the nuclear propulsion system, and it now flies to Alpha Centauri. Took a break from working on city gameplay to do some graphics. I can upload some screenshots soon. Found a nice program that generates tiled textures to do the ice on the asteroid, that looks nice.

New post on gameplay progress: Talking a bit about the conversion of the Interstellar spaceship from a 1d ring to a 2d hollowed asteroid: http://hooliganlabs.tumblr.com/post/116430398510/update-new-spaceship-city-design-making Still no new screenshots. I'm focusing way more on gameplay than art so everything looks like crap.

That's a great question. Our telescopes can tell us a lot about a planet, but that can change during the voyage. Imagine if aliens showed up at Earth today expecting nothing but the forests and plains we had a thousand years ago!

I could see picking a planet to be an option once in a solar system. Then you would be close enough to see how habitiable each is, if one is already occupied with a hostile alien race, etc. Advanced propulsion systems could make it possible to get a speed boost by slingshotting from one star to another. Issac Asimov wrote about this.

The idea of asymmetric economy management sounds good! There are some people who love city management and some who hate it. This could cater to both. I'm in the process of writing a strategy game in Unity. If you feel like trying that as a way of writing a video game its free and there are RTS tutorials coming out on YouTube.

I know I haven't posted in a long time... I've realized how much more there is to do to make this a real game. But I'm still doing it! Here is a long post on what's been happening: http://hooliganlabs.tumblr.com/post/112098256405/interstellar-isnt-dead-its-still-going

Script progress will make it possible to “mod†in custom names, and eventually whole new species.

Update: Generations! Read more here!

Good point. This is how I plan on having it work in Interstellar. 1) Space is big. Really really big. If you started from Earth and an Alcubierre drive gets you a fantastic 10x light speed, it would still take you more than a year to get to the closest known potentially habitable planet (Tau Ceti e, I believe). Once you have occupied about 10 planets that far away, the next closest would be 49 years away (Kepler-186f). At this point you would have to expect your entire crew to be dead by the time they arrived, so you would need to have a second generation born on the ship to colonize it. And should you want to explore the center of the galaxy, which is about 27,000 light years away, you are looking at a 2,700 year journey. 2) We don't really know what is in deep space. We just know it's not empty. In Interstellar, it will have properties that explain a lot of what we do and don't know about alien life, and what that means for trying to cross it. 3) Society generally doesn't care about space. It's expensive, dangerous and unpleasant. It takes a monumental planet-wide cooperative effort to launch an interstellar ship. You may be playing as the only interstellar ship in existence, being refueled and improved a little bit each time that you make a journey to a new planet. I think that makes for a compelling basis for the game.

Are you referring to the model on the front page? Nope, that is a nuclear pulse propulsion engine, which is based on well understood technology we could use to build an interstellar ship now. It has a habitat ring on the front. That rotates to provide artificial gravity, which is really necessary for humans and most large organics to live for extended periods of time.