Double Fine's latest game: Spacebase DF-9

[Cosmic Misogynerd]

maybe in 5 years it would be a worthy game to try out.

Do you think Double Fine will still be alive 5 years from now?

I hope not.

 

[suejak]

The question the studio is struggling with is, "Can we be rich enough to publish our own games from now on?" Not, "Can we keep the studio open?"

Nothing pisses the Codex off more than success. Fuck that. All the really good games are made over 3-5 years by poor people working in the free time in the evenings after their code monkey real jobs. Bonus points: negative reviews from major sites.

 

[Haba]

Success? Could you show me where this apparent success of Double Fine has been hiding all this time? After squandering all the backer money, the sales of the stillbirth Broken Age will barely cover the second part. And how much will the second part sell? Probably less than the first.

 

[Destroid]

Well... everyone's wages are getting paid. I guess it's not as productive as it could be for the owners and investors though.

 

[suejak]

How do you prove success? "Hiding"? What? The company is completely self-funded (w/ Kickstarter money lolol) in San Francisco with a few dozen senior/highly skilled employees. Broken Age's sales numbers are not public, but the "stillbirth" has been on and off the Steam top 10 list for a while now, and the Steam top 10 list ranks by revenue. They have multiple projects in progress.

They also have hired at least 3-10 new people in the time I've been watching, which has only been a couple months.

I wanna believe they're suffering and poor as much as you do, but Broken Age at #4 on the Steam charts just the other day doesn't sound bad to me.

It's actually #38 now that the sale is over, but that's still not really low.

 

[J_C]

New videoupdate about the project. I must say, this is shaping up to be a good base sim.

I recommend everyone to watch the video, I was surprised how much new stuff was added. It becomes more complex with each update.

 

[anus_pounder]

Srsly though, I'm interested. Would buy if I had any zenny to spare.

 

[Destroid]

Looks like it's coming along nicely.

 

[Angthoron]

So due to that video I decided to go and check how much this game costs. 22.90 or 27.90e, huh. Let's check Kinguin.

http://www.kinguin.net/category/5682/spacebase-df-9-soundtrack-edition-steam-gift/

7.90 for the soundtrack edition? Don't mind if I do.

Already installing.

 

[Angthoron]

So, gave it a quick try, seems to be pretty nice.

Unfortunately, there seems to be some sort of a bug going on, where, once you build night stands in Resting Quarters, the NPCs will go ahead and immediately try to sleep in them. Since that gives about as much rest as you'd expect, they end up trapped in an endless sleep/awake/sleep cycle even after the damned things were removed, and of course, hunger meter runs on, AND of course the builders were the first ones to take a nap in their new convenient night stands, pretty soon, half of my population got wiped out in their sleep. And that's when a raider party landed...

So yeah, only build beds in resting quarters first, unless you want to make your base...

...a one-night stand.

 

[Hellraiser]

I'm waiting for a hotfix since I keep getting crashes and lots of them in this update, the damn door placement bug pisses me off and there's also some issue with building beds.

Oh and they really need to do something about security beacons, they should allow you to set beacons to roam/explore and guard. AI is a bit dumb and often gets stuck when told to explore unknown ships, even if they docked with your base.

Overall I like the direction they are heading in, but it took them so fucking long to release this update it's not even funny. When was the last update? February?

 

[Angthoron]

Can some of you bros help me out a bit? How do I send my security guys to actually take care of an invading force? They just tend to derp around and be useless. Beacons in own base too?

Also, with major invasions (When another ship docks), so far, I have two stuck to my base, both being dormant. What do? I have some laser wallguns waiting for them just in case but I'd probably like to invade myself, and last time I went through the airlock my guys were decimated in seconds.

 

[Hellraiser]

Can some of you bros help me out a bit? How do I send my security guys to actually take care of an invading force? They just tend to derp around and be useless. Beacons in own base too?

Also, with major invasions (When another ship docks), so far, I have two stuck to my base, both being dormant. What do? I have some laser wallguns waiting for them just in case but I'd probably like to invade myself, and last time I went through the airlock my guys were decimated in seconds.

Yeah, place beacons in own base when defending, redshirts will flock to them.

Assuming you mean docked ships and not the breach ship raiders you have to murderkill their inhabitants, though sometimes there are friendlies on board. Raiders aren't too much of a nuisance, it's the killbots that are a real fucking pain and that's probably what's killing your guys. Just conscript new immigrants into the security force and send them into the grinder until the docked ship is secure.

Docked and derelict ships can have goodies on board, loot in the form of research schematics your eggheads can retrieve and then research. Also you can just vaporize them for matter making them a good alternative to mining.

 

[Angthoron]

Cool, thanks. Been having some pretty bad luck with immigrants, most are just 1-star Security fodder, might be more useful once I finish the plasma rifle (or whatever) research, though.

Edit: Fucking argh! Got 5 3-star security guys, they enter airlock and immediately get assraped by something. I know it's not killbots because the ship actually has garden and oxygen levels and shit. And for some great reason they don't want to get in through, like, THE DOOR that is connected to my space station, no, it has to be airlock.

Gonna try to cheese it by building walls in space and hooking up laser cannons onto them, maybe that'll clear the ships.

 

[Hellraiser]

Double Fine finally released update 6, monthly updates my ass. Though I till give credit to them, it's actually a bit beefy in new features, highlights:

- systems require power, base seed now provides some, also derelict and hostile vessels that dock now spawn with engines which provide power. Also this means reactor zones and reactors are finally more than just cosmetic.
- colonists now have preferences to job types which affects their morale
- low morale colonists now engage in reckless behavior such as starting brawls and sabotaging machines
- security officers can now be set to use non-lethal, necessary and lethal force. Troublesome individuals can be detained in the brig.
- colonists have personal possessions, which they store in cabinets and what not. (in the future this is supposed to tie into the game's economy)
- snazzy new morale/needs graph which shows what needs and how much were satisfied over time.

 

[Angthoron]

Do the medics work properly yet? Last update I was sick of having all the corpses and injured people lying around unattended infinitely for no apparent reasons. Hooray, that totally didn't affect morale and productivity at all.

 

[Hellraiser]

Do the medics work properly yet? Last update I was sick of having all the corpses and injured people lying around unattended infinitely for no apparent reasons. Hooray, that totally didn't affect morale and productivity at all.

They seemed to work right for me all the time. Unless the medic ended up being incapacitated himself. Maybe yours was a lazy alcoholic.

 

[J_C]

They will release the game in october, after some bugtesting, doing the tutorial and adding objectives:
http://www.spacebasedf9.com/post/97755808095/the-road-to-1-0
Finally!

 

[Berekän]

How the fuck do you have the gut to still defend them is beyond me. Hopefully this is another nail in the coffin for that bunch of thieves.

http://web.archive.org/web/20131018054131/http://spacebasedf9.com/devplans

 

[SuicideBunny]

full source release isn't a bad thing, though.

 

[Ulminati]

After the feature cuts it's still just them taking a dump on your chest instead of directly in your mouth.

 

[sexbad?]

This is pretty awful.

 

[sexbad?]

For posterity, here is what they had planned. This likely isn't the most recent feature list they had up, but it was the only snapshot that was saved in the glorious archives of the internet before the fuckers deleted it all.

Spoiler

FOOD
* citizens have hunger need and must eat food to satisfy it
* food replicator object that can be built in any zone
* citizens can use food replicator to fulfill hunger need, but it's like vending machine food, adequate but not great
* small matter cost (1-2) each time someone uses a food replicator
** 0 matter = replicators stop working
** improperly maintained food replicators produce bad food that makes people sick?
* replicator food comes in wrappers, produces waste (litter carryable) (if/when carryable object concept is added)
* garden zones where plants, ie "real food", is grown in hydroponic trays by citizens with botanist duty
* plants in gardens produce small amounts of extra oxygen
* citizens who spend time in garden zones have happy thoughts, increasing morale
* plants grow from seedlings to full-sized plants ready for harvest
* plants have a "health", if it reaches zero the plant dies
* citizens on botanist duty "maintain" plant health, much as techs maintain machines
* botanists harvest fully grown plants and deliver them to pub fridges for preparation
* bartenders at pubs cook food into meals, which nourish citizens more and make them happy
* concept of different dishes?
** how do bartenders/patrons decide which dish is cooked?
** immigrants bring recipes for new dishes?
* citizens sit at a pub table and eat
* citizens have food preferences
** eating a preferred food makes them very happy, eating a strongly disliked food makes them a bit unhappy

CARRYABLE OBJECTS
* citizens visibly carry around arbitrary sprite/3D objects
* containers can hold other things
* citizens can stash stuff in an inventory, shown in a new inspector tab
* when people arrive, they have a suitcase (container with their stuff in it)
* players build shelves for people to put their stuff on
* a single item of stuff can have multiple tags describing it, eg purple, terran, fuzzy, punk rock, etc. citizens have affinities for these tags
* citizens trade stuff with each other, trying to get stuff they like more
* roaming traders will visit the base to trade new stuff with people
* "litter" objects that citizens with low neatness personality throw away
* janitors / people with high neatness pick up litter
* janitors clean up bloodstains and other cosmetic damage
* people gibbed by monsters turn into bits, which janitors must clean up

POWER SYSTEM
* "reactor zone" with fusion reactor object that produces power
* rooms must be adjacent to a room with a working reactor to be powered
* unpowered rooms go dark (emergency lighting) and objects in them don't function
* reactors only produce X power, then you have to build another
* factor new need for reactors into starting matter allotment
* maybe make the Base Seed object serves as a low-output reactor to help players get started

MINIMAP
* minimap display of base in lower right corner
* separate viz mode toggles for minimap vs main view

BASE HISTORY SCREEN
* a permanent timestamped list of important base events: citizen joined, citizen died, ship docked, first zone of each type created
* in-game screenshot key that pops up a "write a caption for this screenshot" box, screenshot + caption is added to the timestamped list
* base history is stored locally in save dir as HTML + linked images, each base has its own dir
* base history is also mirrored on a hosted server somewhere, players can easily link their base histories

BASE STATS SCREEN
* auto-show stats screen after base fails, ie everyone dies, "game over" state
stats to show:
* Matter spent
* Derelicts
* Hostile docking
* Total docks
* Non-hostile docks
* Docking requests denied, accepted, forced
* Room temp
* Raiders killed
* Monsters killed

MULTI-LEVEL BASE CONSTRUCTION
* UI for navigating multiple levels
* rendering tech for showing multiple levels
* build gravshafts to allow citizens to travel between levels
* ability to build railings for safety?

TAG SYSTEM FOR LOGS
* a log message can have any number of tags, citizens select an especially appropriate one (but avoid repeating themselves)

ASSIGN PEOPLE TO ROOMS
* depending on their duty and/or zone type, this can mean different things:
** assign a security-duty citizen to a room to have them guard it
** assign any citizen to a residence to have them use it as their quarters
* normally, a citizen will "claim" an unused bed and the area around it
** citizens decorate their living space with their stuff (see "stuff" above)
* people protect their spaces / become annoyed when strangers or unfriendly people intrude

"LEARN TO PLAY"
* option in front/pause menu
* loads Box.sav as starting map, as opposed to normal DeepSpace.sav
* "only display once" hint flag for tutorialish / first time messages

TELEPORTERS
* build at least two "teleport pad" objects to create a functioning teleporter
* UI for selecting which teleporter goes where (dynamically changeable)
* teleporter accidents: poorly maintained teleporters could hurt/kill people, scramble their brains (personality change), turn them evil (goatee Spock)

METEOR STRIKES
* meteors strike bases, punching holes in the hull, depressurizing rooms, damaging people and things
** not as harsh as in the Amnesia Fortnight 2012 version, promise :]
* shield generators generate shielding to repel meteor strikes (gives technicians stuff to do in space)

MISC UI
* confirm + cancel for roster screen
* custom viz for Construct mode - desaturate colors except for amber building color?
* shift-space = max speed
* up/down arrows in room centers showing whether room O2 is rising or lowering
* "object condition" viz mode: color-code objects by condition, highlight technicians? do same when a technician is selected?
* allow zoom in beyond min_zoom, spring back to normal min_zoom after a few seconds
* make ability to rename citizens "once only"
* "no power" icon over unpowered rooms (once power system exists)
* little lines showing where someone is pathing to
* cutaway mode should work on asteroids
* support Mac trackpad gestures

EMERGENCY DISTRESS SIGNAL
* (very expensive?) object you can build that calls for rescue people / immigrants to show up and save your base

BASE NAMING
* when your first oxygenated room comes online, base is considered "established" and prompts you for a name

STEAM WORKSHOP
* built in savegame sharing!
* mod support!
** "mods" subdir where user-created scripts patch base game lua files at runtime
** provide uncompiled lua source for gameplay-relevant classes, eg Character.lua, to support modders
** allow PNG sprite sheets - lower performance than tex format in exchange for easy moddability

BARTENDERS
* pub customers get their orders from bartender
* bartenders serve food (once food exists)
* skilled bartenders make people they serve happier
* citizen drunkenness - increased by X every drink they have, dwindles to zero slowly (ie "blood alcohol")
* drunk citizens more likely to make mistakes while doing duty

CITIZEN FIGHTING
* citizens who dislike each other enough will fight
* low risk of actual death, but injury and deepening mutual hatred
* security can stun violent people to calm them down, knocking them unconscious for a bit
* drunk citizens more likely to fight
* low morale citizens far more likely to fight

SPACE MADNESS
* when morale is critically low, space madness takes a form depending on personality type:
** sit in bed moping (how to recover?)
** become violent, grabbing a rifle if available, attacking random people

DOCTORS
* doctor duty and infirmary zone
* doctors unassigned to an infirmary (see "assining people to rooms") patrol the base looking for hurt/sick people
* citizens seek out an infirmary/doctor when hurt or sick (parasite infestation)
* doctors use tricorder-like first aid prop to heal people
** better doctors heal people faster / more fully, bad doctors have a chance to hurt them
* revivabed object for infirmary: only way to detect parasite infestation or cure some diseases

CONSTRUCTION TOOLS
* "flood fill with floor" tool, works on areas enclosed by walls or asteroid
* "build circular room" tool - drag out a circular area instead of a square
* filled (with floor) vs unfilled (without floor) toggle for box and circle room tools

MISC LIFE SIM
* "skill point distribution" algo for generating skill set on citizen spawn - nobody will be terrible at everything, if someone is really good at something they'll likely be bad at everything else
* over time, citizens get nicknames, eg Bob "Sparky" Schmidt
* ability to flag any citizens as hostile / suspicious (security will keep an eye on them)
* citizens have to reach a locker before they can change duty
* citizens become annoyed if their environment is noisy (people passing through or doing stuff) while sleeping or relaxing - incentivize building residences that are low-traffic
* "watch video" activity tied to monitors
* sportsball matches viewable on monitors / in pubs
* high morale = skills go up more quickly
* citizens put on duty-outfit when they go to do duty, remove it when starting certain other tasks (sleeping) or if it's been long enough since they last did duty

SOCIALIZATION / AFFINITY AI
* people prefer to chat with friends, unless they have high gregarious personality in which case they actively enjoy chatting with strangers (low familiarity)
* people have +/- affinities for objects and rooms with certain qualities, eg red, dark, fluffy
* people have +/- affinities for people with certain qualities (xenophobia/philia, sexual preference, fashion sense)
* people spread gossip about people they dislike, biasing affinity map changes against them
* trends: popular (high aggregate affinity) people influence the affinities of less popular people
* fashion accessories signify social affiliation, eg cliques wear the same kind of thing
* new concepts (topics) are gradually introduced by immigrants and trade, eg a new fasion craze starts when a trader visits the base with slap bracelets

PERSONALITY TRAITS
* introverted/extroverted = how much people enjoy solitary vs group activities
* gregarious/shy = how much people enjoy chatting with strangers vs friends
* vindictive/forgiving = how long people hold grudges and whether they act on them
* angry/peaceful = whether people become violent or depressed when morale is low
* neat/messy = whether people pick up litter and spare objects vs throw junk on the floor
* religious preference = whether people prefer to be recycled on death or given a "spock funeral"

AFFINITY/CONVERSATION TOPICS
* games
* pubs
* tv shows
* films
* sports
* sports teams
* music albums
* songs

TECHNOLOGY
* scientist job
* research lab zone
* blueprints - you can only build what you have blueprints for
** scientists can construct blueprints by doing research in labs
** players choose research topics?
** blueprints can also be discovered aboard derelicts or brought by special immigrants
* starting conditions determine what technologies you have access to
* take dead hostiles to research labs to study them and learn to better deal with them
** eventually, how to deactivate killbots and reform them into friendly (still scary lookin') bots

"VISIT A FRIEND'S BASE"
* hangar bay zone where shuttles can dock
** (post "stuff" update, traders show up here)
* load citizens onto a shuttle and give it a destination friend's base
* shuttle leaves, your friend gets a visit request
* if accepted, your citizens disembark inside their base, walk around and have adventures
* eventually, they return to the shuttle and return to your base
* travelers preserve any stuff, gained experience, technology etc that they accrue while visiting another base

BASE DEFENSE
* more types of attackers show up in derelicts, docking ships, etc:
** killbots
** murderslugs
* invaders breach base walls and invade from the outside
* exterior base defenses - defensive gun batteries, shielding
* build traps to capture or kill invaders:
** tripwires that can be scripted to doors, other traps, depressurize room, etc
** laser grids
** auto-turrets
** stun nets
* brig zone for storing captured hostiles or violent citizens
** monster domestication/breeding?!?
* greater variety of weapons for citizens to wield
** flamethrower
** gravity gun (flings things/people around)
** plasma cannon (cuts through anything)

FUNERALS
* when they die, depending on religious(?) preference each citizen will either be recycled at the matter recycler, or given a "spock funeral" ie placed in a spacecoffin and sent out an airlock
* either way, a small service may be held with the citizen's friends
** attending this service raises their morale, ie if there is no time for a proper ceremony then survivors will have a harder time grieving

ROBOTS
* robots join your base as citizens
* states for robots:
** normal - subservient to organic life, perform the duty they're assigned without question, don't have a personality
** rampant - gained self-awareness but hate all organic life, they rampage and band together with / produce more killbots
** enlightened sentient - after a long enough life, they become sentient, develop personalities, change their names, live normal lives

LAWS
* ability to pass ordinances: forbid/penalize certain actions, punish or praise people

COMPUTER TERMINALS
* write Lua to script control of environment objects, robots, etc

PLANETFALL
* teleport down to the surface of planet(s) you're orbiting
* discover abandoned bases, alien life, friendly or hostile sentients

HOLODECKS
* build vast zones that can reconfigure their geometry to provide different entertainment/educational scenarios
* citizen costumes for holodeck scenarios
* holodeck malfunctions:
** glitches that partially reconfigure the geometry of your base, eg "half your base is now a medieval castle"
** holo-actors can break free and wreak havok in your base, eg "cavemen and cowboys are attacking everyone"

"HISTORICAL SCENARIO" ADDON PACKS
* props, tiles, costumes for sandbox storytelling in famous sci fi settings: alien, star wars, 2001, etc

TIME TRAVEL
* events deemed timeline-critical by the IGTTC Armistice of 7978 cannot be changed without serious consequences. however, we are pretty sure time travel armistices are for babies.

 

[J_C]

How the fuck do you have the gut to still defend them is beyond me. Hopefully this is another nail in the coffin for that bunch of thieves.

http://web.archive.org/web/20131018054131/http://spacebasedf9.com/devplans

It's simple, I like fun games. And I look for enjoyment in games, not finding fault in everything. It makes gaming so much more fun. Would it be better if the devs could integrate every feature they wanted? Hell yes. But this is still a fun game. Sure. Problem solved.

And don't get me wrong. This is a dissapointment for me also, and I expected more from DF. But in the end of the day, I will have a fun game I enjoy for a dozen hours, and that's all that matters.

 

[DeepOcean]

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/09/18/double-fine-early-access-spacebase-df9/

It appear that Double Fine did "Sorry guise, thanks for the money but now get this shell of a game and do our work for us."

Double Fine have announced that development of Spacebase DF-9 is coming to an end and the development plan listing planned features has been removed. The Steam Early Access page has been updated to state that version 1.0 is due for release. It “will be its final major update”, according to the recently updated development plans page. The previous version of that page contained hundreds of features that “might possibly” be implemented at some point. Today’s update makes it clear that any future implementation will be in the hands of the users rather than Double Fine themselves, thanks to a full source code release.


For those who haven’t been tuned in, Spacebase DF-9 is a product of Double Fine’s internal jam, the Amnesia Fortnight. As with many games made in such a short timeframe, enthusiasm for the game was invested in its potential rather than its current form. It wasn’t the first game to make people yell “DWARF FORTRESS WITH AN INTERFACE AND A GRAPHIC” but it was one of the first to make them add, “IN SPACE”. Of course, it might well take decades of development to create Dwarf Fortress in space and Spacebase DF-9 will not be that game.

The most important words from the Steam update are as follows.

As for what will be added between now and the 1.0 build, new features will be aimed at providing the complete experience you’d expect of a non-Early Access game: a Tutorial mode to smooth out the early game a bit and help new players learn the basics, and a Goal system that lets you work towards concrete objectives. That as well as over a month’s worth of pure bug-fixing work and final polish.

We’re also pleased to announce we’ll be releasing the game’s full Lua source code a short time after 1.0, which will allow the community to create potentially far-ranging mods that add content, new features, and change some fundamental game behaviors. We’ll of course be sticking around a bit for bug fixing and support, but any new content for the game will now be in your hands. We’re eager to see what people do with this game!

A lot of people will likely find that last part a particularly bitter pill to swallow. If the original prototype had been released with full source code, there’d probably be a heck of a lot more content already available for the game, but as it is, moving to 1.0 at this point feels much too early and much too late. Early because there aren’t enough possibilities for emergent scenarios in the current content, at least not when weighed against what was originally planned, and too late because if this were to be a user-content driven experience that hadn’t been clear until now. Releasing the source code is fantastic for those who want to meddle but not so great for those who were hoping for Double Fine’s own take on the emergent life sim.

I used to be of the opinion that story driven games were ill-suited to Early Acess but I’m increasingly coming to believe that ambitious sims are the most likely to suffer. The complexity of what Double Fine intended or hoped Spacebase DF-9 could be – or what players envisioned it might be – was perhaps untenable from the start, which makes the Early Access release an offering of potential and possibility.

It’s doubtful that Double Fine wanted to move to 1.0 in this fashion and the hollow hurrah of the ‘it’s in your hands now!’ announcement made me wince like I’d eaten a Jif lemon, but we don’t know the reasons. Staff may be required on other projects, money is probably tighter than it appears to be from an outside perspective (it almost always is). That’s little comfort to those who’ve bought a game that is lacking the features and content they were anticipating, particularly when the company seems to have its fingers in so many other pies. A case of over-reach then? The truth might be that attempting to make the game that Spacebase DF-9 could have been would overstretch anybody.