Wing Commander RPG

[QuailPilot]

Just popping in to say, that I'm willing to test the game out once it needs to be tested.

We could organize a weekly session, with some sort of voice chat and use Map Tool.

 

[capi3101]

Just popping in to say, that I'm willing to test the game out once it needs to be tested.

We could organize a weekly session, with some sort of voice chat and use Map Tool.

I'll probably take you up on that. There are a few things that are about ready to be tested, like creation of various objects (characters, vehicles, capships, etc.). I need to get my act together on equipment before that'll be ready to go.

I do have some stuff in Chapter Ten that I've tried it out myself and I got it to work the way I wanted it to, but I could stand to have someone else go through the procedure to see if it's abundantly clear or not, if you're interested. Sector and Nav Map creation come immediately to mind.

 

[QuailPilot]

Alright. Once you have stuff to test out, let me know.

 

[capi3101]

Okay, well the Sector generation procedure is complete and ready for further testing. Start with Sector generation in Chapter 10.2.1 (http://wcrpg.wikia.com/wiki/10.2.1:_Creating_Sectors). I'll go ahead and upload the correct template page you'll need to Appendix Two (http://wcrpg.wikia.com/wiki/Appendix_Two:_Templates). Be sure to ask questions if you get stuck; that'll help me gauge whether the procedure is as clear as I think it is or not. It is somewhat time consuming, especially when you get to the part where you have to place all the jump tunnels. Then again, I even say in the beginning of the Chapter that there shouldn't be too many occasions where that procedure is strictly necessary.

 

[QuailPilot]

All right. I'll take a look at it, when my finals are over.

 

[capi3101]

Good Monday, wingnuts. Again, it was a light week for WCRPG owing to a general lack of breaks at work and my focus on counter sheets (I built at least five sheets worth of counters last week alone according to my notes). I did manage to finish up the basic attack rules for character-scale combat and have now moved on to damage resolution on the character-scale, and I hope to pick up work on the game later this week. Meantime, I've created a page for my counter sheets; it's a project gateway off of the master WCRPG wiki page (wcrpg.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page). I've also created a page for another project that I've started that will use some of those counters; it's mainly there for notes right now. Game still sits at 57% complete this week.

QuailPilot has volunteered to help test out WCRPG as sections are completed. I've started out by asking him to help test the Sector Creation procedure in Chapter 10.2.1; he said he would begin work once his finals were complete this semester. I'll be sure to let y'all know how the testing goes.

 

[QuailPilot]

Okies sent you a pm of my thoughts on Sector creation.

 

[capi3101]

Received; I'll review it and get back with you. Didn't spend any time on WCRPG on the holidays on account of lousy Net access where I was.

 

[capi3101]

Good Monday and Happy New Year, wingnuts! Been a three weeks since I last updated y'all on what's been going on with WCRPG due to the holidays. As I mentioned in my previous post with QuailPilot, I didn't get a whole lot done on the game during the holidays, though I did get a good amount done on my counter sets (all the designs I intend to do for now are done; I've been dealing with cutting them out recently) and I've written a pnp version of Armada that utilizes some of them (haven't gotten any feedback on the game as yet). WCRPG itself has seen some progress this last week; after several months of trying to find sufficient time to take care of everything, I finally completed editing of Chapter 9.2 (character-scale combat) on Thursday, and have since moved on to Chapter 9.3 (vehicle-scale combat). I have been finding some minor things that needed to be fixed in 9.2 and 9.4 as I've been editing 9.3 and I've been fixing those things as I've been finding them. I also adjusted some of the text in 9.1 to add the ability to use hex maps in the game (up until that point, only orthogonal grids were used). I'm actually considering making this its own sub-section, as much of WCRPG is still set to exclusively use orthogonal maps. Finally. QuailPilot has given me some good feedback on the procedure in Chapter 10.2.1 (Sector creation), and I'll need to make several changes there (which I'll probably get to when I'm done with Chapter Nine).

WCRPG sits at about 57% completion as of this morning. Definitely still looking for folks who can help out with testing of Armada PNP.

 

[capi3101]

Greetings, Wingnuts! Hope y'all (like me) got to enjoy an extended weekend. This past week with WCRPG my focused remained in Chapter Nine (combat rules). Early in the week, I was bored with working on Chapter 9.3 (vehicle-scale combat) and decided to jump over to Chapter 9.5 (mixed-scale combat) to see what I could accomplish there. Next day I had knocked 9.5 out completely, leaving 9.3 as the last unfinished section of Chapter Nine. I'm pleased to report that progress in that Chapter has been moving steadily and with any kind of luck whatsoever, I should be able to finish up the remainder of the Chapter this week (seeing that aside from some skipped examples, I have about six paragraphs and five definitions to go through before I can call the thing good and done). Been thinking about where I want to go next with the game once Combat's done, and I think the time has come for me to at least break ground on Chapter Eight (Navigation) next, seeing as how that's the only Chapter in-game that's left that hasn't seen at least some work up to this point.

Armada: PNP is now in PDF format, in case y'all missed the news a couple of days ago. I will need to take some time to get the full tactical combat rules ready to go, but that won't happen for a while yet (not until I get a better handle on vehicle-scale equipment in WCRPG). The game is playable, however, and I could use some help with the playtesting if anyone's interested.

WCRPG sits at 59% completion as of this morning.

 

[capi3101]

Good Monday, Wingnuts. Well, as I'd hoped, things in Chapter 9.3 went by fast after last week's update and I was able to finish it up later in the same day. I can now proudly proclaim that Chapter Nine is finished and all the game's combat rules are 100% complete (now I just got to get some ships, creatures, vehicles, etc. with which to use them). And as I had mentioned last week, once Chapter Nine was finished I moved into Chapter Eight. So far I've performed the initial dumps from SFRPG into the Chapter, though I don't think there will be much of the interstellar travel rules I'll be able to keep (owing to differences in the two universes). A lot of what's been going on with Chapter Eight so far has been collecting and collating data; to assist with this part of the game, it was necessary to start a discussion of the D-drive from Privateer 2 and to figure out its place in the overall WC continuity in general. This discussion is still ongoing. Meantime, I focused my work on Chapters 8.1 (Fuel and Fuel Efficiency Rules) and 8.2 (Planetary Transit/Exploration Rules). I'm happy to report that I was able to knock out Chapter 8.1 during the day last Saturday.

I've also begun initial work on the game's timeline in Chapter 12.1. So far, work has involved preparing the entries from Star*Soldier. I do hope to include some Kilrathi history in there, as well as some of the Confederation's early history (when the Akwende Drive was invented, when the Confederation came into existence, etc.). I would like some help with this if at all possible, and will accept entries from any canonical or semi-canonical source.

As of this morning, WCRPG is 61.8% complete.

 

[capi3101]

Good Monday, Wingnuts! Time for my weekly WCRPG update. First things first: thanks to the CIC staff for Saturday's article; I'm hopeful it will help generate some additional interest in the project (especially for when it comes time to start accepting submissions for the non-canon parts of the game). Couldn't really believe it'd been six months already since I started work on the project until I went back to look at my composite log; the first entry is on August 4th, 2011. So yeah, it's been six months already...

This past week my focus was largely on Chapter 8.2 and 8.3 (planetary transit/exploration and interplanetary travel). I'm happy to report that I was able to finish up Chapter 8.3 during the day on Saturday. Technically, I was also able to finish up Chapter 8.2, but as I got further and further into the transit example I realized that I needed to make some significant tweaks to the rules as they were. This is largely due to the addition of potential seismic events - volcanic eruptions and earthquakes - which were not in SFRPG. I haven't had sufficient time to make the necessary changes to the rules as yet but I hope to be able to affect them later today. Meanwhile, 8.2 remains in draft status. Chapter 8.4 (interstellar travel) is on deck for later this week, and if all goes according to plan I'll have Chapter Eight in a standby status by the rest of the week (the remaining planned section, Chapter 8.5, will deal with navigational data, which is going to be heavy on graphics work and therefore will take some time to complete). Long term plans: I'll probably head to Chapter Five and formalize the rules of trade and commodities list, then get Chapter 12.3 out of the way. After that, it'll be time to start adding some specific universe content; that'll be the hard part.

I did make some additional progress with the timeline this past week, including the addition of a few actual entries. Last Wednesday as part of the ongoing D-Drive discussion, BanditLOAF pointed out some links to materials from the abandoned Privateer Online project, including the intended post 2680 timeline. I have yet to review it, but it's likely that I may include some of those materials in the final timeline for WCRPG; some of that got changed when Arena was released, of course. It'll be good to have something, though; what I've got for the years of the Nephilim War at the moment is paltry.

WCRPG sits at 62.7% complete as of this morning.

 

[capi3101]

Good Monday, wingnuts. Time for another WCRPG update.

Well, as I'd hoped last week, I was able to affect the final set of changes to Chapter 8.2 last Monday after the update. I'm not wholly satisfied with the solution I came up with for planetary exploration (namely, the single hourly roll for weather became three separate rolls, one for weather, one for quakes and one for volcanic activity), but it does prevent the total apocalypse that would happen otherwise on a particularly high set of rolls. If I can think of a solution that would get that back down to a single roll, I may go ahead and implement it at a later date. For now, I'm happy to call the chapter complete.

The bulk of my focus this week was on Chapter 8.4 (Interstellar Travel). This chapter was one of the chief ones that I could not transfer over directly from SFRPG and so a lot of its content has been completely new. I have had to reorganize it several times over the course of the previous week and a lot of what's there is from the official sources on jump and hopper drives in the WC universe (namely the CIC Jumpfaq article and the information from the Confederation Handbook available at WCPedia). The actual workings of each FTL system are handled very similarly to one another; the difference is in the details, of course. 8.4 is not quite done at this point; I still need to determine what "special topics" are required for the game, including rules for such things as wormholes, jump gates, etc. I hope to have 8.4 done by the end of this week.

As I was working with the information from the Confederation Handbook, I kept on coming across dates of various events in the development of the various drive systems. I decided to take advantage of that information and add it to the timeline in Chapter 12.1. This gave me the impetus I needed to start filling in the timeline this past week; everything in Chapter 12.1 was essentially finished with the exception of the timeline. After finishing up the entries from the Confederation Handbook's "Every Citizen's Guide to Practical Science", I went ahead and added the timeline from Star*Soldier, entries from the CH's "History of the Terran-Kilrathi War" and "History of the Pilgrim War", and watched through the cinematics of P2 to check for dates mentioned in the game. I've looked through the rest of Star*Soldier for events pertaining to the Nephilim War and I've gained access to the intended Privateer Online timeline. I would like to add the POL timeline entries, but while the timeline there does indicate a renewed conflict with the Nephilim, it doesn't appear to be anywhere close to the scale of what was ultimately put in Arena (i.e. a full twenty-year conflict that utterly destabilizes Confed's hold over the Epsilon Sector). I'm still trying to reconcile the events in POL with those indicated in Star*Soldier, so I can have something for the Nephilim War other than "some serious s*** goes down" in the timeline entry. This does mean I'm taking a little bit of license here; I still hope that what I ultimately have for WCRPG's timeline is comprehensive and as "canonical" as possible. Late in the week, I mentioned in a seperate thread how close the timeline was to completion and asked for help from the community to help check for errors or superfluous entries; I could still use the help.

WCRPG sits at 63.6% complete as of this morning.

 

[capi3101]

Good Monday, wingnuts. Time for another WCRPG update.

This week saw me focusing largely on 12.1 (the Timeline), making corrections to the existing entries and making additional entries for the time period from 2682 onwards to about 2725. As I reported on Thursday, I was able to get all this work completed and am currently satisfied with the timeline as it stands. Over the weekend, I was contacted by gavinfoxx, who pointed out the Privateer 3: Retribution timeline. I have not yet had time to go over that particular timeline to see if any of its events can be incorporated into WCRPG's timeline, but I certainly have plans to do so this week. Meantime, Chapter 12.1 has been moved to completed status.

Work on 8.4 (Interstellar Travel) also progressed this week, though I was rearranging the special topics section up almost until I finished work on it. Biggest piece of the special topics rules came on Friday, when I had to add a method for determining the distance between stars. I figured this would occur so rarely during the course of normal game play that I went realistic; what's there is basically the method for determining the distance between two points in spherical coordinates, a tricky and involved piece of trigonometry (and I included simpler, random methods along with it for those GMs whose strong suits do not include trigonometry). With an example of how that works in the game, I was able to wrap up 8.4 on Friday. After 8.4 was completed, I took some time to update the to-do list with a fair amount of notes I've been accumulating; most of these have to do with items for Chapter 6.2.3 and 7.2.2 (vehicle and capital ship equipment, respectively), and then resumed work on Chapter 5.1 (Trading) as I indicated I would a couple of weeks ago. 5.1 is progressing well and I hope to have that piece of the game done by the end of the week, after which it will be time for me to move on to Chapter 12.3 (Environmental Effects).

WCRPG sits at 65.5% complete as of this morning.

 

[capi3101]

Good Monday, wingnuts! Time for the weekly WCRPG update.

This week I had some relatively heavy RL to take care of, and so my time to work on WCRPG was a bit shorter than normal. The fact that no new chapters were completed this week can be attributed directly to this fact, though I did make some fairly significant strides in Chapter 5.1 (Trading), where I was largely focused. Most of the rules in that chapter are now complete, though I do have two brand new sections to write up along with quite a number of example sections. I'm hopeful that I can finish the chapter up this week. I also performed some very serious work in Chapter 5.5 in preparation for consolidation of the commodity lists. The Privateer Two commodity tables were transcribed from the Official Origin Guide to Privateer 2 into the game on Monday; after much deliberation, I've decided that only a minimal amount of tweaking will be necessary to make them in-game ready. Work on the P1 tables is taking longer, as there's a fair amount of data to go through. I'm also hopeful that I can finish up work there this week, putting Chapter Five in a state where I can freeze work and move on. I really only have Chapter 12.3 to go through before I can start working on specific universe information.

I did learn a little bit last week about Crusader and its relationship to the WC universe; more importantly, I learned about how the Star*Soldier entry on the movie "No Mercy" related to those events. Unfortunately, it seems I'm going to need to make an alteration to the No Mercy entry in the WCRPG timeline, and so this last week I posed the question as to whether or not the two continuities should become one for WCRPG. Haven't got a lot of feedback yet but what I have gotten is definitely against this idea, and to be honest I'm leaning the same way. Still, I'd like to hear from some more folks before making a final decision. Meantime, the incorrect entry is still up.

WCRPG is still sitting at 65.5% complete as of this morning.

 

[capi3101]

Sitting here at a bit of a loss today. I've finished the work I was going to do in Chapter Five, went on to 12.3 as planned...and had it zipped up and done after the better part of one day. I'm trying to figure out where I should go next.

On the one hand, I don't have vehicle and cap ship equipment finished and those really are the only thing keeping me from working on the craft catalogs. On the other, I haven't finished any of the race profiles; of the 35 remaining wiki articles on the game, nearly half are race profile pages. And of course, I haven't really done much of anything about codifying personal weaponry, armor and equipment, nor do I have any maps in the game yet. The rest of what's left is dependent on having this information in place first; only narrows it down to 23 possible pages to go to next.

Yeah, I think I'm done with the easy bits. The rest of the game is going to take a little more effort.

I think the next logical step for me is to get a Terran race profile written followed in short order by one for the Kilrathi (which would at least get the game to a point where it could conceivably be played). It occurred to me that there is more than one Terran nation in the WC universe. Need a quick spot check from somebody here...human factions in the WC universe include the Confederation, Pilgrims, Union of Border Worlds, Grovsner Colonies, Free Republic of the Landreich, and Black Lance. Have I missed anybody? Kilrathi shouldn't be a problem; found an old Acenet page with a lot of data on them, most of which is canonical (there's some Acenet-specific content, but not much).

Been through the WCPedia entries for the rest of the races. Not much to go on...just means I'll have to fudge a bit.

Got the gun chart; is there a missile counterpart anywhere?

 

[starfox1701]

In your info have you found any real Cap scale guns other then AMGs and the super cannons like the PTC?

 

[capi3101]

I've found the CIC gun table; there are a few of the turret weapons from WC3 and later on there, and some from P2. I need to sift through that table to determine which guns are from cap ships and which ones are from fighters. Weapons systems are a big unfinished part of Chapters 6.2.3 and 7.2.2 (vehicle and cap ship equipment, respectively), and something I'll need to deal with sooner rather than later, I'm sure.

 

[capi3101]

Good Monday, wingnuts! Time for the weekly WCRPG update.

I suppose you all know the major events of the week already given my post on Saturday, but there's no harm in making it all formal. Last week I continued work on Chapters 5.1 (Trading) and 5.5 (Commodities). Last Monday saw some very substantial work on the commodities tables, enough that I was able to wrap up Chapter 5.5 on Tuesday. With little else to work on, I was able to focus on finishing up and tweaking Chapter 5.1, with work coming to a conclusion on Thursday. Thursday also saw an outstanding minor change made to the timeline, namely to the 2701 "No Mercy" entry; I think the final solution I came up with there works well enough. As I had indicated in prior weeks, with work on Chapter 5 at a point where I could switch gears again, I decided to head to Chapter 12.3 (Environmental Effects); that chapter was the last one I could identify as needing minimal changes from SFRPG to make it usable in WCRPG. Work started on Friday and progressed much, much faster than I anticipated; I was able to complete editing of the Chapter that same day.

At this point, all of the work that will be going on in WCRPG is going to be original content, which unfortunately does mean that things are likely going to slow down. There are 35 wiki pages (and thus 35 sub-Chapters) that need to be completed before the game can be called done. Of those, 16 are species pages and another 13 are dependent upon the completion of other sub-Chapters prior to their commencement. The remaining six Chapters cover equipment (including weaponry and defenses) on all the scales of combat, and Navigational Data (which is important but upon which nothing else is dependent). My likely plan of attack at this point is the same as I mentioned the other day: I will spend this week working on race profile pages for the Terrans, Kilrathi and perhaps the Firekkans (I've already spent a little bit of time collecting what information is available on some of the lesser-known races; those'll be the tricky ones). After that, I will move on to finishing up Chapters 6.2.3 and 7.2.2 (covering vehicle and capship equipment). That work there will make the game ready for construction of the craft catalogs. Finally, I will probably move back into Chapter Five, and finish the chapter up. This all will probably take several weeks (probably at least a few months, realistically).

I am going to be working on race profiles in the near future, so I'd like to go ahead and put out the first call for anybody who'd like to help out with that effort. Last guy who did that (with SFRPG) was credited as a co-editor in the final game; just saying...

WCRPG sits at 68.18% complete as of this morning.

 

[starfox1701]

I'm currious do you have an idea of how you will deal with some of the background problems like poorly thought out specifacations for some ships and fighters and missing ship classes, fighter classes, and weapon systems?