Future request: Message system

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evert
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Future request: Message system

Post by evert »

Hi there. I did spend some time looking for a request that is similar to what I have in mind, and did not find anything. If this is a duplicate request, please accept my apologies.

I am running VS 0.5 on linux. It's a great game, and visually quite attractive. I used to play privateer, and IMHO VS beats it handily in almost all areas.

The only thing I would like to see is a messaging system. These days almost everyone walks around with some sort of smartphone or PDA. Messages are instantly received, and sent, and we tend to run our lives by it. It would not be a huge leap of imagination to think that we'll do something similar in the far future.

What I have in mind is that in stead of having the mission display on the HUD, a hotkey would switch over to your PDA. Your PDA can also be used on planets to save games and look at what missions you are doing. Since your PDA gets destroyed with you in space, it would still be impossible to save your game in space. :)

Having your missions in a PDA would alleviate mission text scrolling off the bottom of the screen in the hud on smaller resolutions.

Mainly, though, it will make writing a good story to follow in VS a lot simpler. In stead of having to travel to a planet and accidentally meeting a person, you could be mailed with a list of instructions...

Thanks, again, for making a great game.
klauss
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Re: Future request: Message system

Post by klauss »

Yeah, that makes sense.

But it would mean quite a bit of development, because the game doesn't have the concept of personalized messages yet.

So even if writing the code to support the PDA wasn't difficult (which perhaps it isn't), we would still be without content for it: missions would have to make good use of it, and they don't.

I guess this is a nice feature request to write down in the To-Do
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Shark
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Re: Future request: Message system

Post by Shark »

Moving personalized information to a dedicated screen/interface is a good idea IMO.
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