2016-04-02 23:03:09

I am starting up a new thread for this to avoid people reading descriptions and bugs from the first time around.  Few things are more annoying than having people ask about features long since changed or removed, because they don't know they're reading something old.  smile

As before, the public beta officially starts on Sunday morning, and it will run for 1 week.  Also as before, I am posting the beta client a day early so people have a little extra time to maybe familiarize themselves with how the game works.  Once Sunday morning hits, the server will be cleared so everyone is starting at the same time.

Please keep in mind that this is still a beta of the game, and over the past few days major work has been done on the game's foundation, any of which could have broken little things here and there.  The point of this beta is to test the multiplayer portions of the game (single player is to be developed later) and to stress test the server.

The server could go offline at any time, as I find myself needing to adjust things that I cannot do while it is running.  I will do my best to keep the server going for the entire week without any major interruptions.  Anyone with an active Kaldobsky gamer account is welcome to join in on the test.

Download link (54.5 MB):
www.kaldobsky.com/audiogames/castaways2beta.zip

To save time, this smaller download only has changed files for when I update the versions.

Patch Download link (only contains the EXE for a faster way to hand out small fixes):
www.kaldobsky.com/audiogames/castawaysbetapatch.zip

- Aprone
Please try out my games and programs:
Aprone's software

2016-04-02 23:14:14

I should quickly add that for anyone jumping on the public beta today (Saturday), you're jumping into the last day of a week.  That means the story it reads will not be the introduction, and your building options will contain things you can't normally make yet earlier in the week.  Just letting everyone know so there is less confusion.

Once connected to multiplayer, you can press escape and arrow down to "Story".  From there you can read each of the 4 story sections, in case you wish to hear them without waiting for them to trigger at different days of the week.

- Aprone
Please try out my games and programs:
Aprone's software

2016-04-03 00:01:31

Hello
thanks aprone
Now I will try the game.
greetings.

sorry my english, is not my native language.

2016-04-03 04:19:36

Getting it now. Hopefully I can be more helpful than before (if not because of the server issue).

Why do ghost hunters have to hunt ghosts? Well, there's a fear of being ghosted out there. They may need therapy as well as their ghost hunting kit.

2016-04-03 09:05:38

Hi all, when i try to connect to the server, it just stucks there and does nothing, it plays the sound, aka i'm online, but i can't do nothing.

2016-04-03 09:16:15

it just says  connecting to server and stucks... I have tried multiple times.

2016-04-03 09:34:45

that happenned to me in the first beta test too.

Why do ghost hunters have to hunt ghosts? Well, there's a fear of being ghosted out there. They may need therapy as well as their ghost hunting kit.

2016-04-03 09:47:32

Interesting, what can i do?

2016-04-03 09:50:19

Yay a second beta

2016-04-03 10:23:17

Awesome sauce. I am going to be a trifle busy this week, but I'll certainly try to give the game a go just because the previous version was such good fun, albeit I doubt I'll be a on the leader board.
Still, really glad development continues so well and I'll look forward to seeing the changes and improvements.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2016-04-03 11:47:17

Ahoy all
@Aprone nice to see a new public beta. Considering I have nothing to do I was actually wishing for something like this and here we are.
I am unable to connect either. I was able to login once at a point when the server hadn't switched to Sunday,and was running the 6th? stage. after a few it came up with a msg, a new day or week has started,please sign in again. and after that all I get is connected to server and it sits there
Looking really forward to it,although I would seriously like something that's something like the current castaways2 and a bit more of pve and less pvp, as that's the direction this is going to be I'm guessing. I wouldn't mind that, of course although I'd probably suck,but a version where one can just produce and sell stuff, and maybe deal with a few problems now and then to keep it interesting is what I'm talking about.
just random thoughts and all.
Either way, looking forward to playing this for a week again!

Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, ‘It might have been.
Follow me on twitter

2016-04-03 13:17:28

unfortunately I also can't connect to the server. It tells me it's connecting, plays the connect sound, but just sits there and does nothing.

I used to be a knee like you, then I took an adventurer in the arrow.

2016-04-03 15:20:56

When the server switched itself over at midnight, for some reason (still unknown) it froze and has sat that way all morning.  I finally woke up and was able to correct the bug, so everyone should be able to connect now.

- Aprone
Please try out my games and programs:
Aprone's software

2016-04-03 20:48:16

Working fine thus far, actually a good thing sinse I needed a stress releaver, indeed I've the game running now and am typing this  while my minians do their work big_smile.

Lovely to see another beata, hopefully I'll get to some fun stuff later, I certainly like some of the editions  like showing implements in use in the inventory and only having important messages in game history (all those notes about what squares I looked at  were a bit urcsome).

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2016-04-04 00:31:30

hey Aprone, I would like to have when I press for example f, it says fashion wooden showel and so on. I hope you know what I think.

2016-04-04 04:54:53

Sitaa you already can.  When you use space or enter to bring up jobs, typing will filter out the results and narrow down your search.  Typing "F", for example, would only show jobs with an "F" in them.  That wouldn't work well to narrow down to a single job, so you would probably have to type a few more letters.  Once you typed "Fas", it would likely leave you with just the job you're thinking of.  You could also type "Shov" to have it narrow down to the job with "shovel" in the name, so you aren't limited to searching by only the first word of a job's name.

- Aprone
Please try out my games and programs:
Aprone's software

2016-04-04 09:41:16

@aprone, I'm liking the game thus far and actually progressing rather well, I like the new iron ore swamp thing though perhaps a clear swampland once you've mined the iron ore from  undernieth,  that's assuming of course there isn't some use for swampland tyles later, eg, gathering herbs for use in medicines or cooking, cutting peat to burn as fuel as an alternative to firewood, or even looking for other important soils such as pitch or salt peter, ----- yes, boom!

I do however have a bug, when I was using o or g to show gems and ores, I was getting lists of above ground squares with trees and things on, not the underground ones, which was odd.

It'd also be nice to be able to turn chat off and on, sinse if I'm listening to the requirements for a job I don't want to be interupted with a chat message, or maybe just have the ability to set whether chat messages interupt incoming text or not.

Speaking of Chat, I'd also like a way to review completed achievements, and  at least some prospective achievements, sinse I think I missed a couple of initial messages about them from the server, also it'd be nice to know what I can work towards (secret achievements aside), indeed I love those styles of things in game and achievements could be used to create single player objectives further down the line, stuff that wouldn't be doable in a week of online play.

So, a key for checking achievements would be nice, perhaps shift q or maybe E.

One thing I do find a little weerd, is I can't really get why hard boiled eggs need a bucket as apposed to a clay pots.

Speaking of food, I also wonder why you can't cook mushrooms?

Now we have firs in the game more, I also find it a little odd that we need to always use iron for arrowheads and hemp for bow strings, after all, lots of stone age cultures had bows and arrows just using animal sinew as bow strings and stone arrowheads, and if we can make stone knives and hammers and axes, why not flint tipped arrows?

Of course these wouldn't be too efficient and would need replacing a lot, and also wouldn't really be sufficient to actually use on raides or against humans, but could provide firs and meat occasionally, just as in castaways 1, and with so much more cloth items to make and quests to do it'd make sense to get hunting a bit more into the game.

I also love the idea of glass making, though I haven't found any sand as yet, but I'm sure it'll show up at some point.
Unfortunately I'll be really busy this week so probably won't get to try too much of the game, but I might well give the single player a go next time around just to see what I can make (and yes, I know single player isn't perfected yet and we're waiting on disasters and other things, but it'd be nice to get to actually building everything and as I said I don't know how much playing time I'll have in the next few days).

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2016-04-04 16:25:31

Eventually the swamp tiles may have a more direct use.  I'm keeping my options open, but pitch was indeed something I had been thinking about.

The gems and ores keys were fixed shortly after I posted the public beta, but several people grabbed the slightly older copy of the file.  If you download it again, G and O should work properly.

I am 100% with you about the radio.  Radio modes and channels are on my list, but game bugs and balance issues always found a way to push radio stuff aside.  I plan to finish coding those things as soon as I'm able, and I do apologize for all the public testers who are currently limited to channel 1, haha!  smile

I like the idea of putting achievement notifications into game history, so on my copy of the client I've already made that change.  When I post a new client (not sure when), that change will be in it.  I also haven't yet sat down to code a way for people to even see what their achievements are.  It is also on my list of things to do.

The buckets for hard boiled eggs was done for similar reasons to iron arrows and hemp bow strings... an attempt at game balance.  Sometimes it is frustrating, but I had to put limits on jobs so that the various "tech" directions were relatively balanced out.  Chickens and eggs were far too useful compared to other "basic" foods, so requiring iron to consume the eggs bumped them into a "medium grade" food.  The supplies and buildings needed for different things in the game were often times tweaked and changed in order to keep some things equal to others or to intentionally make some things more difficult than others.

It hasn't come into play as much yet during public testing, but some job requirements are also taking the store into consideration (to a small degree).  Since arrows were brought up, those can be used to demonstrate what I mean.  The iron of the arrows means you would have to have mined iron ore and smelted it.  The bow requires a textile mill for hemp rope, and I believe the workshop to construct it.  Those could be thought of as 2 different "tech" directions to go in.  If a player was able to make rope, bows, or arrows, any of those 3 could be put up on the store.  As long as they were affordable prices, other players could see bows for sale and choose to put off making their own hemp farm, textile mill, and workshop.  Getting a bow + arrows combination, without the resources and time of making those 3 extra tile types, is worth a lot.  These types of divisions in the tech tree allow for people to make some good money with the store system.  In the last public test I saw people fine tune their land toward the production of a few useful items/materials, and then continually sell them for affordable prices.  They had a constant income stream, and others got to skip over making those things themselves.

I'm a big fan of player driven economies!  big_smile

- Aprone
Please try out my games and programs:
Aprone's software

2016-04-05 07:13:06

Hi, just wanted to know if their is anyone on castaways 2 right now, I am unable to connect all of a sudden. Wanted to know if it's a server thing or my client.

2016-04-05 07:51:47

Hi.
I can finally connect to the server, which is awesome. I really, really like the new beta. This is fantastic, and I can't find the words to describe how much I enjoy this game.
It's pretty strange that when you find a tile which have a tree, then it's trees, not tree. But there is only one tree there, right? Because the tile changes when you cut down the tree. smile
I won't get so much time as I wish I have to play the game this week, but I look forward to play it some more.
It would be great to have the same chat features like channels, friend list and the other chat commands like in Swamp.
Keep up the fantastic job Aprone. It's so fantastic.

Best regards SLJ.
Feel free to contact me privately if you have something in mind. If you do so, then please send me a mail instead of using the private message on the forum, since I don't check those very often.
Facebook: https://facebook.com/sorenjensen1988
Twitter: https://twitter.com/soerenjensen

2016-04-05 09:59:09

@slj, nope, tyles with trees have infinite amounts of trees on them to cut, only if you specifically direct to clear a tyle of trees if say you want to build on it, or unless you have the big stick fault would the tree tyles disappear. This is because you'll need far more lumber and firewood than could be supplied by only 20 or so trees.

@Aprone, tech directions and economies make sense, however at least where arrows are concerned I'm not sure about that one generally, sinse I can't imagine any players not wanting to make their own arrows or being able to support buying them, especially if far more direction in the game revolving around firs will be added later. While I do take the point regarding eggs, sinse logically a person would need to fetch water to boil the eggs for which you'd probably need a bucket, I'm really not sure on arrows from a logic perspective.

I'm actually running into a similar tech limit problem now, sinse even though I'm doing lots of mining and grinding and digging for rocks, not one iota of sand!
I wonder, if sand and stones and different sorts of rock are going to be in the game in addition to mineral ores, say marble for marble statues or salt peter, if the quarry should return from castaways 1.

Right now my choices seem to be either to try and buy sand from someone or to try and settle a new plot of land and wait to get lucky, neither of which is an option I particularly care for sinse I'd much rather have the satisfaction of building things myself.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2016-04-05 10:29:59

Hi Aprone, I was trying to make a wooden shovel, and got this error message.  ---------------------------
Castaways 2
---------------------------
Wrong protocol or connection state for the requested transaction or request
---------------------------
OK   
---------------------------
I'm loving the game so far though and hope the beta can be extended for longer than a week so I can gain another plot to have fun with.  I do have a suggestion though.  If possible when looking at job requirements, could the end of the sentence where it states what you have and what you don't be reworded to make things easier, for example instead of saying have and don't have, it would say you are missing then the item?  I just think it'd flow better, as sometimes the list of requirements can be read quite quickly. 
Thanks from Lori.

out of my mind, back in 5 minutes.

2016-04-05 10:34:21

me too. this message came, I dont know exactly when. thanks for game Aprone.

2016-04-05 14:50:07

A suggestion that goldfingas and I have is when in the marketplace and their is multiples of an item to be purchased show it.  For example:
Straw for 10 coins, 1 available
Yes, that was an actual thing in the marketplace.
This way you're not pressing shift+enter until it says that some one else has purchased the item, even though you were the one that was purchasing it.

2016-04-05 18:04:04

Dark I think you got the tree thing wrong in the earlier post.  You can collect sticks from a tree tile indefinitely (unless you have the fracking big stick fault), but any time you cut down trees it removes the entire tree tile.  Some players will start on lands that have so many trees they will practically never run out of lumber, but some lands might randomly have a lower amount.  In those cases, the player may need to expand to a second plot sooner (in search of more trees) or buy lumber from other players.

I'll admit I might not be understanding your original arrow suggestion.  I thought you were wanting arrows to no longer require iron+hemp to manufacture, which would greatly affect the effort needed to make guard towers, and then the balance between those guard towers and the other defensive tiles, and the balance between guard towers and resources required to make soldiers (guard towers kill enemy soldiers).

Looking back, I see that you may have meant you wanted a second type of arrow added, that would require very little and would be dedicated to hunting.  This 2-arrow types idea would be much easier to balance, so it is something I would consider.  It would be equivalent to the game having stone axes and steel axes, which are used for different tasks, and a few overlapping ones.

Only lands that started with water will have sand.  If you find yourself on a waterless plot of land, you can trade for it from other players, buy it from the store, or expand to another plot of land and hope for water.  I do understand the desire to be self sufficient (in many games that is how I prefer to be as well), having all players be "islands unto themselves" is not actually the goal while Castaways 2 is being developed.  Very few things will intentionally force players to depend on others, but to be totally independent, and get everything in the game, will likely require a fair bit of work.

To the people who received the "Wrong protocol or connection state for the requested transaction or request" error, did it disconnect you from the server after the error?  I'm still trying to track down a few frustrating bugs, and this is one of them.

Lori I will keep that in mind about the requirements list.  I suppose as long as it tells you what you still need, it doesn't need to also tell you what you already have.

Blindndangerous, I'll give that some thought.  I do like the idea of having it say how many are available, and I'm guessing you also want to be able to choose an amount to buy instead of 1 at a time.  It may be a bit of a pain to code those changes, so while I would like to change the story to this idea, I may not get around to it right away.

- Aprone
Please try out my games and programs:
Aprone's software