Dev Blog 17th December - Come S.A.I.L Away

Hey everyone!

In the current version of Starbound, S.A.I.L will talk to you on your ship and give you advice during missions. Soon, S.A.I.L will be able to give you helpful tips while you're roaming the surfaces of planets!



Sometimes you'll get messages from other characters, too! They... probably aren't all going to be so cryptic.

 

It's a cool idea, but the AI's reaction to the player finding coal is a bit long-winded, IMO. Could be shorter. Don't want to read a novel when I pick up all ores for the first time. Maybe summarize it in 20 words or less?

 

Nice! Make sure that there's enough time to read them, though. If you discover two new things at basically the same time, you still want to be able to read all SAIL's messages.

 

I rather like it, actually. Looking forward to seeing more interaction with S.A.I.L.

 

You know what this needs? A voice actor.

DIBS!

 

I was just thinking the other day, when I was re-playing some of the missions, that some of these texts are not long enough on my screen. I am a rather slow reader and I would get really bothered by nice text / S.A.I.L. interaction - and me just reading half of it.
Is it possible to add a "dismiss"/"read" button, so I can make sure that I don't end up missing something???
edit: love the "dark" humor

 

Please let it either be something you can toggle on and off, or at least leave the lengthy comments to missions. Coal information is pretty neat, such as small deposits deeper underground makes the grade higher (Hilt's Law), it's still a bit silly for the first thing you can mine.

Still, it opens possibilities for good things.

 

Oh god no. Say it isn't so. At the very least say it can be turned off.

So, I've discovered coal huh? Thank you Mr. Chucklefish but I think my neanderthal brain is capable enough to let me open my inventory and see what I just picked up. If I want more info I'll look it up like I did with Minecraft and Terraria. Until then please stfu and let me discover things on my own without all the hand holding. I'm really not your type anyway as I only like girls. Adult girls. Women, you know?

 

Hopefully we'll be able to make custom race AIs say different things. I want mine to say something a bit more witty than that. It'll be nice to see her popping up more often, regardless!

 

Hmm... I wonder if dialogue boxes could pop up if day you approach a glitch city that doesn't like visitors and asks you to kindly bugger off or be incinerated...

 

Oh! Snazzy!

Hmm... I hope it doesn't get too overbearing. As much I liked the companion characters in the modern LoZ games, I do have personal thresholds. >_>;

 

This is a really cute system, and seems to be understated. If the prevalence of the messages increases dramatically, it seems to me that the immersiveness will be heavily enhanced (I admit I'm taking it for granted a bit that the Starbound team will maintain their impressive standard!) by these messages.

Since race-specific immersiveness is something I find to be fundamental to the game, it seems important that the messages differ from race to race (not least because I want my own S.A.I.L. to use all caps).

 

HEY! LISTEN!

Or not... I hope it can be turned off.

 

I foresee a small, easy to produce mod that turns this off.

The rest of you just keep on hoping.

 

To be fair, you can mine anything ANYTHING on the first planet from the start, so coal doesn't have to be the first thing.
But yeah, it probably will be the first thing considering how useful it is in the early tiers, so I see what you're saying. I also agree with the ability to toggle these messages on or off being a good idea. Sure, I'm more than willing to listen to them initially, but after my 6th character... I think I'd get the point. Not to mention this might break the immersion in RP servers.

 

It would be great for first timers in a tutorial sort of way.

 

It's a good start. I'd like to see dialogue options with SAIL, maybe conversations that reflect your progress through missions. (Maybe comments on the last planet we visited, code willing!) Their dialogue will vary between races, right?

 

ai/radiomessages.config implies otherwise at this time, but who knows? The rest of SAIL's messages, in ai/ai.config, certainly do have species-specific lines so if not now, perhaps later.

 

Ah, the ship's AI will get more freedom..... not long until "I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that!", then?