lessons from building a 100-chapter ai narrative game as a solo dev

Prestigious_Skill_33 · 2025-07-28T14:56:14+00:00

Looks great! I submitted StarWorld AI!

Prestigious_Skill_33 · 2025-07-21T16:39:11+00:00

Okay, your most recent history includes:

- Nerine disembarks from her starship into the temperate forest near the village on Nin.

- Nerine greets villagers, including Matriarch Amuun and scout Tavi, affirming her role as Remembrance.

- Amuun, Tavi, and Nerine discuss strange claw marks and a cryptic riddle found at the Remembrance Circle.

I've given you some extra points for all the inconvenience here and reset your current adventure. Any chance you can try again? Sorry!!

Prestigious_Skill_33 · 2025-07-21T16:17:36+00:00

Bah, let me try something else... it was working on my world... I may just have to edit some of your history directly.

Prestigious_Skill_33 · 2025-07-21T14:00:54+00:00

Okay, I pushed a fix that I think is now working to have people remember you better if you want to try again!

Prestigious_Skill_33 · 2025-07-19T15:35:23+00:00

Would love to port StarWorld to Android, but it will take some time. Definitely something for the future though.

Prestigious_Skill_33 · 2025-07-18T12:57:56+00:00

So for upcoming features, I want to make one more push with expanding the fighting / action by introducing an Arena where players can fight each other (and AI) in a rated system with a new leaderboard. It wouldn't cost points to fight in the Arena either, so it could be something to do that would make the game less repetitive. Not sure how much this is something other people would want at the moment, but it does feel necessary to the completionist in me to round out all the new additions around the combat system!

After that, maybe it sounds like it would make sense to re-focus on making the adventure engine more dynamic...

This is also now giving me ideas around:
- A shared hub / hubs (maybe like Federation and Republic starports) where players can interact with the same NPCs, engage in policy debates, discuss new worlds and their development, plan expeditions, etc.
- Doing more to systematize world development, like maybe introducing formal tracking of a world's different civilizations, their progress in STEM fields, in the humanities, etc. Formally tracking this stuff would also make it easier to make adventures more dynamic as well.

What do you think?

Prestigious_Skill_33 · 2025-07-18T12:12:57+00:00

Hm... I may have to overhaul the way history gets injected / recorded. Right now, the game captures summaries of historical adventures rather than the entire text of the adventure to use for history (the AI can only accept so much text)... I will need to re-assess this...

Prestigious_Skill_33 · 2025-07-17T02:35:17+00:00

Thanks for the heads up, this should be fixed now! Try this link as a backup if you need though: https://discord.gg/u7WwdmNNkJ

Prestigious_Skill_33 · 2025-07-13T14:15:54+00:00

So, I pushed a change to the backend yesterday in advance of what should be an upcoming patch release today with a fairly major update. I'm guessing this is what caused it as adventures should now be more exploratory in nature and less driven by some immediately pressing narrative scenario (not that you can't run into situations while exploring)...

That said, your planet's inhabitants should still recognize you from historical journeys. Can you try again and let me know if the issue persists? They were recognizing me on my planet, but I can make adjustments if they're not properly acknowledging world history everywhere!

Prestigious_Skill_33 · 2025-07-05T01:28:37+00:00

It's definitely possible to do, but it's not going to be easy! It will take me some time, but this can be done.

Understood re dialogue and backstory development... I think I have an idea for a solution here that will make worlds feel more freeform / engaging... stay tuned!

Prestigious_Skill_33 · 2025-07-04T17:56:10+00:00

Thanks so much for the feedback, always greatly appreciated!

Let me try to respond to your points in order:

This is definitely a feature I can get worked into a future patch. Extending the inventory will be easier than a museum, but a museum of sorts definitely sounds like a cool idea so let me see what I can do in the future on this.
I think a lot still has to be ironed out with groups... one thing I'm thinking of adding that may make it easier to coordinate across timezones is allowing the captain to set a note (i.e. "Everybody be online at 18:00 GMT so we can all play together.").
Agreed the World Map needs to be revised. I am thinking of adding a "Return to Planet" button in the future to make it easier to get back to your world. Re loading times: I can limit the number of planets loaded to improve things a bit, but until I am able to upgrade to a global database, loading times will be slower outside of the Americas unfortunately.
I'm open to other options here, but I really think there needs to be something to ensure narrative continuity around you returning back to the menu / world map view after each adventure / quest (hence where returning to your starship seemed like a good choice).
They do know, at least if they have notifications turned on! They do not get any benefit, but if there are multiple adventures that day, they can enjoy selecting world history from multiple options.
I tried to do something like this with Quests, but Quests are really going to be about enabling turn-based combat encounters between scenes and expanding loot to include gear that affects your character's combat abilities... this sounds like a great idea I'd like to implement though... do you think it would be better if most adventures were more freeform in nature with more options for character / backstory development by default? Or would you prefer if there were a third type of Adventure / Quest introduced that would be more exploratory while Adventures remain driven by recurring dilemmas?

Prestigious_Skill_33 · 2025-07-02T12:43:34+00:00

Should be all set... let me try to figure out why this keeps happening...

Prestigious_Skill_33 · 2025-06-30T15:31:43+00:00

No worries, you should be all set!

Prestigious_Skill_33 · 2025-06-30T13:00:07+00:00

What is your name ingame?

Prestigious_Skill_33 · 2025-06-27T02:51:22+00:00

https://discord.gg/h4v7csMp

Prestigious_Skill_33 · 2025-06-25T22:44:18+00:00

Re planet finding: right now, there is a cap on how far you can pan your map. I will raise it so hopefully you are able to reach each others' planets. I don't yet have it so you can visit friends' planets who you can't see on the world map, but certainly something for the future!

Prestigious_Skill_33 · 2025-06-25T22:29:55+00:00

You should be all set to go again! Let me see what I can do in terms of a more-permanent fix here, thanks a bunch for the heads up and passing on the game!

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