sparticle999
commented
4 years ago Hey there, I'm sorry I haven't been active in days. I'm going to take a look at this, and implement a few of these changes. Thanks so much for making the edits in the code! It's so helpful. Some changes I probably will not agree with, so I apologise for that, but this is generally because I already had some idea about how to change the specific features.
For example, I previously changed achievement boundaries for V1, and these work better in my opinion.
Due to a github pull request changing everything, I will instead copy paste the individual changes into my own edits. Obviously I will give credit for your commits, and once again, thanks for the effort!
Misacek01
Hello Sparticle,
I have another commit for you, if you're interested. Since it's unsolicited, it's up to you to decide what (if anything) you want from it. (I promise not to ragequit if you refuse it. :p) In that case, I hope you can select which changes to keep and that it's not take or leave the whole commit. If it is, and if you only want some parts, I guess I can make a separate commit for them.
There's quite a lot in there, so the summary is rather long. I wanted to explain what I did in detail, but if you prefer the short version, see Changelog at bottom.
I tested the branch and nothing seems to have been broken by the changes, but ofc I didn't take every possible user action. If you'd like to play my branch to see for yourself, I can send you a late-game save if you don't have one handy. (Or do I have to enable something on GitHub for others to play from my online repository?)
Change comments - Proofreading and copy-editing
I took the liberty to proofread all the user-facing text I could find, and copy-edit for nicer phrasing where appropriate. Should be all of it, though ofc I may have missed something. You may recall I'm a translator, so I do this kind of work often - it should be a reasonably competent job, if I do say so myself. :p
Most of the time, I worked the same way I would on a job for a client, i.e., taking care not to change the factual contents, regardless of phrasing changes. In a few places though, I added or removed some text, mostly where I felt the text was an inaccurate and / or inadequate description of the game mechanic.
At some point, I made a list of some of the 'factual' changes where I explain them. However, it doesn't cover everything. If you see such a change that's not included below and want to hear my reasoning for it, let me know anytime.
interstellarData.js 360, 361: renamed "Battle Cruiser" to "Battlecruiser" Most uses I've seen had it as a single word. See e.g. on Wikipedia.
interstellarData.js 384, 385: renamed "Capital Ship" to "Battleship" Capital ships are a broad group that also includes battlecruisers. You have battlecruisers separate, implying they are not capital ships, which isn't right. 'Battleship' is a simple, well-known option for a ship type bigger than battlecruiser. I also mentioned it on the game Reddit a while back.
renamed "Jupitonian Condensator" to "Jovian Condensator" 'Jovian' is the proper English adjectival form of 'Jupiter'. It is derived from 'Jove', the 'native' English version of 'Jupiter'. 'Jove' itself is now considered archaic and only really used in the phrase 'by Jove' - itself rather outdated. However, the adjectival form 'Jovian' remains the only one that can be used for Jupiter in English.
constants.js line 61, achievementData.js line 17: changed "Producers" achievement category name to "Buildings" 'Producers' isn't used much in the UI and seems less clear as to what it is, particularly to a new player.
stargazeData.js line 126: removed reference to Pascal's Triangle, new explanation The sequence used for Swarms is specifically the binomial coefficients of (m choose 2). The Triangle as a whole is generated by generic binomial coefficients (m choose k) going through all 'k'. So the sequence used here is just one of infinite diagonals in the triangle, no more characteristic of it than any other. Nor do online explanations of Pascal's Triangle that players might search explicitly mention this sequence, that I could find. It was thus a bit confusing. I considered spelling out the generating formula, but rejected it as 'too technical' for the situation. I settled for trying to explain it in the simplest terms possible.
Change comments - 'Game changing'
As for things that actually change the game in some way, see list below with file and line addresses of the changes. (Not sure if this is necessary? GitHub will show you the changed lines, right?)
interstellar.js line 456: fixed bug: military power icons overflowed back to single dot at high power One threshold too many was defined - removed last.
constants.js line 57, achievementData.js line 18: changed 4 and 5 star building achievement threshold from 500/1000 to 150/200 The old numbers were effectively unreachable. These numbers are realistic with decent DM boost, but IMO not too easy. They don't follow your 10-5 scheme, but they do keep the increment to next level constant, so IMO it looks okay as a sequence. They also don't give any benefit in the early runs, as low levels stay the same and getting 150+ machines isn't realistic without a good bunch of DM. So this change gives no extra DM early in the game, which is when the extra points could change balance. Later, 2 or 4 more DM per run doesn't matter much when you're hauling hundreds.
interstellarData.js lines 312, 313, 336, 337: switched display-names of Frigate and Corvette; did not change entryNames to match In real navies, corvettes were smaller ships than frigates. See the aforelinked Reddit post about this.
interstellarData.js 324, 329: reduced Corvette (former Frigate - see previous) Lunarite price by a factor of 10 (from 6.1B to 610M) Was way overpriced relative to attributes and to cost in other resources. My guess is old cost was a typo - an extra zero. It made the ship useless, and probably unused.
Unresolved issues found
Military panel intro text does not display There is a text description that should go at the top of the Military panel in interstellarData.js, but it doesn't show in-game. It had a bit of info on conquest mechanics, and I expanded it with more detail because I feel that the whole invasion mechanic is very sparsely explained ATM. In particular I wanted to add the basics of how ships are lost in invasion, as first-time Interstellar players may have ground for ships for a long time and probably should know what actions risk them.
The Military intro seems a good place to put this, so I did, but it doesn't actually display in the UI. I don't know enough about coding to figure out why or how to change it, so I'm putting this forward as a suggestion to you.
Faction description text (in Stargaze only) does not reflect proofreading changes. The faction descriptions that show in Interstellar are in interstellarData.js, and the ones that show in Stargaze seem to be the ones found in stargazeData.js. I made some style edits and copied them to both files, and they show okay in Interstellar. But no matter what I do (tried reload, close and reopen window, and Rebirth), the faction flavor texts in the Stargaze panel do not update.
I really don't know what gives. I went through all the code files, and the texts don't seem to exist anywhere else. On my changed branch, there shouldn't even be an existing copy left of the old faction text, but it still shows in my Stargaze. Where does it even load from? The save file? Your master branch, somehow? Code Hell?!
All the other text in Stargaze is really loaded from stargazeData.js and reflects any changes I make normally the moment I reload the page. The only thing I haven't tried is to start a completely fresh game, in case it really is in the save file. But I didn't take the time to edit together a fresh save where Stargaze is visible. It's also ofc possible it's somewhere else in the code, for whatever reason, and I simply missed it in my search, however thorough.
Changelog
Open issues found
Best, Mike