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X3AP » A flash update
Posted by Roguey on Monday 20th February, 2012     1 comments

You maybe wondering what ive been working on the past day, it is actually some flash code that displays the universe directly from the XML file that X3AP uses. The code only displays an universe map, however using the XML file it knows everything about the universe, so sector maps could also be done. Here's what it looks like atm.



I did not draw that map, nor put any of the links in - they are all worked out by the flash code. Another advantage to this is that it should work for all X-games. Scrolling is done via the cursor keys atm. Its crazy how fast my flash projects have been moving.. you could say.. in a flash...

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A quick flash
Posted by Roguey on Thursday 16th February, 2012     1 comments

I hate being beat, after my recent failure with flash. So I thought ill give Vectorian Giotto another go. After a short while I managed to create a small flash item that displayed the time. This was an major step forward than my last attempt, however Vectorian Giotto was crashing a lot - not the mention each time I tried to type something, I would trigger the hot-keys rather than type what I wanted.

This wasnt right, so had to find something else - Vectorian Giotto was basically not stable enough, and I felt it wasnt up-to the job (shame although). So google around for other alternates and came across FlashDevelop.

At first you are thrown into an editor - which is a bit overwhelming at first as if your learning the language, its very hard to know where to start. However I kept going and within a few hours I had created my time thingy in FlashDevelop:



It may not look much however this was in flash and used a timer to update the area, whilst moving it around and put an textbox there. I kept going thought a good next project would be new ship index flash. After a many hours, I manage to create it in flash (seen here).

What does this mean? well creating small pieces of flash. If everything goes well I might be able to make my own arcade games, however I feel that could be awhile away. However its all progress, which makes a nice change

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Flash and gone
Posted by Roguey on Sunday 12th February, 2012     0 comments

Today I read up a bit about Flash, as its an technology id like to use for my site. It seems that Adobe have ownership on flash, which basically forces you to buy their own editor. I was a bit surprised to see the price of it... £700!?! Eeeek!

So I thought ill have a look to see if anyone has an alternative. This is where I find Vectorian Giotto - which looks interesting. After a few hours, I couldnt get I want working: to load an external images. A bit longer, I got it to work but not how want I wanted it. As an coder, I want to be able to write code.

AS2/AS3 (which is the code used in Flash) seems very complex and hard to understand, its more like Java but you seem to pick random keywords out of the air. Even the editor is hard to understand, clicking on things which dont really seem to do anything, code disappearing, nothing really explained... its just a nightmare to me. This doesnt even look like its Vectorian Giotto fault, as their editor looks similar to Adobe's! Vectorian Giotto is probably an good alternative to Adobe. I did get a few basic things working although, just some plain animation.

So I tried it. Adobe Flash is simply too pricey for me, and then its an complex language to learn (for games and dynamic content). Its fine if you want to create a small animation (like a running stick-man), or something. I guess this explains why there are only a few flash developers out there, its not something which is easy.

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X3AP » What to buy at 50 million
Posted by Roguey on Friday 13th January, 2012     5 comments

Its took a long time to buy up any serious money in the Terran Commander. Most of it ive been spending on my complex, which is now 50 stations large.

I built my complex in Megnir, which seems a fairly safe Terran sector (this sector has gates you can jump too). Carbo Cake seems to sell fairly well, although just 4 or 5 L factories seem to cope with demand (price set at 31cr), however my main seller is Poltergeist missiles (price set at 1 less than default). I have 10 of these stations (in the complex) and the missiles are normally always brought by the NPC ships.

After much time and many kill missions, I wondered what to buy at the 30-40 million range. M7's seem good but kind-of wanted more turrets, M2's are a bit of a stretch but are the most powerful fighters (but are rather slow)... after much thinking I decided on a Split Cobra:



My reason for this is that its the second fastest M7M (speed can be important in M7M's), which is able to use boarding pods to board other ships. Boarding pods make boarding so much easier, as you send your marines in a missile like projectile rather than kicking them out of air-lock and letting them fly up-to the ship.

One little tip: if your setup for boarding in your M7M, angry the ship you wish to board with a few missiles (probably a few Flails every 5-10 seconds). Now get the ship behind your M7M (7-8km is safe) and set your top speed to the same as the ship you wish to board. This puts the enemy ship so its front is facing you, which should allow you to send missiles and boarding pods without the turrets shooting any of them out. Now use a few Hammer Heavies to take down the shields, and then use a few Flails (at 10%'ish shields) to bring them down to 2-3%. Launch the boarding pods, then a few more Flails (although you need to be more careful with lighter shielded ships). Now keep the shields under 10% with Flails until the marines reach deck 1. Now you can just wait and hope your marines are successful.

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X3AP » Terran Commander start
Posted by Roguey on Friday 6th January, 2012     0 comments

The Terran Commander has definitely been a hard start: no plot mission, war all around, no Terran police license and such large sectors making travel very long winded (trade is near impossible). I managed to get some money together by salvaging stuff then went exploring. I noticed the Terran Springblossom (M6) has got a crazy top speed, so I headed out looking were its sold... Aldrin. So I ditched the Katana (which has just 1 extra shield) and brought one (at 6.5mil its a great buy, with top speed of 360m/s!).

This new ship allowed me to travel across those hostile sectors where Argon ships jump in and start shooting at you. Once I got away from those Terran and Argon sectors I could find some friendly sectors. This is were I started making real money because of the fight missions.

After a few missions I headed on over to Cardinals Domain. I shot down an Argon ship there, then thought the local police would go hostile... nope.. nothing. hmmm.. has my paranid rank gone up?... I shot another down.. yup! The Paranid actually like me for killing Argons?!? This makes Cardinals Domain for me a great place to capture M3/4/5's.. there is even a shipyard there to sell the ships!

After awhile the money started building up, so I starting getting marines and training them. I didnt get them far when I noticed a small wing of ships supporting a single Heavy Centaur.. I thought what the heck?.. lets try boarding it...

Oh.. that thing puts out of lot of damage... my Springblossom just managed to hold the damage whilst I sent out the marines out and hold down the shields... "We on target.. stand-by"... 6 marines with just 2 stars have got no chance!.. "Deck 1 clear.. moving to deck 2"... hmm... "Deck 2 clear, smoke in the hole".. now this getting interesting... the Heavy Centaur is an 15million credit ship!

A few moments later, "transferring ship to your command".. oh!.. did I really get that ship with just 6 bad marines?.. oh 4 have been killed (ah screw them they were bad marines anyway)... still, oooh:



Now ill be arming up my new ship to capture and board more ships... The best way to look at the Terran start is that your a Pirate attacking the Argon... OOohh Arrr!