Captain Successor

By: Derek Yu

On: November 20th, 2009

If you’re a registered supporter of Captain Forever you no doubt just received an email informing you that the next installment of the series, Captain Successor, has been released. The basic game mechanics are the same, but Successor puts you in control of a new ship, Eris, that is piloted by Captain Lan, and the game features a variety of new ship parts, like torpedoes, homing missiles, ramming spikes, and auto-repair systems. The ramming spikes are fun, I’ll tell you that much.

Not only that, but Forever is now free to play, so give it a go. If you enjoy it you might consider paying $20 to support the project. Supporters can play Captain Successor as well as any further games in the series.

Posted in Action, Browser Games, Freeware, Highly Recommended | Tags: Farbs

Synnah

Oh sweet! Thanks for this update; I probably wouldn’t have checked my email for a few days. I’ll try this out at lunch!
OMGAWESOME

You should be piloting the Eros because this game is pure sex.
jason

about time cf is free farbs =P
jw

one of the best games I’ve played this year :D
Ein

Captain Forever fuckin rules.
Ninomojo

This has nothing to do but are TIG’s forums down?
Marcus

Captain Forever seems nice but it keeps crashing on me a bit into the game (my cpu goes crazy, the whole computer starts lagging). I’ve never had a flash game do this to me before…
http://www.farbs.org Farbs

Marcus – that’s really weird. Would you mind answering these questions?

* Are you allowing or denying camera access at the start?

* Have you tried reducing the graphics quality (press G to cycle)

* What version of flash are you using? (right click, then “about”)

* What operating system are you running on?
chrknudsen

Ninomojo: I haven’t been able to access the forums all day… :(
Marcus

Hi Farbs, I did allow the camera/mic the first two times, figured that might be the cause so denied it the third time, but it didn’t help.

I didn’t try reducing the graphics quality, and I don’t think that’s what’s causing it since it’d play all smooth and be fine until suddenly something happens (couldn’t say what) and my laptop’s fan starts spinning like hell.

Windows Vista Home Premium/Flash 10,0,32,18 (in Firefox)
http://www.farbs.org Farbs

Oh cool, thanks Marcus. Unfortunately I have absolutely no idea what the problem could be. Has anyone else experienced this issue?
fuzz

so i tried it, found that i loved the atmosphere and the graphics, but the game itself was not for me. i only really lasted about 15 minutes before i got bored.

but! that’s just me, and i’m sure the game _is_ fun for a lot of people.
Epitaph64

Great fun! Reminds me a lot of roguelike style of one moment a champion, the next a corpse. I managed to get some blue parts the last game, but then a MEGA ship destroyed me almost instantly haha.
Stephen

Captain Forever is fun. I tend to get too into the building part, forgetting you need to do it quickly or you’ll get shot at. I’d probably enjoy it more if you had more time to reconfigure your ship, with the battles more difficult to make up for the advantage. But you obviously can’t make the game perfect for every single person’s personal preferences, so with that in mind, what you’ve got here is probably ideal. I’ll be coming back to this one!
Xeno

Yeah Farbs, I’m running XP & Firefox 3.5.5, site loads and 4 seconds later firefox crashes.
nik

i am deeply sorry , but apart of the console-gui i couldn’t find anything compelling,

should i read in somewhere or something?
http://www.YagerX.com YagerX

Captain Succesor is SOO MUCH FUN.
I’m not sure if I can say this but “SPOILERS”:
Random spawn supplies.
Super cool modules (Ie. Sprint boosters, missile launchers, REGEN MODULE!)
Funky Background.
And soo much more!
http://chaoseed.com/garden John Evans

It was interesting, but I wasn’t quite sure of the point. The ‘Info Buoy’ told me to fly around with WASD, but beyond that it didn’t tell me what to do. There was something about “unattached modules”, but they seem few and far between…
Demicol

Farbs:
Allowing camera makes Firefox crash. Otherwise the game works perfectly.
Noyb

@John Evans – Perhaps there is a way to make modules attached to other ships become unattached…
Dodger

This is a fun little romp. Any chance this will become a downloadable game?

@John Evans,

Space Bar shoots. Of course, it helps if you have lasers equipped to your modules (some are available early on). Also here’s a hint, when shooting other ships try aiming for the cockpit only, this will destroy the ship and leave more modules intact for you to add to your ship.
http://gamejolt.com/freeware/games/action/shmup-bit-fortress-wip/405/ Davioware

I get so happy after I’ve finally built up a nice little pink/blue ship with lots of thrusters and such… only to have a huge-long-ass-wall-of-lasers-battle-cruiser just roll up on me and PEW, PEW, BOOM! It’s a great game farbs, really a lot of fun.
Dinsdale

Best game ever.

Also, this should merge with Gratuitous Space Battles.
genericlogin

So, so, freaking beautiful.

Are your graphics a combination of blur and glow filters? I’d really appreciate it if you’d tell me how you did it.
http://www.farbs.org Farbs

The bloom effect (which you can turn off by hitting G a couple of times) is just a BitmapData object added over the game screen with BlendMode.ADD. I render the game screen to it every frame and hit it with a blur filter. To save CPU cost the bloom bitmap is 1/10 as wide and 1/10 as high as the game screen, but drawn at 10x scale. This adds a few artifacts, but it’s also much faster.
http://jamesgecko.com James

Interesting. Also really hard. I started taking hints from enemy ship designs in short order after getting blown up a few times. It’s not quite like a roguelike, but it’s rather close given how hard it can be to recover from getting asploded.

Building is kinda annoying. Actually, building is good; building while getting shot at is kind of annoying.
“Oh, crap! I missed that rocket module! Can’t turn correctly anymore! Now I’m blown up again! Noooo.”

Also, I’m not sure boosters work that way in space, do they? The turning mechanics seem to be somewhat boat-like; like the entire thing is underwater.
http://www.farbs.org Farbs

The boosters are relatively accurate (though I don’t think real boosters wouldn’t maintain constant force like these do). The big cheat is friction – your ship shouldn’t lose linear or angular momentum in space.

Originally I didn’t have drag, and although it felt space-like floating all over the place it was also incredibly difficult and frustrating. It was a lot like the original Asteroids.
Zaphos

As a spaceship pilot, I can vouch for the accuracy of this game. It is a completely realistic simulation.
http://www.farbs.org Farbs

Zaphos I’m not sure that’s what people mean when they say you’re a space cadet.
HookerWithNoBeViS

Dude! DUUUUU-DE! Captain Forever is like.. AWESOME!!! I’m seriously considering to pay! =)

..This might be a dumb question, but what’s the deal with that camera/mic thing? Nothing seems to change whether I allow or deny it.. except my webcam get’s turned on when I choose ‘allow’.. otherwise nothing else happens.. I think..
MisterX

Earlier today I’ve played Captain Forever for 5-10 minutes. I thought it was nice, but then constantly being interrupted while trying to tinker a bit with the ship design and being caught off guard was pretty annoying, so I just quit.

Now, I’ve played it again for about 10-15 minutes and loved it. You actually do have time to build your ship to your liking, but you’ve got to be careful. It’s quite exciting to dismantle a great part of your ship and sticking new, better parts together, all the while zooming out, checking the surroundings and hoping that no stronger ship comes around. The sense of progression is also nice. You have nice fights with enemies at your level, you get to easily rip apart lower ones who used to be strong foes just a few minutes ago, and when a much stronger ship comes around you have to figure out its weaknessess and tactically take it apart.

And in that game, it was a bit of a shock when suddenly those huge white lasers shot in from off-screen, and it was a sight to behold when this huge and seemingly impenetrable battleship got close. An enemy ship at around my level cot caught in front of that white fortress and was simply shredded apart, and when I tried to take it from the side, accidently got a little too close and the whole right half of my ship was seperated with a single hit, I knew it was over…

So, yeah, very nice game :) I’m not sure about the longevity, but at least this is one great free game. Just don’t judge it too quickly!
Phasma Felis

Captain Forever? What? What is this? AGH WHY CAN’T I STOP PLAYING
Phasma Felis

Experimenting with different build concepts. I’ve had some luck with a broadside setup (long, narrow, guns on the sides) but it’s hard to get set up–you need a lot of guns, and they need to be balanced properly.

Think I might try playing with small fighters next. Quality of guns, vs. quantity. I can’t really get into the giant wall ships the AI makes–solid firepower, but you can’t maneuver or dodge, so you get whittled down.

I’m sure everyone already knows this, but you get more turning ability out of thrusters the further they are from the center of gravity. Ha, maybe I should try something completely asymmetrical, like the Star Wars B-wing. :D
bateleur

@Phasma Felis – You can make wall-of-guns ships that are highly manoevrable if you construct them correctly. Guns all along the front and engines all along the back with the power levels of the engines arranged to give you decent but not excessive turning speed. Strongest guns (if the power varies) at the edges, because those are the ones that will usually hit. Fly to slightly miss the opponent (the AI never deflection shoots) then turn in at the last minute. The first volley will cripple most opponents.
failrate

I had some success with a broadside ship with asymmetric thrusters, so I could turn faster in one direction than the enemy to keep them in the line of fire on the side with the most guns.
ecto

great game. being able to pause when building your ship would have been soo nice tho!
http://www.klikscene.com Radix

The game is fun as hell, but holding spacebar for so long really hurts.
Phasma Felis

A good compromise between realtime and paused construction would be allowing part to directly replace other parts. Drag a Charlie thruster over a Bravo thruster, or a Delta girder over two Charlie girders, and the old part is automatically ejected and replaced, with all connections preserved.

Would make it a whole lot less harrowing to replace internal girders.
MisterX

I also think that some kind of compromise would improve the game.
On the one hand I like that especially exchanging integral parts is very risky and you need to be very careful. Also, sometimes you just need to escape in a haste with a ship that is only half complete and try to grab as many leftover parts as you can to drag them to a safer place.
On the other hand, building really big ships just isn’t fun (in Captain Forever) in my opinion. With only a small command module, “big ship” means big branches, and that means sooner or later you have to completely scratch at least 1/4 of the whole ship if you want to “modernize” the parts.
FhnuZoag

It’s a bit too basic of a game really. Imagine combining this with something like Transcendence or Escape Velocity Nova – give me a big old universe to explore, a mechanism to purchase or sell pieces or do trading or whatever to earn case. A little more compromising gameplay/non-ironman death handling. Add stuff like constructing your own AI wingmen. Plus add some different types of modules to combine.

That would be the best game ever.
Stij

Captain Forever is really fun. I’m definitely donating to get the sequel.

@39 MisterX: Yeah, I know what you’re saying. To get around that, I tend to start by making the core of my ship out of crappy parts, then build up around it as I acquire better parts. It doesn’t matter if the core is weak, since it’s never exposed to direct fire…

Also: Forwards-facing thrusters are extremely useful. Not only do you let you reverse, but the make you turn a lot faster, too.
http://vacuumflowers.com/ Sparky

Farbs, I’ve been playing Captain Forever all day, and I must say it’s really inspirational stuff. It’s so much fun to gradually accumulate better parts and tinker with ship design.

I love the way thrusters affect the ship handling, by the way. Not only is it really easy to learn the basics, but it seems there’s quite a broad array of viable ship layouts as well.

I also really like the look of the game- it’s very clean, and has a lot of little stylish touches. Unfortunately I have to play with bloom off :P

Cheers!
Dinsdale

That being said, getting killed in this game is extremely frustrating.
The Cartesian

I REALLY want to enjoy this game, but I’m having such an annoying time of it almost every time I try to upgrade my ship. Half the time I end up with less than I began with cause I have to evade another ship that would be more powerful than mine even once I’d upgraded, so I have a frankenstein half-ship trying to evade enemies but consequently I just fly around in circles! I suppose the lesson to be learned here is to probably use a mouse rather than the insidious mousepad thing on my laptop.

I’ll have some fun playing this game if it kills me.
http://coop-gaming.tv X-Tender

Its sad that there is no Save option :(
Or did I’am just blind to find it?
MisterX

Aha, X-Tender, so we meet once again, hehe. Well, doubt you remember me.

Anyway, there is kind of a save feature. Press “X” for “Export” ingame :) This can copy a nice ascii image of your ship to the clipboard, including a link that can be used to pilot it. Very convinient for posting your designs on forums.
http://coop-gaming.tv X-Tender

Hehe, small is the World ;)

Yeah I know the feature, but when I load it again its not possible to export it again :/
Trystero

Farbs,

fantastically addictive game, and bravo on the sequel, it’s quite fun.

(spoiler alert)

I’ve built a white-level ship, have killed the kilo-class clones, and now have all of the respawns “trapped” inside of my ship. Now what?

Some questions
– missiles tend to “friendly fire” when I shoot right before thrusting. Feature or bug? They also tend to aim for me when no opponents are in sight. More often than not the missile modules simply blow themselves up.

(and let’s not even discuss what happens when you trap an opponent in your ship then fire a salvo of 8 juliet class missiles…I’ll only make *that* mistake once!)
http://www.farbs.org Farbs

@Trystero – now you can start over with a new ship design :D
Some players also like to keep adding to their end-game ships, but after a while computational limits kick in and the game goes a little wonky.

Missiles can be very dangerous, and are surprisingly difficult to use effectively. I’d recommend thrusting before firing rather than the other way around since they’ll inherit your velocity. They should fire straight outwards when no other ships are near, but yeah trapping other ships inside your hull makes your own missiles rather dangerous.
http://www.farbs.org Farbs

…I’ve tweaked the limits a little, so people should be able to make larger ships now.