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I love where this is going. Not familiar with Ingress but had a peek via Google and looks pretty new and ambitious. You may already be aware, but the sound in the video comes in extremely soft. It might be worth re-recording since the the whole point is the audio track. Impressive that you pulled all that off with Lambda and DynamoDb. I noticed you had a couple hiccups with Alexa understanding--which is something we all have to deal with. There might be a way you can give attackers and defenders creative names that also make them more distinct, particularly if you can vary the number of syllables. "Red Wings" vs "Sentinal Shields." I don't know. Also, I was curious if your game kept up with previous requests to track which type of drone was the current or active, so you could apply that as a default without having to specify on each request. Again, that might not be practical or applicable. I'm also curious if the game will have any companion material--such as a web or mobile app. I'm actually hoping to make games with printed accompaniment--such as game maps and such. In general, I hope we see the day when Amazon lets us offer custom audio streams. I think there's a whole market for voice gaming, and to be able to cue music, voice acting and sound effects will really make an experience like this pop. Overall StarLanes is super impressive. I just wanted to be the one to say I'm a fan of your work, and can't wait to see this stuff hit the market! Thanks, Jim

>I noticed you had a couple hiccups with Alexa understanding Snort. The video I recorded was 7:30 long. Chopping out the bits of me repeating "Drop two factories" 8 times in a row and other Alexa recognition weirdness cut it down to 2:30. I'm [i]really [/i]hoping they do some behind-the-scenes improvement in recognition. Otherwise the game borders on unplayable. >might be a way you can give attackers and defenders creative names They do pretty well. It's "factory/factories/factory drones" that Alexa screw up. The "Drop two factories" matches an intent "DROP drop {two|quantity} {factories|drone}" yet Alexa consistently gets "drop two five four". WTF Amazon? Anyway, it's up for certification now. I want them to see it as-is before I start doing work-arounds. >I was curious if your game kept up with previous requests to track which type >of drone was the current or active, The general game play is going to systems with a surplus of different types of drones, loading your ship up, then going to a contested or empty system and dropping them off again. So I'm not sure it really is the case where you are dealing with one type consistently. But I'm logging just about everything, so I can always test that theory against the logs. >I'm also curious if the game will have any companion material Not presently. I have a rich client desktop app which you can play through. That's for me to test out the game logic, and possibly distribute to a few seed players if it looks like the gameplay needs more direction. There is the potential for additional material. What I'd like to see first is a community board. The game is interactive: everyone plays in the same space. But not directly confrontational: you can't screw with another player's ship. (That's the element that is akin to Ingress.) Players are going to need somewhere to coordinate. (And I'd LOVE to see them make a map.) But that sort of thing ups the ante from what I'm good at (programming) to what I'm not good at (graphical design/UI). Just look at EchoSim and you see the sort of horrible UI designs I churn out! So I'm starting with the pure Alexa service, and see where it goes. Like I mentioned, I've got comprehensive logs tracking gameplay. Once it gets past certification and onto the Internal Amazon Beta I want to see if it has legs or not. If so, I'll be more likely to add additional elements (and look for real advertisers). If not... well, it would have been an interesting experiment. :-) I'll probably open-source it. >I hope we see the day when Amazon lets us offer custom audio streams. Amen to that. I agree with you 100%. I [i]really [/i]wanted a "you're going into warp" effect. I played with freaky strings of vowels like "o.o.o.o" "eoeoeoeo" and stuff like that to see if I could fake the text to speech into making some lame effect. No luck. They caught all the cases I could find. Just going to have to wait for them to let us have streaming audio. >can't wait to see this stuff hit the market! No matter what happens, it will be an interesting experiment. Thanks for the kind words!

Starlanes has now been released! I've reviewed it up on my blog: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/starlanes-animal-game-joseph-jaquinta and gave it 5-out-of-5. OK. I did write it. But I was trying really hard to push the envelope of what you can do with Alexa that I, honestly, think it deserves that rating. Fire it up. Judge for yourself. Note: it's a multi-player game. So getting in quickly and establishing yourself at some good systems is to your advantage! :-)

There are several new features that are being worked on for Starlanes 2.0: * [b]Tide[/b]. The distance a ship can transition changes over the course of the day * [b]Fuel[/b]. Ships now have fuel tanks and the number of transitions they can make will be limited * [b]Configurations[/b]. You can alter your ship to bias it for range, carrying capacity or fuel tankage. * [b]Gameplay[/b]. There are several tweaks to the gameplay to make it more challenging and collaborative. * [b]Tutorial[/b]. You can elect to hear comprehensive tutorials that will walk you through the commands of the game. Additionally a user forum has been set up here: http://starlanes.freeforums.net Many of these features are being rolled out to the current live game. They are being announced in the forum, as well as feedback taken. Please join in and contribute!