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ercolesptr
(@ercolesptr)
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This is a space colonization game of our own solar system. The player starts on Earth and has to colonize the planets to get resources in order to expand his space empire. Here is a quick tutorial:

By keeping the right mouse button pressed and moving the mouse you can pan the camera view up, down, left & right.

By keeping the third mouse button pressed and moving horizontally you can rotate the camera.

By moving the mouse cursor to the edges of the screen you move camera forward, backward, left and right respectively.

By using the mouse wheel you can zoom in and out when in planet view or map view.

By pressing "m" you switch to map view and by pressing "n" you switch to normal view.

By pressing "o" you bring up the Options Menu to save game, etc

By pressing "s" key you get the spaceship menu to easily hold track or spaceships.

By pressing "p" key you get the planet list menu to easily find a planet or moon.

By pressing "a" key you get the asteroid list menu to easily manage asteroid mining.

By pressing "c" key you get the colonized planets menu to easily manage colonies.

By pressing "1" to "5" you can slow or speed up the game respectively and "3" stands for normal speed.

You interact with the game by clicking on planets or moons with left mouse button. At first the only colonized planet is Earth, if you click on it you will get a panel with 8 buttons. Clicking the buttons will open the respective screen to interact with. You should start by researching the MK I solar panel, then produce it in the production menu and later activate it in the energy menu. To build items you will need resources, there are 15 resources which are mined from the planets and moons. However to mine resources you need 20MW of energy. At first you get 50 tons of the first 5 resources, you should use these to built 2 solar panels MK I which will give you 20MW. You can then start the mining of materials. Built silos to get more storage space on the planet or moon. You will also need habitats to increase your population, this is necessary to man spaceships, etc. You should then start building a probe. Launch it from the hanger menu and move it to a planet or moon. You move it by left clicking on it and then right clicking on the planet or moon you want to send it to. Once the probe is on the planet, go to research and research the probe data. You should then be able to see what resources that the planet or moon produces by left clicking on the planet or moon. You colonize the planet by building a colonizer and sending it on the planet. There are 3 types of colonizer ships. The Normal Colonizer ship can colonize most planets except those having extreme temperatures like Venus, Mercury, Pluto, etc. For these there is a special temperature resistant colonizer ship. Also Gas giants need a special pressure resistant Colonizer.

You will notice that you will be missing resources to build some structures, for these you will need to use a grazer to mine resources from the ten asteroids orbiting the sun between Mars and Jupiter orbits. You can mine resources from asteroids by deploying a grazer on an asteroid and then after mining the asteroid send it back to earth or any colonized planet.

You should also research defence items as you may face attack and if you are not well prepared your colony may be wiped out. You should have a fighter to defend the planet. You can also built bunkers where your people may take refuge in case you get attacked,etc. When there is an attack you will receive an alarm and you are given the option to go there or ignore it. If you press go there, this will take you to the planet being attacked, you should then press the defence button to start defending your planet. If you ignore it the attack will still occur and most of the population on the planet will be killed. If the population reaches zero, you will need to transfer some of the crew on any spaceships you may have in space in order to start a new population for that planet.

Update History:

6-May-2011: First Beta release

8-May-2011: Included Game option menu (press "o" key).

Included Space Ship location menu (press "s" key).

9-May-2011: Bug fixes.

10-May-2011: Added new features to production section + duplicate minerals bug fix. Also fixed attack bug and made attacks more frequent. Fixed Habitat bug (now each habitat gives population space as told in research screen). Also fixed bug in research section where one could research item beyond 100%.

11-May-2011: Fixed bug in loading routine. Also bug in Research and Production screens when changing planet has been fixed.

11-May-2011 2nd update: More bug fixes and now added resources panel view also in production section and when colonized planet is clicked. Also in production menu it show energy available for production.

13-May-2011 Added New Game option and fixed some bugs in Save/Load Game option and the defence section.

14-May-2011 Made a number of improvements in defence section. Also planet and asteroid resources are now randomized at game start.

15-May-2011 Fixed some bugs and added pirate raid event. Also added choice to choose filename for saving and loading.

16-May-2011 Bug fixes in hanger section and save section.

21-May-2011 Various bug fixes and enhancements + first attack now takes longer to occur.

22-May-2011 Fixed bug in combat section. Added planet list panel.

31-May-2011 Fixed bug in Production section and planet panel.

2-June-2011 Added Asteroid panel + several bug fixes. Spaceships, Planet and Asteroid panels work in both normal and map view.

3-June-2011 Bug fixes.

4-June-2011 Fixed bug in grazer mining. Added Colony menu.

4-December-2012 Fixed a bug in the energy section of the game. Updated the game resolution to 1920 x 1080. Added the possibility to slow or speed up the game speed during playing.

7-December-2012 Added an intro to the game together with a starting task.

12-December-2012 Added a Campaign and Scenario section in the game. Made a Scenario builder utility which allows anyone to make his/her own scenario.

15-December-2012 Added a lowres version of the game (1024x768) for those with low spec machines.

 

Suggestions:

 

If you like these type of games I suggest you play Haegemonia and Millenium 2.2 Remake.


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Geraldine
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Hi Ercolesptr

Firstly welcome to the SSC, its always nice to see game devs on the forum 🙂 . I am downloading your game as I write this. Recently I was playing Millennium 2.2 on my Amiga and it really put me in the mood for just such a colonization type game.  😎


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DarkOne
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Sounds like a great start so far ercolesptr.

I will be downloading this tonight when I get home.

What stage is your game in development or is it complete? Can you actually see construction or mining being done in-game or are you waiting on some sort of progress meter to complete?

You mentioned attacks in the game is their a human faction or some sort of aliens in the game? And do you have some sort or research tree to build to construct various items/structures?

If you don't mind can I upload this game to SSC?


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ercolesptr
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The game is in beta stage, that is, it is fully functional but there may be bugs.

This game stands somewhere in between Millenium 2.2 and Haegemonia. These were 2 of my favourite games, unfortunetely Millenium 2.2 was only released on the Amiga and was never a 3d game, not to mention the old graphics, and the game never had random events making it a once play game only, while Haegemonia lacked the depth of Millenium 2.2. I recently saw the Millenium 2.2 remake for the PC which was not so graphically good as Hegemonia. This rekindled in me the will to make something which would have the depth of Millenium 2.2 and the graphics and universe of Haegemonia.

There are screens showing mining, production ect, but it is mainly through progress meter.

So far attacks take the form of either pirate raids or meteorites in direct collision with the planet.

Yes there is a research tree, and items need to be researched before they can be produced.

Yes you can upload the game, I want it to be open source, actually if anyone is interested I can make the source code available.

An important thing about the game is that the resolution the game uses is 1440x900. I know that this may seem high but today's computers are strong enough to support a realtime 3d game at this resolution, if however there is someone who has a weaker computer system and would like to have the game run at lesser resolutions then leave a comment on this thread and if there is enough demand I will make a version which requires less computer power to run.


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Geraldine
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Had a quick play with this and thought I would give my first impressions. Firstly, love the music! <img src="' http://spacesimcentral.com/forum/public/style_emoticons//wink3.gi f"' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=';)' /> Graphics are pleasant and clear to read, planets are nicely done too. The game ran fine on my dual core 2.8 Ghz Pentium with Nvidia 9500 GT and 2 gigs of ram running XP. So the resolution caused me no problems at all.

Niggles: Menus sometimes can be difficult to dismiss and it would be handy to be able to drag them where you wanted as the ship and options menus can overlap and hide one another.

An option to switch on text labels or streamline the selection of planets, asteroids and ships would be nice and speed up hunting around for things of interest.

All in all, a good sound base to build on, so I would say the game as it is now, is a good start! <img src="' http://spacesimcentral.com/forum/public/style_emoticons//icon_e_smile.gi f"' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':)' /> I am a Millennium and Haegemonia fan too so your game appeals to me. Speaking of Haegemonia, that was one of the most beautiful space games ever made. If your aiming for that level of quality in the graphics department, your game could be very cool indeed! <img src="' http://spacesimcentral.com/forum/public/style_emoticons//icon_cool.gi f"' class='bbc_emoticon' alt='8-)' />

What are your next plans for the game ercolesptr?


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ercolesptr
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Geraldine wrote:

Niggles: Menus sometimes can be difficult to dismiss and it would be handy to be able to drag them where you wanted as the ship and options menus can overlap and hide one another.

An option to switch on text labels or streamline the selection of planets, asteroids and ships would be nice and speed up hunting around for things of interest.

What are your next plans for the game ercolesptr?

Thanks for your comments, I will try to implement the things mentioned above, with regards to selection of ships if you press 's' you can easily select the ship in space. Will implement something similar for planets and asteroids, though if you go in map mode pressing 'm' it is already much easier to select your required planet or moon.

My next plan is always to hear what users wish to see in the game and try to implement it. I would also like to see someone willing to participate in its further development. The game is written with Gamestudio A8 engine using Lite-C programming language, which is a language similar to C and C++ but much more adapted for rapid games development. One can get hold of a free version of gamestudio by downloading it from its official site http://www.3dgamestudio.com . Once installed I can forward the sourcecode of the game, and can thus join in the further development of the game.


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tindrli
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GREAT STUFF!!! AND GREAT IDEA!!! i was also a fan of milenium 2.2 and to tell you the truth i would love to participate.. however im familiar with programing more less the same as human specie with black holes or similar.. anyway, before i read that you mentioned something about PC adaptation of milenium 2.2.. i wonder , what is the name of this game??

keep on rocking


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Geraldine
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i read that you mentioned something about PC adaptation of milenium 2.2.. i wonder , what is the name of this game??

You could try this in the download area http://spacesimcentral.com/ssc/files/file/170-millennium-remakezip/


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Pyros
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ercolesptr wrote:

This is a space colonization game of our own solar system. The player starts on Earth and has to colonize the planets to get resources in order to expand his space empire. Here is a quick tutorial:

Has alzheimer finally caught up with me or Millenium 2.2 started on the Moon?

🙂


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ercolesptr
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This is not a Millenium 2.2 remake, but a game featuring both the depth of Millenium 2.2 and the interface and style of Haegemonia. In fact there are many differences between this game and Millenium 2.2. For example in Millenium 2.2 you could not colonize some planets, here you can colonize all planets as long as you build the required colonizer ship. Also the tech tree is different, and there are more and more differences.

As I said above I did not want to make another remake, after all playing always the same game is not always fun. I wanted to make something different but with the good features of these 2 other space games.


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Pyros
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ercolesptr wrote:
This is not a Millenium 2.2 remake, but a game featuring both the depth of Millenium 2.2 and the interface and style of Haegemonia. In fact there are many differences between this game and Millenium 2.2. For example in Millenium 2.2 you could not colonize some planets, here you can colonize all planets as long as you build the required colonizer ship. Also the tech tree is different, and there are more and more differences.

As I said above I did not want to make another remake, after all playing always the same game is not always fun. I wanted to make something different but with the good features of these 2 other space games.

Sorry for the mix up 😉 and grats for the result

I tried it out for some minutes and here goes 1st impressions:

-Game is a bit too fast - takes me less than one minute to do a research or build a silo. (i7 920@3.6ghz, Radeon 5870) - besides pause, is there any way to control game speed?

-Navigation center - having a central point to view and navigate through all planets (at least colonies) would make things more easy

-A spaceship - or exploration - panel would come handy

-Research and production panels could use a icon stating which area is being researched and status (%)

-Already researched items could turn to green

All in all I liked the game a lot 😉


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ercolesptr
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Quote:
-Game is a bit too fast - takes me less than one minute to do a research or build a silo. (i7 920@3.6ghz, Radeon 5870) - besides pause, is there any way to control game speed?

At the moment there is no way to control game speed, but I will look into that.

Quote:
-Navigation center - having a central point to view and navigate through all planets (at least colonies) would make things more easy

Have you tried pressing "m", this brings up a view from the above which allows just what you asked above.

Quote:
-A spaceship - or exploration - panel would come handy

Again pressing "s" brings up such panel.

Quote:
-Research and production panels could use a icon stating which area is being researched and status (%)

When you start a research there is a green bar and adjacent there is a percentage showing these and they are present in both research and production section.

Quote:
-Already researched items could turn to green

Already researched items have the green bar full and the % at 100.

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All in all I liked the game a lot 😉

Thanks, and I like the feedback you gave above. Also I would like to know of any bugs there may be so I can fix them.


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Pyros
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ercolesptr wrote:
Quote:

Quote:
-Navigation center - having a central point to view and navigate through all planets (at least colonies) would make things more easy

Have you tried pressing "m", this brings up a view from the above which allows just what you asked above.

Quote:
-A spaceship - or exploration - panel would come handy

Again pressing "s" brings up such panel.

Thanks, and I like the feedback you gave above. Also I would like to know of any bugs there may be so I can fix them.

Well, one bug was that s, m, o and n stopped working - I didn't refer it because it was somethign of uncertain origin, but *might* be caused by alt tabbing. The other bug I found was with a forth rank in mining (silos), that appeared with the text of the 3rd and no image. But I'll try it out again

Also - not sure it is a bug - in combat, sometimes there was a different kind of ship (or a ship positioned differently) that I could not hit not matter how many times I tried.

Another sugestion is to create an initial buffer time where you cannot be attacked.

ercolesptr wrote:

Quote:
-Research and production panels could use a icon stating which area is being researched and status (%)

When you start a research there is a green bar and adjacent there is a percentage showing these and they are present in both research and production section.

Quote:
-Already researched items could turn to green

Already researched items have the green bar full and the % at 100.

Well, the 1st refers to the research amd production menu itself stating which tech/tree is being researched at the moment - a simple icon besides the production line with suffice. Regardign the "turning into green", while there is the percentage indicator, if the reserch item text itself (e.g. "MK II") turned green it would be easier to identify what is done and what is not


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Geraldine
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Basically I stand by what I said earlier, some improvements in the UI and this game will take off. Have buttons you can press to get the different map views and dedicated menus for ships, planets ect. <img src="' http://spacesimcentral.com/forum/public/style_emoticons//icon_e_smile.gi f"' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':)' /> Maybe tool tips could help too? <img src="' http://spacesimcentral.com/forum/public/style_emoticons//wink3.gi f"' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=';)' />


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ercolesptr
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Quote:
Well, one bug was that s, m, o and n stopped working - I didn't refer it because it was somethign of uncertain origin, but *might* be caused by alt tabbing.

I could not recreate this bug but I modified the routine so that in map mode pressing the right mouse button would also clear all panels as in normal mode.

Quote:
The other bug I found was with a forth rank in mining (silos), that appeared with the text of the 3rd and no image. But I'll try it out again

This has been fixed. Maximum Silo is level III.

Quote:
Also - not sure it is a bug - in combat, sometimes there was a different kind of ship (or a ship positioned differently) that I could not hit not matter how many times I tried.

Can you check exactly when this happens.

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Another sugestion is to create an initial buffer time where you cannot be attacked.

Done, now first attack will take longer to occur.

Quote:
Well, the 1st refers to the research amd production menu itself stating which tech/tree is being researched at the moment - a simple icon besides the production line with suffice.

I do not understand what you mean exactly can you explain further.

Quote:
Regardign the "turning into green", while there is the percentage indicator, if the reserch item text itself (e.g. "MK II") turned green it would be easier to identify what is done and what is not

This has been implemented.


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ercolesptr
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Geraldine wrote:
Basically I stand by what I said earlier, some improvements in the UI and this game will take off. Have buttons you can press to get the different map views and dedicated menus for ships, planets ect. 🙂 Maybe tool tips could help too? 😉

The planet menu is now available by pressing "p" during gameplay.

Update here:

http://www.adrive.com/public/60cb0f8497 ... c8362.html


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Geraldine
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Excellent stuff ercolesptr! <img src="' http://spacesimcentral.com/forum/public/style_emoticons//icon_e_smile.gi f"' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':)' /> These improvements can go a long way to making your game more user friendly.


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ercolesptr
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Some people said that they had problems when saving the game. Since this does not occur on all computers,( so far only 1 person reported this problem) I have included here a version which does not use the file dialog for saving and loading but always saves to the same file. So anyone having problems with saving and loading should use this version of the game:

http://www.adrive.com/public/7b06b315bc ... 32464.html

Also please will anyone having this problem post a message so that I can see how many people are experiencing this problem.


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jimmy69
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1st of all, a great game. Tho I have a question on how to collect the ores from the grazer on a asteroid? I tried to undeploy it and send it to Earth, but theres no ore gain, so im kinda lost here. And I cant build transporters or colonizers without the help of the grazers.

Edit: Never mind, figured it out 😀


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jimmy69
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Theres a bug, wich allows you to build only the 1st item from each research field. Restarting doesnt help.

Edit: The only thing that works here is going into the research menu, chose what you wanna build (energy, pop, prod...), then go back into the building menu and you can buil anything from that field, weird bug 🙂


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ercolesptr
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jimmy69 wrote:
Theres a bug, wich allows you to build only the 1st item from each research field. Restarting doesnt help.

Edit: The only thing that works here is going into the research menu, chose what you wanna build (energy, pop, prod...), then go back into the building menu and you can buil anything from that field, weird bug 🙂

This bug has been fixed. Thanks for pointing it out.


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jimmy69
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I didnt do anything out of the ordinary, the same clicking, sending, building I did before. When im building and clicking, sometimes this happens, then it would go on like this for some time and then out of nowhere I can normaly build all other tier items, then it comes back again. Its weird 🙂

I'll give it another fresh start.


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ercolesptr
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jimmy69 wrote:
I didnt do anything out of the ordinary, the same clicking, sending, building I did before. When im building and clicking, sometimes this happens, then it would go on like this for some time and then out of nowhere I can normaly build all other tier items, then it comes back again. Its weird 🙂

I'll give it another fresh start.

I fixed the bug yesterday and placed the new download in the first post link.


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jimmy69
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Game from the 1st post link crashes on saving, is the save updated version also fixed so it can be aplied or do you have to fix the whole thing?

Some ideas:

-bigger ship/probe/grazer/asteroid icons when zoomed out, becouse its hard to click em

-asteroids with grazers could be marked-colored, so you know where you sent em and dont need to click em all to find it

-an option to gather resources from grazers with transports with auto pick up option when the grazer is full, maybe a trade menu for sending materials to colonies (you go on a planet where you wanna send it from, click trade, send, choose a transport, a colony and wich materials and click send)

-a GO TO option for sending grazers/probes/ships/colonizers to locations of your choosing (you would choose a ship/probe/grazer would click the option go to and then you could choose

-auto jump on the next researchable item with a bar or menu wich doesnt close with clicking, auto activate energy and population buildings when built

-build queue with lets say 5 slots or maybe more


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ercolesptr
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Quote:
Game from the 1st post link crashes on saving, is the save updated version also fixed so it can be aplied or do you have to fix the whole thing?

Yes the link above for the lite version also has the bug fixes.

Quote:
Some ideas:

-bigger ship/probe/grazer/asteroid icons when zoomed out, becouse its hard to click em

-asteroids with grazers could be marked-colored, so you know where you sent em and dont need to click em all to find it

-an option to gather resources from grazers with transports with auto pick up option when the grazer is full, maybe a trade menu for sending materials to colonies (you go on a planet where you wanna send it from, click trade, send, choose a transport, a colony and wich materials and click send)

-a GO TO option for sending grazers/probes/ships/colonizers to locations of your choosing (you would choose a ship/probe/grazer would click the option go to and then you could choose

-auto jump on the next researchable item with a bar or menu wich doesnt close with clicking, auto activate energy and population buildings when built

-build queue with lets say 5 slots or maybe more

I will see what features from the above suggestions I can include. In the meantime please note that by pressing "s" you get a spaceship panel which allows you to easily zoom and track your spaceships in space. There are also other panels besides this, see the first post for details.


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