To all SSC Station occupants
Thank you for the donations over the past year (2024), it is much appreciated. I am still trying to figure out how to migrate the forums to another community software (probably phpbb) but in the meantime I have updated the forum software to the latest version. SSC has been around a while so their is some very long time members here still using the site, thanks for making SSC home and sorry I haven't been as vocal as I should be in the forums I will try to improve my posting frequency.
Thank you again to all of the members that do take the time to donate a little, it helps keep this station functioning on the outer reaches of space.
-D1-
Kickstarter for Tiny trek looking for very small 4K http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2064021040/tiny-trek?ref=live
Our (not five year) Mission
Have you ever wanted to play your favorite weekly Science Fiction show and engage in the same exciting adventures they do? Travel to strange alien worlds, meet interesting and unique life forms and then if you want... shoot them? In Tiny Trek you will be able to do exactly that. You see, probably like me, you have yet to find a space based game that gives you gameplay that emulates the great Science Fiction TV shows we all love. And thus that is what I set out to do with my latest game project, Tiny Trek.
Tiny Trek's mission is to provide you with the exact same experience as those favorite adventures we watched on TV, allowing you to sit in the Captain's chair and make those critical and dramatic decisions. From diplomacy, exploration and resource management to epic space battles and exploring alien worlds.
Are you ready to sit in the Captain’s Chair?
From the creators of Vincere Totus Astrum comes for a universe of exploration and adventure. As the Captain of your own Starship begin your trek of literally endless worlds by first selecting your randomly generated race and ship, then set out for the stars.
Encounter alien races and exotic locations as you travel in an endlessly procedurally generated galaxy. No two game are the same. As you explore, randomly generated “Episodes†will have you fighting hostile ships, helping aliens and exploring the surface of new planets.
How long can you survive the deep of space? How far can you travel? Who knows what is waiting for you! Your trek begins now!
Setting out to the stars!
The game starts with players selecting a Home Star from the intro screen galaxy view. From there you zoom into your new system and select a homeworld. The type of the star and the kind of planet you select orbiting it determines some of the base stats of your race. A low gravity cool and wet world tends to produce sentient species that are more docile in nature, where as more hostile environments lead to more aggressive races. These differences help decide how battle-hardened they are or how adept at science they may be etc. From these base stats a player then sets out to determine the look of their race through a set of procedurally generated tools and what kind of society they come from. All of your decisions up to this point help affect what your ship will turn out like. Using procedural generation the game creates unique ship designs which you can edit. Design choices affect a ship's capabilities and stats. Once you're done, it's time to set out amongst the stars.
Tiny Trek is designed to be endless... Well, endless if you are a good Starship Captain, that is. Players could select one direction and keep on going, if they choose to do so. The way you lose, of course, is getting killed or running out of resources. As you travel, make sure to orbit some stars and collect fuel. Damaged and need repairs? Visit a planet rich in minerals and mine for them, or trade with a local spacefarer.
Exploration in itself is fun, but throughout your star hopping you will encounter randomly activated "Episode triggers". The triggers are the starting point for an adventure that is created procedurally from the Mission Matrix. For instance, you may locate a plasma trail during interstellar travel. The bridge crew would then ask you if you would like to investigate. If you choose yes, then the game may take you to a ship in distress in an asteroid field, or one that is under attack or has crashed on a planet. From there, your choices affect the rest of the episode. Attacking the damaged vessel will mark you an enemy of that race whereas tractoring them out makes them a friend.
And I think that is the cool thing about Tiny Trek. It is a game that is procedurally generated and thus your actions perpetuate the game world. For instance, that race whose ship you helped repair after they were marooned on Planet X sent word to their homeworld about your heroics. And so, when you are attacked by a hostile race later in the game, they may be flying by and lend a hand (thanks to the randomly generated "Episodes"). The current engine design supports over a hundred different episode combinations, and with your help we hope to make that number much larger.
-Galaxy is big: And when I say big I mean really big like a never ending Galaxy with stars, planets, nebula and other space phenomenon.
-Do you have that ship in a different color? Yes we can do that with our procedural generation algorithms. Everything from the planets and stars to ships and races is created on the fly. And then to take it step further we provide you tools to edit your Ship and your race.
- Lets fire blue particle cannons full... Engage in battles of one on up to three enemy vessels. Cool thing is with the Mission Matrix, a ship might jump out of battle and you may get the option to chase them, once you catch up you may finish them off or two of his friends might be waiting for you.
--You think they have apples on an alien planet? I don't know if apples will be there, but the idea is that you can explore endless alien worlds and conduct various away missions. Planets will contain unique items that your science officer can scan, and your engineer can collect to bring back to the ship for trade.
-Making Friends will be important: Talk, trade and assisting other spacefarers will benefit you as each race you encounter will store an enemy, neutral or friend status. That will effect how your next encounter with them will be.
-Episodes for everyone! In Tiny Trek we have worked on creating a generator that creates randomized missions or as we call it, episodes. Each episode last around 3-8 minutes on average and include everything from search and rescue, transport, battles and more. Imagine receiving a distress signal, then approaching a ship to discover it's a trap. After defeating them and searching the ship discover that the stranded crew is on a nearby planet. The unique Mission Matrix generates over a 100 different "episode" types and puts them together.
-Stuff is cool... Player will be able to collect and store unique plants, materials and relics you discover on your journey. And trade them for other resources or information.
I feel like a bit of star trekking myself :haha:
Boy that was fast as they are just not past the half way point but nearly at the finish line.
WOW!
We reached the half way point in our first day. I really appreciate all the support and energy everyone has given for Tiny Trek. It is truly humbling to see all the positive remarks and support with your backings. It is motivating me to triple my efforts to make sure you all get the game you deserve! As we move into day two I wanted to address some of the reoccurring comments. I will also make some of them FAQ's today.
Platform Support: I made a pretty graphic showing the target platforms but really never spelled it out and this has lead to some interesting inquires. The original design scope was to target Windows PC, Mac, iOS, Android and Ouya. Linux and Windows Mobile 8 have been mentioned by many a potential user. I believe at the minimum I can get it running on Linux using HTML5 worst case. I am still attempting to see if I can generate a native app. I am still researching if I can use XNA to achieve a true Windows Mobile 8 App. I will update you guys as soon as I have solid answers.
New Features: You guys have sent me some great ideas over the last 24 hours and I am researching them and figuring out which ones can go in without effecting scope badly. What I want to know is how do people feel about them being bundled in stretch goals if they turn out to be a lot of extra work. One new feature that I am all ready working on is Space Stations.
Here is a WIP image of me tuning the new algorithm to generate them. I am working on a mini game to match your ship up to the station for docking, The station will be rotating during the process. Once docked we can port over a lot of the trade code but I wanted more ideas on what we could do, I was even thinking a Lounge ala Galaxy on Fire 2, to pick up randomly generated missions. Thoughts?
Beta Testing: I am announcing that anyone who contributes $5 or more with their backing can choose to participate in the Beta testing. More details to follow!
Tiny Trek on the Internets: The game is started to be picked up on the internets, So I thought I would share some of the links. Some I e-mailed others are forums and some found the game. I hope to word continues to spread! If you guys see a place I missed post it or PM me, I want to make sure I scan as many as I can to answer questions.
IndieDb: http://www.indiedb.com/games/tiny-trek
Pockettactics: http://www.pockettactics.com/news/ios-news/infinite-space-exploration-game-tiny-trek-crowdfunds-2014-launch/
Tigsource: http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=37240.0
Toucharcade: http://forums.toucharcade.com/showthread.php?t=209798
Update from Kickstarter.
So today I had a ton of Android debugging to do and so that plus the work I put into the game, I won't have much of a update to show you. What I did work on today, was building in more gameplay to the Away missions fleshing out more of the individual crew members abilities like scanning, Shooting, etc. Should have some images tomorrow. Speaking of away missions it looks like most of you want to have crew names instead of anonymous crew as I had planned. The question I am working with now, is should I continue having endless crew as I had planned (IE you only loose in a away mission if all the crew dies, but if you make it back with one, then you got more folks to kill of next mission) or do we limit the number of crew? Thoughts??
I will insert some of those fleshed out Space Stations I have showed on some forum threads that I completed last night. Procedurally generated, I am working on how to get some different shapes beyond variants of the star.
Goal been hit and still 30 days to go. :gaming:
I thought tonight I will talk a little about away missions. Were you can send them, what they do once they arrive. Everyone has being bringing some good input on that in the last few days and I want to show you guys what I have incorporated from those ideas thus far. I think first it best to introduce you to your crew types!
Marine: This guy hits the ground running, They are your first line of defense (or offense when needed) Armed with the latest in pixel hand weaponry, when selected, this guy can dole out some damage where need be. I would also like to point out he is in a "Red Shirt" and i think we all know what that can mean. So keep that in mind when you have him charge into well, whatever!
Science: The blue shirts like to research and examine stuff, of course he is the guy to tell you that their is a 12.453847592% chance of this or that. In Tiny Trek the science officer on a away mission is to use the trusty scanner to locate cool things that might be useful or interesting or perhaps even dangerous. With the scanner you can scan specific items that have a scan icon appear when near to them. He is also the one who collects the samples and brings them back to the ship be stored in the cargo bay.
Repair: The Repair officer uses his fancy repair tool to open doors, fix busted control panels, and interact with any kind of machinery you find. The Repair officer also is the one who can mark minerals for mining, which will be transferred back to your cargo hold when done.
Command: The Yellow shirts main function is to communicate or negotiate with other sentient species. They are highly adapted to handle exchanges and trade. When you need to conduct some business, sending one of these guys will certainly help.
Medical: If you remember we do have red shirts in the game, and they have a tendency to, well you know. With a Medical Officer on the team he can heal people hurt on the mission helping to ensure in dangerous situations that they can succeed. Their is also the possibility we can get the engine to allow the Medical officer to heal npc's adding more depth to the episode generation options.
Some things I have added or beginning to code since reading your comments are reflected in part in the next image. You will notice that now we have three HUD boxes at the top. These will store the names of the characters sent down to the planet. The hope is I can give you the option to name you officers and they will have health points and can earn experience that will improve overall efficiency on your ship.
I think this can be a nice addition and deeper fleshing out of my original idea. Just a note I won't be providing a very deep micro managing mechanic to the crew. But I do see value in personalizing them and giving them some progress and growth. I am uncertain about perma death and recruiting replacements. I believe I am looking at incapacitation during a mission and if so they earn no experience. But if one party member at least remains and the away team makes it back, then the advanced technologies on your vessel will revive them and return them to duty.
I look forward to your thoughts!
Not posted about it since it hit it's target, still has 16 day to run.
Stretch Goal 1 Complete
Thank you my friends, We have reached the first stretch goal, Now I can assure you get better editors and deeper control over your ship design, weapon systems, race stats and looks. It's quite exciting. I will post more information on that this weekend as well as more detail on what we plan on doing with the internets and sharing your creations across players games should we reach the next stretch goal of $8,000. The campaign so far as been amazing and that is due to you guys and gals, I deeply appreciate it. Help me continue to push this out the world so we can assure the best possible quality game I could muster by the end of May. Any suggestions on how to reach more media is more then welcome. Now that's out of the way let's talk about legs.
Crew Members v2 - Now with Walking!
So I wanted to share this recent development concerning the Away Team graphics, specifically the team themselves. As you can see in the above image we have the old static blocky crew member representation I am came up with. But my good friend and game developer colleague D.Czanik chipped in with hopes of solving my walking dilemma with the two animations you see next to mine. So I ask you the mighty 451 (Backers as of this update) what do you think. Do you like them? Do they fit in the game? These little guys are important cause you going to be doing a lot of adventuring together so we want them to look just right.
Speaking of away teams I have been asked recently "What do you do on a Away Mission anyhoo?". It's a fair question, so to give a bit more detail, the away mission engine will be capable of delivering interesting fun and excitement a couple of ways. One is when you just decide to visit the surface of planet for no reason, on the surface you will be able to scan items, collect samples, conducting mining, And conduct trade and conversation with sentient species you might meet. During this you may trigger "Episodes" which provide more structured gameplay through the mission matrix. A trigger on the surface of planet or on board another ship could be requests from other sentient beings, discovery of a artifact or even running into so pirate smuggler types. The idea is I have gone through and attempted to figure out what kind of things one would do on a Mission and distill that into triggers, and mission components. What kind of triggers and planet surface mission components would you like to see?
Tiny Trek have set up their website and for those of you who are in it can get access to the Alpha.
New Website is now up!
Ok so we are getting much closer to getting out some full test builds. Close enough that it was time to build the initial website that I will deliver them on. We have had interest expressed by people wanting to back after the campaign ended, so It was decided that in order for these new backers to get access to builds we need a single common none Kickstarter page to deliver them on. That being said I present to you....
http://www.TinyTrekVoyages.com
So to all my awesome backer friends please visit the site, and then go to Test Builds from the top menu. Here you will be presented with a login section and a register section, please fill out the register section then hit submit. Keep a eye on your spam filter folder for confirmation that you are registered. The system notifies me of new registrants and I will cross reference them with the backer list and approve the correct accounts. The Test Build link will also be the same one used to deliver all our testing versions to you. At some point we will also from this URL begin testing of some of the HTML5 front end interface functions we have planned.
Please let me know if you have any issues with the site. Hopefully things will begin to ramp up speed wise as we enter March. I am very excited about seeing the game reach a release state, and hope all of you will be able to spend some time testing and leaving feedback for me on the forthcoming builds.
Best Regards,
Tiny Trek seem to be moving along as well.
Looking forward to seeing it when it finished.
Looks to be progression pretty well.
Building out the interior of various ships
Last week was alot of under the hood stuff, bug fixes and tweaks. But I did work on fleshing out those parts of a NPC ship I mentioned last week, Below you can see various pictures of hallways, Engine rooms, and crew quarters. Still have a lot to fill in but its coming together. It kind of feels like I am building sets to be used which makes sense as so much of the game is based around serialized SciFi shows. Any suggestions on what we could have for procedurally generated ship rooms please make a forum post or comment.
I have decided for my beloved Backers that I will post a build on Tuesdays during my weekly updates regardless of it’s condition, so various captains can tool around and possible during there shakedown cruises discover issues or make suggestions. So swing on over to the test builds page if your a backer at http://tinytrekvoyages.com/test-builds/ and grab the latest file.
Looks like their has been a few updates to the game, this one came through Kickstater.
We have a new build to share with you today. As far as work moving forward for my backers, I have to finish the interface issues mentioned below making Joypad, Keyboard/Mouse easily useable. I have all core functions of the game done. Once we nail down the final bits on interface we can then move on to filling in the rest of the episode content. I have a do or die hard date of December 24th. If I don’t have it submitted to iOS by then I loose the name. SO it will be done before then.
Visit http://www.TinyTrekVoyages.com for the new build
This build has several refinements mostly centered around space combat. As this is a big part of basic gameplay I wanted to build more into it PLUS we have several bugs I hope you will find squashed now. Some of the improvements include seed based procedurally generated Nebula clouds. I personally found the black with stars background a bit boring, I hope this breaks that up a bit. If you return to the same sector in space and have a encounter you should get the same nebula. Also we have added some new HUD information for PC, including a speed indicator and a Enemy Target indicator.
If you target the engines and knock out all four engine modules you will disable the enemies ability to move. I plan on doing the same with bridge, but make it disable weapons. Need to get opinion on the game play impact. This is a big improvement that I hope will increase gameplay opportunities.
You can find the space battle engine improvements in the melee mode I added, Melee contains the combat improvements and the bug fixes, if they are working for everyone I will move it to the main game.
As I continue to make the PC version workable with both mouse/keyboard and Controller capable. I have decided that I need to rework the interface in some areas like Weapons creation, you will notice some small changes in the Beam weapons creator area. I removed the weapons type button and added to the last slider. so the idea is Roll and Continue will end up on buttons A and B of the controller and the sliders will be adjusted moving up/down on thumbpad for changing slider type and then left and right to add or subtract points. I would love more input in this regard.
Also they are numerous fixes in the main game, like walking animations etc, However I am still in the middle of coding Episode components, so you can get stuck easily.
Looking forward to seeing the finished game.
Tiny Trek WIP video showing away missions combat.
Big long video on the progress of Tiny Trek.
Looks like it's getting close to release. :nyam:
Finally got my Steam key so I am off for a Tiny Trek.
Let us know what you think, pinback! I'm tempted to try this as well.
You look good through a crosshair.
Will do, just not had much of a chance to play it the last few days.
I picked this up.
First turn the film grain off. Its an option, and imho it looks better without it. Game is highly playable, if a bit buggy. Choose your planet and race which determines looks and stats. Create your ship, and choose your beam weapons and torpedos. (ALOT OF CUSTIMIZATION.) Next go visit stars and explore.
The combat is quite fun. Kind of like asteroids. The planetary stuff is kinda dull. You can get samples and minerals for selling and repairing. The suns can refuel. Cant really talk to people planetside. You can talk from your bridge, but it doesnt seem to do anything.
Which leaves the randomizes missions. These are short, usually consisiting of 3-8 minutes. I pulled a damaged ship out of a asteroid field. Then I saved a guy in distress.
Seems pretty solid, and I think once more content is put in this will be excellent. Its everything I want from a star trek game.
Not had much of chance to play it and a good point about turning off the scanline in the options, also I would say play it in the small screen size as I found the other sizes make the game too blocky.
New version of TT out.
Build 1.26 is posted and has primarily added a revamped ship to ship comms system. I have a few things left to do, namely the trigger ties ins to add, but it is enough for me to start getting opinions. Also a ton of bug fixes some of which are listed below. As always I appreciate your bug reports and suggestions, please keep it up! I look forward to your input Captains.
Ship to Ship Random Encounter communicationI revamped the ship to ship communication during random encounters. It is my hope you will like what I have done better than the broken system in place before. When encountering a new unknown ship outside of a episode and you hail them you will be given a new input interface of four buttons surrounding the NPC avatar. From here you can start by selecting one of three main options or Cut Signal. The three main categories Talk, Demand and Offer have options beneath them that can either provide a episode trigger, material benefit, increase or decrease that races friendship rating, or cause negative results like being attacked or shunned. These values will be recorded to the race and when I add re-encounters they will effect the next time you meet them.
The friendly meter happens behind the scenes and governs your success rate in using the options. Each main option may only be used once during any one visit with a single ship. Using the keys or your joypad press to a diagonal direction to select an option and press ctrl to use it, OR use the mouse and click on them.
TALK
Converse
- JOURNEY Engage in conversation about each others explorations, you may learn something or get a hint that could lead to a episode
- HOMEWORLD Discover the species homeworld
- PACT Become allies, 100 percent friendliness rating
Trade
- Open Trade Dialog
Request
- RESOURCES Ask for resources
- FUEL Ask for Fuel
- INFO Ask for information from their travels.
DEMAND
- SHIELDS Demand the lower a hostile posture
- LEAVE Demand they leave this sector of space
- BOARD Demand they allow a boarding
OFFER
- RESOURCES Offer Resources in friendship
- FUEL Offer Fuel in friendship
- INFO Offer information you have discovered
F2 key Reset This has now been changed to Ctrl+F2 to cause a reboot
Random Name Generator Editing There was numerous reports of issue with backspacing, generating random names, and inputting with various text entry fields during new game creation. I believe I have quashed them and look forward to hearing back from you.
New Government types Added two new types of Government NETWORK - Decentralized collective no central government but highly interconnected (Wisdom -2, Logic +2, Agression +1) SYNDICATE - A group of individuals or organizations combined to promote some common interest. (Wisdom +1, Empathy -3, Logic +1)
Random weapons roll issues A few users put the random weapons generation screens through the gauntlet and identified several issues that should be corrected now.
Tiny Trek seems to have had a name change as now called Bit Odyssey.
So the name change was down to an attack of the Trek lawyers.
Name Change
So as some of you have figured out we have conducted a name change to the game, At CBS request, holder of the "Star Trek" franchise IP. We have renamed the game "Bit Odyssey!
Also we did do some small cosmetic changes they requested in game that show up in a current build of 1.27 on Steam. Speaking of Steam everyone should have their steam key if the have filled out the surveys and requested one. Steam is a great place for us to beta the game but is also a difficult audience. If in fact you like the work so far please leave a positive review in Steam that will help a lot. If you have you checked your messages and have not received a Steam key you requested please message me asap.
1.28 8 bit gods willing, will be content heavy addition to the game, I am currently working on a revamped procedurally generated cityscapes on away missions as I begin to focus on episode content when on planet surface.
Finally if anyone is looking to get a copy of the game on Steam or gift it to one, Bit Odyssey is participating in the Steam Sale this summer at 50% off, spread the word!
Such a cool idea. Shame development seems to have died. Its really down to alot of the basic mechanics simply not working. The dev talks about working on ground combat, because the rest of the game is almost a mess. We havn't had a serious update since... well that post. I'm not going to say the game is dead, but its pretty obvious he has lost all desire to work on the game.
He promised an update before the end of the month... but here we are. 😛
My point is, save your money. This is going nowhere. Its just too disorganized.
Has been awhile maybe get one in the next week or so.
Ive been thinking that for MONTHS.
Unexpected update for Bit Odyssey, when I turned Steam on this morning http://steamcommunity.com/games/328740/announcements/detail/969764806328659208 not had a chance to try it out yet.
Ok so here is the latest build FINALLY. Please attempt to get the surface of a planet and engage some NPC aliens, see how it feels and look for bugs so I can get it all balanced out and working right. Once we have ironed out those issues and other bugs you find I will work on the items below. For another build end of the month.
General Fixes/Changes
- Add Joypad/Keyboard controls to Star selection at title
- Added HWA scanline shader to all of the game
- Increased Horz screen res from 480 to 568
- Corrected Keyboard/joypad controls on government selection
- Display Ship Name in Engineering
Away Missions
- Added Stamina meter for all crew, use of crew tools or the act of rolling and leaping depletes the meter, Meter recharges a bit of time. Take a breath basically.
- Added Player/NPC rolling or "Shatnering". Shatnering from cover to available cover is great to avoid getting hit in a fire fight, also rolling will be used in future version to duck under tight spaces. Left in a example pipe section so we can see if it works well.
- Added Player/NPC Leaping. Leap over new obstacles that stop the crew in the paces. These obstacles also serve as total cover. Background cover items are darker grey and they give you 50% coverage, forground obstacles can provide 100% coverage when ducking.
Things to expect by end of this month...
- Away mission intergrated episode content
- Away mission text render engine
- Persistant ship damage, Damage from battles remains intill repaired.
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