Hi Irbis

Welcome to SSC and do keep us posted on any developments on your development and glad you decided not to keep the game to yourself 🙂

Answers to your questions:

1. I would have to say exploration and openness of space. It is great to come across artifacts, undiscovered systems, meet new races, derelict ships, anomalies and other things like these. I like trading that makes sense, where you can impact a outpost if your shipment doesn't get there or people come to hunt you because you didn't deliver the goods.

2. Forced combat, games that always push you into combat where it gets repeative and you just can't enjoy 30-60mins of combat free exploration.

3. If I had my choice I would say a mixture of real-time and turn-based. Meaning if you have a larger ship you can go tactical, but if you have the option to jump in a fighter as well that would be awesome as well and then your main ship goes tactical automatically.

4. I do like the fact that you are building a RPG/Adventure game personally and if you can even get close to the way BioWare created the mechanics behind KOTOR or Mass Effect you would have a great character progression. I would like a game where you do gain levels and your ship equipment, skills and fame get enhanced by your experiences. Would be nice to have a crew, you don't have to interact with them but just be able to advance their own skills to benefit your ship and yourself. I would like to see move developers allowing your to be a 'pirate' or a 'hacker' and really use this for your personal gain. Graphics isn't always top priority it is more what you can do in the game that counts for me.

You mentioned RPG and open ended game, the challenge in this is balancing all those exploration, battle, trading, etc in an RPG universe. Have a list of main/plot quests, also you can throw some good randomly generated side quests/missions with a defined but wide parameter. This last part will make it possible to still playing the game after the player exhausted the main plot quest, of course to make it a non-boring put randomized stuff in the system. For example, you build a couple dozens of space station, planet, etc models, put a tag in every model including the parameter such as minimum and maximum distance to another objects in the system. Then finally when the system is generated, the game calls for volunteer, assigning those models inside the system as defined by the system parameter first, and by the objects/models tag.

Btw, I prefer real time battle with some ability to pause for changing tactics.

Hello Irbis.

My answer would be.

I open ended sand box games, trading and exploration no jump gates, the ability to try your hand at different jobs with in the game be it trading, mining bounty hunting or pirate as well as any new jobs that can be added to the game IE exploration and salvage.

2 maybe games which concentrate too much on just one feature and ignore the rest.

3 Has to be real time in a space sim.

4 I would say my ideal game is still a combination of Frontier First Encounter with better combat mixed with Megatraveller adventures and throw in bits of Sundog and Precursors for when you are out side the ship.

Great answers so far that I totally agree with. I would like to add, make the game easy to mod. That way, some of the pressure is taken off you when it comes to adding features. Good examples of this are Oolite and increasingly (I am happy to say) Pioneer. Good luck with your project irbis, please keep us updated and welcome to the SSC! 🙂

keep it comming guys! belive me - i am that type of man who really WILL add things you would like to see into the game (as long as they are within my skills and engine limitation).

Dark i think you will fall in love with this. the whole game is mostly focused around explaration and combat so far is very hmm "episodic" if you know what i mean.

as for levels and skill development:

the whole game is very arcade in gameplay but very strict about realism regarding human being, ship and overall common sense. lemme quote myself: "whatever your health points are, or high your endurance is - when you have a hole in your head you should be death"

so basicly, Ship can be upgraded and expanded, your jumpsuit is the same. but character development is strictly limited to skills - not atributed, as they are irrelevant. what i mean is - for example.

Linguistic skills and languages. you dont understand anything from an alien language even if your Ling skills is maxed.

then again - even if your KNOW the language - the Ling skills deteminates how well.

for example:

if you dont know the language you hear BUT your ling skill is low the sentence looks like this:

"erw sdfhjkj ert3"

if you dont know the language you hear BUT your ling skill is high the sentence looks like this:

(you dont understand the words but it apears that this creature gives you his good opinion about something)

if you know the language but your ling skill is low its:

"me cake likes"

if you know the language and your ling skill is high its:

"I would like to share with you that i really love eating fresh baked cakes, especialy with strawberries"

Ling/Lang system is how i call it.

another one is - randomly generated planets. Weird Worlds/strange advanture in infinity space-style, but more in deep as you can land on each and every planet, scan it, mine it, collect life-forms, or even - if you have the equipment that is - build your own personal base/facility. but dont be affraid about this randomisation. the planets are RANDOM but not RANDOMLY generated.

basicly i create around 100 planets, all personaly designmed by me, not pre-rendered. all unique.

then - whenever you are in new star system, the game throwns a dice and roll what planets will be there from the poll from the database. 80 planets for each game 100 in general. so each time you play theres a chance you will discover something new - and if not, at least in new area. at least for demo.

*cough* sometimes i talk to much. especialy as the game is not even in playble state

please continiue

Sorry for bumping my own thread, but is it really al you have to say guys? thats not very inspiring.

sidenote: if someone would like to help directly i am in need of music composer and graphic artist.

I love the whole language learning you have in the works irbis.

I guess wish list/features you are looking for is hard to really give some good feedback when we don't have more to go on? I know your planning on focusing on more the trader/merchant/explorer aspects, but there is plenty of ways to go about this. For instance we were commenting on the movement on the inside of your ship. This alone covers a lot of work for you, from layout/design to what you can and cannot do when you are moving about your ship. Interaction with crew members, repairs and upgrades, possible combat on ship (ie: being boarded), is game still going on while you are moving about your ship, more detailed information at actual station view compared with your hud/command console views.

I guess we need more focus itself on what areas you want to address first? 🙂

Ok, so you are looking for ideas, have a look at this thread on the Frontier Forum, I will warn you though, its a bit on the big side and its all aimed at what many would like to see in a possible Elite IV, but it is stuffed with great space sim ideas 😉 http://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread ... 86&page=21

I will also admit that I have had the odd rant on that massive thread 😆

after 5 days of HARD working i come with something...

heres the official in-game intro

Hi res: Viddler:

http://www.viddler.com/explore/irbis/videos/1/

low res YouTube:

and heres my young Dev Blog (atm empty and looking like crap):

http://hiddenspace.blog.com/

so? what you think?

i tried to keep it "old style". just like the game will be

Nice intro Irbis setting up the backstory to the game, with a bit of a mystery ending . 😀

thank you kindly!

It cost me quite a lot to finish this.

1st day ive spent totaly on writing the script and figuring out how i can tell the game do render all this on the game engine. (yup, sadly enough, the only engine simple and plain enough for my few brain cells to manipulate doesnt support any type of movie files)

2nd day ive spent on placing the frames and events in the chain and foragining net for material for the graphics

3rd gone rather peacefully on me editing graphics (thx God i have some basic knowledge about Photo Shop) and putting them togather, the flying asteroids scene for example, was done in that 3rd day by creating 3 diffrent layers of asteroids and making them move in diffrent speed)

4th day was full of frustration. it was when i figured out i need some SFX. I cant belive how internet turned from "free for all" to "pay for everything". even a stupid "explosion" sound costs around 3-5 american dollars. you remember that Earth explodiing at the begining of the intro? that was me opening a bottle of wine, or rather the "pop!" sound it makes when you unplug the cork. then i edited the sound in Audacity by decreasing the pitch, slowing the tempo, buffing basses and adding echo. this is also when had a huge struggels with the game engine doing everything in the wrong order.

5th is when the hell broke loss. first 3 hours ive spent adding last things like that shadow on the end and making it blink. i havent been aware of what was about to fall on me. Recording came first. out of 8 recording programs none did the job right. some recorder only the screen flickering, the other one made all visual spin like 'that dance ball from late 80's. the worst is that none of them was recording any sound. when i was finaly done with recording ive ended up with two 6 gigabites heavy HUGE files. from unknown to this day reasons the recording programs splited the recording into two file 3gig each. so i needed to compress the files. another 8 programs that failed later i had two nice files, around 35 MB each. ive edited it a bit cutting out the ugly temp menu screen and aweful main title. then i needed to connect each movie parts... 2h later when i finaly found a proper video merger that WOULDNT downgrade the FPS from 60 to 25 i was ready to upload it, and so i did. as a interesting fact ill add that ALL animations you see are hand made with frame-by-frame technique. what it means: you make a picture. you save it, you make another one slightly diffrent, you save it. and so on and on and on after you tell the game to display those pictures one after another. the same method people made cartoons 50 years ago.

shame how few poeple on the internet actualy knows how much work you need to do to produce such a simply, 4 minutes long game intro... 🙁

Hey Irbis you did that in 5 days? Not bad at all, that would probably take me 5 months 🙂

That definitely set the stage up for the game, my only nit-pick is the text color for the video. I think that color of green is hard to read on some of the backgrounds. Maybe use different color text depending on the color of the background so the text sticks out.

But overall great job and will be interested to see what you do with the story you have started.

I can well appreciate the amount of work you have put into the intro as I have done some 2/3d animation back in my Amiga days and some stop motion in super 8 before that. Had the same problem with Sound effects for the Amiga anims, even when I did find some good one I was never able to get them into the animations. So you have done excellent job of doing it all in 5 days.

What do you plan to work on next.

Oh my god i am your fan! no seriosuly, Far Colony is the game that made me think about making my own.

You cant imagine how inspiring it is to hear this from you! i am honored 🙂

yeah, ive noticed it to. but had hard time finding color suitable for this.

Maybe i should display some sort of transparent background just for the text?

thank you for you kind word guys 🙂 you dont have any idea how much power it gives me.

As for the next. At first i wanted to work until the job would be done. but now i am aware how much time this project might take. Thats why i decided to do the job in steps.

so first i want to create a working spaceship model, a working solar system with couple of events and planets.

then step after step ill add more planets, systems, sectors, player base, weapons, enemies, crafting, crew and my favorite - being able to walk around your space ship.

As someone noticed most space sims doesnt make you feel like a "pilot" of the ship but rather the "ship" itself. i want to change that, to make you feel as a human in he machne.

So are you saying that you are aiming for a full on space simulator, with a proper cockpit with as near accurate instrumentation like for example in Flight Simulator? That sounds really good, balancing docking thrusters, calculating hyperspace and or jumpgate routes and power distribution. Could add a bit of tension to the gameplay.

actualy - totaly opposite.

As i said, the game is totaly 2D and its very hard to pull a proper "realism" in non-3D game.

Sidenote: there is already couple of space sim build totaly around realism so ill pass on them. another note is that not always realism = fun. the game will be very arcade with flying like EvNova, NAEV, or Star Control but very in-deep in terms of details. on example: theres is a "area" of some solar system, then there is a small area representing planet's orbit, then the surface from lander view, and finaly the surface from "on-foot". same thing with your own space ship.

when you have a space battle your spacecraft is visible a bit, when flying in space you are smaller, but anytime you can "leave bridge" and just walk around your spacecraft, turn autopilot and go have some coffee, or go to toilet and take a leak 😉 or go to workshop and try to craft new planetary weapons or upgrade your spacesuit, or when engines breaks you got to enginery, or cargo bay. same with hull/armor damage. theres rarely any spaceport that will fix your ship just by you -the player pressing buttom. you wanna fix you scrached armor? then grab your space suit and have a space walk OUTSIDE of your spaceship with needed repairing tools. many times, when you are just screwing around your spaceship board the alarms suddenly screams - then you need to hurry and run back to the bridge as you had been attacked and autopilot cant only turn shield on.

i want players to -feel- they are the pilots, and this is their ship, i want to force their imagination so they will belive they are there, flying in space. and i claim that i dont need 3D next gen graphics to do that. if graphical fireworks would be the thing that matters no one would read book right? what you see when reading? text. a whole walls texts. yet you somehow "see" what you read about.

the game will be arcade and easy to pick up. but detailed so insanly so you can even go and mop the floor of your spaceship after last failed boarding atempt of space pirates who now dead left a lot of mess as blood all around, and theres not Mr Handy to clean your garbage. to lazy to go and do something so pointless as cleaning your ship? fine by me - but better learn to like the red stains and bad smell 😉

(of course thats just an example - dont worry, i wont turn this space sim into SIMS 😛 )

Interesting I like the idea of putting that amount detail into the game and making the player feel they are running a ship instead of being the ship. As it’s a 2d game how will you show the ship ie will it be top down or side on view.

A lot of great ideas here Irbis. Definitely like the wandering around the ship and getting attacked and have to get back to the command & control area. The ability to manual alter ship systems, repair hulls, upgrade your personal items (ie: suit, weapons, rover vehicle etc..).

Could create a small text box at the bottom of the video but inside the border to display the text.

Decent examples another example you could use as well is Transcendence.

well, for the time being i have 4 diffrent concepts, and this goes for both "ship view" and "on-foot" view, of course - they can be diffrent, i dont see any reason for them to be exact (even if it would be half of the job less lol)

1. Top-down. Like Aline Breed, Crimsonlands, Alien Swarm, EvNova ect ct

the simplest one. i can totaly manage to do this one all by myself. it would cost me the last amount of time. but also could hurt the "feeling" in the gameplay. it can propably scare out many younger players or just people who arent used to hardcore, old style games.

2. Semi-isometric. Like in most jRPGs, Zelda ect ect

funny but this costs much more efford and skils. I still can manage to do it by myself though so its not that bad. A little less tempting, but also not very innovative or groundbreaking.

3. Sidescrolling. Most "fly from left to right" kind of shooters and platformers (Mario anyone? heh)

Choice of my heart in case of ship interior, totaly blah for flying in ship. it costs me much more of work, and i will propably have huge problems (i have already) finding someone who can do a nice sprites for this method.

4. "Fake" 3D. Eye of Beholder (and most early '90s RPG games), Migh&Magic, early FPS's but with 45 degress/jump movement.

Would be cool for Ship interior but hard to do for Ship flying. For this i not only need sprites but a working 3D map. Definitly not my favorite because of the huge amount of work and 2nd party persons involved. Maybe ill leave this for "Probes".

I agree, but then again - Dark you ever watched movie with subtitles? your eyes are constantly flying from middle to down where the subs are, and many times you find yourself reading the text rather then watching the movie. At least thisis how i have without being able to pause the text (i am a slow reader, and even slower if the lang used is not my native. Thats also why i dislike watching movies in cinema)

Aaahhh yea, i totaly forgot about that one. preety descent game btw.

Good thing about 2D and top-down down game is that your overhead goes down because you don't have to create 3D models. Transcendence is a good example especially now that it is v1.0. Visited your blog and you did a great job on whipping together that ship 🙂

God definitely didn't bless me with any artistic skills at all.

Thank you for your kind words Darkone 🙂 as i said in the video credits - without you guys, even the game intro wouldnt be created. it is your support that keeps me rolling.

Top down might be the way to, couple of games worth a look are sundog and space rouge, also deathwar 3030 in the downloads and an Amiga/ST game called Starblade not the console game which has the same name.Both these last two are a combination of side on and 2d or 3d in Starblade case.

Was glancing over Irbis's blog and saw saw a rough mock-up of the cockpit and possible avatar used in the game?

If he does some nice texture work it could look really nice. If I remember correctly this is top down game so viability outside isn't really needed for this view to be effective. Here is the whole post: http://hiddenspace.blog.com/2010/09/08/ ... ust-go-up/

In one word: exploration.

being away from stuff, no fast way back, on your own, where a ridicoulous incident like a broken toilet can get you in some real trouble.

In accordance to above, fast teleportation from one place to another. If you can get from one end of the galaxy to the other in one day, the vastness of space goes lost.

Space, if simulated well, offers a hundred ways to die without anyone shooting at you. A proper exploration game should more play like a management/survival game than like a shooter. The good old oregon trail is an everlasting manifest to that. Starflight could have had a bit more of it, but it was ok in its way of having you deal more with unfriendly climates, fuel shortages and unknown animals than with aliens trying to shoot you up. Especially the second part, where you had to rely on trading stuff along the way for fuel, made for a very nice exploration feel, where you always had the heavy decision wheater to take the chances and press on, or call it a day and get on the long way home again. If they'd had some nice features like deseases, random failures on the spaceship etc, it would have been pretty ultimate.