2D Elite clones is a crowded market but you may have a hook with the modular add on :good: 

Check out Sol Commander site for some free 3D models http://www.solcommand.com/ I don't know if you can covert them for use in your own 2D game engine. 

Thanks for your answer! So 2d elite clones is a crowded market? Wow. Didn't know that there are so many clones out there already?

Going 2d simplifies just a lot and I even want to make it possible to walk on your ship which is not that hard but maybe some nice additional feature.

So beside this ship building, flying around and attacking others.. I scratch my head about how this can be done in a fun way for the player?

Going 2d simplifies just a lot and I even want to make it possible to walk on your ship which is not that hard but maybe some nice additional feature.

Nice 😎 I remember Megatraveller 2 was going to have some thing like that but never came about.

Ah well, never heard of that game.

Let's see if I can put together a small prototype with horrible graphics. I have a good artist as well but don't want to bother him in the beginning.

Anything you'd like to see in such a game?

Ah well, never heard of that game.

Let's see if I can put together a small prototype with horrible graphics. I have a good artist as well but don't want to bother him in the beginning.

Anything you'd like to see in such a game?

Gravity from any planets or stars might be some thing to think about adding into the game.

MegaTraveller is an old Space RPG from the early 90s based on the paper & pen game of the same name.

Check out Sundog which is even older for more 2D ship based action.

Question is of course as well. Would someone play an 2d game these days?

I think a 2D game can have a lot of appeal, if it's done right. Although it can be a little hard to pull it of these days, I guess, because the suspension of disbelief barrier is a bit higher, given that we are spoiled by highly detailed 3D games.

I had a great share of fun with 2D games, like Star Control 2/Ur-Quan Master, or Starsector for example, but I saw more unappealing 2D space games than good ones (for my taste at least, but I guess I might be a big snob 🙂 ).

I think you should properly think trough, how you can avoid some of the tired tropes and provide an engaging gameplay. I think there's still potential in the 2D space genre, in multiple directions. I'm curious about what do you have in mind.

Also, as an artist, I'd suggest that you should involve "your" artist as early as possible. A nice simplistic preliminary graphics can add a lot to a game, even if it's temporary. And you can work together to nail out the look and workflow. And equally (if not more) importantly, the UI.

I think you should properly think trough, how you can avoid some of the tired tropes and provide an engaging gameplay. I think there's still potential in the 2D space genre, in multiple directions. I'm curious about what do you have in mind.

 

Exactly, some thing even the pro developers still fall for especially when they claim to have reinvented some type of game. (Hello DarkStar 1, Galaxy On Fire ect) :biggrin:

If you want to make a 2D game that doesnt just mindlessly shoot/trade/buy upgrades (like a hundred others do at the moment) then I have some suggestions on what would make it really stand out from the crowd:

Wow that's quite a bunch of incredible good ideas, thanks so much. I'll answer more in detail later, being on vacation this weekend.

What about multiplayer? Is that of some importance or not?

No problem 🙂 

I would say that multiplayer games are a different thing to space sims. I mean sure the newer ones have it but I think its no where near as important as having a good immersive game world. In multiplayer you basically ignore most deep aspects of the game and focus on what other players are doing. In good space sims you really loose yourself inside the world and thats the beauty of them.

Since I used Skyrim as an example before I will use it agian here, whats the better game? Single player Skyrim with its immersive RPG elements (9/10 on steam) or the shallow but multiplayer game of Elder Scrolls Online (7/10 on steam)  

I also recall that people were very heated when Elite: Dangerous said they were not going to have an offline mode, to me that shows that the single player aspect is the most important part of the game. I doubt there would have been anywhere near as much of an outcry if they had developed the game from the beginning without multiplayer.  

Just one mans opinion though.

I was a backer of Elite Dangerous and actually did not like that drop of an offline mode.

Thanks again for your input, I really appreciate it!

So do you think it's a good idea to let the player have one ship (he can have more but only can fly one at a time) he can enhance free quite a lot? I think it makes sense to have some player skills which are just independent from the ship itself, so some rpg elements so to say?

Space stations will be walkable I totally agree. I always wanted this.

What about planets, stars and so on? I see some limitations there making it 2d top down. What do you think?

Happy to help! 🙂

I think one ship is better than a fleet or small group of ships. If you think about what the popular influences of the genre are, things like Firefly, Han solo and his Millennium Falcon, the Ebon Hawk from KOTOR, the Enterprise, the Normandy from Mass Effect and even the game FTL, they are about adventuring through pace with a ship and a small but interesting crew.

I would rather see crew management than multiple ship management and I think most other people would too. Once again I think the fleet style game play is a different theme to the space sim. One is about war gaming your way through the universe and huge space battles (which is fun dont get me wrong but its not something I would keep on my hardrive for years to come) and the other is about being immersed in a world and exploring it with some people you have picked as crew, having adventures and freaking out when your one ship has to limp back to a station or moon base for repairs when you got your ass handed to you in a fight.

Yes, I totally agree with you about the player skills. The way I would do it (and this is just me, I dont know if its the popular thing or not) is to have a person that is you, you name him/her, select your starting skills or maybe an occupation and then they develop skills as I said before, through use. When that avatar dies then its game over. You start with a crappy ship and can upgrade it over time. Perhaps there are a few sizes of ship and eventually you can work your way up to a Battle Star sized ship to command but to buy / fly / command these largest ones you need a special skill or perk from the skill tree.

When you have a high enough level in some skills then you can operate certain types of upgrades or equipment. it also could trigger specific story situations too like if your smuggling skill is at level 25 then you get approached by an underground freedom fighter faction that wants you to help bring them weapons they need to liberate their homeworld.

The smuggling skill would also help you when security forces stop you for random cargo inspections, a random roll affected by your skill level determines whether they find your contraband cargo or not, and the different factions would need higher or lower rolls depending on how good their security forces are.

Maybe another way to get past the security check would be with a Persuade or Bribe skill. This lets you solve this particular problem in various ways depending on what you have sunk your skill points into. Thats is one of the most interesting and rewarding parts of an RPG, when you can use the skills you have built up the most to interact with the world.

If it was me I would just look at the Skyrim skill progression tree and turn as many of them as is practical into space sim skills. Its regarded as one of the best skill systems so just copy that and you couldnt go far wrong! Also the skills for Deus Ex would be worth a look too.

Now as for planets and stars, I think you could have them in the background layer (bellow the player) and then have an option to scan the planet for points of interest. Higher grade sensors and higher sensor skills by either the player or one of his crew would should show more points of interest. Things like bases (the equivalent of space stations but on the ground), mining colonies, military outposts, science facilities, faction head quarters, crashed space ships, distress beacons, abandoned military test areas, high concentrations of rare mineral deposits, hidden pirate hangers, strange alien artifacts, abandoned alien ruins, and even mysterious energy readings might all show up once a planet was scanned (I would look at the little story choices in FTL for more).

So now you have anywhere between say 2 and 12 points of interest on a planet, each of those could be places you can either contact with your comms or land at.

Maybe in your game you take a shuttle down or land the ship itself. Either way you have a top down map of red dirt and rocks or what ever color the planet is, you have areas to investigate by either walking (in a space suit if its go no atmosphere) driving your expensive but awesome Aliens 2 style APC, flying around in your drop ship maybe on a little ride on 4x4 like in Firefly. You can talk to people you meet like you would on a station or shoot them or stealth past them and hack into their network and open some doors or what ever it is your space dude does best.

So basically its very similar to the walking around the station map, it has a limited size but large enough that you can move around and explore the place. It might have dangerous wildlife or craters of high radiation, some exotic ore poking up out of ground, a broken down APC and the remains of a dead landing party. Just small points of interest to make you want to look around (placed proceduraly on the map around the main point of interest, the outpost ect). This is also where you can create immersive atmosphere, is it a swampy planet like Dagobar and a crew member will comment on the smell when you land or their fear of snakes. Actually various crew could comment on any of those points of interest mentioned above. Then after 10 mins of investigation you leave and once back up in your ship the crew members fight over who is getting first shower. 

Here is an idea too, you could do like Mass Effect and and only pick 2 crew to go to planet with you. For a top down game they could be to the left and right of you in an arrow head formation, locked into place. They move when you move, shoot when you shoot. that way you dont need to worry about much AI or path finding for them.

Any combat on planet could be the same mechanics as in space, your top down team of 3 is like your space ship and the automated defence droid on the planet shooting at you is the same as a space pirate. The controls should be basically the same, thats how I see it playing out with planet landings anyway.

Its a lot to ask I know but If you could do even half of these things you would have probably made the best 2D space sim ever lol 

You're awesome! 🙂

Thanks for all your time, effort and incredible input! I like your ideas and I am completely with you, even though some of them must be postponed to later to be realistic but please keep your brainstorming flowing. 😀

Some more questions came into my mind. Let's take some random situations.

Let's talk about battle. This won't be the major part of the game but it can happen. There are different possibilities to do this. The way I see it, it would be good if it isn't fast paced action as you have a crew (later on, first you start with a shuttle for instance) and give commands. I still scratch my head how this can be done. I mean you could lock a target ship and dependent on your skill you have different success fighting it. I think it would be better to not handle fights directly but more like in RPGs so it doesn't matter how fast your "trigger finger" is. I mean the personal skill should not matter (contrary to ego shooters for instance)?

I try lol 😀

So to battle. I thought long and hard about this one, your right that the problem with these games is that often they end up drifting into the realm of arcade shooter and thats ok for maybe an hour or two but then you have had your fill and probably will feel bored with it from then on. Its maybe the biggest problem in this genre, right up there with lame fetch missions and non-interactive crew / NPCs.

I agree that more strategy is the key to making combat fun and challenging. So how to make the combat more RPG and less "trigger finger?". I think that what you need is something that handles it like Baldurs Gate. You play it out in real time (as apposed to turn based) but you can hit [Space bar] to pause the game and issue commands or micro manage things.

The other game that came to mind and is also THE MASTER of space time combat strategy in my opinion is FTL. This too is real time and uses a [space bar] pause system. The only problem is that the ship is static and not moving around. Still the weapon balance & the ability to change load outs to fit various strategies are damn near perfect, and they are designed to be used in a real time game.

SO what I came up with is this:

1. you target an enemy ship (pressing [ T ] toggles through the ships near you?)  

2. you select what power goes to what systems

2. all weapons that are powered up fire when you hit the fire button (possibly you can map keys for each of your weapon mounts though) 

3. depending on their Evasion skill (combination of their ship size, engine grade and piloting skill) your weapons hit or miss them

4. any hits go to their shields first (except missiles, they hit the hull) and if there are no shields then the hull takes damage

5. your weapons take various amounts of time to cool down before you can fire them again. 

They do this to you at the same time while both of you are in motion. At any time you are able to press [space bar] to pause the game. The cool down times range from 2 seconds to 11 seconds so you have quite a lot of time to do things between salvos even without pausing. Weapons can only fire if your in the correct range (missiles wont fire if they are in close range and lasers wont fire if they are at long range)

I went one step further and outlined the basic components based on the weapons charts from FTL, halving the cool down times but keeping most things the same. The idea is that you have a set number of weapon mounts and fill them up with anything you can find / buy in what ever combo you like. 

Here is what I came up with:

So thats what I would want, lots of options.

If you were willing to go further then introduce Drone Bays for the larger ships, add rail guns with the same stats as the lasers, add armor that did the same thing as shields (then lasers do half damage to shields and rail guns half damage to armor) and counter measures that work specifically against missiles, and proximity mines. Also the ability of a crew member with hacking skills to remote shut off an enemies sensors or shields or engines or weapon mount would be cool.

Dont forget to add to these to the wishlist while we are at it: big white hot (soundless for added realism) explosions when a ship detonates, powerful sounding impacts on your hull from missiles, computer warnings when your target locked or a missile has been launched at you, the "Game over man!" from any of your crew with a cowardly streak when your ship is crippled, the "yippee kai yay" when your weapons officer takes an enemy Capital ship out, asteroids that you can fly through to evade enemy fire, vast clouds of dense ion gas that you can fly into to escape a target lock, solar flares that detonate missiles as soon as they are launched if your fighting too close to a sun, space stations that have over sized beam weapons to take out multiple pirate ships in one swipe, cloaked mine fields, micro meteor showers that take down every ones shields at the same time regardless of who's side they are on, ships that fluctuate and loose power and die with a whimper but no explosion and just left to drift until someone claims them for salvage. 

Phew. Now this is quite a list. Thanks again, I will see what I can do and probably provide you with playable demos. Heck I even scratch my head if it would'nt make sense to go the 3d route but yes, this adds another layer of complexity even though I have no problems doing it. But 2d has its own charm.

Usually I go the cross platform route, so everything will run in a browser, standalone executable and tablets (Android/iOS) as well.

They were just some ideas to help spur you on haha

Playable demos would be great! Hmm 2D vs 3D.. thats an interesting point. If you can cram all this kind of cool stuff in, then your game would be right up there with the best space 2D's ever made I think (plus there is a gap thats crying out to be filled by a space sim with really good game play in 2D) however if your going 3D then suddenly your up against really stiff competition, plus I think maybe it all takes a lot more work to make it pretty.. look at how many times the Dev making Limit Theory re wrote his shaders and lighting for his back drop alone lol

Anyway I would like to see a 2D myself, I agree it has its own charm, plus it would be great to be able to play this game on a tablet. Actually that would totally rock.

All the best, hope you keep us updated!

P.s. If you ever need more random brain storming just let me know  😀

Thanks again! I will come back to you for sure! I'll keep you up to date. But, as this is a part time project and I have a 9to5 day job, this might take a while. A first prototype should work pretty quick and I already have a name for it: Space Privateers 🙂

I'll go the 2d route and I think doing this right can become quite a fun game! Regarding the modularity of ships I think it's better to not make them totally free (like in Heat Signature) but give some hull types which can be enhanced and equipped.

What kind of tablet do you own?

I've looked at FTL and yes, this is something I definitely want to include! I mean that kind of micro management and battling other ships.

Probably not only the player as a captain himself should have a skill tree but other crew members as well.

Regarding battles it could make sense to do them turn based even though I like that FTL approach which is somehow turn based as well due to the cool downs. Turn based allows some great tactical stuff like done in X-Com the days back and even would allow player vs player battles which I would restrict to specific sectors so you can still play offline if you like. What do you think?

Going to put something together now. 🙂

Thanks. It's very motivating to get such kind of incredible feedback. Haven't actually expected this.

Currently I work on some kind of a small design document to summarize everything a bit.

FTL looks awesome, I completely missed that gem! Boarding of other ships is on my list, yes. And I will stick with different ship types like in FTL which can be equipped and enhanced modular but which are not completely random like in Heat Signature. I think that mixture of somehow turn based and real time like it's done in FTL is a good way to do it.

I'll set up a small page and will blog a bit about the game and how it proceeds. Of course I will keep you up to date here as well!

edit: Page: http://www.spaceprivateers.com

haha no problem! just passionate about space sim games, especially traders and also space 2D games, so glad to help you come up with ideas!

great idea

Boarding of other ships is on my list

Wahoo! I am excited about this game already and there is nothing to even look at yet lol

FTL is so fun. Thats also why i was thinking you could make that the basis of the combat, all you do in that game is fight ship after ship but you can do it for hours and hours and not get bored with it. They must have gotten the balance just right.

I like the sound of your idea for the ships, that sounds perfect to me, as does the mix of turn based and real time. like i said Im already excited to see these concepts in your game! 

Blogs are awesome, I follow a bunch of dev blogs already and I will follow yours for sure, will be great to watch your game start from the ground up!

so cool, its a real thing now, it has a website! 😀 and you even got the right name for it, well done with that btw

look forward to seeing how your first mock up goes

Haha oh well. Having a website doesn't mean it's real. Wish it would be that easy. Oh wait, NOT. But yeah, thanks so much again. I've carried parts of this idea for years of my life already and so it will become something I put my heart into. 🙂

Regarding boarding: Yes, always wanted this. I like rogue like games so this is a must have for me. Loved X-Com the days back as well (played the first, original one). I think I'll even start with doing something that your ship is docked to a station and you can walk there and buy and sell stuff. Might be a good start.

About that name, well yes, I had this in mind quite a while already. 🙂

Oh and by the way, actually there is really a chance that this will become a real game. I've already released some so I'm not that kind of guy who just talks, even though I love that part too! HA!

I could tell you have been thinking about it for a while so I am picturing good things will come of this! 🙂

re: boarding

I think thats a great idea, starting at a station and shopping around for supplies. In fact its how one of my favorite rouge likes starts! (have you ever seen a game called Prospector RL?) maybe you can also find abandoned and downed ships and board them too, just like stations. If you could use that boarding / station mechanic for exploring derelict ships in space then that would be so fun!

I can think of like a dozen different short stories to accompany a derelict craft too, that would be great for the RPG elements of it, working out what happened to them from log entries and what items are in each room.

Were everyone taken by aliens? Did the crew try to fight off space crazed cannibals and fail? Did slavers take the crew and scuttle the ship? Did a mysterious anomaly turn them all to dust because they only had low grade shields? Maybe the captain went rouge and vented the atmosphere so he could make off with a near priceless cargo they were carrying or maybe the ship was just so low on fuel after running from pirates that they literally couldnt get back to a station to fix the damage they received.

These could made for some interesting and creepy side missions or just points of interest on your way too and from other places.

Im the kind of guy thats always wanted to try but only knows very basic coding so just talks about it instead lol

Glad to hear you have experience though, this makes me even more interested in what you come up with!