Welcome on SSC 🙂

First, I wanna ask you few questions:

What language do you use to make this game?

Do you want some help?

What I need to run dedicated server (I've got my own apache server right now)?

I'm currently working on similar project called "StarStrategy" (hm... or not similar :P) but I want help you. I can make vector and raster graphics, code in Javascript (c++ and php after few tutorials too ;D) and design minimalistic web pages 🙂

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As for "language", it is made in C# and HLSL.

I begun by coding it in Silverlight 3, and then stopped... and some months ago I restarted in Silverlight 5 Beta.

In SL3, CPU died everytime I tried to manage more than 300 ships, in session, at the same time... in SL5, is a lot like XNA, so it allows to move lot of the work to GPU and so far it managed to handle up to 7500 ships without much trouble on a small Atom-based netbook 😉

Basically, I code it as a hobby during my spare time (which is not a lot); but I'm slowly managing to give the game the shape I'm envisioning.

As I'm no good as graphics designer myself, I'm not able to give it some "cooler" graphics, nor sound nice sound effects.

Of course, in due time, people will be more than welcome to privately test it in order to shape it more into the taste of the general public, and debug as well.

Any computer supporting .Net or Mono frameworks will do ( Windows, Linux, Mac, etc...).

I coded the entire web, udp, compression, etc... So there's no need for external service. The game server itself serves everything.

It only needs 3 ports open: 80 (or watever) for web access. 4530 for client sessions. 973 for policy service requests.

I actually have it running on and old refurnished Duron PC running ClearOS (Linux) at the office and it manages quite well.

Help is always welcomed, but as I told you I'm not working on it "very hard" everyday... It is more like slowly polishing bits of it every night after I arrive home from work.

Right now I'm working on a better AI, and trying to add more "interactions" for player characters to do.

What the game do really need is to get more content:

- Defining more ship types. (not graphics, but to be defined on the database).

- Adding more NPCs/Planets/Satellites/Ships to the database. (this can be done manually... some day I have to code something to automatically populate the universe on each "fresh" startup... I'm waiting until finishing the AI+Interations stuff, so in due time the NPCs should multiply by themselves).

I'll have a look at your StarStrategy soon. 😉

I have heard about Silverlight but never used it for game. C# (it looks pretty) and HLSL, never used any of them but I've got some free shaders for my own game 😀

Next... Do you think that I code I make my game 24h/day 7d/week?I just had more time because of holidays 🙂 Now it'll harder to do anything bigger 🙂

What graphics do you want for SC? Vector hud like? Raster with 2.5d and textures? Heavy detailed?

Sound effects... I'm not the expert in it but I made some simple sounds for my game. So I could try if you won't.

About server... I can host it even for 24h/day but my upload speed is ~374kbps

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SL haven't really got lot of diffusion (nor good support from the press)...

At a certain point I thought of migrating into a stand-alone Win32 Executable, and work it out in C++ and DirectX... but I really wanted it to run on a Web Browser...

Hopefully, SL5 did come for the rescue a couple of months ago.

I uploadead a tiny video and posted it on the blog ( http://spacecaptains.blogspot.com ).

So far, I'm using raster textures, and I render them as ships/planets/effects using XNA (in a 3D but Orthographic Projection), with some effects... and then add some extras to each, such as fire-like propulsion thrust, lighthings, explosions, etc. Usual ships textures are 192x192, but I believe I'll be reducing them to 96x96... So far, zoom can be done as to get them to fill almost the entire screen... or make them look like a tiny dot (when they are replaced for an Icon).

I already have some sound effects... which I "STOLE" from a couple of other unrelated games (they should be replaced before going public).

The sound and music engine is fully functional... but lots of data have to be added to the DataBase... so each effects and each ship know when and how to play each effect.

Don't worry, I can't say that the one I'm testing it on nowadays is much better.

The client requires 450Kb to start (which I hope to reduce to 300Kb some day, after removing some uncompressed assets from inside it)... Then, there's about 4Mb of assets (textures, sounds, music, etc), but they are downloaded "on demand" by the client, during gameplay... (only once each, depending on browser memoy capabilities used for caching).

Regarding gameplay requirements from the server connnection... during gameplay.. you don't need more than 4 to 10Kbps per client session.

There is allready a game called Space Force: Captains. So maybe a more original title for your game would be better.

Anyway, good luck on your project.

I just added some screenshots to my first post on the thread.

There's a tiny video I quickly made for the game's blog.