Hi chaosavy

Firstly, welcome to the SSC 🙂

That looks mightily impressive for a prototype! 🙂 Explosions are nicely done. What do you think will be the next area of the game you will be working on?

Thanks! The explosions (and other particle effects) I can't take much credit for, they are part of "Particle Universe" an addon to the graphics engine (Ogre3D), the explosions themselves are part of a media pack that I bought from the creator of Particle Universe. Its really been a huge boon and made my project look hundreds of times better. Not to mention given me a huge boost of enthusiasm, it is pretty rough sometimes to have a great number of ideas and sources of inspiration (other games, movies etc) and little artistic ability. It may actually be the hardest part of being an indie game developer IMHO.

For the past month and a half I've been focused on bug fixes, clean ups, manuals, websites, putting in the basics of sound, that I've gotten out of the add new features mode which I forced myself to ignore to release the prototype version.

The nearest goals in my mind are: create a instant action option (add ships to your fleet, add ships to your enemies fleet, and fight it out). This will help in creating a better game balance, I can pit 1 fighter against 1 fighter and see the outcome, etc etc till the game balance feels pleasing, plus other gamers can help and give feedback. Eventually this will hopefuly turn into a sort of a exporter for players to share with eachother the crazy/modded scenarios they can come up with.

The other feature which is fairly small I want to put in is a messaging system: EG: Combat messages: your ship abc has destroyed ship xyz. Tactical messages: intel reports enemy attack imminent and Economy messages: your station has built a ship, planet abcdefg is now colonized etc

Another feature: fighters with after burners (to ease the effect of the simplified newtonian physics), fighters with "secondary weapons" (EG: missiles) to make fighter to combat more fun for the player.

Another feature I've been wanting for a while: having trading ships actually "send" cargo through the use of in game physical object cargo containers to stations, right now this process is invisible (based on trading ship distance to space station) and I feel that's really a sore point and against my "if it happens I want to see it" goal.

There is so much to do and that I want to do that it would take a novel. The game needs more and better sounds. Better controls (especially in the tactical interface), better graphics. More options. Better AI, and AI ship commands (wingmen commands especially).

There's quite a lot more on the far horizon, like alien ship shields (they will only cover a part of the ship, and may not be destroyable at all, forcing the player to adapt tactics), research, customizations, modding tools.

Nice going Chaosavy looking very impressive. 😎

Haven’t been able to download anything yet as keeps saying it’s going to take 2 hours to download 70 odd meg, ❓ will have another go in the morning.

A few quick questions for you.

Does the whole game take place only in one solar system or is there more than one.

Do the planets have there own gravity field and will they orbit around there star or are they static.

Will there be an asteroid belt.

For a prototype, this looks really great ! Good job and I certainly look forward to seeing this game completed.

You say graphics aren't your strong point, well, you should use some free models, there's tons of them on the internet. If you'd like you can use any of my own models, if they fit your style. You can find them here:

http://solcommand.blogspot.com/

There is currently one solar system. Two planets have their own moons. The idea that I have in my mind is that at certain points in the story line the player will leave the solar system (using the enemy's gates) to attack alien bases that keep sending waves of attacker's into the home solar system.

There is no gravity (I was thinking of putting this in using Bullet's (the physics engine I'm using) constraints/joints). Funny thing is that planets and moons used to orbit, one of the very first things that I worked on (talk about odd noob priorities, there were no ships but there were planets). The code is still there, but questions remain: how fast should these rotate? Should they also spin? Their rotation caused some issues with the collision detection methods I was using earlier (much better methods now) so at that point I turned the rotation off. The scale and realism aspect is something I"m still debating. How do I reproduce a solar system and not have it empty? The X games use sectors, but they are basically identical, and a big problem is that out of sector combat has different rules that in sector (not bashing the X games they are awesome). Freelancer has planets whose scale feels right to me. However my game is aiming to be a single zone, Freelancer had many. The question I'm wrestling with is this: would I and my audience rather have 100 ships with 1 gun each? or 10 ships with 10 guns each (in latter case turrets turrets). Would it be better to have 5 carriers with 5 fighters docked? Or 1 carrier with the ability to launch 25 fighters? It hte question of scale, too many units and they feel worthless, too few and you lose that epic feeling.

This is why I refer to this release as the prototype, many questions remain. Some are naturally going to be answered through progress and as I learn more (this is my first real game).

There was also an asteroid belt in the begining, pretty crappy and basic, killed the frame rates, I turned it off. I would love to have a really good and fast procedurally generated one, so hopefuly that's somewhere down the line. If anything the instant action mode will have a toggle to get asteroids in.

Solcommand: I know your models well, I even emailed you a while back signaling my desire to use them. Turns out that it wasn't that easy to itegrate them. The problem would be that some models would be awesome (yours) and others would be my quality (to fill in the gaps in ships and ship classes), so maybe they should all be my quality so that initially the game experience not to be so night and day? I'm hoping for many units in game at once, so yours may be too detailed. Graphically I'm aiming at the level of Sins of a Solar Empire, or X2. Your stuff is X3 quality.

Hi Chaosavy

Welcome to SSC and thanks for sharing your WIP. I think your doing a great job with the Orge3D engine and depending on your talents there is definitely a lot more this engine can do. I hope to download the prototype sometime this week and give it a spin. But the videos you have posted are really showing some concrete progress for a prototype.

Agree 100% 🙂 I am absolutely awful at making graphics for the website, almost can't imagine myself making 3d models.

Just so its clear. Your wanting to actually visually show moving cargo from ship-to-ship or ship-to-station? Kinda like using a robotic thruster to steer the cargo to its destination? This would be a nice touch that I haven't seen in a game. And may open an opportunity for the pirate inside of me 😉

Almost forgot, once you have decided on a title for the game I will add it to the game list and if you need a forum area for your project just let me know.

Well man, if you've got concept art for your game assets I am willing to have a look over them and let you know if I will recreate them in 3D with XYZ amount of polys that you specify. I imagine that at this stage you don't need that many models, right ?

Cya

Darkone: thanks for the welcome and thanks for the great community you've built. I've been planning on announcing my project here for a while. For me 2d art is harder than 3D, I'm getting better at 3D while 2D just seems to time consuming (texturing ships for example, first you have to prep them for the texture by making seams, then you have to paint them etc etc) and the results are pretty bad, where as a 3D model with a green texture when shaded by the rendering engine's light looks pretty ok.

I'm talking about a cargo container/pod type object, think of Independance War cargo containers (especially Indpendance War 2). Right now cargo transfers in an instant within 500 or so units in distance, this would have the cargo float to the station, which would take time letting the process take longer giving pirates a bigger chance to disrupt traffic. This should be pretty easy to do since the AI is a simple turn to direction and move when collide transfer cargo type affair. However since trading isn't a big part of the game, since the economy isn't balanced there's not much internal demand for me to add this feature.

And yeah now that I think about this, you could potentially disrupt the enemy's ships cargo operations and steal their cargo as well!

I'm terribly focused on finding the right name that it takes forever. Project1 may be as good a name as any for now. I'll probably ask for feedback on chosing a name.

Solcommand: there is no concept art and I have no clue as far as the poly counts, nor do I know which ships I need. Essencially there will be/are various fighters, corvettes, frigates, destroyers, cruisers (not in game yet), carriers and dreadnaughts (not in game yet). I'm fairly happy with about 5 models, but they don't compare to anything that would be made by someone with experience such as yourself. I like the style that homeworld had, which to me was a sort of a "navy in space" or the style which you have which reminds of me the Stargate universe human ships. Babylon 5 ship sare also awesome. I don't like the way certain ships are in my project, they are too small (going back to that whole scale thing), I'm thinking I'd rather have less ships (at a time in the game) but have them have more turrets (some for offense, some for defense, once turret control will be placed in the hands or the player, or once better turret target selection gets put into place) and carry more fighters. So basically at this stage it wouldn't make much sense to ask someone to make art, since everything is so undecided. thank you for the offer, and thank you for offering your art online like you do. Once things get more settled, I will probably seek out to contract art out since it will be a fairly demanding endeavor with me not being able to provide concepts rather than "feelings" (kinda like this, but more like...). This will all depend on how much interest there is, since the ideal situation would be to recover the money spent on commissioning that art.

I tried some of Solcommand's models and threw them into my basic editor for some tests. They aren't as bad as I thought on performance, about 7 of the Morena type models (which is so awesome) and the frame rates drop from 1600 to 120. This is without any ai, particles, physics, bullets flying around etc. So for my needs I do think that they are too detailed based on current graphics cards and average pc specs.

Anyway while looking at the ship models I recalled seeing the asteroid base models and always thought about putting the Adder one into the game as a pirate base, then it hit me, I'm struggling with the idea of scale, I want a "space game" feeling but without the emptiness of space (there are huge empty places between planets), so why not base the game in a asteroid field? Basicaly a plaing field populated by about 10 or 20 large asteroids (and clumps of many small ones possibly), with initially only a few of the large asteroids populated by various factions. There would still be an alien race coming from a space gate.

Now I could utilize the entire map for base placement (planets are basically one the same plane (depth width), but asteroid bases could be on all 3 (depth, width, height). I could have a bunch of cool features like having towing ships to clump the bases together for easier defense. Pirates make much more sense and are a bigger threat (planet versus pirate asteroid base seems like a huge power disparity, but asteroid base versus asteroid base seems about equal). Asteroids are awesome and scream space. I could have nebulas/gas clouds (these don't make much sense to be in a defined area near planets, but near asteroids seem to make more sense). Could have rock type ships, could have ships that have attached asteroids to themselves for defense. Death star type asteroid based weapons? Death Asteroid? "That's no moon! that's a battle asteroid!" 😉

Cool stuff for an addon or later release: FPS type deal where you storm an asteroid to take it over. Since its an asteroid base wouldn't have to be a huge map.

I could save the planetary based game on a later release (the in game enemy gate has to lead somewhere right?)

Cons: too similar to Miner Wars?

I have yet to try the prototype (but I will), your game really isn't close to Miner Wars. Miner Wars main focus is the drilling into asteroids and mining for the most part thats all you can do in their present alpha build. From the videos I think there will be more action and less empty space like in Miner Wars. Putting in asteroids and nebulas between destinations or making them resource farming spots are a good.

A fully operational battle asteroid would be great 😀

And down the road if you can add the ability to go aboard vessels and bases and do some FPS like in Parkan II that would be a huge plus. Because then your game is catering to more of an audience, or thats just my opinion.

Hehe, mate, you tried the "wrong" model. When I made Morena I was planning to use it in a short movie I was making so it is in no way meant for games as the poly count is >huge<. 7 of those ships may be enough to crash any game 🙂

And about Miner Wars -> the answer is > No <. It doesn't resemble with Miners Wars at all, and I should know what I'm talking about cause I helped make it.

U could always donate some time to the pioneer open source project there is a subforum for it here

What would be a good model to try? What # of poly counts should I be looking at? I have no clue about these.

Question: your asteroid base models (and your base models in general) are really neat (I downloaded the 2009 pack), however the 3ds format doesn't seem to import well into Blender 2.48a. The models are out of position of their sub parts (EG: in the adder v2, the asteroid model and the "little tower up top" model aren't joined, and they aren't aligned as in the picture). The addder v2 isn't so bad, but other models with more subparts, some don't even appear, some are rotated in a different direction than theoriginal. The newer obj modeles import well. Anyway to get .blend files? or for you to join the models together in 3ds format (no idea if that's possible or if its already done or what not and its just the importer). I think I could put these modles to some really awesome effect.

Darkone: I would love to do a fps board vessels aspect, problem is that its basically almost like developing a whole other game. The biggest issues in my mind are obtaining humanod models and animations (pretty scary thoughts to someone like me whose primarily C++ and can't draw lines straight).

Yeah sometimes I think about participating in open source projects, I must admit however that I feel very anxious to have the ultimate say in the direction, so I think for now its best I try to get my own project more developed. If anything I will eventually make my project open source.

Well mate, let me know exactly what models you need and I'll weld all their subparts together and export them in either 3ds or obj, whatever works best for you.

As for the poly count, now that's something that really depends on each game engine and each developer, cause for example the old "Freelancer" game has models made of like only a few hundred polys, however some mods made for it by the community have models with poly count even larger than 200.000 polys ..... so you need to test your game and choose whatever poly count you see fit for each model.

Given the info you provided already about your game, I'd say small ships such as fighters should have somewhere up to 5000 polys while massive dreadnoughts could have as much as 100.000 polys. It all depends on the size a particular model will have ingame, the smaller its size, the smaller the poly count. Hope this info was useful and sorry if I somehow hijacked your topic with all the talk about models 🙂

great! thanks for the offer, it looks like the format doesn't matter (so 3ds or obj is fine) as long as the models are joined:

The adder v2 and the asteroid base were simple enough for me to cobble together, so I should be able to get started on the basics and see how well the concept works.

I would love to have the asteroid stations:

2009 pack

asteroid mining colony

mining colony

mining outpost

smuggler's den

kece asteroid industrial base

tube station (tube only) I think I'll throw these into the other models to standardize the fighter launch tube (if that's ok with you)

small repair facility <- I'm thinking this will get build by the asteroid bases to build capital ships

but honestly if you have the time all the models combined would be great (I would love to have the asteroid bases build upgrades in the form of orbiting stations (EG: the DMC, and Vala and others) to enhance production/population etc). The ships have the same issues as well.

thanks for the info on polycounts as well. There is no way to tell how much poly's my engine can handle since the engine isn't finished yet. I keep reading that one of the biggest mistakes of first time developers/programmers is pre-emptive optimization and lets face it I'm guilty of poly paranoia.

OK I will edit some of those models, probably tonight and send them to you, and the rest in a couple of days. I can't really edit all of them cause they're many, way too many and I doubt you'll use them all anyway 🙂

Ok, I welded them together and exported as OBJ:

- Vala

- DMC

- Mining Colony

- Small Repair Facility

- Tube Station

- Kece Industrial facility

- Smuggler's Den

- Mining Outpost

The file is attached to this post.

After you import these ingame, if you need more models, let me know exactly which.

got em! hopefuly in a few days they'll be launching fighters, thanks a million

thanks for the feedback!

Your game looks pretty sweet too, it reminds me of a game back in the 2d days, earth sent colony ships (due to an impending alien attack) and you were in charge of one, you had to settle a solar system and discovered 2 alien presences. One that evolved in a gas giant. It was more sim city than flight sim, but I remmember it fondly. Forget the name of it, may have the cd somewhere laying around still.

Bit of news:

I put up a new dev-blog on my site http://arrmaytey.com/wordpress/ about the progress to get asteroid bases into the game using SolCommand's models. I'm about 3/4 done with the basics. After the basics are done I'll tackle positioning of space stations (that the asteroid bases can build) using the tactical screen into the game world (the player will move a little place holder to the spot that he/she choses then press build), shouldn't be too difficult.

Here are some preliminary images:

It's gonna be interesting playing the new build and see what changes you've made.

Update: I've put up images into the manual section to try to intorduce the player better than the text only version it was before.

http://arrmaytey.com/manual/manual.html