Welcome to the SSC esgaroth 🙂

Your mod sounds interesting. I do hope that you will keep us updated on your progress.

Hi geraldine,

thanx for the welcome !

Well, interesting only if you´re a trekker. At present, it is little more than vegastrike with star trek ships, factions, weapons and planets. And with a warp system closer to real warp and without jump points/gates etc. But we seriously underestimated how difficult it was to convert a space fighting game into something more trek like, with exploration and, well, trek feeling (cant explain it better) in the center. The lack of a good python wizard at the present aggravates this. But, as long as there is life, there is hope, and so we work on it.

Welcome to SSC esgaroth.

I do hope that VegaStrike engine gets updated enough for the team to finish the mod. To me I think the Vega Strike engine progress goes fairly slow. I think they have been on version 0.5.0 for over a year now. have you thought about the Freespace 2 engine? I know there is some amazing things being created on that.

Enjoy the site and see ya in the forums.

Hi Darkone !

Well, upgrade of the vegastrike engine IS slow, (especially the switch to ogre is now announced the third or fourth year), although a new effort has been started lately.

The problem for us at the moment, however, is not the engine, outdated or not. It is first, the lack of a really good artist for base art, and second, a good python programmer who is able to help in the mission system which adds a lot to the flavour of the game.

Third, i am now understanding a bit how vegastrike works, and by changing to a different engine i loose this knowledge (although this could be compensated by good documentation of another engine...).

I am no programmer, though, so all i can do is modding and i dont know whether there is something out there which i could tweak into a star trek direction without hardcore coding. And, of course, what is important, too, is that a free flight mode is available. We deliberately decided against a campaign-only game and decided to put more emphasis on free flight, a dynamic universe where you can do what you want (like original elite), with the missions only as the icing on the cake.

However, I am not married to this engine and if there is a basis for modding available, i would like to try it. Do you have a suggestion?

I definitely feel your pain, learning any engine is tough (least for me) I have been actually trying to learn Python for a while and was going to try my hand at the PyGame engine soon. I know Orge and Panda3D are both Python based 3D engines but I don't think I am ready to start coding in Python yet. I would stick to what you know and hopefully VegaStrike engine will be updated to help ease the struggles you are having. There is a few good artists on here that may lend a hand in the 3d modeling department. I would post something in the mod/dev area and see if you get any nibbles. I am a awful 3D artist so i'm out 😉

Interestingly, a new beta of the main vegastrike engine was released last week, so i am in the process of transferring it to vegatrek now - with some help of the main devs. Should give much better visuals of planets in space.

Also made some progress in tweaking some existing python scripts for better landing screens (it was a bit strange to see a galaxy landed on a tiny landing pad....) so that now different screens can be used depanding on the size of the ship. Now i only need those landing screens... So there is some progress. Hopefully we get our new homepage online soon - the old one rather frightens off people ...

Definitely keep us posted on your progress. I will eventually get around to trying VegaTrek and it probably won't be until you get the new engine update but I did glance through the forums a bit and there is some nice pics of models and interiors in there that when all put together would be a nice touch indeed to the game itself.

From someone that cannot design themes or graphics to save his own life I do know why sites don't get updates sometimes 🙂 I tend to leave something alone if it is working 🙂

hey es, good to see you still trying with vegatrek. i used to follow it eons ago 🙂

Hi cruisin,

how does it come that your post makes me feel ages old 🙂 ?

And yes, I am still fighting to get vt into shape. I´ll probably open a vegatrek thread over there at the indie subforum once i managed to get the next release out.....