Game looks pretty good..

1. How many planets/stations are going to be in the final release of the game?

2. I noticed from the video you had some squadmates how do they assist you in your struggle in the game?

3. Do we get to play all three races?

4. Can you describe the upgrade/equipment element to the game. Do you purchase these items, craft them or gain them automatically?

1. Is it an one man effort or do you have a development team? (And how big the development team is?)

2. For how long are you developing the game.

3. Isn't this fusion of genres a risc ? Is it a space combat game with some FPS elements or the other way around?

4. What do you think about similar efforts like Starshatter, Parkan II or the upcoming Percusors?

Thanks for the invite to come talk about my game, D1. Definitely a cool community springing up here.

Thanks, Solnicaris. 🙂

I've worked in the game industry for a while, and I've always been way more focused on gameplay than graphics. But the more I work on Salvation Prophecy, the more I obsess over little graphical details. I still consider myself a "gameplay guy", but a couple years ago, I never would have imagined myself spending a week straight getting the shadows in a game to look just right.

The plan is to have one station layout for each of the different factions. There are 4 factions, so that's 4 different station layouts.

As for planets - that's tough to say right now. All the planets are custom built, so it takes a lot of art. A lot of space games go for a random / programmatic universe, which makes it feasible to have hundreds of planets. But I couldn't achieve the gameplay I wanted with randomly generated planets.

So, it mostly depends on whether I can land any funding for the project. If I can, a huge chunk of the money will go into making more planets. I'd like to have around 30.

Your fate in the game is tied closely to that of your faction. As your faction goes into battle, either in space or on planets, you will receive a mission to join them. The troops / ships on your side are all controlled by AI, but it's important for you to help them achieve victory with as few losses as possible. If your faction is destroyed, you go down with it.

In the end-game, it'll be particularly important for your faction to be well positioned and powerful. But I'll talk more about that some other time.

It's a non-linear, open-universe sort of game. Battles will occur whenever one of the Factions calculates it's strategic for them to attack. If you rise to the highest rank, you'll also be able to order strikes yourself.

Yep. And there are 4 races. Each with different weapons and ship designs.

There is both personal combat equipment, and ship upgrades. The majority of equipment can be purchased with money you make by completing missions and gaining rank. But there are a handful of specialty items, alien artifacts and the like, which can only be found by exploring alien planets.

There will also be a skill tree.

Hi CaptainKal,

I'm the only one working full-time on the project. But I have a fantastic team of artists helping me out. It's an interesting collaboration - most of the artists who have contributed to the game I've never met face to face. Some of them I found on artist hang-out websites. Others found me through the Salvation Prophecy website. It's kind of cool seeing how the project has gained momentum since I started. Enthusiasm breeds enthusiasm. 🙂

I quit my job in June 2007, and have been working full time on it since then. Kind of a risky move, but that's how I roll. 😉

Yeah for sure it's risky. Both in design, and in scope. The wide scope is a huge amount of work. And whenever you spread yourself too thin, you run the risk of ending up with a big vat full of crappy half-finished gameplay. But, the way I envisioned the game, it really called for a mixed-genre approach.

The game is single player, which helps chops off a big chunk of work and design complexity.

I'd say the game is a roughly equal RPG / space sim split. Maybe a tiny bit more focus on the RPG, but not much.

Since the game does have such a wide scope, I've chosen to go with more of an arcade feel for the ship controls, instead of a more complicated, accurate physics style. This makes the controls easy to pick up, and lowers the learning curve, which is important for a game with so many different facets.

Embarrasingly enough, I haven't played any of these. Which is lame. 😳 A designer really should play as many games from the genre as possible. There's so much you can learn from other people's games. You're right, Parkan II does look like a similar mixed-genre game. I'll pick that up and have a go at it tomorrow.

Thanks to you and D1 for pointing these games out. I think this site and the community is going to be pretty useful for both space-sim players and devs.

-Jabberwocky

That's a very bold move. I do not think I could do it. 😀 I hope it all works well. Have you found a way to distribute your game?

Considering that the Precursors aim at 5 or 10 planets (with a full development team at work), that's very ambitius. Have you contact any company (like Matrix Games or Stardock for instance), for additional funding? How about some form of episodic gamimg? (5 planets now, a couple later, that's short of thing).

Yes. The more space sims the better. 😀 😀 Let EA make one sequel after another. (Although I loved Mass Effect 😀 😀 )

Not a problem. I like a good RPG in my space sim. 😀 😀 (Besides RPGs are my second favorite genre. Gothic FTW 😀 )

I absolutelly agree with you. Even though I have HOTAS Cougar as a joystick, I try to use a mouse/keyboard combination whenever I can. (Setting up my joystick is a kind of a ritual. Since I don't have much time to play games, I prefer more of pick up and play style of gaming).

Thanks Jabberwocky and I'll try to give you as much free publicity as possible. Jabberwocky with leaving your job almost 2yrs ago do you do side projects or are you eating pork n beans solely to finish Salvation Prophecy? 🙂

If people go to your website (www.salvationprophecy.com) and offer up their services to give you a hand are you looking or willing to take the free help?

Unfortunately people are very visual these days and sometimes the gameplay does take a backseat to the graphics in most games. And with graphics generally taking the longest in a game will the Orge3D engine keep the game current enough throughout development?

I have a PS3 at home and I often pay $5-10 for a downloadable content or small games and those developers do fairly well. Have you thought about porting your game to play and be distributed on xbox live or playstation network? You would get huge exposure and it could give you time to work on the continuation of the game while getting payed by thousands of players. Just a thought.... I know the developers behind No Gravity are releasing there PC based game for the PSP and doing quite well with it since its release last week.

I do hope over time SSC becomes popular with players and developers alike to talk about and get feedback for games and projects in the space sim scene. I hat the fact that I see it dying a little each year and even reviewers of more recent games say this genre is just about dead. It's glad to see a few brave soles trying to keep this type of game alive so thanks Jabberwocky!

-D1-