Hi Kogen.

I completely forgotten about this game. 😳

Good to see you are still working on the game.have you done any new vid of the game yet

Thanks Kogen

I thought Salvation Prophecy stalled since everything went silent for the past few months. Those new screenshots look great and I only hope one day I can create some models like that in my playing with blender 3D. Definitely see the improvement in the visuals since the last set of screenshots I saw.

Hei Pinback, hei Darkone,

thanks for your attention. Yeah, we neglected the community a bit. Firedance games is still pretty small, that's why we have to set priorities and we wanted to push the game before we posted any news.

We don't have any new vids, but please be patient and give us some time to create one.

I guess Salvation Prophecy has grown up and everyone of the team is getting a feeling for the style and how the game will look best. Though there is still pretty much to do I'm really looking forward to the next steps.

I can understand your feelings about Blender, Darkone, the behavior of Blender is a bit... strange. But I'm still hoping for Version 2.5. 😉

Any plans for a demo yet Kogen?.

No, not yet, but I'm very confident, there will be one in the future.

Last time Jabberwocky was here he mentioned that Salvation Prophecy would have around 30 planets in its universe, is this still the plan? And will you be able to land and battle on all the planets?

Kogen any plans for the ability to build/craft things in SP?

Hi SpaceSimCentral fans,

I'm a design and programming guy for Salvation Prophecy. Kogen asked me to drop by and answer Darkone's questions. I'm very bad at answering questions briefly, so this will probably go on for a while. 😉

Characters and Space Ships

One of the main features of Salvation Prophecy is that you control both a character and a space ship. Your character can walk around inside a space station. You can also land on planets, get out of your ship, and walk around. This is a lot of work for a small game company, and in order to pull it off properly we've been very careful about which other features to include and which to leave out. For example, the game has no trading, which many other space sims rely on. Our game focuses on the military conflict between the 4 factions.

Ship Components and Character Equipment

There is no crafting. You do have some freedom on how you equip your character and your space ship. For your ship, you have a slot for your engine, shield, reactor, energy bank, scanner, and weapons. As you complete missions, increase in rank, and earn credits, you can buy upgraded ship components. For your character, you have weapons slots, an armor slot, and "stims", which provide a variety of temporary combat boosts. You can buy upgraded equipment for your character.

Action-Based Combat

We're intentionally avoiding a complex design with equipment and ship components. Salvation Prophecy's combat is not a heavily statistics-based experience, like you might find in an RTS or turn-based strategy space game. Instead, our combat is very action oriented. Your success will depend greatly on your ability to pilot your ship and maneuver your character effectively in battle. Although it certainly helps to have a big gun. 😉 Equipment and ship upgrades are mostly a way to advance and become more powerful, rather than to provide complex statistical configurations.

Planets

Yes, we are aiming for a pretty high number of planets. I should describe exactly what these planets are.

Battleground Planets

Many of these planets serve only as battlegrounds between the factions. These battleground planets have resources which each of the factions will try to control. Factions can build a small colony on these planets, with buildings that extract the resources, and with troops and turrets on defense. Other factions can launch invasion missions against these planets. Much of the ground combat in the game revolves around attack and defense of these planet colonies.

These battleground planets need to be pretty simple. Computers have a limited amount of graphics capability, and most of this graphics power on battleground planets will be devoted to drawing as many troops, turrets, colony buildings, weapons fire, and explosions as possible. The focus is on battle, carnage, and destruction. These planets will otherwise be fairly rocky and barren.

Alien Planets

Some of the "non-battleground" planets will be more of an exploration experience, and will include more interesting designs, alien plant life, and some nasty alien creatures.

See, I knew that was going to be long. 😆

Thanks for your interest in the game! Now, back to programming...

Any drivable vechicals on the planets?.and how big a is the ground area on the planets ❓

with four factions in the game, will you see factions fighting against each other in space and on the planet and you could pick a side?

Will there be some sort of black market dealer for getting some really good gear for a price?

Will we be able to create small colonies to increase or wealth and power in the game?

Will there be any artifacts to be found on the alien planets to give you the edge in battle or npc negotiations?

Are your game design, influenced by games like Parkan, Precursors, and the Battlecruiser series? And how are you going to handle Planet/Space transitions?

Hey CaptainKal,

The game design has similarities to Parkan II, in that there are both space sim and character-controlled aspects of the game. If I remember correctly, Parkan II had similar user interface panels to Salvation Prophecy - stuff like a mission log, character equipment, ship components, and galaxy map.

I've never played the Battlecruiser series, although I'm certainly aware of them. Those games seemed good at generating a lot of controversy. 😉 I thought Battlecruiser games were pure space sim - did later versions allow you to exit and walk around?

I hadn't heard of Precursors until your post. I googled it and checked out some videos - it looks extremely cool. For sure there's some similarity between our games, although it looks like Precursors is doing a couple things SP isn't, like vehicles.

At the bottom of the Precursors website, it says "Programmed by Eugene Bond". If that game was programmed by one guy, I tip my hat, he's a machine.

Hey PINBACK,

No, no drivable vehicles. You're either flying a space ship or walking. I'd love to include drivable vehicles, but they're a lot of work if you want them to play well. I don't want to take the development time away from the space battles or character control.

The alien planet sizes are big enough to get lost on, but small enough that you can explore the whole playable area eventually.

You'll be neck-deep in the battle between the factions.

When you start a new game, you pick a character from one of the 4 factions. For the rest of the game, your fate is highly bound to the fate of your faction. If you choose to play a "Drone Unity" character (one of the 4 factions), you fight with the "Drone Unity" for the entire game.

The reason for this design is because the battle between the factions is a core part of the gameplay. You can't just ignore it, sit by and watch the factions battle it out while you tour around the galaxy. 😉

I don't think so. A black market doesn't really make sense in SP's game world. There is no weapon that any faction would consider illegal - any faction would happily use any weapon to annihilate the enemy.

The plan is to put you in control of your faction's high-level strategy, once you gain enough rank to become faction leader. You would control which planets to colonize, which buildings to build, and how to spend the resulting resources to build more ships, troops, and colonies.

This strategic part of the game is still fairly undeveloped, so the precise design may change.

Yep.

Are you sure you are not a machine too? 😀 Answering three posts ia a row, AND programming a game? I think there is a whole development team behind "Precursors" ( http://deep-shadows.com/en/about.php ). But unfortunatelly there is no word from them for a long time, even though they released their latest game "White Gold", in Russian speaking territories. (You might want to check "Boiling Point", a very good sandbox game).

From "Battlecruiser Millenium", and on you could do that. But it was a daunting task to come to gripps with that game, that's why it generated so much controversy. Derek Smart released "Battlecruiser Millenium" & "Universal Combat" as free downloads. (BTW his latest game "All Aspect Warfare", is something like a futuristic "ArmA II", and I find it very interesting. Derek also has the finest collection of computer games, I 've ever seen. Some 16.000 of them).

16OOO games 😯 has he ever posted any pic of his collection

Jabberwocky/kogen another question.Do you intend to have any weather effects on the planets

and a day/night sequence. ❓

Pinback check this site:

http://www.dereksmart.com/pics/08-04-03/

Thats one awesome collection of pc games he go there. 😎

Might have been a good idea to hide the tekwar one.

That's damn impressive and expensive 🙂 I wonder if he has played through everyone of them?

I have been playing around with some weather effects. Rain, snow, would love to do lightning too. We'll see if I can get it looking good enough to include in the actual game. 😉

I'm not planning on a day/night sequence. I considered it, but decided against it because I found the skies usually looked better with hand-crafted art, rather than a programmatic transition between day and night. Plus, you tend to boogey around to different planets fairly often, and I think a day/night cycle is more important for games where you're locked into a single landscape, like many fantasy RPGs.

Wow, you'd need to play 3 new games a week for 10 years. 😯

Jabberwocky or Kogen any new updates on Salvation Prophecy?

All,

Randomly browsing I noticed Salvation Prophecy has updated with a new video:

http://www.salvationprophecy.com/page.php?63

You can also get it here -

- along with all the other previous videos. 😎

Nice to see Salvation Prophecy is still moving along. The video shows off a lot of what you can do in the world and the space combat engine is pretty good from the video and its nice to get out and stretch the legs on the ground in some combat. The combat looks pretty smooth overall. Nice find Stardreamer!

Looks like they updated the website and removed all the old posts 🙁

I just got lucky this time. 😀

Jabberwocky any new updates on Salvation Prophecy?