Hey Charlatan and your no longer a lurker 🙂

Thanks for the update on your upcoming project 'Black Warp: Star Runners'. And I really do tailor to the indie devs so if you wanted a dedicated forum area for your development just let me know.

Couple questions before the wish list:

1. Is this going to be a 2D or 3D game?

2. Is this going to be only on the PC or other platforms?

3. And will the game have a open sandbox game design?

These are only my wants in a game of this type:

- I'm a huge sucker for a great background story and great story telling elements throughout the game. Maybe my attention span is getting less and less as I age, but if the game lacks something to keep me playing like a good story that has some depth I might loose interest.

- Since the game sounds more merchant trader based than action. There has to be a dynamic economy where your actions matter. So you hear across your news feed that X colony needs a certain resource because of some event. Now if you make it there in time you save the day but if you don't something bad happens to the colony. And make it stay that way until they rebuild.

- Illegal activity is a must. Give us the ability to scan ships holds, hack banks/outposts or even ability to try to steal goods while docked. Its nice to have some of these elements to the game especially since the game may not be to combat focused. makes you feel like your living on the edge and just biding your time until you get caught.

- You said that thus far the humans haven't found much life. So you can also have some nice exploration and have it be rewarding where you might be the person negotiating with new species and possibly setting up trade. So in the end you profit from your venture and expense of exploration.

- Take a little from the X series where you can purchase/build outposts that sell or mine materials for you to make money. But also make this more hands off and let them manage themselves.

- We can move around the ship... let us have a crew that we can train and increase their expertise in certain areas. Plus its lonely moving around a ship with no one on it 🙂

- Not looking for endless game play but the universe should be large enough that you can have a sense of exploration. Let's say 1/2 of the systems are charted and the others await you.

- Customizable ships and ship systems.

- Mission system that builds on the happenings in the story and mission success/failure actually has an effect on the systems effected.

With there being less focus on combat and more on the other you just need to provide the 'little things' that will make people want to play your game. Yes you said it is free and that always helps, but what you want is people talking about your game 10-20yrs from now 🙂 I was really hoping that Star Trek Online was going to scratch my itch of exploration and it failed badly. Your missions have no effect on the universe at all.

Games don't need to have cutting edge gfx to be successful they need uniqueness and game play. Can't wait to read more on your efforts Charlatan and hope that SSC's community can help you make this game the best it can be. And there is a few artists here as well that could lend a hand.

-D1-

Wow, fantastic post Darkone. Thanks a lot! I'll run down the list and clarify things:

1. Is this going to be a 2D or 3D game?

I should have mentioned, but it's full 3D in first-person.

2. Is this going to be only on the PC or other platforms?

PC and Mac. I'm primarily a PC user, but you have no idea how frustrated I was trying to find good free mac games when my wife got her laptop. So it's more of a personal mission to make sure I release on mac.

3. And will the game have a open sandbox game design?

Yes! Elite and the like are a huge inspiration for me, so I definitely want to cater to that crowd. One note though, it's not "infinite space" as in, fly as far as you want. There are distinct sectors you warp to. This will help keep it to a manageable scale, and allow higher quality zones. I'm still up in the air as far as landing on planets. It would be amazing, and we've seen Infinity and Evochron handle it well, but as this is a hobby project I can't guarantee I have the will to invest the amount of effort it will take to pull it off. The number of games that do that can be counted on one hand - because it's freakin' hard!

Definitely a focus for me.

Sounds like a great idea. Adheres to the fiction-driven focus, so that's good

Absolutely. It's a tough galaxy and you'll do whatever you have to do, to keep flying.

For now the plan is to keep it human, but that's something to consider. (I've been watching a lot of TNG lately so I may change my mind :))

I already had plans for probes you could launch, that would sit in space and keep track of events. More passive, but I like the idea of them doing the work for you.

That's definitely something I've been thinking about. Character animation/AI is a huge can of worms that I don't know I'll be able to get to (not if I ever want to finish this thing), but it's something I am back-and-forth on. Probably not in the near future of development.

Absolutely.

The plan right now is you get one ship. It's YOUR ship. You saved up your entire life to earn the credits for the ship. Boats aren't cheap. Also, since the entire interior is open for exploration, I can't feasibly build dozens of ship types. But you absolutely will be able to customize the components of the ship (weapons, tools, decorations, etc).

.

That is the plan.

Thanks a lot, some good material there 🙂

Myself, not looking for total 3D interaction with the crew. You can just see them at there stations and or walking about the ship would be great. But if resources and time permits just the ability to bring up a page of your crew members and dig into their abilities would be excellent. And like some other games have the ability to get new crew members and pay them wages for their abilities which gain in experience in your travels.

Take a look at this game and the crew system used here, something like this is good maybe with some tweaks.

http://www.metalbeetle.com/spaceexploration/

Hello Charlaton should we be worried by that tag. 😆

I assume that there will only be one ship in the game as you say you want to be able to walk around it.

First thing I think you should do is download a copy of Sundog and a copy of Steam the Atari ST emulator and have a look at what FTL did with regard to inside and ship systems as I don’t think anyone has done it better.

Will game have fuel ❓

Hi Charlaton, welcome to the SSC 😀 Good luck with your project! Please keep us updated on your progress. 🙂

Ha! No, it's just a random name. Actually it was the hostname for a slackware box I had years ago.

Nice link on the Sundog. That looks great! Looks like I have some research to do. Reminds me a lot of Privateer: Ascii Sector (which is a great influence to me gameplay wise. Very cool!!!) http://www.asciisector.net/

Oh, that is very cool. I'll have to download that and investigate. Seeing all these indie space games makes me so joyful 🙂

Ascii Sector is great example of attention to detail and great to see Christian moving the project to another level with v0.7.0.

On the 'fuel' option. I think it adds to some realism to manage certain things on your ship (ie: fuel, provisions, parts, etc..). Because being a trader/merchant is a rough life and being low on something is water could effect the crew or maybe ship systems depending on your coolant systems. You escaped those pesky pirates trying to get at your holds, but you paid the cost and your now limping along and you run to planet/outpost X is going to be a bust if you don't make it by your deadline.

These types of things could really play a factor in your decision making as well. Same with 'weight' of cargo and ship as a whole with they amount of fuel you consume. Now that you have taken the cargo run and your at the port getting everything loaded you have a choice to make... fly with basic loadout and make it with some time to spare but if you hit a snag your screwed or carry only the essentials and go for speed to get there quick and hopefully out run pirates.

So many little things to think about 🙂

I think if you are going to able to move around the ship then there has to be a good reason for doing it

Here a vid showing then shunts use to repair the various subsystem in Sundog, the shunts are only a temp repair until the player buys a replacement part .

Also some of the StarTrek games have the ability to move energy from one system to another, eg life support to shields’ IIRC did not I War 2 also have it.

I would also say that fuel adds a tactical layering to the game as in, do I use all my fuel to jump to that far away but safe system or do I go the close but dangerous system with enough fuel to jump out if things get too hot. This is one of reasons why Elite even will always be a better game than the X games.

Thanks for that Pinback! That is exactly the type of thing I'm working on. 🙂

Also, fuel is a precious resource. All the points you guys made is valid. Also, it will help me mitigate people attempting to fly off into the black rather than warp to sectors. (Thinking warp energy and engine fuel would be seperate. Can't warp without fuel, but you can fly without warp energy. )

So if I have this right the player will only have one ship and the fuel makes warp energy which powers the ship, so the only way the player will be able to increase the range of the ship is to add bigger fuel tanks. seems to me that this might have an impact on the design of the ship, I think there could be 3 possible solutions to it.

1 A self contained hull were every thing fits in, ie just ignore the problem

2 The bridge at one end and the engines at the other with a long spindle in the middle, where cargo pods fuel tanks ect are fitted onto the ship some thing like discovery from 2001.

3 The bridge is a self contained unit which plugs into bigger hulls with more space for cargo/fuel.

Cool ideas! As for the main ship, I was thinking about the fuel being a gel-like liquid that is stored in a massive piped coil. The fuel actually acts as a heat-sink for the engines or some other justifiable nonsense that i'll figure out later. Basically though, the fuel tanks are large flat cylinders that can be stacked for increased capacity. That's just one idea based off the ship designs i'm working on.

If you guys know any good ship designers I'd love to get some concepts. I'm looking for more industrial, worker class stuff, minor civillian craft. Eventually millitary stuff too (space cops!) Stylistically though, I"m trying to steer away from hyper-sleek stuff like you might find in star trek. More Firefly/Millenium falcon, if you get my meaning.

That heat sink idea reminds me when I was marooned in a cargo ship several clicks from nearest port for three days together with the other 26 crews... Just because there was an emergency so we needed to dump our water supply (not sea water with salt but simple H2O). Unfortunately the water was distributed in the ship via round about way all over the generator to act as coolant, without coolant the generator couldn't run, so we got three days blackout in a freighter... doing nothing but fishing while waiting for a tug towing a water tank. We trade some pitiful amount of water from passing ships but just enough for minimal dehydration-prevention but not enough to fill the tank, not even the two minutes shower.

So with that background I'm thinking about auxiliary system that is a must-have under the header of life support, so when emergency comes, the crew wont die.

Btw, Millenium Falcon has an oversized engine, just like Pride of Mandeyn. If you can't outshot the bad (or sometimes the good) guy, you have the option to outrun them. This will need an additional slot for custom stuff installation.

PS: Have you read some scifi books dealing with space with heavy dose of semi-technical stuff? I think it could give you some ideas about possible space ship system by comparing one author with another, albeit fictions.

Have a look through solcommander thread show-off-f55/models-giveaway-t622.html or on his blog http://solcommand.blogspot.com/ Also Google pics of work by Chris Foss and Syd Mead .

Hey folks! I've had a bit of a break for real life/real job, but I'm back on semi-steady work now. I will have the dev blog up and running hopefully very soon, and with that I'll start showing the first media.

I'm following a very bottom-up approach to building this game. Getting the core mechanics in place using very crappy temp art and shaders/graphic effects. If it feels great now, then when I add the other "cool stuff", it will feel even better.

You guys will be happy to know I got the on-ship FPS control system worked out, so now you can fully walk around the ship freely. It's pretty much the coolest thing I've ever done 😛

Look forward to seeing the it

The ability to walk around in your ship, in first person?

That is the most awesome thing I have ever heard in my entire life.

Will there be portholes that you can look out of and see the ship's surroundings?

Absolutely! The captains quarters has a nice little window with a view as well.

FYI in case people are curious: Although I'll probably never get around to multiplayer, the ship is built as a 5-10man vessel (read: Firefly), so there are all the normal ship elements. Pilot's quarters, captains quarters, general crew bunks, cargo bay, engineering/engine bay, galley, etc. I've been tossing around the idea of a small personal computer terminal that runs along a track throughout the main rooms of the ship. Basically, it will run along its track and follow you around, allowing you to commit basic ship controls from wherever you are. Not unlike Gerty from the movie "Moon", though its much much smaller and not an AI, just a computer. It also serves as a messaging station for communicating with other vessels while not on the bridge, or being notified when you're about to crash into an asteroid field.

Can't wait to see what you have accomplished so far Charlatan. On the access to the computer are you going to do something like just have some basic terminals in various sections of the ship? And if you decide to do a system like in Moon why not just go a bit further and do the star trek approach and just let you talk to your computer 🙂 Might be easier to code because then you could use text prompts and the computer answers back with a popup window... just some thoughts.

Cool ideas DarkOne.

Ok, it's not the most exciting media.. ACTUAL STUFF COMING SUPER SOON!!

But I threw together some logo imagery that will be used for the blog.

This is done in 3d and will be the animated intro to the game or trailer or something.

[hsimg] [/hsimg]

The spacey stuff in the background is from a good friend of mine who will be providing all the fantastic backgrounds in the game. You can find some of his work here:

http://redxen.deviantart.com/

Looks very good I definitely need some classes to do some artwork like that. Checked out that gallery and there is some nice art in there.

Well you seem to have some good ideas already which if completed would put this well on the way to becoming 'dream' space game.

But add Newtonian/Realistic physics and space-flight to the mix and I think it will be one big step closer. 🙂

A realistic selection of weaponry would be nice too. Most games have such a limited selection, it would be nice to have multiple choices in how to engage the enemy. You could have the 3 basics, variations of ballistic weapons, Directed energy weapons (particle cannons, laser beams) and missile weapons. But use many variations of each. As well as many missiles with varying functions, some are traditional explode, some might surround the ship like a Tholian web 😉

Atmospheric flight model and seamless planetary landings would be very nice too.

How about a modular ship design system? You could have the basic ship hulls, and add a selection of various parts, all of which are upgradable but the ship would change visually too?

Engines, coolant, weapons, shields, armor ect all these might be visible changes.

I second the modular ship thing. this type of stuff always gets me drooling like an idiot 😕

oh, nice art on yer deviantart page btw. also got me drooling. i think i need a bucket or something...

My biggest complaint is the lack of feeling of being apart of a universe and that your actions matter... For me I almost want a strategy game in a 3d world... Take this for example;

Say you blow up a transport ship, well I want it to matter that you blew up that transport ship... Now X race doesn't have the materials they needed from that transport ship. It doesnt have to be overblown with menus but make the economy matter not just spawn another ship in a random 5-10 minutes... Keep track of the resources, how many asteroids they own, how many space stations they have... If they don't have the resources to make another Destroyer they can't unless maybe the player has all the resources so they either attack the player to try and get them back or bite the bullet and make peace with the player to maybe try to establish some sort of trade route.

I saw alot of story based things in here... and the problem with that is it creates linearity... If I try to go off the beaten path does the story change? I mean yea Lost Planet, best story I have played maybe ever, great acting and what-not but guess what? Now that it is over I have absolutely no inclination to play it again... X series... absolute horrible story but even after years I still load it up and play it time and again, (until some mechanic of the GOD engine pisses me off).

Now a way around that is giving a story but maybe only offering certain story lines under certain conditions... say you attack race Y and make them your enemy, well you can't do a certain mission with them but another story opens up... Which is hard to do but at the same time I would much rather take an open environment and being able to create your own story than one that is written in stone that you have to follow...

With that same concept make the player able to do crazy things... One of my favorite things to do in Doom was get the Imps and the other demons to attack eachother, while you just sit back and marvel at the chaos you created... make it realistic if you attack some lonely ship in the outskirts of the universe and nobody is around, who knows who killed them? Maybe if you are in good standing with that race they will just assume it was random pirates...

I dunno that is just my take on it...

That sounds complicated to code. It would be beyond awesome, though.

I'm disappointed when I stealthily kill a member of a faction, in a game, and the entire faction knows about it.

It's like they're omnipresent or something.

But realistic enough to be able to provoke a galactic war? It would be an instant classic, in my opinion anyway.

I would try to make a peaceful coalition to advance technology, and use that to get an awesome planet destroying capital ship. Then I'd start a galactic war. 😈