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ScrumbleShip

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dirkson
 dirkson
(@dirkson)
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Joined: 12 years ago
Posts: 4
Topic starter April 15, 2012 16:26  

Hey all! My name is Dirkson, and I'm trying to create the most accurate space battle simulation game ever made. Its name is ScrumbleShip, and it's currently just shifting from pre-alpha to alpha.

The general idea is to re-create the classic sci-fi battles we all know and love - Several capital ships manned by massive crews dominating the battlefield, with support fighters available. Boarding actions, atmosphere venting, and realistic damage from kinetic projectiles are all planned, and damage from overheating of ship blocks is already partially implemented. The game is designed to be multiplayer, with multiple people operating one capital ship at a time.

3d damage on an organic ship. In the current version, much of the damage would heal back over in a minute or two.

[hsimg] [/hsimg]

Damage on an inorganic hull. The tower you see is the ship's bridge.

[hsimg] [/hsimg]

And here's some unedited gameplay footage from a recent version:

If you'd like to try it out, there are free demos for Windows, Lin32 and Lin64 available on ScrumbleShip.com , with Mac and Win64 versions in the works. The demo is currently pretty similar to the full game, but won't remain so! 😀

Also, this is my first time on this forum. Hi everyone!

Cheers,

-Dirkson


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TechnicalBYTE
 TechnicalBYTE
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Joined: 13 years ago
Posts: 54
May 3, 2012 03:32  

Hi Dirkson, I'm mechwarrior24 on IndieDB. Good to see you've made a post here! This game is looking better all the time- I still think it's the most promising sci fi sim yet. And besides, what other game allows you to build ships of butter? You know you want to make a ship made of butter. 😆

It's definitely worth checking out everyone!


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Pinback
 Pinback
(@pinback)
99 Star General Site Moderator
Joined: 7 years ago
Posts: 9085
May 3, 2012 11:35  

Welcome to the forum Dirkson

Is this an online game ❓


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dirkson
 dirkson
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Joined: 12 years ago
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Topic starter May 3, 2012 11:43  

It's not multiplayer/online yet, but it will be by the time I'm finished with it!

The whole goal of the thing is to allow two crews to build and fight ships against each other in the most realistic, most true-to-sci-fi, and most fun way possible : )

Cheers,

-Dirk


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DarkOne
 DarkOne
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Joined: 8 years ago
Posts: 7867
May 3, 2012 14:53  

Hi Dirkson

You mention in the game description that you can gather resources, how do you get resources to build your ship? And where is your ship when its in a construction state, can other people destroy it?

I added Scrumbleship to the game listing.


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dirkson
 dirkson
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Topic starter May 3, 2012 15:00  

Thanks DarkOne! I've already uploaded a copy of the demo to your guys' download area, but I forgot all about the Game List : )

Currently you can build without restriction. In the next version or two, though, I'll switch away from the free-build method to a "collect blocks from asteroids" method - Most any material you use will be found via the asteroid belts, though you'll also be able to purchase some materials from inhabited planets. Landing on planets is planned for a far-future expansion of ScrumbleShip, after 1.0 is released.

By default, I intend to make it so that you have to manually accept any battle request, and that battles are simulated rather than real - You and your opponent wager a sum, and at the end of the battle your ship goes back to the way it was before, with only cash changing hands. That said, real battles and lawless areas (Where real battles are default) are both going to be part of the game.

Cheers!

-Dirk


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DarkOne
 DarkOne
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Joined: 8 years ago
Posts: 7867
May 3, 2012 18:15  

Dirkson, so if your building your ship. What are you in, some sort of scout/transport while you build your own ship? I know you mention player interaction, is there any plans for NPC activity such as civilian miners and or pirates?

And just a platform question, do you plan on supporting tablets or other platforms besides PC?

Soon as I get some free time I can't wait to play around with Scrumbleship


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dirkson
 dirkson
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Topic starter May 4, 2012 09:21  

The way I envision the final game working is that you start out with a small bit of cash, on a space station. You can use the cash to buy someone else's cast off space station, buy parts to make your own, or charter a ride out to the asteroid belt.

NPC's may come eventually, but they'd likely be a post-1.0 or very late beta thing - They're not the focus of the game.

ScrumbleShip is too resource-intensive to run on anything but a computer. (As I understand consoles, they have good GPUs but sub-par CPUs) We do support Windows, linux, and eventually, Mac, though.

We'd love to have you around : ) Come say hi on the irc channel if you get a chance!

Cheers,

-Dirk


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Astrum
 Astrum
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May 30, 2012 13:59  

I just wanted to swing by here and drop a little more detail that came straight from the orange-hatted horse's mouth, because this game is incredibly exciting. 😀 Note that most of these features have yet to be implemented, and may change somewhat before release, but all have been discussed. Some particularly relevant and juicy morsels are:

Material Mining, Refining and Storage

  • Players will need to mine resources from asteroids. To mine an asteroid, you use your torch to break off a block, then either mark it for collection and toss it out of your way, or just toss it out of your way. The crew members will then swarm the asteroid, carry off the blocks, and bring them one at a time to the ship's hold, which can only hold as many of the meter-cubed blocks as it's big enough to contain.
  • Once the ore is in the hold, players and clones can take blocks to an ore refinery - a machine which breaks the raw ore into its component parts (typically iron and chondrite, among others) and spits out blocks of them once the machine collects enough.
  • The ore refinery, like any other powered device in the game, requires electricity, which can be produced by various engines and reactors (which in turn

    • require liquid, solid, or gaseous fuel), or by solar panels. ScrumbleShip subscribes to the First Law of Thermodynamics, and energy can neither be created

    nor destroyed - only transferred.

    Component Production and Power

  • Players and clones can then take these refined materials to the ship's hold(s), or to a factory to be reconfigured on an atomic level into useful ship components like railguns, thrusters, beds, rations, and “hygiene stalls.”
  • Clones perform their tasks better when they have amenities like beds and hygiene stalls.
  • These components can then be attached to the ship and hooked up to a wired/wireless power network, and/or to a pipe network for components that need a supply of matter (e.g., thrusters need a piped-in supply of fuel to burn and expel).
  • Wire networks must include energy-producing components (like fusion reactors) and storing components (like batteries) for them to power any component on the network.
  • Similarly, a pipe network must be attached to a tank or hold full of fuel for it to supply fuel to the ship's drives - fuel which the drives will deplete according to how hard they work.

    • Hot Hot Heat

  • The game is the first of its kind that will feature a realistic heat transfer engine! The heat transfer engine is already 90% written, with all the hard problems solved.
  • Fire a laser into a ship made of butter, and watch it melt pitifully away. Fire that same laser into a ship made of tungsten, and the hull will take much more abuse before melting, if it does at all. Shoot a laser at a ship with a hull of diamond, and it will pass right through!
  • The amount of energy you put into powering a laser will determine the amount of heat energy it can output. Hook a laser up to a fusion reactor and a whole bank of batteries, and watch it slash through armor with ease.
  • Certain materials are very good at distributing heat, which results in much of the outer hull of the ship absorbing heat energy until it finally melts, rather than concentrating it at the impact point and allowing a hole to be melted.
  • The engine works on more than weapons damage too - heat dissipation will be a major issue inside any ship, as heat does not dissipate well in a vacuum. The heat from the ship's own systems, from diesel engines to fusion reactors, can be its own worst enemy, and can melt players and hulls alike; a smart ScrumbleShipwright will design with heat dissipation in mind.

    • Use the Force

  • Not only will the game feature a fully functional heat engine, it will employ a force transfer engine as well, allowing ships' hulls to buckle, shear, and crack realistically under the force of kinetic weapons, missiles, collisions, and even a ship's own acceleration.

    • Fun with Physics

  • The physics engine will be fully Newtonian.
  • Ship flight will take place in six degrees of freedom (player movement on foot takes place in 4DoF to make movement and building easier, both from a player perspective and a coding perspective - and to prevent motion sickness).
  • Each player character and clone has his or her own inertia, which can result in crew slipping to the rear of the ship when it accelerates hard, or splattering on bulkheads when the ship comes to a sudden stop (e.g., ramming another vessel). That's what crash couches are for.

    • Multiplayer

  • As development progresses, the game will become increasingly multiplayer-based. In the first multiplayer modes to be implemented, gameplay will center on battles between two or more player-designed ships. Multiple players may also man the same vessel.
  • Players will wager money on the outcome of the fight, and battles will be fought in different gameplay modes: capture the captain’s terminal, last man standing, and modes where victory is based on the value of damage done are all contemplated.
  • As development progresses, the game will take on an open world feel, with each server comprising a solar system, and all servers stitched together by player-owned warp gate space stations. The servers will be represented as a system map.
  • Some servers/systems will be designated as safe zones, where battles can take place by request only, and damage is only simulated (unless the players choose otherwise). Other servers, however, will be lawless zones where battles can occur at any time, and damage is permanent. Only visit these systems if you like to play for keeps.

    • Shipbuilding

  • Although ScrumbleShip is, on its face, a blockbuilder, building a ship won't be a matter of simply plunking down as many blocks as a player has in his bottomless inventory: each player and clone will be able to carry one block at a time (they're a cubic meter in volume, for crying out loud)!
  • Players will "build" a blueprint of their ship, choosing what material and which blocks will go where, and freely laying down placeholder blocks in the traditional blockbuilder style. However, these blocks are ephemeral, and merely serve as a guide for where the clones and/or player will place the actual blocks as they are produced through the methods described above, or purchased or gifted from other players.
  • The clones will swarm over the ship and assemble it, placing the appropriate blocks into the blueprint, building the ship piece by piece - much as they disassemble asteroids.
  • You might occasionally find remnants of an ancient civilization embedded in asteroids. For those lucky enough to find them, asembling these relics will allow you to construct an entirely separate type of spacefaring ship.

    • The Damage System

  • All weapons damage in the game takes place on the individual voxel, rather than cube, level. This allows for very high resolution damage detection and modelling, which results in realistic gashes and holes being punched and scored in ships, based on both the kinetic and heat energy carried by weapons.
  • Player characters and clones are subject to the same voxel-based damage system, and stress and heat engines, as the rest of the ship's components. Dismemberment, vaporization, suffocating, starving, and dying inflated like the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man in the cold void of space are only some of the ways a clone or player character can go out.

    • BATTLE!

  • There are as many ways to deal death and damage to the opponent as you can dream up - the player will be limited only by his imagination.
  • Design a ship with a small boarding craft attached, fill that boarding craft with clones holding laser rifles, and send it over to board the enemy ship.
  • Or, take that same boarding craft, fill it with hydrogen, send a luckless clone to drill into the enemy's hull, flood the enemy ship with hydrogen, and

    • detonate.

  • Create pods full of explosives mounted in a hold on explosive bolts, and jettison them out the rear to act as mines.
  • Not to mention the standard tools of the trade, like railguns, gauss guns, and lasers, the power level and ammunition of which you control; missiles with

    • payloads of your choice; and much more.

    I could go on, but I'll stop here for now. Suffice it to say, ScrumbleShip will be the single most realistic and fun space sim ever devised. Watch this one closely!


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