SpaceSimCentral

Hi!I'm new here, but I wanted to show you a little project of mine.It's called "Lone Star" and the best fitting description is "2D Top Down Newtonian Space Sim / RPG... Engine".I say it's an engine because altough I have made the game thoroughly moddeable, I'm a sucky game designer So, for now, it's more like a sandbox in distress: waiting for it's prince charming.Current features:Accurate gravity model.Somewhat accurate air resistance.A dumb but lovable AI to pilot ships (Several personalities: Pirate, Trader, etc)Procedurally generated seamless universes (Or not, it's your call)Nebulae generator.SVG or PNG gfx support.Scripteable missions (Powered by Gamemonkey!)Real asteroid mining. (As in "I'll chop them down to pieces!" mining)Scripting console ingame.LAN support (Only chat and cooperative world creation through the ingame console for the moment)Extra Vehicular Activities! (You can even grab the little asteroid pieces with your EVA suit and push them towards your ship)Space stations (Based on X series)Inventory/Trading support.3D Audio!And some more!Here's a video I made of an old version. Lots of stuff has changed, but the spirit is there :)If you want to download it (Free as in "Glad to get some feedback" =p), go here. It weights less than 2 Mb and has a ton of documentation.I decided to post this because it's my first serious game as an indie (I work profesionally in consoles), I did this in my ever shrinking free time for the past three years and I have reached a point where I can't find the spark while working with it.If you want to do something with this and it doesn't involve coding, do so freely (Altough I would love to hear from you).If you are a programmer with new ideas or you need me to code something new into it, we can talk. Try and have some fun =)

Hi OnimatrixAnd welcome to SSC and thanks for letting everyone know about your project. Your list of features is great. I have a couple of questions after watching the video and maybe I missed the text popups explaining the game. I saw that the red lasers were cutting the asteroids but what does the blue/purple ones do? Could you have attacked the mining ship?In the video the ship/asteroid physics are great. Do you have a website for Lone Star? Want to add your game to my growing list.I tried to play version 7a and think I am having some issues because nothing really happens after I click 'Dev Playground' here is the lonestar.log file (I am running 64x Win7 btw):
Code:
HGE Started..HGE version: 1.80Date: 16.12.2010, 23:14:41Application: Lone Star v0.7a - 15/08/10 - [Anniversary Version]OS: Windows 6.1.7600Memory: 4192760K total, 2993452K freeD3D Driver: atiumdag.dllDescription: ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series Version: 8.14.10.678Can't find appropriate full screen video modeMode: 1024 x 600 x UNKNOWNInit done.Initializing game...Initializing font...System start!Error: Invalid game state!Error: Invalid game state!Initializing ENet...ENet initialized!Deleting g_MGO...Setting b2WorldAABB...Creating b2world...

Hi!Blue and purple "lasers" are traction and repulsion beams. I made them so that they push/pull from the point of contact, so you can make something turn uncontrollably by pushing and pulling at the same time =PThe only damaging weapons as of this moment is the mining laser.You shouldn't have problems with Win7 or x64, the game log is clean (Those errors are only tests I make before running the game). Still, I'm sorry. I forgot that 0.7a needed some special help You see, from the main menu you have three buttons. Load Universe XML asks you for the name (Without extension) of a universe file in the universe folder.This is the fastest way to play with Lone Star game objects, as there's a lot of documentation regarding the universe xml format. You can put "comm" here to try the comm system, you can put "mine" to try mining, you can put "proc" here to see the nebulae. For a sad example of the pirating AI, try putting "dog" here.Dev's playground on the other hand, gives you a blank universe to be filled by using the ingame console.To add, for example, a ship controlled by you, you only need to:1) Open the console (Press Backspace ingame).2) Type > character first, so Lone Star knows it's a script command.3) Type ship., to access all ship related functions. (Note the final dot)4) Type Add(, as we are trying to add one ship to the universe. (It's a function, use parentheses)5) Type "nameofyourship", , so we can use it as an ID to change it's properties later.6) Type "fighter", , to build a specific ship model (You can see/add/del models from the ships folder and ships.xml)7) Type 0, 0), to build it in position 0, 0 (And there are no more parameters).8) Type ;, because it's the end of the command.9) Press ENTER, to acknowledge the command.
Code:
>ship.Add("nameofyourship", "fighter", 0, 0);
This will give you a ship, named "nameyourship", of model "fighter" positioned in 0, 0.If you want to sit in the cockpit, you need to do this:1) Open your console again, put another > at the beginning.2) Type "nameofyourship"., because we want to drive THAT ship (Also, don't forget to put the quotation marks enclosing all strings).3) Type SetInput();, because that's the function that put us in control and it doesn't need any parameters.
Code:
>"nameofyourship".SetInput();
Please note that if you need help while scripting, you only have to ask the game for it by using the Help function.
Code:
>Help();
Gives you all the different game objects.
Code:
>Help(gameObject);
Gives you a list of all functions related to that gameObject (ship, station, planet, black_hole, etc).And that's that.If you need more help, I'm more than willing to write my fingers off. This up here is the first piece of useful feedback I've got in the last three years (And the game has been downloaded more than a thousand times).