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User137
30-03-2012, 10:08 PM
Ok, that's not real project name, propably... i haven't thought of it yet.

But here's something, can you call it "eye candy"? ;D I thought to try something completely new for 3D parallax background. It's actually roughly 80 objects total in the picture, can you spot them?

WILL
30-03-2012, 11:51 PM
First competition thread, congrats!

Nope don't see much other than your ship. I'm guessing that they are very very far away in other solar systems? ;)

User137
31-03-2012, 05:45 PM
Nope, each star in the screenshot was not a dot, but neither was it a big background picture. It consisted of "parallax background sprites"... However i came to conclusion that this will not work for me, because the camera is 360 degrees in all directions. Current implementation is going for cubemap, but i might make more than 1 layer, will see...

So how much is it ok to reveal about the project? Naturally i'm using my nxPascal library to make this :) At this point it'll propably be a RTS, and no clear character or a single player owned ship to speak of. As for travelling criteria filling, i'd still think i could manage that. Then again, just trying my best not to put the bar too high for myself so that this would finish.

WILL
31-03-2012, 09:19 PM
An RTS would be interesting, but how would you fit in traveling from location to location?

User137
31-03-2012, 10:37 PM
There are a few AI controlled races, and each player has a number of ships they can divide between planets. Each planet being the source of resources of construction is also a sight on its own. They will be visually big and noticable, each different for as far as i can graphically do. Each star system may have their own perks to have unique looks, so that it may feel a little different to have a major fight in system A than B. Color of the sun makes some of the atmosphere.

And what travels; camera does, limited to what player has vision of, but ships should be quite a interesting sight as they enter and leave warp space to their destinations. They are the real travellers. Camera might lock to one of the player's ships, maybe at all times. It might be the only way to ensure that the camera isn't focusing places it shouldn't.

But yeah, definition of "location" is a little vague in this case. In game like this it's not an issue at all to have 100 different locations. Maybe what decides is unique locations. Maybe blackholes, wormholes or other natural wonders that might be the key to change the game in player's favor. Thinking too big again... :D

Ñuño Martínez
08-04-2012, 12:56 PM
Hello. Any progress this week? ::)

User137
08-04-2012, 02:13 PM
Humm, not much to mention. Playing other games is my biggest problem... Not sure if i can get this done. Some work is done in the game code, and UI graphics. I have sort of almost full picture in mind what the game would look like, but that's about it. I'm not good at designing things on paper... or more concretic level.

WILL
08-04-2012, 08:00 PM
Not sure if a traveling camera would do it. :) But the ships in your game traveling between the planets (ala RTS form of conquest) could constitute the traveling aspect that you need to be 'in theme' for the challenge.

Maybe enforcing the theme into the gaem more by making the player actually 'invade' each of their planets as well? Once their main base / command center is defeated or something? That idea seems win/win because you can stick to the RTS theme with it and by all definition it's still traveling from location to location. Just make sure that you have at least 3 of them :)

User137
09-04-2012, 09:22 AM
Day or 2 ago i ended up with thought that each player has a mothership. That's what the camera will focus on, and that's what is used to populate new planets. With the time limits i might end up with just 1 type of combat ship and auto-combat. Toggled with limited amount of diplomacy.

User137
12-04-2012, 09:31 AM
Another screenshot added. Solar system is generated for 10000 sectors, although not all of them are guaranteed to have a sun or planets. This is last screeny i can give out before starting adding UI elements, which will be nearing the final product... There are also 10 different planet textures in use, although the texture mapping is wobbly on the sphere for now. Maybe i could generate the sphere myself, instead of relying on model file. Would at least get the coords right.

I had a setback with fonts. Installed some free scifi front from Internet but only Gimp can use it >:( TCanvas and MsPaint can't use. I could create buttons with Gimp but i can't make the font map for all texts.

edit: Added another picture from UI work in progress.

Hoping to add warp drive soon. Starmap is working, and i will use it to open sector view. From there player can open warp rift and send selected ships there. This is done by clicking any point in the sector, meaning that he can precisely decide how far or which side of the planet you want to come out from. Textures for all warp related are already done.

Still, there are a few unsolved issues in the design of this game that i hope can come to conclusion.

User137
16-04-2012, 10:30 PM
Here's a little teaser of what's it like:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0s5VpotO2zo

paul_nicholls
17-04-2012, 02:48 AM
Neato! Keep up the great work dude! :)

Eric
17-04-2012, 06:28 AM
Nice start!

What's the gameplay genre going to be?

de_jean_7777
17-04-2012, 06:58 AM
That looks great.

Ñuño Martínez
17-04-2012, 07:33 PM
So, you move the camera around the vessel to look at the direction you want to go and then press a button to change the ship's route, isn't it?

User137
17-04-2012, 10:44 PM
Yeah, it moves forward to camera direction with W key... or that's how it works right now. Not sure if i'll remain like that after i've added more ships to player control. I might do a bounding box selection and right click move order. That would need little further zoom. Also, i did notice in the video that camera looks very rough, and can be smoothened by using a destination turn angle and then animate the rotation.

edit: Then in the vid you saw how i set warp destination, and the button suddenly became enabled. This mode of flying will be fully automated and not interruptible with player controls.

But that's still little open design, because combat ships might, and most likely will, be fully automated. With this i wouldn't actually need to select ships. I was thinking that only purpose of shipyard would be to assign current sector ships to either planet defence, or join the player fleet.

Didn't show well in the video, but starmap highlighted the current star system, and warp destination... because... you want to know where you are ;)

The planets have a type, which was also slightly seen in the vid. There are 10 types, from which 4 don't support life, and rest will be classed in different quality which will determine building rate of new ships for player disposal. For example a desert and ocean planets are still feasible, but not optimal for industry.

Jimmy Valavanis
18-04-2012, 12:48 PM
Looks great!

WILL
19-04-2012, 03:44 AM
Very impressive! The Navigational Map is great. And from my count, you might make the maximum bonus for re-visitable locations. ;)

Can't wait to see what the gameplay will be like though. You have a pretty good established base to build it up now from at least.

User137
26-04-2012, 06:43 PM
Smoothened all camera controls, and finetuned ship movement to feel more like you are actually handling a ship. There's now WSAD controls, with strafing and ship stop. Enemy homeworlds added to game... And finally new elements to the map; system view has planets, and galaxy map shows a fading zoom-in special effect on current star system.

Little by little coming together, just few more features to be able to neglibly call it a game :D

User137
28-04-2012, 07:13 PM
Released 0.1 version in the ftp, just to get feet on the door before competition closes ;) Ok, maybe there is still over 24 hours time left, but i can still upload new versions later, right?

It's still heavily in progress, although the main thing, travelling is done. I hope you like the warpdrive. Mothership is slightly different and bigger from the normal combat ship, and also, while exploring v0.1 you will find enemy ships in unknown systems. They just don't do anything. All ships in same systam as player is in, have highlighted crosshair in the map.

WILL
28-04-2012, 10:16 PM
Glad you got something in early just in case. If you want to upload a newer version, just make sure you number it higher than the previous one. This will help if you do submit a few extra to make maximum use of the time left so we know which is the latest.

Good luck in the final stretch!

User137
29-04-2012, 05:48 PM
Here's video from v0.2 (it's actual ingame musics, not separately added to video):


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMGrShgj-AM

It is not finished but it might remain final version for the contest.

Ingemar
29-04-2012, 06:06 PM
Here's video from v0.2 (it's actual ingame musics, not separately added to video):


That warp effect is enough to make it worthwhile. Very good.

WILL
30-04-2012, 03:39 AM
Wow, that's really awesome! Don't think I've ever seen that cool of a real-time visual effect for a space warp done in a game before. BTW you may have an extra 2 days, if noone objects to an extension. You could add something more to your entry if you want.

BTW I like some of the videos that you guys are posting on YouTube. Would you be willing to upload them to the FTP site under a 'videos' folder? It would really help me to make a promotional video down the road for the event. It's also nice to show off your guys great work like this. And you guys really do deserve all the credit for it. :)

User137
30-04-2012, 09:31 AM
The video is 62Mb in size, and always available from Youtube as i made that public. But i can upload it if it helps :)

Maybe i could finish the combat in extended time. The v3 is for now buggy in a way that (new) healthbars and attack button are flashing... AI engages in combat from place that is not intentional, and counterattack system fires up. Notices that no ships in system and stops combat, all repeatedly many times per second :D

WILL
30-04-2012, 09:49 AM
PGD has no space limits these days. Not for something like that. And it does help a lot so I would really appreciate the contribution of that great footage to show off. As a video file I can convert and cut my own community ads from it and use it to promote the community more. Plus not having to record it myself gives me more time to the compilation and showcasing rather than gathering. :)

Yeah if you've met all the goals, which from the video it seems you have, playability and gameplay would be a good priority I think.

User137
18-06-2012, 11:26 AM
Ok contest is over, but game can still be improved regardless :) Got some of that done today, but man... the combat bug is really persistent. I will have to debug it very deep to find it. I even restructured the AI in general to be more easily readable, and logical. Ships do really get destroyed now and i can capture planets in enemy ownership, sometimes... But even my own fleet ships start moving to undesired places on their own, that goes beyond reason :D

- Travelling within same solar system is no longer instant, wasn't meant to be.
- Map remembers the last system that player opened, and cannot open "system view" of empty space.
- Music is looping properly.
- All ships health regenerates slowly.
- Warp start is making engines glow brighter and brighter until it jumps.

User137
29-06-2012, 02:35 PM
Finally fixed. Simple thing like ship owner uninitialized ::) Conquered the entire galaxy in a test game now. Combat works and AI seems to properly fight with each other too, and it's sending its fleet to random planets nearly like player does. Could be better, but works... and i'll propably leave it at that.

LP
29-06-2012, 04:07 PM
The project seems promising, although you may want to use a different name (http://www.mobygames.com/game/star-reach) due to trademark issues and use that ingame song with caution, as it is quite popular (http://modarchive.org/index.php?request=view_by_moduleid&query=47339) and is also copyright protected - you might want to check with the song's author first.

User137
29-06-2012, 05:04 PM
I checked the rights on the music site, they should be free to use anywhere. But whatever, until someone complains about simple contest entry, i'll call it Star Wars if want to ;) Just small games with no real meaning to anyone, just demos.

LP
29-06-2012, 05:57 PM
I checked the rights on the music site, they should be free to use anywhere. But whatever, until someone complains about simple contest entry, i'll call it Star Wars if want to ;) Just small games with no real meaning to anyone, just demos.
Yes, although I'd say that your game has a selling potential. :)