Stars reach

[User137]

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"? 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]

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]

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]

An RTS would be interesting, but how would you fit in traveling from location to location?

[User137]

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...

[Ñuño Martínez]

Hello. Any progress this week?

[User137]

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]

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]

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]

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.