Space Trader (working title)

**Tsunami** · 10-04-2010, 06:44 PM

A few screenies to start:

The rather sparse main menu
Pirates take down a police ship
A heavily-outnumbered police defending an asteroid base

What is it?

Basically an Elite/Freelancer style game written in Delphi 2007. I've been working on it for a while casually, and it's been a 2D top-down game for most of its lifetime, but last year I decided to get more serious about programming, get better at the language, and teach myself OpenGL and GLSL. It doesn't actually *do* much yet but I've finished a lot of the engine stuff, and while it's far from finished, I'm taking a break from that to work on the fun gameplay-type stuff.

What I've got at the moment is the basic engine and the game which includes a faction system, simple combat AI that dodges attacks, patrols, and fires weapons intelligently, several types of weapons, dockable stations, and a WIP mining system. Multiplayer is in there but broken - I have a system based on DelphiX's DirectPlay that is disabled while I look for a better replacement.

The plan is that the finished game will be similar to Frontier or Freelancer, but with more RPG-like elements - something that would have made Freelancer's multiplayer much more enjoyable. That'll probably take the form of ship upgrades, crew experience, and character customization. I've got a class system planned out and the eventual aim is to have either a story-driven campaign or randomly generated missions for each profession.

Aaaand... that's my current project! Any feedback?

**phibermon** · 10-04-2010, 07:37 PM

It's looking really nice

I'm a massive fan of elite style games, I would love to see somebody attempt the procedural world and galaxy generation of the frontier and first encouters games

let me know when you have a demo to play with!

**Tsunami** · 10-04-2010, 07:53 PM

Will do

Regarding procedural generation I think I'll probably go for the Elite 2 approach, ie have a bunch of main systems that I've designed and then a big chunk of procedurally generated stuff beyond that.

**chronozphere** · 10-04-2010, 07:59 PM

This looks quite good.

How long have you been working on this?

I'd like to try it when it's finished.

**phibermon** · 10-04-2010, 08:53 PM

that's a good idea

I've not much experience in procedural generation, but it amazes me that all those years ago, in pure machine code, (re-written for multiple systems!!) david braben managed to achive such a milestone! the seemless transitions between space and planet has still yet to be beaten. Oooh and if you don't know about it already, search for 'ffeD3d', some russian coders decompiled and extended Frontier : First Encounters (Elite 3) with direct3d (obviously) and all new models, few rendering techniques etc

They still rely on a hell of a lot of machine code from the original decompilation however, they can't really make it next gen without, pretty much, a re-write.

But satisfying to play to say the least

**Tsunami** · 10-04-2010, 09:37 PM

I was pretty hooked on a fan-made OpenGL (I think?) version of Frontier 2 many years ago... that's a big influence on me

Originally Posted by chronozphere

This looks quite good.

How long have you been working on this?

This version, around 6 months, mostly weekends as I am at university. I first tried to make it as a 2D point-and-click adventure-type game in Delphi 3 after I first played Freelancer - that was 2003, I was 13

**WILL** · 10-04-2010, 09:58 PM

Woah! Too cool. I LOVED Freelancer. I think you've got yourself a fan already.

Will you be planning on adding a trading system like Freelancer? I enjoyed being able to take cargo from one 'sector' where it cost you X amount and be able to travel to another 'sector' where the value was up to Y amount so you can make a profit.

I also like the idea of having multiple contracts/missions/jobs you can perform throughout the who game world. If you went with online play you could then have each faction 'respond' to a successful contract against them with an equal contract back against another faction. This would add some dimension as if a heavy amount of contracts between two factions are completed it would turn into a mini-war between the two. You could also possibly have special contracts (simulating major battle/conflicts) when such a situation happens in the online managed world.

The screenies look great. I'm excited about your project for sure. Please keep us up to date on your game as it progresses. Very cool.

**Tsunami** · 11-04-2010, 06:35 PM

Thanks for the ideas WILL!

Originally Posted by WILL

Will you be planning on adding a trading system like Freelancer? I enjoyed being able to take cargo from one 'sector' where it cost you X amount and be able to travel to another 'sector' where the value was up to Y amount so you can make a profit.

That's something I definitely want to do. It'll probably be the base of one of the available career paths.

I spent a while today just tidying my entity system up into a nice neat hierarchy, which involved a lot of Find & Replace All renaming... that made it a lot easier to import ships from my ship editor, however. I also added a cockpit in first-person mode, model WIP evidently!

**WILL** · 11-04-2010, 07:10 PM

Originally Posted by Tsunami

That's something I definitely want to do. It'll probably be the base of one of the available career paths.

You could have all career paths allowing for a little bit of everything, but in some way restrict how well they can do them for those not related to their well career.

Cool ship editor. What do or will you use to design the ships with?

I've gotta say that I'd use the 3rd person style flying (much like Freelancer's mouse controlled approach) much more than the first person. I'm just not much of a pilot, I guess.

**Tsunami** · 11-04-2010, 08:12 PM

Originally Posted by WILL

You could have all career paths allowing for a little bit of everything, but in some way restrict how well they can do them for those not related to their well career.

That's sort of what I had in mind. You'll be able to change ships (say switch from a mining ship to a fighter) whenever you like, but if your character's a miner, you'll do less damage, for example.

Cool ship editor. What do or will you use to design the ships with?

I'm creating the models in Maya and compiling them from OBJs into my own binary format. At the moment I mostly have very low poly models and low-resolution textures but I'll make time to improve them later.

I've gotta say that I'd use the 3rd person style flying (much like Freelancer's mouse controlled approach) much more than the first person. I'm just not much of a pilot, I guess.

I had similar input from my friends

The control system I settled on works with either a joystick or mouse/keyboard - it feels very much like Freelancer in third person using the mouse, and a bit more like X-Wing or Freespace in first person using a joystick.