DarkStar

[Zanthos]

I've been working on this game for about 4 months now, and as it stands I don't have any visually enticing screenshots to show anybody :cry: . DarkStar is a *deep breath* 2D space-based real-time strategy game which works over a LAN or Internet. My main aim is to GET THIS GAME FINISHED! :) Its nearly up to the stage where I can start making the rendering system and thanks to the months of laborious designing, I'm not having many problems *touch wood* with everything fitting together :) My website isn't completely functional yet (spent more time on the game), but when it is I'll be posting some early screenshots and parts of the design documents :) I would knock some faux screenies in PSP, but you'd all notice :wink:

[BlueCat]

No problem, just post the source code :twisted:

Keep us updated, sounds interesting especially the multiplayer bit. How many simultaneous players will it support? I tried a few client/server experiments a while ago but as my PC was both the client AND the server it was hard to tell how fast it was.

I did run a few tests over the internet with a friend and it's great to see it all working, but a 56k modem is not the best connection for a game server! I guess turn based games are more viable with a slow connection

[Zanthos]

Heheheh... no :P

It'll support at max 8 players, through a seperate server program which is either ran on the game hosts computer (and a loopback method is used), or on a dedicated machine. For now player AI is not being implemented, but what is being considered is a dll plugin system for the server (admin mods, AI bots, stats logging, etcetc :) )

I tried some tests over the internet to see how much the server would have to send to keep all the players in synch, and it came out that a 56k could *just about* hold up on a full 8 player game(although in actual practice I can see this being about 4 :) ) I suppose I'm lucky to have two computers at my desk to further test the networking system whilst not connected to the internet, shame that the other is a P200 :cry:

Its a far cry from the current development status, but I've been designing the game to allow a variation in game length, and figured that I could scale play between 1 hour and 4 days(with a stored game option on the server :)) My friends have been helping with the game ideas, which is a bad idea really because they've managed to fill up half an A5 pad :shock:

Anyway, I'll keep everyone posted, and sort out my website :)

[TheLion]

I'm looking forward to seeing screenshots or demos from the game!

It sounds very very cool, I was designing on a Space TBS with my cousin, however it kinda got stuck, since we both didn't have any idea what we wanted to do exactly and we both didn't have much time! :)

[iLLUNis]

Hope you post some kind of demo soon.... :shock: