InfiniteSpace-online

[Rahakasvi]

"The idea of having a navigator, a gunner, an engineer, a pilot, soldiers. mechanics, fighter pilots all in the same ship seemed like a flight of fantasy."

I would be imaging rather this:

Group of 3 players has just left planet Alayon in case of transferring medicine to another system. Just after they enter the open space, two pirate clan fighters enter the system. To reach the hyper jump area (out of planetary gravitation) they need to wait for at least 2,5 min. Navigator chats over text chat: "Pirates!!! Come quickly" Other 2 players, who have been playing some minigame runs quickly to weapons, other back, other up. Navigator screams: "Fighter ahead!", Upper gun man responses: "I see it!" And fires.. Intensive battle starts. Navigator tries to dodge enemys fire and upper gunman (who see only up and front) and back gunman (who see only to the back and down) tries to disable enemy attack. Pirate missile hits engine and navigator screams: "OMG, the hyperspace engine has been broken.. Leeroy! Go and fix it!!" and back gunman runs quickly stairs down to the engine room and another missile hits. Player can actually feel this shaking in his foots while he tries to get in to the engine room. He starts to fix it and some wires has been melted and he must remember what did go where when he connects them. Upper gunman manages to destroy one of the ships but lose the other. The pirate player understand that there are no firing from the back of ship, so there is a safe place to be. Upper gunman asks navigator "Where the he** is that ship?!?" Navigator screams. "It's behind us" While back gunman is fixing the engine, upper gunman must run to the back of ship. Then he waits until back pirate ship is locked to missile and FIRES! It misses, but navigator has reached the point where one can enter hyperspace and engine is already working. Whoooozzh.. They flies to the safety.

Other pirate ship didn't have tracking computer so it can't track the transporter and has to satisfy to collect another pirate player from floating around empty space and remaining of the other ship (after heavy repairment most of the parts can be used again

[jasonf]

A medium range scan has picked up an object, it's not moved for the last hour or so, it may be a dead vessel or a trap.

A salvage captain sends one of his crew in a short range pod to investigate. It turns out that the ship is a medium cruiser, armed to the teeth but it's hull is ruptured and its crew are either dead or escaped. The scavanger signals his captain. An hour later the scavenger ship arrives. This derelict ship is top of the range cruiser, "This must have been one hell of a fire fight, but I think we can repair her.. seems a shame to tear her to pieces".

The group of engineers board the distressed vessel and set about repairing the hull so it can be repressurise. After much welding and mauling and with visible scarring, the ships hull is repaired. The ships core is not leaking so it's possible to run a diagnostics to determine the extent of the damage. There's still power in the batteries and the ships mainframe comes up without too many complaints, attaching a hacking module makes this job so much easier.

"I do love it when we bring home a live one" remarks the captain.. they fly the ship back to their base via the back routes just in case the original owners signalled for help or their successors come to claim the salvage.

The rest of the repairs are completed while the ship is in transit, the backlanes are always quiet so they can travel in relative peace.

"She'll never be pretty, but she flies.. we should be able to sell her to someone"

A hidden figure emerges from a space suit, arms a weapon and hides.. ready to strike "This is my ship!" he mutters

[Rahakasvi]

Situation 1:

Larger pirate ship docks smaller ship. Three pirates comes with weapons to kill players and take all the goods. Player has hidden in to the secret room near the docking bay and when pirates are entered, he runs to the pirate ship and closes the docking hatch. Then he runs to the cockpit and kills a pilot. Then he hyperjumps away..

Situation 2:

Large space race is about to begin. Player has bought four cheap ships and created one fast ship (4 engines in a small hull) and tries to win the champion..

[WILL]

Hey you know what else I'm reminded of... Firefly! :lol: Or Serenity the movie, if you've not seen the TV show. I'd advize all of you just to check it out so you know what I mean.

Basically it's kinda like the ship-for-hire thing in star wars, but a little more western in nature. Mel, the captian and main character is an ex-soldier who was fighting on the losing side of a big civil war. (turns out they where actually the good guys... or so we seem to think in the show) But after the war he buys himself an old firefly class cargo vessle and he and his old comrad hire a crew and do 'jobs' and hire out their services. Great premise for a show, I'll admit too bad about the network execs though.


But yeah, the whole privateering and piracy, etc... it's reminecent mix of these cowboy/pirate cultures... And I personally have only seen too few renditions of it in games. It would be very exciting to see these sorts of stories play out in a MMO world.

[technomage]

Ah, I remember that beer session Jason. When we were both young and could cope with hangovers

these are all great ideas guys.

I do agree any co-op play mode would need to be well balanced. One of my favourite ideas is as follow.

The UTS Magellan moves silently though an asteroid belt esorting a few mining transports. A Fold point opens a few thousand kilometers away and a large battle cruiser enters the system.

On the Magellan the capitain orders flighter to scramble. Fighter pilots run down the corridors to the flight deck to man the ships, meanwhile NPC deck crew are fueling the fighters and loading weapons. Each fighter launches out of the flight deck. The capitain tells the flight leader to engage the enemy but to also protect the transports. The flight leader then give his wing there orders, "alpha team take on the enemy fighters punch me a hole in their defenses, beta team protect the transports ,gamma team follow me in and take out the cruisers main guns".

meanwhile the capitain brings the Magellan's main guns to bear on the enemy cruiser.....

It's a dream, but I might be able to do it. Getting that kind of communication ad syncronisation would be very difficult. But will help I think it could be done.

[marmin]

So if this project would succeed there would be a lot of programmers and artists involved. Would they be payed? Have you any idea of the scale of it
i could help you with 3D model artwork and music, i've years of exp and could deliver solid work. But.. the main -but- is that I wouldn't do it for free, and that the project would be very, very reasonable to come to full fruitation. Most projects like this, honestly, are never finished like 10 % at all. They stick to wonderful ideas.
How are you gonna finance it?

[technomage]

Financing is a concern, considering this is not a full time project for me (I like may others have to attend my day job). And I think we are talking years before this project is finished.

That said I would be willing to pay for 3D models to be done. But I have no idea what rates would be charged, there is some quality work that I have considered using over at http://www.3drt.com/. But I guess it all depends on the conplexity of the models.

I have been thinking about wether I should sell the game or give it away for free. One option is an Eve like subscription which should bring in a monthly revenue, another would be payment for premium account which have more content. The other option I am interested in would be to allow players for play for free, but people wanting to host a solar system would have to pay for the SDK and support. There is also the posibily of in game advertising (something like Ad Boards on the side of space stations for things like Coke or Tesco's etc).

Any developers/artists could be paid a percentage of any profits made. That could mean that is the project is a complete failure no one gets paid.

I think I'll start a poll on this subject over on the ISO site. If people have any opinions on this please vote and post comments on the forum.

[technomage]

I'm just reminding people that this project still needs help.

I've sorted out a source control system which the dev team can use as well as a project management site. I need help to develop not only the Game/Assets/Music but also the InfinitEngine the 3D engine for the client.

the InfinitEngine is cross platform and supports Windows, Linux and almost MacOSX. The asset sytem has been tested under all three major platforms and is 100% working (it was used in CrashBlock) It also supports OpenGL 2 and DirectX9 (directx is one of the areas I need help with). There are also plans to add XNA support which will allow people to write apps to the XBox 360 using Chrome.

In the mean time here are a few new designs for one of the ships, this one
is a carrier and is being modeled in sketchup




Note that currently the project is closed source, I may open source the engine at a later date.

I will also be looking for a list of alpha testers to test the engine of various platforms.

So if anyone is interested please PM me.