Hey, thanks for the kind words. Yeah, sorry about the darkness. Right now I'm working with a single light source, which is mostly accurate, but things like planets and moons would give off their own reflected ambient light if you were angled correctly with them and close enough. A lot of this sort of thing will emerge when I get to the point I can spend more time on the environments, which is a couple milestones away still. I'm very focused on game play code more than art right now

Fair enough, gameplay is where it's really at anyway. It would be a crying shame to finally get a space sim on the market for it to have so/so gameplay with pretty scenery, kudos to you sir!!! Just learned that StarShatter source code has been released so that should keep me happy yet wanting for a little while.

This is brilliant - I always wanted a spacesim which had flightsim aspects, ie navigation that feels real, real physics, real ship systems. I thought it was a shame all other spacesims, bar none, were so arcadish. Battlecruiser 3000AD was heading in the right direction... but, well, you know... :-)

A space sim, woohoo, count me in! It's so depressive to look back at all these years without anything decent.
Now, I know you already said that MP wouldn't be in at first and a priority, but please keep it in your plan though - I'm guessing that your audience will be the same kind of people that inhabit the forums here, many of us enjoying coop style multi player as a natural side to all of our sims. Among the group of friends I play with, I would say we would be 2 to go for the purely SP version, but a dozen if coop would be part of it - something worth keeping in mind

Oh, MP is definitely a goal. Again, I am keeping it in mind as I develop systems, but I want MP to really work WITH the SP game rather than be its own little separate entity. If that makes sense?

Here's another idea offa the top of my head. Catastrophic Destruction. Does everything have to explode into a million pieces and then disappear? There could be different levels of destruction which would leave behind wreckage and debris. It could also be functional in the form of salvage, where it would be possible to make a profit via harvesting, especially in combat zones where large battles are likely to take place. Which also brings up another peeve. Fire in Space. It would be nice if you could disable the effects associated w/ explosions w/o affecting other visuals, in an attempt to keep things realistic...

don't you dare mention his name......... I swear i will kill if you mention his name !!

;-)

Don't worry,I won't mention his name.

Did we HAVE to go there?!

right thats it !! everytime you show that picture, a kitten dies

?_? know nothing about this...

Some enlightenment, please?
Still that's a creeeeeepy picture...

The lead dev/creator of the Battlecruiser franchise is...shall we say...controversial? Either you hate him or you barely tolerate him.

I think ships should be self-illuminated. You can add one extra light source from a local star for specular highlighting, but other than that it's going to be dark up there unless you're close to a star, so they'll need their own lights to be seen.

As for sound, I've seen it rationalized in some of the books I've read as the onboard computer taking sensor data and generating sound to be what you WOULD hear if you were in an atmosphere. So it notices weapons fire, it produces a "pew pew" sound. It sees a ship destroyed, it makes a "boom." It's hardly a difficult idea to implement today, so the idea that a spaceship could have it requires no leap. It also means that it would be pilot preference...you don't like it, you can turn it off but leave your own sounds (comms, engines, weapons fire, impacts, anything that would cause sound within your ship). Seeing as many racing sims let you adjust how loud your engine is compared to opponents', wind noise, road noise, tire squeal, etc, I would imagine it's not that tough to just segregate sounds into "internal" and "external" and make the external ones turn off with a switch flip.

Myself, I enjoy the external sounds. It's not real, but it's cinematic, and I'm only enough to know reality is far less interesting than what a good story can provide.



The Jedi Master

Yeah, you can see in the vid I tested a shader with self-illuminated elements--the idea being to have running lights, illuminated insignia and formation lights to help you spot things you wouldn't otherwise see. I might even play with self-illuminated trim that outlines the shape of the ship. You're going to need help seeing things in systems with low magnitude suns, or none at all.

Sounds--it's not hard to separate internal from external. And, I have a great option idea that should suite every taste (and I'm not just talking simple volume).

Technically, I don't think anyone has tested making a fire in space, while yes there's no air if something with air in it in a vacuum explodes and there is the potential for flame ie. fuel and ignition in zero G it would probably be a bright ball of plasma and then nothing but glitter from all the pieces. Poorly done Sci-fi FX has poisoned our minds, you don't have flames in zero G at least not like we do here with gravity and atmosphere. If an explosion rips open a vessel in space I imagine there being some fire but as bright flashes like fireworks burning brightly and dissipating into the void, followed by lots of ruptures and debris, unless the anti-matter goes.. then your toast.

Count me in as very interested - For years I've lamented the fact that Tie fighter (possibly my favorite game of all time) and WC Commander style games seem to have been long forgotten. Tie Fighters engine/shield/weapon management coupled with the combat make me feel like I was actually 'operating' a fighter, rather than just shooting stuff down, so inter-dependent systems with click-able cockpits makes me rather excited!

In real life managing your workload in the cockpit effectively to free up the mental capacity to concentrate on the job at hand ie hitting a target, is half the battle and hugely satisfying!

I have no idea whether this is realistic or not, but having the ability to fairly easily script voice-acted missions would be unbelievable, and probably contribute to longevity ala Freespace 2.

ps. I have vague plans to build a home cockpit at some point - there is now a good chance it'll end up being a space fighter! Oh yeah!

Wow! This will be amazing! Definitely count me into this bunch! My two favorites Space "Sims" are "Darklight Conflict" by Rage/EA (seen some similar ships in your demo video) and "Independence War" (I-War in the U.S.A.) series by Infogrames. Wish you the best in pulling this off and resurrecting this game genre. Continue the great work, I am looking forward to it and will be glued to this thread for updates/progress reports.

Yes, in friendly space, I could see self illumination used. However, this may be nitpicking, but I imagine in space, computers and sensors will provide the tools to "see" spacecraft, especially in combat.
This may not be ideal to provide an entertaining game, but in a realistic future, when spacecraft enter hostile territory, I could see them wanting to go "dark" the same way our military aircraft of today turn off nav lights.

Then again, in a game, its no fun to shoot at a square on a HUD all the time. However, this does open up possibilities for sensor upgrades to complete the visuals for the pilot or an illuminating flare probe. And, possibilities of interesting stealth missions, trying to drift a "dark" ship (all systems shutdown) through enemy lines undetected.

All depends on the direction Crisis wants to take his creation.

Hi Crisis, and all the best with the development of your project.

I too remember fondly the days of independence war. I also like the fact thatt these will be "Naval" vessels. Personally I would much rather be in a military service flying my spaceship about, and thought it a shame that this seemed to go out of vogue . I remember Independece War was one of the few that did, then they too joined the bandwagon with its sequel where yet again you were some plucky anti hero or criminal turned freedom fighter, etc etc.

Anyways as I seem to be running off with my thoughts I better get back to what I was going to comment about re thoughts on lighting the ship. IMHO I really don't think it matters if your ship is lit up like a Christmas tree because to all intents and purposes the systems you would have on board would "see" other ships long before you could visually make them out.

Even today fighters will pick you up on radar long before the pilot has eyes on, even modern land warfare will have tank commanders and gunners looking through thermal sites to id enemy obscured by foliage, etc.

I would also imagine that any ships "out of the cockpit" view would be heavily augmented by computer generated symbology, so a HUD displaying a friendly would have a green silhouette or brackets for example, enemy would have red and neutrals blue with unknowns orange or something.

Even if you argue that having a lit ship would show a point of light moving about, again I would think that the advanced radar/ scanner you would have, would be "matching and tagging" these long before your mark 1 eyeball had chance to make them out.

Any way good luck with it, whatever you do!!!!

The difference is in space, with the vast distances involved, the level of self-illumination possible probably wouldn't make you visible more than a thousand miles or so, by which time other sensors would certainly see you. So while "silent running" might make you a bit less visible, it's probably negligible.



The Jedi Master