The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

Ok everyone, A friend of mine and I are interested in starting a new open source game.

We want to take the old Star Con 2 game play and bring it up into the new age of gaming. This includes using the open source quake engines in order to bring in 3d aspects for use in melee combat. Using "Shared" tech between allied races. This means Earth cruisers can be fitted with alien weapons and thrusters. The ability to select your starting race. computer only races to ally with. And above all, Multiplayer. not just melee but full multiplayer in which you can ally with each other, or pit seperate alliances against each other.

It is our goal to make a multi-platform open source game that will make the world raise their heads and wonder how a bunch of gamers in the world could come up with a production class game.

Anyone interested in joining can e-mail me or im me. This is a call out for coders on all platforms, modelers, skinners, and gamers with ideas on what kind of content and gameplay they would like to see.

For melee we are thinking of Descent style combat in an open space area with actual asteroids and comets that affect the combat. For storyline gameplay think of the old Masters of Orion 2. mining, colony building and tech tree development (also more like civilization but on a galactic scale.)

Descent combat and SC2 ships makes happy marriage.  However, if I'm allowed to make a simple suggestion...  The game Freelancer had very unique and innovative controls for a 3D space game.  Instead of using just the keyboard or a joystick, controlling your ship in space was done with both the mouse and keyboard.  This combo which is popular with many FPSs was successfully implemented in this game in my opinion.  You should be able to find the game now for around $15 in any game store's bargain bin if you want to see what drugs I'm smok'n.  You can also visit their website...
http://www.microsoft.com/games/freelancer/

Uh no it doesn't.  Inertial movement in 3D?  This will be totally different and (probably) nowhere near as fun.

I agree; that it will be different and that I most likely would not enjoy it, but some people like exceedingly difficult challenges to overcome.  The helicopters in BF1942:DC proves that.

The thing that makes me think that a 3D space game like that would be not as fun is the shear scale of space combined with momentum will make navigation impossible. In the end you would have to make a very complex Navigation system that would do all the flying for you, and that removes the hands on feel of SC2. (That’s if you plan to put in realistic physics.)

The goal of the 3d flying system is for the melee batle sequences only. the normal game will use 3d but be limited to 1 plain of movement. Basically 3d modeled ships moving along a fixed plane for hyperspace and star system navigation. (this is easy enough in game by setting an invisible ground plane and not allowing (jump) or upward thrust in the physics, and expand the area to a fixed cube of space with limited boundries for combat sequences. also that anoying warp drive will not be made readily avaiable unless we see that it is indeed highly needed. That to me and my partner seems like the wimps way of sneaking away from a screw up. In it's place will be a (respawn) of sorts. Since the game design lets you start out as one of many races, you will have an escape pod and if you manage to hit eject, you will be rescued and start back at your starting starbase, without any ships of course. If you don't have the resources to build a new ship readily available then unfortunately you will get a game over and have to start all over. This game is intended to be molded to be more of a multiplayer game than a single player one.

PS. I am still in need of people to join in development. E-mail me at ranathalan@madmages.com if your interested.

Um... Give Freelancer a try first... and if you don't like it, then you can tell me it sucks...  If you haven't tried it, then I don't want to hear it.

Well, I have tried it.

Furthermore, my original comment is more insightful than your entire blog.

Give'r. :)  For better or for worse, welcome to open source and open communities. :) 

Consider the following:
* do your research.  About 2-3 good quality indie games come out each year that are Star Control-like in  nature.  Find them, and learn what you can from them.  Look in these and star-control.com forums for the "games like" threads, and elsewhere.  Most communities are not hard-core for-profit enterprises, so they will be willing to talk if you keep relations polite; and in your game, keep your ideas front and center. 
* write your GDD, and stick to it.  Don't let it get stale, and don't let it get lame.  :)
* You and your friends' are best asset's for talking through ideas. 
* Consider code reuse.  Quake3 Arena, making a mod, joining one of the existing groups (I'll just be evangelical this once in this thread: consider TW-Light)
* look in existing communities for support and help: http://igda.org/indie/, http://sourceforge.net, htpp://developer.berlios.de, http://gamedev.net, your local IGDA chaper, etc. 
* consider SVN over CVS for your source control.  Presently, sf.net support for SVN is experimental; for berlios.de it's better, and in the past 1.5 years, has improved to the point that it's pretty much reliable.  Personal preference.  Food for thought. 

Best of luck!

SC2 was the first game I've played with landable planets.
If you are going to make landable stuff you may like "Orbiter"
http://www.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/~martins/orbit/orbit.html
If you play it you may like sound.
http://www.orbiter.dansteph.com/index.php?disp=d
And perhaps you may like my music add on
http://www.orbithangar.com/searchid.cfm?ID=1209

However, be aware that the forums of that game are not entirely friendly for newbies.
Just try not to post too much, or ask questions regarding material that is in the docs, for they don't like that.  They also have flame wars from time to time, so try not to engage in one.
But except for that you may have lots of fun.

SC2 was the first space game with real physics I've played.
Orbiter has too.

There are plenty of add ons and I'd love to see an SC2 add on for orbiter.
Orbiter is an indie game.

As for more indie game links, youmay find those links at
http://www.ataricommunity.com/forums/showthread.php?s=a69f95c65ac3e3e64adb9419f2ce88a1&postid=6644774#post6644774

Technically, SC physics are pretty far off from reality ;)

Baltar, how so? Seems allright to me; inertia, collisions, etc....

- Dean

May be, but that was the first time I had to care about gravity in a computer game.
I always wondered if one could achieve an orbit insertion... ;D

I got this from some document called STAR CONTROL II: SUPER MELEE MODULE EXTENDED REFERENCE TEXT. I never tried it myself, I was too busy blowing up stuff (go, Fwiffo, go! :D) So if you do this, you should be able to achieve orbit, sounds hard to do with a ship that can't turn as fast, though.

And I really like your idea, ranathalan. I would help, but I know of myself that I'd just give you 99% of all the bugs, glitches, and inexplainable crashes if I try  :-[. So I'll be cheering you on instead. Good luck.

Well, the glaring difference is the size comparison of the ships to the planet.  Yes, SC has inertia, but consider that it still asserts a top speed for each ship separately; you'd expect light speed to be an asymtotic limit for all space ships.  Also the lack of angular momentum (the ship doesn't keep spinning after you've released the turn key).  The fact that asteroid collisions against ships, especially when they cause such a marked change in velocity on both bodies, doesn't result in any damage is pretty amazing.  I could go on, but you get the idea.

Not that I'm arguing that something be changed mind you; SC2 melee is thoroughly awesome as it is and likely would be hurt by 'realism' changes rather than helped.  Just calling ar81 on a factually inaccurate statement :)

The problem of entering orbit is tht you have to aim retrograde (which will mean a constant change of heading), and if you fire your thrusters too much, your orbit could intersect the planet and you may crash.

So you have a speed lower than escape velocity, but also enough speed not to crash.
At most you may achieve an elyptical orbit.  Achieving a perfectly circular orbit seems very hard, for it would require precision maneuvering on SC.

Anyway, it would be very interesting to try it.

If any of you got to do it, just tell me.

Ah, I see your point. But it's still got quite a lot fo physics in it - just not those that would detract from gameplay. I suppose it's like an adventure game -- noone could possible fit a broom, shovel, etc. into their pockets all at once (or at all!) but it's nessesary to make the game.

Sometimes reality sucks. Still I agree; SC2, whoops, I mean UQM rules!

How's your code coming along OP?

- Dean

Maybe skimming through this thread I missed something. But
it strikes me as really easy to get an orbit going in UQM melee.
With the noted exceptions of the few ships which are not
effect by gravity, of course. The easiest is probably the Yehat.
They have enough thrust to pull directly away from the
planet, but are slow enough not to thurst in a jerky manner.
Chmmr are also very easy to manouver in and out of orbit.

I'm sorry if I missed something glaring, like we're talking about
real spaceship orbits.

Since there is all this talk about gravity i dcided to put in my 2 cents on the topic.

This is some code I came up with that finds the velocity need to orbit a gravity well.

PosOfAccelPoint - this is the position of the gravity well.
PosofShip - this is the position of the ship.
AccelDoToGravity - this the acceleration do to gravity at PosofShip.

It returns the velocity vector that the ship must be going for circular orbit going counterclockwise around the gravity well.


What it does is find the velocity that it will be going when it reached the gravity well. And then makes the ship go that velocity perpendicular to the direction of acceleration. So when the ship reaches ¼ of its orbit its velocity vector has been rotated 90 degrees.

Im pretty sure this would work in UQM except fo the fact that this code is C# and UQM is C.

Is accel point the periabsis (lowest point in the orbit)?
A retro burn to make orbit circular should start some time before you reach periapisis and it would end up some time after, so periapsis is at the middle.

Also, some eccentricity calculation is necessary, not only to know if you have an orbit instead of a slingshot, but also to prevent a crash on surface planet.

Geez, I am turning SC into a 2D simulator. ;D :) ;)

Independence War 2, 3D game with inertial physics if you want to try it out.  I'm trying to see if I can get my bad disc replaced since I want to play this one again anyway.


Well FreeSpace 2 is open source now and since FreeSpace was the next evolution of Descent and FreeSpace 2 the next evolution of FreeSpace you may have yourself an engine to use right there.  There are some basic gravity mods out there that would give you more of the SC2 combat in 3D feel though there was no inertial combat and you full ship motion.  Just a thought.  Of course I would love to the FreeSpace combat engine in SC2 but I'm a FreeSpace nut.  :)