The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

I'll post one and then link the rest for bandwidth sake! :D

And Sorry for no new versions, we semi sorta decided to work until GDC 08 comes around, and we plan on submitting what we finished to them. Between now and then we will probably release a version, just not sure when exactly hehe.

(http://www.blackskygame.com/ram/newteaser5.gif)

http://www.blackskygame.com/ram/newteaser1.gif
http://www.blackskygame.com/ram/newteaser2.gif
http://www.blackskygame.com/ram/newteaser3.gif
http://www.blackskygame.com/ram/newteaser4.gif
http://www.blackskygame.com/ram/newteaser6.gif
http://www.blackskygame.com/ram/newteaser7.gif
http://www.blackskygame.com/ram/newteaser8.gif
http://www.blackskygame.com/ram/newteaser9.gif

Looks interesting. Ships are just images? Got a list with species and stuff?

yep just images, but they respond to 1 light source to control shading and lightng of the ships. if you notice, look at the same ship in the pics and you will see ships has light and shaded on different sides depending on where they are.

I decided to go the whoel reverse route. instead of designing a game and everything else, i decided to make a engine before designing any aliens or anything of that sort.

Only because designs are ideas, and engines aren't!

and im kinda in the same boat as you, no real programing experience, never made a big game before, or even a small one matter of fact, and all the cool ideas and designs in the world are useless unless they become realized and tangable.

In other words, if I cant even make my game why design it. So i tested the waters to see if i can make the game. and so far so good. now i can design just as i hoped!!

Right now our team is only 3 members. Me who does everything, Ram, who goes over gameplay and gamedesign, he's also going to write the full story and all thats involved there. We have Ultima who just joined like 10 days ago, he's our new ship artist, and misc other things.

Anyways our plan is to go to GDC and dominate, so thats the plan. :D

It looks like you are using bump mapping or something similar for the shading on the ships. Am I correct?

yeah normal maps :D

I see. I thought of trying to do some kind of 'bump' maps for my ships, but decided it was too much work to get them right. Maybe a 3D model with a topdown projection texture could work (so you don't have to do any texture unwrapping).

I can't focus on two things at the same time, so it's either engine or design for me. I mostly pick design since for me it is the most fun part and it takes less time than coding. My project focus period is about 1.5 week so there's not much point for me to start an engine in that time (I'm VERY easily distracted). I'm not particulary bothered by never finishing anything, since the fun of starting new projects makes up for it. Right now I'm working on (actually resuming) my LaserSquad/RebelStar/Xcom (http://community.conceptart.org/groups/?id=34&link=view_topic&topic_id=303&group_id=34&PID=1) project.

What will you use for conversations / main screen turn on?

Is that turrets? I love turrets!

The conversations will be a mix between star control 2 and solar winds. So basicly it will have a portrait of the alien and a dialog box about 1/4 the size of the screen. Each race will have its own music, just like star control2, and then you can pick different answers and ask questions. So you will make first contact/make peace/war etc. We are trying to make the game really dynamic and give the user a nice pick of options, for example he can serve in one of the alien races navy, or become a bounty hunter, or if he becomes powerfull enough, he can sit back at his own starbase and not fire a single weapon and command his fleets to battle for him...

And yeah the ships have forward weapons (hardpoint fixed) and turret weapons that have a primary angle and a fire range arc angel which can be set externally, all the ships in the game are built from text files, so you can create your own ships. About 4 ships in the screenshot i graphicly made and built, the rest Ultima or Ram created without my help. Actually my build only has like 8 ships so ram is adding ships in his data files.

We are making our game modable on almost every single thing, so people will be able to make their own games using our engine without programing knowledge or skills. Just open up notepad and start creating weapons, shields, engines, reactors, hyperdrives, sensors, and ships. etc.

You will also be able to mod the AI, the entire galaxy, planets, solar systems, ai converstations, all the way down to what the ship particles act like and how they behave.

The only thing ATM that isn't modable is the GUI, at least in terms of functionaly, but you can change all the graphics in the game. But i plan on fixing the gui so its using text files as well so its layout can be changed.

Sounds like a nice system (a bit similar to mine, I think we discussed that at some point). Maybe the turrets and guns needs to be more visible so you can tell what you're up against, otherwise it might end up a bit like startrek with all sorts of powerful beams coming out of nowhere.

Will there be "Daleks"? Every game has a Dalek, or used to, back in the day.

Portraits are just a passport pic then (I just looked at solar winds).

Yeah I dont have the skills to draw full on aliens like what you have on star control and same with ultima, but ultima thinks he can do the portraits.

yeah the turrets can be resized in Turrets.bsd each turret has its own x and y width.

some races will have big turrets, others small..

It be a nice system indeed.
And it be even further than this, eventually.
Actually, Viper's original design been...lacking, greatly.
He still cry onto pillows at night from all the configureable features I direct him to append.
But I cannot complain, his coding be superb and he has done an excellent job realising our mutual vision.

"main screen turn on" be lost on Viper, for he does not know AYB, believe it or not.
As for Daleks...perhaps. I be rather fond of the daktalakpak, but I have never been a fan of Dr. Who...I prefered Dr. Doom.
A small robotic race with graemlin tendancies does make for a rather tempting theme, we shall see.

Mind explaining in greater detail, please?
Are you refering to a game, TV show or otherwise?

Actually, in the Wrath of Kahn, you can see the beam emiters. Kahn's disc ship has visible batteries at the corners of that bridge shaped wing thingy on the top. And there's the big torpedo launcher in the center of that structure. On the enterprise, you can see six phaser "pits" shooting when they are in the nebula, two in front and two on each side on the bottom of the disc section. It also has a torpedo launcher on the section that unites the disc section and the lower section. The torpedo launchers are a lot more visible than the phasers though, which is the opposite in the next generation, where they have those phaser rings, but the torpedo launchers are too small to be noticeable (which is sort of ridiculous.)

But I agree, big turrets are cool.



If you did some 3D models of aliens, animating them would not be difficult.

Some alien doodles (http://itchstudios.com/psg/sce/blacksky.jpg) just for fun.

Yea atm we have ships with lasers with no visable turret but i made sure to make the Phaser arcs visable on the ship:
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v493/phoenix87/Race0.jpg) (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v493/phoenix87/Race1.jpg)
Ultima

I like the little alien with big ears and the gun. Looks cute and scary at
the same time. Like grmlins.

Reminds me of the plan 9 (http://plan9.bell-labs.com/plan9/) bunny.

*caught*

I thought about sneaking in redesigns of Duke, Tux and the BSD daemon but ran out of patience.

Re weapons, maybe this can give some ideas:
http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3x.html