Unfortunately, a Melee engine is *not at all* what a project like this needs, unless the sequel is based on Star Control 1 instead of Star control 2. You see, Star control 1 took the Space War game, expanded on it with way more ships, and then build around that melee engine a strategy game...

Hehe, I know that
I just made a small melee engine so I can get ships/items moving in a space and detect collisions between them. And you need that in solar system exploration in story part. So that's why I started with melee. It currently supports different ship models quite nicely, all the special parts and all weapons are missing, but it is not yet relevant.
(and melee is fun to make )

On the exploration front I can currently procedurally create star system and you can fly around it. Entering the planet/moon display is next on list. When that is working one can "enter the planet" where the conversations stuff is going.

So, basically not too much process in the visible thingies front. Had a few major bugs in 3D model loading stuff which had to be fixed, what took time.


And, thanks for the Dragon for your models, those are great!
Thanks!

Table of ship properties might save some time

That page was great, all info in a nice format with explanations.
But seems that Ultronomicon doesn't know all, where is the weapon data? Like what is the speed of Earthling Cruiser missile, how many frames or seconds it flies? How far does the Vux laser reach, speed & life time of limpets, etc etc.
Weapon damages and behaviors were explained in here, but some relevant info is still missing.

Also, could you try and modify settings.xml (just open it on some text editor) anb disable audio from there like this:

Cool, it works fine now - battered the planet with my ship for a bit . 

As an aside: when hovering over the start button with the mouse it selects exit.  This might be Cedric6014s issue?

Great, you got it working 

And about that clicking... That has to be Cedric6014s issue (I hope )
It was a bug in one of UI XML files, mouse clicks went to wrong element... Using enter and arrows in menu gets around this.

Great, thanks dragon, that Ultranomicon page looks to offer all information that is needed

Also, could you try and modify settings.xml (just open it on some text editor) anb disable audio from there like this:

Code:

    <Audio>
        <Option enabled="false" />

Changed the code in a way that if audio is missing, it just silently fails to "audio disabled" mode. (not yet released anywhere)

Hah, great start

Could you open stdout.txt file and check is there any "Error: " lines?

Hi
I have been toying with this idea for a few days now.
Here's small tech demo of melee for this project (nothing very special yet):
http://zepi.kapsi.fi/test.zip

There is loads of stuff missing, like camera behavior, weapons, background stars etc.
Currently asteroids, planet and ship are in. Use arrows for moving and Z/X for shooting (though it does not shoot anything yet, just uses battery)

This is done with C++ / SDL / OpenGL / Lua
I use Lua scripting and XML for UI, kind of a same way that WOW does. I think that most of the conversations (story development) could be done with scripts easily. Which would make the game quite easy to develop even for a non-programming guy. Let's see... Maybe even lots of the ship stuff can be done in scripts.

It seems to be quite easy to replicate melee in some level.
Prob I'll try solar system exploration and conversions quite soon.


I have bunch of questions:
- Does anyone know where to get low-poly 3D ship models of star control ships? Anyone interested modelling one or two?
- Where to get (very) technical details of ship specs? Like turning rate, movement speed, acceleration, crew, max crew, battery, weapon reload times, etc etc. If values are in pixels/frame it is okay, I can easily convert them to units/sec
- Where I can get information how melee camera works?

Some info about me:
I mostly lurk on the forums, that's why you probably haven't seen me. I am coder with around twenty years of experience ranging from C64 assembler to high level languages. Currently developing hardware drivers in a mobile phone company.
Downside is that I might not have too much free time, my regular programming work takes away quite a lot of time from projects like this.

As for the article. I was with "Brother John" up until the crust of the earth being thrown into space by centrifical forces. That one is hard to swallow although we do see the dramitc effects of a fast planetary spin at Saturn.

Personally I think that that is possible.
Let's see when first dinosaur bones are found from moon.
Actually, then they'll claim that moon has been habitable in past and those space-dinosaurs have flown between moon and earth

Btw, I haven't heard anything of Saturn's spin and quick google didn't tell it either. So, what's happening there?

That was actually quite interesting.
Just spent few hours of "precious" worktime for reading it.

That theory he gives actually sounds quite logical, even explains how those gigantic dinosaurs could have been so big without been crushed by their on weight.

And yes Lukipela, we all will be killed within next 2 million years 

Beautiful videos, great work there 

I thought to join with idea of Pkunk Fury animation:
Fury flies across the screen and fires few pellets (trying to hit ship offscreen). The other ship fires (only bullet is shown) and Fury is destroyed. Few seconds pass, while camera zooms out and pans a bit, and then Pkunk resurrects. Info screen. Fury spins and shoots pellets at the end.

Rough timing (in seconds):
0-3: flies across the screen
3-6: fires few pellets while flying
6-7: destroyed
7-8: camera zooms out and pans a bit
8-10: resurrection
10: info, rebirth trails still showing on screen
10-13: spins and shoots

Tried to make it quite simple and manageable - but destroying the ship might cause trouble.

Maybe I should also join violating this thread's well earned rest.

1. What kind of poster you are
I am a lurker, I don't post... Ummm... Expect rarely

2. Best moment in SC2
Arilou at the ending credits and the starting cinematic & music.
Music was stunning, I had to watch that cinematic few times, whoa.

3. Favourite book ever (one or several)
Way too hard to choose. But here are some:
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, several of Weis&Hickman Dragonlance books, Hyperion series. Alastair Reynolds scifi books.

4. One hobby
Coding, I suppose. I also like to read a lot.

5. What you are/want to become in the real world.
I work as a programmer in a large mobile phone company, though I'd like to code something more interesting. So maybe I'll start my own company someday.

6. A fun fact about yourselves.
In almost every picture that is taken of me, I look like I was photoshopped badly into that pic.

7. Anything else that feels valid and important
I wonder if this community could create "true" SC3, I'd be even joining. Though getting the background story is difficult, because everyone has hes/hers own ideas of it. And that also affects every part of gameplay.

Whoa, amazing map quality!
Great scanning job there. Thanks.

The Melnorme hang out at Alpha Centauri, so you can travel there and talk to them right at the beginning (although you will experience major Slylandro Probe attacks if you haven't visited the starbase first).

Ye, there were many probes, which gave a much trouble to a single Earthling fighter and not upgraded flagship. But I got to the Melnorne and I had to admit that I misheard that part of conversation after all.. So sorry for confusion about this.

Weird...
I made a fresh install and let the installer download most of the install files - except few music remixes which I had already downloaded.

Is there any way to check which versions of different packages has been used?

Or any quick and dirty cheat to get more money to check what melnorme did say... hmmm... Maybe I could start a new game and go to hyperspace with no fuel to lure melnorme near. I'll re-check this today.

Melnorme:
...audio says that information costs "120 millon", but the text says 120,000....

Are you sure? It's 12 millions in both on my copy.

It might be 12 millions, can't remember the audio correctly. But in the text it was "120,000" (one-hundred-twenty-thousand) which is not close to 12 or 120 millions.

The wiki says:

In the original PC version, this information cost 120,000 Credits. In the 3D0 version this cost was raised to 12,000,000 Credits.

So the audio said 12 million, but the text followed the original pc format and said 120,000 - which is confusing.

Hi

I have been playing latest release (0.6.2) for a while and found few minor errors in the text and audio.

Ur-Quan:
When I said "Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?", then Ur-Quan gave me a long speech - where text and audio were off-sync in the end of the message.
Severity: Bad

Melnorme:
When the bridge turns purple and you ask of the reason the melnorme audio says that information costs "120 millon", but the text says 120,000.
I found this note from the wiki, which explains why, but it was a bit confusing.
Severity: Minor, Confusing

Slylandro:
At some point when conversing with probes, they give you coordinates and there is no audio of that.
Severity: Minor

To me the two last things were only cosmetical, but that first - where text and audio were off-sync - was quite bad.

Otherwise this has been great remake, I am amazed of your work quality!
Keep up the good work, and thanks