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Author Topic: A star control 1 remake that may actually get finished  (Read 41368 times)
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Re: A star control 1 remake that may actually get finished
« Reply #30 on: November 03, 2008, 07:39:55 am »

an sc1 remake might be better if it allowed more than 1 on 1 combat to spice things up and remove the brutality of bad ship combos.


Ignore him. Stick to the formula. Anyway, the only truly bad ship combo in SC1 is Yehat vs Spathi.
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Re: A star control 1 remake that may actually get finished
« Reply #31 on: November 03, 2008, 09:59:48 am »

Say, Dragon, mind doing silly ol' obsessive aleph a favor and type "Star Control" in two words? It would make the universe complete. Thanks. Embarrassed
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Marines on Maulers and limpets on Earthlings  /  Bright Podship plasma and warm Kohr-Ah death rings  /
Shofixti Scouts doing gravity whips  /  These are a few of my favorite ships!
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Re: A star control 1 remake that may actually get finished
« Reply #32 on: November 03, 2008, 01:09:29 pm »

Ignore him. Stick to the formula.
That's easily done as I'd be disqualified if I didn't Wink.  What I was vaguely alluding to is that everything will be released under (at least) the LGPL and the gameplay should be scriptable.  It's the scriptability which is giving me issues at the moment though but if it works then anyone can (fairly easily) make changes.

Quote from: alephresh
Say, Dragon, mind doing silly ol' obsessive aleph a favor and type "Star Control" in two words? It would make the universe complete. Thanks.
Hehe, fixed.  If only they were all that easy.
« Last Edit: November 03, 2008, 01:16:50 pm by Dragon » Logged
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Re: A star control 1 remake that may actually get finished
« Reply #33 on: January 17, 2009, 12:56:37 pm »

I'm posting an update as I've change direction slightly since my last post.  I've made no fundamental changes to the gameplay: this is still a straight SC1 remake.  I have decided (now that I've haven't got a deadline Sad) to add a bit of polish.  This comes through as two design decisions:

The first is that I'm modeling each of the races for the pilot window animations - I was going to leave them out but I might have a use for them afterwards.

The second change is that the entire gameplay is being written in SmallTalk.  This makes is very easy to write as SmallTalk is an utterly awesome language for scripting.  This will also make it very easy to mod as all the code will be available whilst the game is running and it's possible to change it and immediately see the result.  It's hard to stress how useful/powerful this is unless you've actually used SmallTalk.  The downside is that I'm writing my own (VM'less) implementation.  I've a couple of reasons why I'm not using an existing implementation but mostly it's just because I want to write it myself.  Fortunately it's a very well thought out, simple language.

And seeing as I promised I wouldn't post unless I had something to show.  Here's a non-mocked up screenshot of a Vux Intruder vs an Earthling Cruiser.



and a link to the hi-res version (120KB).  [EDIT] Aaagh, the image was sized down anyway...

Happy Days!
« Last Edit: January 17, 2009, 01:30:06 pm by Dragon » Logged
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Re: A star control 1 remake that may actually get finished
« Reply #34 on: January 17, 2009, 08:37:54 pm »

While I am slightly disappointed that we'll have to wait longer for your game, the modability certainly sounds very exciting. While I'm not familiar with SmallTalk, easy modability is a big plus. It'd allow us to expand the SC universe with new stories and adventures.
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Re: A star control 1 remake that may actually get finished
« Reply #35 on: January 17, 2009, 08:41:23 pm »

To say nothing of the fact that that screenshot looks pretty snazzy. Nice work.
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Re: A star control 1 remake that may actually get finished
« Reply #36 on: January 17, 2009, 08:42:41 pm »

True that, it looks amazing. you have some real talent Dragon.
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Dragon
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Re: A star control 1 remake that may actually get finished
« Reply #37 on: January 17, 2009, 11:38:43 pm »

Thanks for that Smiley

While I'm not familiar with SmallTalk, easy modability is a big plus.

To put my lecture hat on (and those who don't like coding can safely ignore the rest):

SmallTalk comes from the Lisp branch of the programming tree so it's quite different to the COBOL inspired languages (C++, BASIC, Pascal, Java and friends).

Once one gets over the initial WTF stage it's actually incredibly well thought out and consistent.  Absolutely everything is an object and there are only six keywords.  To grab an example straight off Wikipedia, an if 'statement' looks like this:

Code:
result := a > b
    ifTrue:[ 'greater' ]
    ifFalse:[ 'less' ]

Looking at "a > b", it's evaulated as a Boolean (which is an object, there are not primitives) and it is either going to be True or False.  Both of which are subclasses of Boolean.  The magic is that Boolean has two abstract  functions (virtual functions for the C++ers): ifTrue and ifFalse.

The True class overrides  ifFalse to do nothing and ifTrue to evaluate the block of code passed to it.  The False class does the opposite.

So here "ifTrue:[ 'greater' ]" passes the block closure (ie: chunk of code) to the ifTrue function on - for example - an instance of the True class.  ifTrue will ask the block ( [    ] ) to evaluate itselt and then assign (:=) that result to "result".

The code in the block 'greater' (yup, 'greater' is the whole block of code) just returns the string "greater".  Remember the code 'greater' is not executed until ifTrue evaluates it.  The quotes around greater is SmallTalk for string and block closures always return their last line of code.  In this case we only have one line so it returns a string.

Bizarre until you get you head around it...

...and it's safe to look again Tongue
« Last Edit: January 17, 2009, 11:47:52 pm by Dragon » Logged
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Re: A star control 1 remake that may actually get finished
« Reply #38 on: January 18, 2009, 12:23:25 am »

For the RetroRemake contest the user Dragon has committed to remaking Star Control 1.

http://www.retroremakes.com/forum2/showthread.php?p=180694

I couldn't be happier.

Dammit, looks like this site is broken. if you go to retroremakes.com, it explains why.

Dragon, is there somethign I'm missing here? Is there another way to look at the thread?
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Re: A star control 1 remake that may actually get finished
« Reply #39 on: January 18, 2009, 07:08:38 am »

I remember reading about this a couple months ago, but it was sort of a fleeting thing though. I'm very happy to see this is still being done, because this has the potential to be great. Fantastic job, Dragon. Please keep working on it, and please keep it open-source. I won't say why. Tongue
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Re: A star control 1 remake that may actually get finished
« Reply #40 on: January 18, 2009, 10:11:37 am »

Dragon, is there somethign I'm missing here? Is there another way to look at the thread?
Unfortunately the remakes site is well borked at the moment Sad.  The admins are looking at restoring a backup as an archive so hopefully the old threads will be viewable.  Until then it's a fresh slate.

Please keep working on it, and please keep it open-source. I won't say why. Tongue
No worries there Smiley
I haven't joined the sequel discussion because I'm not fond of writing gameplay, I'd far rather lurk on the engine side of things.  If this project gets used for greater things I'd be happy but if it doesn't - well - I'd still be happy.  I'm just writing it for the hell of it. 

I've posted screenshots of the Hierachy and Alliance ships below.  They're pretty much final so I don't foresee any significant changes to them again...  State of the nation or whatever.





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Re: A star control 1 remake that may actually get finished
« Reply #41 on: January 18, 2009, 10:56:37 pm »

I like almost all of them, but ever since I saw your design of the Cruiser I had a problem with it. I don't know. I just think the front part should be done differently and the cockpit (blue window) redesigned. These are 3D models? Are they 3D models in the very engine or 2D sprites?

Also, I'm not sure I like the stars in the previous screenshot.

BTW, how do you plan to draw the cockpits? Plain pixel art skill or 3D models?
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Re: A star control 1 remake that may actually get finished
« Reply #42 on: January 18, 2009, 11:21:06 pm »

I reckon the umgah could do with a bit more work. It needs a bit more weight at the back.

I love everything else though, great work
« Last Edit: January 19, 2009, 12:59:54 am by Cedric6014 » Logged

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Re: A star control 1 remake that may actually get finished
« Reply #43 on: January 19, 2009, 03:55:56 pm »

Just 2 minor complaints/suggestions:
Shofixti - seems a bit... too grey? Perhaps it could use a few of the details from the old ship...
Chenjesu - the original Broodhome had a bunch of blue 'needles' on the back side which looked really cool...

These are your ideas though, so feel free to ignore me Cheesy

But what I can say in general - I LOVE these! Great job! Grin


Oh, and one more thing - what does the Mmrnmhrm Y-wing look like? Have you made it yet?
« Last Edit: January 19, 2009, 03:59:11 pm by SuddenDeath » Logged
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Re: A star control 1 remake that may actually get finished
« Reply #44 on: January 19, 2009, 06:01:08 pm »

Ta for the feedback,

I just think the front part should be done differently and the cockpit (blue window) redesigned. Are they 3D models in the very engine or 2D sprites?
BTW, how do you plan to draw the cockpits? Plain pixel art skill or 3D models?
The ships in game are 3D models (just plain old DirectX). I'm also planning on having the cockpit animations as full 3D models. My pixelling skill tends to ... um ... bad, so they kinda have to be 3D.

I've used the SC1 DataBank pictures as reference which is why the ships look different to those in the melee.  The Earthling Cruiser and also the Vux Intruder are my two favourite ships so I'm going to leave the front the way it is.  I did just notice I left off the point-defense laser system though.  Oops.

I reckon the umgah could do with a bit more work. It needs a bit more weight at the back.
Yeah, the Umgah Drone looks quite different in it's DataBank entry - and also the SC2 version looks somewhat different to the SC1 one.  As I couldn't see the back of the ship I just made it up but on reflection I need to shorten it or something.

Just 2 minor complaints/suggestions:
Shofixti - seems a bit... too grey? Perhaps it could use a few of the details from the old ship...
Chenjesu - the original Broodhome had a bunch of blue 'needles' on the back side which looked really cool...
Oh, and one more thing - what does the Mmrnmhrm Y-wing look like? Have you made it yet?
The Shofixti Scout is the one ship that I'm really unhappy with.  I should probably scrap it and remodel it to look like the SC2 variant which I prefer.  For the Chenjesu Broodhome I like the DataBank version better than the melee one so I'm leaving that one the way it is also.  Plus it has a much higher polygon count than that any of ther other ships already - so I'd rather not add even more.

Again, thanks for the feedback Smiley
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