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Poll
Question: Interested in being involved? What can you do?
I am a programmer who would like significant involvement in a fan-made sequel   -2 (11.8%)
I am a programmer who would like to be involved in a casual capacity   -2 (11.8%)
I am a graphic artist who would like significant involvement   -1 (5.9%)
I am a graphic artist who would like to be involved in a casual capacity   -2 (11.8%)
I would like to make significant contribution to the storyline and/or alien dialogue   -3 (17.6%)
I would like to make some contribution to writing (maybe dialogue for one alien race)   -3 (17.6%)
I have game design experience and would like to have a significant leadership role   -1 (5.9%)
I have something else to offer (please specify)   -3 (17.6%)
Total Voters: 16

Author Topic: Fan-made Star Control sequel - role descriptions  (Read 28573 times)
Jaenis
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Re: Fan-made Star Control sequel - role descriptions
« Reply #30 on: January 20, 2009, 09:24:11 am »

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.
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Cedric6014
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Re: Fan-made Star Control sequel - role descriptions
« Reply #31 on: January 20, 2009, 10:27:00 am »

Hey Jaenis, I ran the exe file, a menu with two options "start" and exit" appears, I click "start", the window closes and nothing happens
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Jaenis
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Re: Fan-made Star Control sequel - role descriptions
« Reply #32 on: January 20, 2009, 10:40:38 am »

Hah, great start Roll Eyes

Could you open stdout.txt file and check is there any "Error: " lines?
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Dragon
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Re: Fan-made Star Control sequel - role descriptions
« Reply #33 on: January 20, 2009, 12:24:59 pm »

'fraid it doesn't run here either.  I don't have a working sound driver at the moment so that's almost certainly the issue.  Here's stdout.txt:
Code:
00000: >int SDL_main(int, char**)
Tank War version 0.2 (build 9)
Error: SDL_mixer error: DirectSoundCreate: No audio device found
00535: Wait graphics hardware: 0.000000 (-1.$%)
A window briefly pops up.  It writes the files: stdout.txt, settings.xml and ZipList.txt (which is empty) and then closes again.
Hope this helps...
« Last Edit: January 20, 2009, 12:28:54 pm by Dragon » Logged
Dragon
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Re: Fan-made Star Control sequel - role descriptions
« Reply #34 on: January 20, 2009, 12:53:01 pm »

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?
Check yer PMs.

- 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
The Ultranomicon knows all.  You may have to dig a bit but all the ships stats are in there.  The list of ships is probably a good place to start.

- Where I can get information how melee camera works?
Too find out precisely how the camera works you'd need to check the code out (or maybe meep-eep or someone familiar with it could summarise).  Personally I'd re-invent it - as long as both ships are in the frustum and the zooming isn't extreme it's probably fine.
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Jaenis
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Re: Fan-made Star Control sequel - role descriptions
« Reply #35 on: January 20, 2009, 01:33:47 pm »

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

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)
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Dragon
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Re: Fan-made Star Control sequel - role descriptions
« Reply #36 on: January 20, 2009, 01:49:20 pm »

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 Wink

As an aside: when hovering over the start button with the mouse it selects exit.  This might be Cedric6014s issue?
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Jaenis
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Re: Fan-made Star Control sequel - role descriptions
« Reply #37 on: January 20, 2009, 02:13:36 pm »

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 Wink

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  Smiley

And about that clicking... That has to be Cedric6014s issue (I hope Grin)
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.
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Re: Fan-made Star Control sequel - role descriptions
« Reply #38 on: January 20, 2009, 04:55:22 pm »

The Ultranomicon knows all.  You may have to dig a bit but all the ships stats are in there.  The list of ships is probably a good place to start.
Table of ship properties might save some time Smiley
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?
Also, there's this page but it's a bit empty Grin

While I'm here I might as well mention that I'm happy for any project to use the stellar backgrounds I've worked on for Dragon's SC1 remake, examples in this thread and I'm happy to fiddle with them and generate more. I can also make clusters of points and am working on nebula generation . . .
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Re: Fan-made Star Control sequel - role descriptions
« Reply #39 on: January 20, 2009, 04:58:30 pm »

You're right, it's not reasonable for me to expect everyone to jump and help me based on nothing tangible. Just got to make somethign tangible! Sounds like my only real hope is persuading my brother to help me out. He likes StarCon, sci-fi and is a programming whiz.  If we can get some kind of demo set up we might be in business.

I think something will come out of all this discussion. There's the resource out there to make it happen, whoever it is.

Well, it sounds like you have your resource. With your brother coding you should at least be able to produce some small proof of concept. A few helpful suggestions. Bear in mind that I've never worked on any kind of game project. My profession is in a project based industry, where projects can vary from the small 80-hour type to the fairly large 50 000 hour type. SO I can only give advice on general project management, which tends to be a lot harder than people imagine.

It might help you and your brother along if you attempt to create something less demanding first. Do a small game based in the SC universe, reflecting a part of the story you're writing. Then do a slightly larger one. With each project, you'll learn a lot about managing a project and it's resources. And for every completed project you may well attract new resources. Coders and artist who don't want to put work into something that may never be finished could be more prone to working with someone who has shown himself capable of actually producing something.

Of course this means that you have a much longer road to walk. Instead of just making a new SC3, you need to start off with much smaller things and work your way up. On the plus side, we'll get some smallish SC games pretty much straight away while you work out how to make a great sequel.

But this is all just a suggestion. Do what you think is best.
« Last Edit: January 20, 2009, 08:19:44 pm by Lukipela » Logged

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Cedric6014
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Re: Fan-made Star Control sequel - role descriptions
« Reply #40 on: January 20, 2009, 08:15:53 pm »

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.

This is all very cool but I wonder if you should start up a new topic for it? It might not get as much attention as it otherwise would if its buried in this one. Meep-Eep is it in your powers to cut out these posts and make a new topic?
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Lachie Dazdarian
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Re: Fan-made Star Control sequel - role descriptions
« Reply #41 on: January 21, 2009, 03:15:20 pm »

Jaenis, I know your intentions are good, but I've seen too many programmers rushing into game dev projects without prior experience in such.

To me, programming part of a computer game was always the easiest, or to say it better, the least challenging. Of course, this depends on the game, but it’s usually the case unless you are making something in the style of World of Goo. The only thing I see as challenging in a SC-like game is AI, and maybe some procedural world generation code, if a specific game would feature it. To build a skeleton of majority of games is relatively easy. But to create a real game out of it...now that's a challenge. Just an advice from an experienced game developer.
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Re: Fan-made Star Control sequel - role descriptions
« Reply #42 on: January 21, 2009, 05:33:46 pm »

Jaenis, I know your intentions are good, but I've seen too many programmers rushing into game dev projects without prior experience in such.

To me, programming part of a computer game was always the easiest, or to say it better, the least challenging. Of course, this depends on the game, but it’s usually the case unless you are making something in the style of World of Goo. The only thing I see as challenging in a SC-like game is AI, and maybe some procedural world generation code, if a specific game would feature it. To build a skeleton of majority of games is relatively easy. But to create a real game out of it...now that's a challenge. Just an advice from an experienced game developer.

I agree about the AI part. I recently finished my first non-random AI, which is Mario that stomps goombas. As simple as it is, it took over 100 lines of (GML) code without including the 40 lines of comments/empty spaces (totaling almost 150 lines of code). And still, it's not perfect. Now for a complex game like SC, that's a completely different story. You have to account for several factors, some of which are still not accounted for (or at least, not very well) in UQM's AI.
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TheMisterCat
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Re: Fan-made Star Control sequel - role descriptions
« Reply #43 on: January 23, 2009, 12:41:53 pm »

Hi everyone.  I'm a musician and even though there seems to be no need for one I'd like to be involved :]
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Re: Fan-made Star Control sequel - role descriptions
« Reply #44 on: January 23, 2009, 08:27:27 pm »

Hi TheMisterCat.

Can you compose? There will be a need for music tracks for 5-8 new alien races
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