 Poll
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| Question: |
Interested in being involved? What can you do?
| I am a programmer who would like significant involvement in a fan-made sequel |
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   2 (11.8%) |
| I am a programmer who would like to be involved in a casual capacity |
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2 (11.8%) |
| I am a graphic artist who would like significant involvement |
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1 (5.9%) |
| I am a graphic artist who would like to be involved in a casual capacity |
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2 (11.8%) |
| I would like to make significant contribution to the storyline and/or alien dialogue |
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3 (17.6%) |
| I would like to make some contribution to writing (maybe dialogue for one alien race) |
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3 (17.6%) |
| I have game design experience and would like to have a significant leadership role |
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1 (5.9%) |
| I have something else to offer (please specify) |
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3 (17.6%) |
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| Total Voters: 16 |
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Author
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Topic: Fan-made Star Control sequel - role descriptions (Read 27908 times)
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Jaenis
Zebranky food
 Offline
Posts: 14
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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
Enlightened
Offline
Gender: 
Posts: 701
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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
Zebranky food
Offline
Posts: 14
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Hah, great start 
Could you open stdout.txt file and check is there any "Error: " lines?
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Lukipela
Enlightened
Offline
Gender:
Posts: 3620
The Ancient One
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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.
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« Last Edit: January 20, 2009, 08:19:44 pm by Lukipela »
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What's up doc?
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Cedric6014
Enlightened
Offline
Gender:
Posts: 701
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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.zipThere 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
Zebranky food
Offline
Gender:
Posts: 35
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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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jaychant
*Smell* controller
Offline
Gender:
Posts: 432
Please visit my homepage
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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
Zebranky food
Offline
Posts: 10
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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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Cedric6014
Enlightened
Offline
Gender:
Posts: 701
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Hi TheMisterCat.
Can you compose? There will be a need for music tracks for 5-8 new alien races
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. 
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