Quote: "the game is awesome, but i spent 10 mins trying to see a plant on the screen and i couldnt even get close to one, its really hard to control that ship"
Thanks
. Learning to travel in newtonian space is tricky, but it will come with practice. The trick is to watch your speed carefully, remember that it takes the same time to speed up as it does to slow down. The fastest way you can get to your destination is to accelerate half way there, and decelerate the other half. Generally though you'd avoid this to preserve fuel.
Quote: "If you've got the time to do it, try Terragen to create some good looking planetary surfaces. LunarCell by Flaming Pear software is a great Photoshop plugin that creates some basic planets, Glitterado for Nebulae and SolarCell for stars"
Thanks for the suggestions, unfortunately I do not own Photoshop :p Maybe I'll look for something similar for us GIMP users ^^.
Quote: "Music is always tough. You've got this guy at Incompetech.com who does pretty good ambient work every now and then."
I managed to create a few good-sounding ambient tracks myself, but as I'm about to detail below, the style of the game has changed somewhat, and ambient tracks may not be necessary.
Quote: "Good luck, looking fun "
Thanks a lot!
Update:
So, a bit of news. A lot of it actually. It's been occurring to me that if I ever want to finish this project, realistically, it needs to be scaled back. This is the solution I came up with.
Project Eres is an engine. So far I really haven't coded any game-specific features. It remains a generic 2d space opera engine. My plan is as follows:
I plan to continue tweaking the engine to make it more flexible and usable. At the same time, I also plan to release a series of
smaller games using this engine, a few of which I already have plans for. I also plan to eventually release the source code to the engine, when I feel it is more user-friendly. I'm starting school this Fall at Digipen, which is supposed to provide a rather intensive workload, so I probably won't have a lot of time to spend writing games on the side. I may be able to pop features into the engine here and there.
With that said, let me describe the first game that is going to be released using this engine. I don't have a name for it yet. The game is scaled to use a single solar system, with a few planets and also a number of asteroid belts. The goal is to mine as much ore from the asteroids as possible, selling it at nearby planets.
Now, before you say, "That sounds boring Phos, what are you thinking?!" Let me explain the challenge of the game. Each belt is frequented by pirate ships. At the beginning of the game, your ship is equipped with a small mining laser, which doubles as a weapon. As you exhaust the minerals in the smaller belts, you'll have to venture to the more distance, but larger belts. Larger asteroid belts are home to greater numbers of pirates, and also higher 'level' pirates.
When you return to a planet, you can sell the minerals you have collected and buy better equipment, possibly even better ships. The core challenge will be the balancing of defensive capabilities, and also sufficient mining power / cargo space.
While it will have a focus on realism as far as physics and combat goes, the gameplay will take it's cues from older arcade games, in that there is no end to the game, you continue to play until you die, at which point you can submit a high score.
Because of all these changes, I've had to cut a lot of content from the engine for now, though it will return. As a side-note, I've also changed the graphical style of the game. I recently fell in love with pixel art, so the images in my signature below reflect the current look of the game.
That was quite a long post, but I think I explained everything that was in need of explaining, I'll release new screenshots of the game soon, and update the first post with relevant information. Tell me what you think of these changes!
