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Work in Progress / -=Distant Empires=- (RTS Space Shooter)

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JoeOh
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Posted: 16th Apr 2009 15:32 Edited at: 29th Apr 2009 08:53
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***** UPDATE 2***** Scroll down for the Early Beta #2 (11.2MB .RARzip) Description of update in the newest post...

Here's a screenshot of my current WIP. This game will be very similar in many ways to the classic Solar Winds released by Epic Megagames in 1992. Of course this game will be much better looking graphics-wise with more toys to play around with.

Another thing that is important to me is to make this game user-intuitive. What bugs me about some games are that they look awesome, well polished but you have to take a virtual online study course just to get the gist of playing that game.

But the most important thing to me about the game is that it has to be really polished as well as inviting eye-candy for the player.

This game isn't so much about being a WIP more than a Concept In Progress (CIP). I am open to ideas to make this game even better than whats already stated.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Main Concept~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The main concept of the game is to fly around the "top-down" universe and capture star systems and expand your empire. Your empire wont be the only one as you build Orbital posts over stars and planets to gain energy and resources to build stronger, faster, and more tech-improved ships to defend your territory.

Explore planets and nebula's for hidden items to gain an advantage over your enemies or entice new contacts to form alliances.

This universe will be quite large, upwards of 100+ systems to explore and exploit for resources. Some systems will be more valuable for resources/recon/strategy or worthless rubble for cloaked pirates to hide them ambush you. So many possibilities

Once the concept gets nailed pretty much down and the polishment near completion, I will look into making this an multi-player game as well. But that's down the road around the corner in the next town.

I hope this better explains the main concept a bit better. Thoughts??

I attached an updated image of my current status...

http://forum.thegamecreators.com/xt/xt_apollo_pic.php?i=1735413

Home is where my souped-up computer is...

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Caleb1994
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Posted: 16th Apr 2009 17:18
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looks good! are those cones the ships?if not. what are they? and is this 3rd or 1st person(i wasn't sure if any of those ships were the player)

New Site! Check it out \/
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JoeOh
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Posted: 17th Apr 2009 01:01
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Those "Ships" are just temporary until I get some decent models made. Right now I'm in the framework coding phase. But still, that pic is nice to look at. This game will have the following features...

Standard Space Stuff:
Shields (several types)
Reactors (several types [for efficiency ect.])
Cloaking (several types)
Torpedoes (varying power and speed)
Plasma Guns (varying power and speed)
Scanners (detect cloak ships and special particles in nebula)
Cargo Hold (varying capacities)
several FTL drives types

Not-So Standard Stuff:
Space Mines (SubSpace, Magnetic, Cloaked)
Particle Loaded Nebulas
Bussard-Style Collectors
Electromagnetic Pulse Generator
More stuff when I remember it....

Maybe this will spice up this thread-

I'd trade it all, for a little more...
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Serial Velocity
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Posted: 17th Apr 2009 16:07 Edited at: 17th Apr 2009 16:08
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Its looking nice

I really like the background and the sun. Is the sun a billboard or a sphere with a shader?

One thing though, if you put your screenshot on the main post, i noticed more people decide to comment on it. Put this in your main post without the spaces:

[ img]http://forum.thegamecreators.com/xt/xt_apollo_pic.php?i=1735413[/ img]

Good work so far!

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JoeOh
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Posted: 17th Apr 2009 19:45 Edited at: 17th Apr 2009 19:47
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Sounds like a good idea Serial, I'll edit the post now...

Also the sun is a sphere with a shader on it. I made the texture with Gimp. Noise filters make the job so much easier

I'd trade it all, for a little more...
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DestroyerHive
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Posted: 18th Apr 2009 16:05
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Wow, sounds awsome! with all those things you're going to do, you should make it long. (and maybe sell it for a few bucks) I'd like to try the demo

A single drop of water can mean a drained ocean for future generations
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JoeOh
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Posted: 18th Apr 2009 16:34
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Hell yea DestroyerHive, that's the kind of talk I like to hear!!

I'd trade it all, for a little more...
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JoeOh
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Posted: 18th Apr 2009 18:12 Edited at: 22nd Apr 2009 04:29
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Here's an update screen-shot of what I have so far. I polished the HUD a bit better. Added ships icons to the HUD and filled in the power bars. Also in the radar, the icons spin faster the faster they are traveling. It is a neat effect.

I probably wont post another screeny until I make some decent progress.

https://forumfiles.thegamecreators.com/download/1737084

Home is where my souped-up computer is...

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feiting shadow
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Posted: 19th Apr 2009 05:36
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You know? This looks awesome. But I think it's amazing for a different reason. "Not so standard stuff"... seriously, how many space games do you play that do NOT take advantage of the fictitious world?

Homing missiles, shields... that's about it. I'd add nets, jammers, missiles that blossom and ones that blossom then implode... you know, make it vary. The very best space game I've ever played I believe is Subspace Continuum. Go into The Gauntlet, and if I'm not killing you, or you're not killing me, we're laying mines, walls, teleporting, shooting bouncing bullets... list goes on (but not much more, lol).

You do that, and you'll have made the space game I kept half-coding then getting deterred before I learned what motivation was. (If you search, you'll see I have posted 3D map editor source code, it was in preparation for this type of game... but I abandoned it for no good reason, work... Walmart... "making america, into china" )

Signed
------
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JoeOh
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Posted: 20th Apr 2009 06:00 Edited at: 20th Apr 2009 06:14
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Here's the first Beta Release~~~

Enjoy!

https://forumfiles.thegamecreators.com/download/1738251

I'd trade it all, for a little more...

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Serial Velocity
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Posted: 20th Apr 2009 20:15
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Ok I tried out the beta.

I loved the HUD you got there, especially the health and speed bars (Dont have a clue why ).

The sun effect was awesome! LOL

I also like how the guys slowly twist around to face you instead of pointing straight at you. Did you use EZRotate?

Is it possible for you to shoot? I couldnt find the control for it.

Great work so far! Cant wait for the next release .

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JoeOh
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Posted: 22nd Apr 2009 04:10
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I went ahead and edited the top post to clarify the games concept. I hope this helps to spell out what I want to acomplish-

Home is where my souped-up computer is...
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JoeOh
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Posted: 23rd Apr 2009 06:25 Edited at: 23rd Apr 2009 06:26
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Bump.......j/k, heh

But seriously, I've ran some testing and now have shown up to 400 "basic cone" ships on the screen at the same time before a slowdown in frame rates is noticed (below the normal 60fps). It's the sprites that are slowing my fps down past 120 ships on screen. I have a monster computer (2.5Ghz AMD quad-core, 2 gigs of DDR800 ram, Nvidia GeForce 9800 GT vid card, 1TB SATA-HDD) so I'd hate to see this game to be bogged down on less powerfull systems.

There needs to be a "sprite in screen" return function. But for now I'm going to have to use my distance function to find out what sprites need to be drawn to bring up the fps while allowing for huge fleets of ships to exist overall.

As soon as I get my basic plasma weapon working for the player ship and the "cone ships" I'll release the update then.

Later-

Home is where my souped-up computer is...
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JoeOh
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Posted: 25th Apr 2009 04:14 Edited at: 25th Apr 2009 04:20
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Well apparently at 150 cone-ships on-screen or 340 cone-ships totally off-screen and radar causes my framerate to go below 60FPS. And I have a strong system. So I'll have to find a way to improve my screen-scanning code or only have a few systems in the game per bout.

Man I wanted to do a massive multi-player online space-empire open war game. What a drag dude....

Someone give me some hope?

Here's a link to the screenshot of the on-screen "horror", hehe

http://forum.thegamecreators.com/xt/xt_apollo_pic.php?i=1741663

Home is where my souped-up computer is...

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Jimpo
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Posted: 25th Apr 2009 19:15
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How are you doing the health/status bars above each ship? That is probably causing most of the framerate drop. Or it could be the radar causing the lag.

Try running the same scene with no status bars, and then run it again with no radar and see how much the FPS improves.

Dego
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JoeOh
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Posted: 26th Apr 2009 00:29
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Jimpo, I already tried that and found that the HUD has little effect on framerate. the HUD only uses a few fps. I even skipped the background stars and glare effect only to find those 2 things dont really kill the framerate either. Must be something else I can do....

Thanks for the pointer-

Home is where my souped-up computer is...
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JoeOh
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Posted: 29th Apr 2009 09:00
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Here's another Beta release of the game with code. I've gotten the player ship to fire a "laser" beam with sounds of firing, hitting, and an animated explosion of the targeted ship.

~~~Press "Control" to fire the laser
~~~Press "s" to spawn more ships and to test how many you can handle on-screen at once for performance reasons. Please let me know what your results and system stats are

Also there is a 500 ship spawn limit and the spawned ships do not reset/loop for the time being. If you reach 500, restart the game anew.

Enjoy!!

Home is where my souped-up computer is...
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