making a game- help wanted.

Talk about anything not related to Transcendence.
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Aury
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[note- fyi, this was copied and pasted from another forum I was at, so some of the mentions to transcendence are rendundant or unnecessary- ie, my complaints as to the shallowness of many of the enemies (mostly directed about the Order of Penitence)]

Ok, let's cut out the long story and get right to the point.

I'm making a game. (no duh.). Thus I've been in the planning process these last few weeks, laying things out, deciding how I want the engine to work. That should at least explain why I havn't been around too much.

The real focus of this whole project is the engine- I'm trying to design a game engine capable of being used to create virtually any genre of game. The game itself is really promotional freeware to show off the capabilities of the engine itself. I know enough about clever tricks you can use with an engine and enough about programming to know it's feasable, albeit time-consuming, to create something like that. However, I lack some of the skills (and patience) to do the whole thing myself. Thus, I'm asking for some help here. Also, there might be money involved if a non-freeware dev. or publisher decides to buy rights to use the engine. :D (and if GPG has interest in the engine, I'd be willing to give them a 50+% discount)

The help I need

First off, I need some programmers. Since this engine, being as versatile as it is, is highly moddable. Therefor, it would be preferable if we could write it in a common programming language, for example, C++. We need someone capable of implementing a 3D directX9 environment and maybe later adding in a directX10, but the DX9 is more important ATM, as I'm using XP and so are many others.
Secondly, any volunteering modelers would be nice, as it would help me quite a bit in the general area of distributing the work on the models.
Thirdly, UV mappers and texturers. Vital, but as i know, all in quite short supply around here- yeah, I can UV map myself, but I'm terribly slow at it and i often end up with wasted space in my texture files.
Fourthly, someone who can make pixel shaders. I'll leave it at that.

Lastly, if someone could set me up a temporary website/forum to base this all in. Hopefully I'll be able to get my site uploaded later.

As to the game itself

While, yes, the point of the game is to show off the capabilities of the engine, that does not mean that we can't make a beautiful and fun game at the same time.
Transcendence- http://www.neurohack.com/transcendence/
A great example of the basic principles of a "rouge-like" game. That's only the basic principles. I plan to go beyond that, giving the player a much vaster set of options.

This game is set in a futuristic universe complete with your cliched FTL hyperdrives, space pirates, etc., though I've added a huge quantity of new IP and original ideas for defences, weapons, ships and races. Not to mention gameplay...

Part 1) UI and appearance
-Most of your ship's control is through the keyboard, though if you end up as say, a fleet admiral, you may end up using your mouse too quite a bit.
-Since this is in a FULL 3D ENVIRONMENT, you are not limited to flying around on the same plane as everyone else, you can attack your enemies from above, fly around a bulk frieghter in you way, etc.
-The camera settings include- free flying camera (like in supcom, but capable of being oriented at any angle you please), a 3rd person camera with variable distance from off you ship's stern, and a "1st person" camera situated just in front of your ship's bridge or cockpit.
-the arrow keys do not control thrust, only direction according to default settings. left is left, right is right, and up/down can be set in preferences (though forward = down and back = up is much more traditional in terms of flight, despite being counter-intuitive)
-your ship's model does not include it's weapons- all weapons are sepparate entities, each can be assigned to an attachpoint on the ship's model, either by click and drag, or on larger warship and the out-of-game modding facilities, assigned to attachpoint by name (don't worry about the UI there, visually, it quite simple, though in writing, it is quite hard to describe). This thus allows for modular damage.
-everything looks visually correct- a fighter is simply dwarfed by a carrier ship, and even a battleship is a spec against a planet. In order to keep RAM constraints to a minimum, each solar system (which may be traveled to like in EV Nova's hyperdrive starmap, a virtually identical procedure) is divided into "planet spaces" (though it's no limited to just the planets, often far-away moons, sections of an astroid belt and even stars have their own playable areas surrounding them). These "planet spaces" are traveled to in the same manner as the star systems via a little dropdown map in the same map window. Then these "planet spaces" are further devided into sectors, so that the computer only has to keep track of a sector and it's neighbors thus lowering the ram requirements. The objects in a sector are semi-randomly generated, given that planet space's random object parameters. Also, ships and space stations will tend to be constant: space stations will never magically disappear, neither will mission-specific, attacking, or escort ships. All other NPC ships will simply leave and enter the system at will and any in "dumped sectors", sectors no longer being kept track of, will have, let's say "left".
-docking/landing and planets. you can dock with pretty much anything, as long as it's friendly and/or disabled/derelict/wrecked. Same goes for planets. Also, you can't actually crash into the planet- your ship will pretty much just land itself if you fly too close (ie, it automattically redirects you to the "dockscreen" showing you a small "fluff text blurb" and a set of buttons and such displaying the services the planet has to offer.). If docked with a wreck, you may loot it. Derelicts and disabled ships may be captured or looted, though to capture a disabled ship, you must have the manpower to overwhelm the other crew.
Part 2) Gameplay and Playstyle
-The player has many choices and options before them. From the very beginning, they are given a choice of: their starting ship, their player gender (which is merely used to determine how you are adressed- ie, "mr" vs. "miss/mrs/ms", their player species (which plays a major role) and their initail location (within LOGICAL constraints of course)
-carrier paths. there are so many things you could do, though many of the choices are directly influenced by ship type- ie, you won't ever get a request for a charter flight when flying around in a bulk frieghtor, nor will having a luxury cruise liner get you an admiral's position. However, with any ship, you could theoretically become a ruler (easiest is a military dictator), though some ships simply lack the fire power to conquer planets (and leading most legit governemnts require a specific ship category- best for ruling the galaxy through any and all means IMO is one of the heavily-armed frontier type colony/teraformer ships equiped with genesis missiles (easy guess as to the source of that). Some carrier paths will require prior experience, such as before running a cruise liner compony, you'll usually have been flying luxury liners around, or before being promoted to an admiral, you'll have been serving in that nation's military.
-STORYLINE! What an important and controversial subject in the design of a rouge-like game. EV Nova over did it, sacrificing freedom of choice and playstyle to push it's intricate (albiet rigit) storylines. Transcendence underdid it (though apparently with v1.00a there will be a large number of storyline improvements, adding depth to several of the factions), leaving many factions shallow, leaving them as mere enemies with no depth or story backing them. Here, I've been working on a way to strike a good balance between freedom (in obvious ways), the story of the universe (via lots of player/NPC interactions and fluff text), and the story of the player (via both of those). Also, the important NPC's will never be shallow- I'm planning on giving them the potential to have great depth. Random NPC's will have to be shallow due to the nature of their randomeness and memory constraints.

---------------------------------------------------------

For those who decide to join my development team, I can fill you in on all the things you need to know, and any questions you may have out of curiosity (aka, spoilers). And trust me, there are MANY secrets in this universe to be discovered.
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what have you got done and what do you need to get done, the post doesn't make it clear.
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Aury
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yeah, I was rushing a bit when I wrote that- and I DO need to change some of the information in it as I had some suggestions that changed a few of my plans in the other place.
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Homelab Servers: Xeon Silver 4110, 16GB | Via Quadcore C4650, 16GB | Athlon 200GE, 8GB | i7 7800X, 32GB | Threadripper 1950X, 32GB | Atom x5 8350, 4GB | Opteron 8174, 16GB | Xeon E5 2620 v3, 8GB | 2x Xeon Silver 4116, 96GB, 2x 1080ti | i7 8700, 32GB, 6500XT
Workstations & Render machines: Threadripper 3990X, 128GB, 6900XT | Threadripper 2990WX, 32GB, 1080ti | Xeon Platinum 8173M, 48GB, 1070ti | R9 3900X, 16GB, Vega64 | 2x E5 2430L v2, 24GB, 970 | R7 3700X, 32GB, A6000
Gaming Systems: R9 5950X, 32GB, 6700XT
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Misc Systems: R5 3500U, 20GB | R5 2400G, 16GB | i5 7640X, 16GB, Vega56 | E5 2620, 8GB, R5 260 | P4 1.8ghz, 0.75GB, Voodoo 5 5500 | Athlon 64 x2 4400+, 1.5GB, FX 5800 Ultra | Pentium D 3.2ghz, 4GB, 7600gt | Celeron g460, 8GB, 730gt | 2x Athlon FX 74, 8GB, 8800gts 512 | FX 9590, 16GB, R9 295x2 | E350, 8GB | Phenom X4 2.6ghz, 16GB, 8800gt | random core2 duo/atom/i5/i7 laptops
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Fatboy
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FULL 3D ENVIRONMENT
:!:

I could TRY modeling some stuff for you.
(BUT, I can't do textures, so someone else will have to do those for me.)
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I can't really do C, But I do have good ideas, and I can find facts, if you want to make your game realistic, like in physics and everything. If you want ideas for hidden easter eggs, I'm your conciousness.
[schilcote] It doesn't have to be good, it just has to not be "wow is that the only thing you could think of" bad
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Aury
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wow... real necro there... :lol:
sorry i've been a bit busy this week.
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Homelab Servers: Xeon Silver 4110, 16GB | Via Quadcore C4650, 16GB | Athlon 200GE, 8GB | i7 7800X, 32GB | Threadripper 1950X, 32GB | Atom x5 8350, 4GB | Opteron 8174, 16GB | Xeon E5 2620 v3, 8GB | 2x Xeon Silver 4116, 96GB, 2x 1080ti | i7 8700, 32GB, 6500XT
Workstations & Render machines: Threadripper 3990X, 128GB, 6900XT | Threadripper 2990WX, 32GB, 1080ti | Xeon Platinum 8173M, 48GB, 1070ti | R9 3900X, 16GB, Vega64 | 2x E5 2430L v2, 24GB, 970 | R7 3700X, 32GB, A6000
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Mutos
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Hi Wolfy,


Read your post, I've got a similar plan and so do some friends, so I have created some times ago a forum about space simulations to join our forces, it's here at :

http://spacesims.hoshikaze.net

You might expose your project here, if you need a forum space I can arrange it and some people may be of help.
@+

Benoît 'Mutos' ROBIN
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I wonder how I missed this post in April? I'm always on the lookout for new (very new) projects and stuff to join and help out in, like Transcendence four years ago, for example.
You can sign me up as a (very thorough) beta-tester, and a general ideas guy. I'm afraid I can't help in coding/programming areas very much, but I imagine I'd become a modder of the game.
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Aury
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:) maybe this does have some hope yet.
I tried out vega strike but what stopped me in the end was that I'd have to use blender if I wanted to help out.
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Homelab Servers: Xeon Silver 4110, 16GB | Via Quadcore C4650, 16GB | Athlon 200GE, 8GB | i7 7800X, 32GB | Threadripper 1950X, 32GB | Atom x5 8350, 4GB | Opteron 8174, 16GB | Xeon E5 2620 v3, 8GB | 2x Xeon Silver 4116, 96GB, 2x 1080ti | i7 8700, 32GB, 6500XT
Workstations & Render machines: Threadripper 3990X, 128GB, 6900XT | Threadripper 2990WX, 32GB, 1080ti | Xeon Platinum 8173M, 48GB, 1070ti | R9 3900X, 16GB, Vega64 | 2x E5 2430L v2, 24GB, 970 | R7 3700X, 32GB, A6000
Gaming Systems: R9 5950X, 32GB, 6700XT
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Fatboy
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Wolfy wrote::) maybe this does have some hope yet.
I tried out vega strike but what stopped me in the end was that I'd have to use blender if I wanted to help out.
Whatever you do, please don't make the ship slow down when it gets close to an object, like in vega strike(I have a feeling many an hour are wasted when you can only go 1 meter per second)
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Ttech
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May I ask why not mod Transcendence to make it better?
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Ttech
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Here's some advise or suggestion what ever. :)

make it open source, or make it compatible to run on other operating systems such at Linux and Mac.

It'll make it go far... Transcendence already pretty much does.

May I
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Aury
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Ttech wrote:May I ask why not mod Transcendence to make it better?
I do... :lol:

and you may help as well if you wish.
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Homelab Servers: Xeon Silver 4110, 16GB | Via Quadcore C4650, 16GB | Athlon 200GE, 8GB | i7 7800X, 32GB | Threadripper 1950X, 32GB | Atom x5 8350, 4GB | Opteron 8174, 16GB | Xeon E5 2620 v3, 8GB | 2x Xeon Silver 4116, 96GB, 2x 1080ti | i7 8700, 32GB, 6500XT
Workstations & Render machines: Threadripper 3990X, 128GB, 6900XT | Threadripper 2990WX, 32GB, 1080ti | Xeon Platinum 8173M, 48GB, 1070ti | R9 3900X, 16GB, Vega64 | 2x E5 2430L v2, 24GB, 970 | R7 3700X, 32GB, A6000
Gaming Systems: R9 5950X, 32GB, 6700XT
Office Systems: Xeon 5318Y, 256GB, A4000
Misc Systems: R5 3500U, 20GB | R5 2400G, 16GB | i5 7640X, 16GB, Vega56 | E5 2620, 8GB, R5 260 | P4 1.8ghz, 0.75GB, Voodoo 5 5500 | Athlon 64 x2 4400+, 1.5GB, FX 5800 Ultra | Pentium D 3.2ghz, 4GB, 7600gt | Celeron g460, 8GB, 730gt | 2x Athlon FX 74, 8GB, 8800gts 512 | FX 9590, 16GB, R9 295x2 | E350, 8GB | Phenom X4 2.6ghz, 16GB, 8800gt | random core2 duo/atom/i5/i7 laptops
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Ttech
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heh yea... I'm ok with C++, but thats Linux and such, not windows. And I'd rather personally make improvements rather then fork. Can probably lend a hand here and there. :)
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