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.
(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.
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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.
maybe this does have some hope yet.