I'm still revisiting this project periodically. Retopology is a big bottleneck, so in terms of the models things are going pretty slow. On the code side of things, I'm progressing a little faster. I'm still optimistic that there'll be a beta this year.
I now have a somewhat functional UI.
Campaign
Eventually (ie. probably not anytime soon) I would like to include a brief story mode. This will likely be a Fleet vs. Ares scenario, where you play as a gunship in either fleet defending your capital ship. This would be sort of like Star Wars Battlefront space battles, and maybe they could have a multiplayer mode as well.
Mods
That's right, mods (or "plugins" in UE) will be supported. In order to add a ship mesh, all you need to do is add the appropriate sockets for weapon placement and include base stats such as mass/speed. It should also be possible to mod in new maps/systems or even new battle arenas.
Netplay
When you select "Netplay" you are added to a lobby queue, and are matched up with the first other player in the queue. I'm not really sure about this system, and I have some other ideas:
- Select a game mode, Melee or Vs.
Melee will wait for enough players to join the queue and place all of them in the arena at once, and the winner is the last standing. This doesn't allow you to choose your battles, while Vs. would allow you to challenge or refuse specific individuals.
- Enter the game outside the arena as an in-game lobby.
In this area are the various stations surrounding the arena, and you can interact with them to upgrade your ship. In this case all other players would be visible as well - it would be like you're playing an MMO. In this case you would dock at the battle arena to enter an actual match.
I'm not sure which would be the better approach; Option 1 is easiest, but Option 2 leaves the game much more open; it would offer the most room for expansion. For the time being I'll probably start with option 1, but I am open to hearing your ideas.
Long term I like the idea of including stat tracking and leaderboards online. A ranking system would be helpful in making sure new players aren't outclassed immediately, and keeping high level players interested. Currently your stats reset every time you close the game.
And lastly, the Arena model has been added. As you can see it hasn't undergone retopo/texturing yet (It's a big model) but its helpful for getting a sense of scale. It's worth noting that there's another arena model hiding in the truespace file, so maybe I'll find a place to sneak that in, too.
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