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Near Earth Space (Formerly Space Ponies)
Author
(From another forum, I'm the author of this post)
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I'm thinking of entering a DGDK game in the game programming contest over at gamedev.net. I have to have ponies, explosions, crystals, and accountants. How's this design? Please rate and give feedback!
Space Pony Express
A game set in the solar system, between earth and the moon.
Powerful crystals have been discovered on the moon that make hyper-fuel, which powers the "space ponies", spaceships that are named after horses and are piloted by "riders"
Naturally the accountants of earth required that all space crystal refinement must happen on earth, creating a need for riders to ferry the crystals to earth from the moon, and the hyperfuel from the earth to the moon.
Explosions happen when the unfortunate riders collide with each other, the planets...or possibly during some action scenes with some space pirates...
I've got most of this coded, (well, I've got the earth, the moon, and the sun, and a spaceship coded, and the player can fly around in the spaceship with Newtonian physics) how's it sound? Is it too contrived? Is there a better way I could incorporate the four elements into this game?
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Anyways, is this too contrived to be entered into the contest, or is it a-ok?
[Edited by - aersixb9 on December 20, 2007 8:23:13 PM]
how about ponnies who need accountants to sell them to a company which stands on earth,and controlled by other ponnies so they can be free ponnies.
because ponies are owned by aliens ant they want officially to be free,
and want to defeat aliens, and getting their galaxy /world/country etc...
one of the action parts may be to escaping saving the contract.
and at end all the ponnies are on happy farm,
because peoples do not eat ponnies cause they dont like it.
but you can add extara levels which other ponny becomes evil whih is the boss of ponny farm company.
emeralds ? the acountants may use false emeralds for making contract with aliens.
and this makes aliens want to kill accountants.
because ponies are owned by aliens ant they want officially to be free,
and want to defeat aliens, and getting their galaxy /world/country etc...
one of the action parts may be to escaping saving the contract.
and at end all the ponnies are on happy farm,
because peoples do not eat ponnies cause they dont like it.
but you can add extara levels which other ponny becomes evil whih is the boss of ponny farm company.
emeralds ? the acountants may use false emeralds for making contract with aliens.
and this makes aliens want to kill accountants.
Author
Here's a picture of my game, with the trade lane in heavy use by 500 space ponies. I'm now working on collisions and landing (kind of similar), then I want to do some AI to get the ponies flying back and forth between the earth and the moon.
Hope that image posts. I noticed some similarities between my game and libertine...I'd merge them, but I really, really hate warp drives. Why can't space games just use Newtonian physics? Newton's laws work great in space. You can even ignore Einstein's relativity, and achieve speeds faster than C with enough thrust. Although it looks like the libertine guy is probably a better programmer than me :(...
Those dots are the (500) spaceships, and the earth is the art I'm going to use, but the moon is just placeholder art for now...also there's a sun, but you can't see it in this picture. And yes, you can fly up to the 500 spaceships, but they're motionless until I implement the AI. I'll put some missiles in so things can blow up pretty. I plan on using a big white sphere for the explosion - and flashing it on the screen for 1 frame, then having the things around it deflect off of it and get pushed away from the center of the explosion, and take damage. I'll put some very long range weapons in the game too.
Here's another picture where you can see the sun, but without the 500 spaceships. (And one kind of big spacestation - that is placeholder art)
Hope that image posts. I noticed some similarities between my game and libertine...I'd merge them, but I really, really hate warp drives. Why can't space games just use Newtonian physics? Newton's laws work great in space. You can even ignore Einstein's relativity, and achieve speeds faster than C with enough thrust. Although it looks like the libertine guy is probably a better programmer than me :(...
Those dots are the (500) spaceships, and the earth is the art I'm going to use, but the moon is just placeholder art for now...also there's a sun, but you can't see it in this picture. And yes, you can fly up to the 500 spaceships, but they're motionless until I implement the AI. I'll put some missiles in so things can blow up pretty. I plan on using a big white sphere for the explosion - and flashing it on the screen for 1 frame, then having the things around it deflect off of it and get pushed away from the center of the explosion, and take damage. I'll put some very long range weapons in the game too.
Here's another picture where you can see the sun, but without the 500 spaceships. (And one kind of big spacestation - that is placeholder art)
Hi! I'm new here (although not really a beginner in terms of game development) and became a member so I can enter into this competition. Now that that's out of the way...
It's looking good so far.. keep it up! =D
As far as the storyline is concerned, it's pretty good, although you might need to come up with some more details when it comes down to the missions and such (you'll want to give the player a rough history of the world, etc etc).
When you add in gravity/collision it'll be pretty sweet. The player will have to take that into account so that he doesn't accidentally spiral into a planet or something (or when he lands, if that's what he intends to do).
I looked at both yours and Libertine. I really don't recommend combining, simply because I want to see how both of yours will turn out. What I would suggest if you want to do something with XDigital though is agree to share a model for the Pony for example. This way what you can do is have your Pony model be somewhat different than his (you'd change it around some), and then see if you can place both of your games in a compatible timeline and maybe add references in the more "future" one to the more "past" one. See what I mean?
For example, your game could be telling the story of the space exploration era in its youth, and then, say, a hundred years later or so you get Libertine's era where the Pony blueprints have been changed around some and there are other spaceship models (that he mentioned in his thread) and warp drives that have just been invented... I don't know. I'm just playing off of what I know about yours and Libertine so far, but I would do something like that. That way you could both be competitive but share some common elements, and maybe even some common locations and storyline features. That's my personal opinion though, I'm not sure what you or XDigital have to say about it...
Great work though, keep posting pics!
Oh by the way since you're using 500 spaceship models, I suggest adding a DLOD system, although I'm pretty sure you already considered/implemented this.
[Edited by - xLinear on December 11, 2007 12:46:54 PM]
It's looking good so far.. keep it up! =D
As far as the storyline is concerned, it's pretty good, although you might need to come up with some more details when it comes down to the missions and such (you'll want to give the player a rough history of the world, etc etc).
When you add in gravity/collision it'll be pretty sweet. The player will have to take that into account so that he doesn't accidentally spiral into a planet or something (or when he lands, if that's what he intends to do).
I looked at both yours and Libertine. I really don't recommend combining, simply because I want to see how both of yours will turn out. What I would suggest if you want to do something with XDigital though is agree to share a model for the Pony for example. This way what you can do is have your Pony model be somewhat different than his (you'd change it around some), and then see if you can place both of your games in a compatible timeline and maybe add references in the more "future" one to the more "past" one. See what I mean?
For example, your game could be telling the story of the space exploration era in its youth, and then, say, a hundred years later or so you get Libertine's era where the Pony blueprints have been changed around some and there are other spaceship models (that he mentioned in his thread) and warp drives that have just been invented... I don't know. I'm just playing off of what I know about yours and Libertine so far, but I would do something like that. That way you could both be competitive but share some common elements, and maybe even some common locations and storyline features. That's my personal opinion though, I'm not sure what you or XDigital have to say about it...
Great work though, keep posting pics!
Oh by the way since you're using 500 spaceship models, I suggest adding a DLOD system, although I'm pretty sure you already considered/implemented this.
[Edited by - xLinear on December 11, 2007 12:46:54 PM]
Ahhh, a space trade sim...
/emote thinks about ELITEs military laser
I'm looking forward to see some more screenshots and details out of the game. In detail, how you implement dogfight, quests and story. I'm not sure if you should just use Newton's laws. Remember I-War? It was very difficult to navigate the dreadnaught as a beginner. I think a kind of control law should assist the player.
Keep on the good work.
_\\// XDigital
/emote thinks about ELITEs military laser
I'm looking forward to see some more screenshots and details out of the game. In detail, how you implement dogfight, quests and story. I'm not sure if you should just use Newton's laws. Remember I-War? It was very difficult to navigate the dreadnaught as a beginner. I think a kind of control law should assist the player.
Keep on the good work.
_\\// XDigital
Author
You know, I never played I-War! My game's spaceship is pretty easy to fly - use W to accelerate in the direction the ship is pointed, and use the mouse to rotate. Just like a regular FPS! You can also use S to accelerate backwards (very handy), and I'm working on implementing A&D for accelerate-strafeing and Q&Z for accelerating up & down, and E & C for rolling. (Does anyone know how to make a vector that points to the right (andor (as opposed to xor) up) of a unit vector pointing forward? TIA!) Anyways, it's pretty easy to fly, my PS-1 gaming old aunt figured it out in about 25 seconds and was flying around the earth with ease, and having a pretty good time too!
Dogfighting is going to take place primarily with either dumb or lock-on missiles, depending on how good I am at programming. ;) I'd prefer lock-on missiles that lock on to a picked target in front of the aiming reticule. Naturally missiles have no maximum "range", but they do have a limited amount of hyperfuel...perhaps they will detonate when their fuel runs out, or when they strike a target. Some missiles will have more fuel/range than others. I assume that the detonation is a fuel-based detonation, so the explosion size will be dependent on the remaining fuel in the missile...or possibly the missile will have an add-on warhead with some detonating material inside for a larger explosion.
Naturally you can try to dodge the missiles (much easier if they're dumb-fire, if they're lock-on I might add in some ECMs)...I might put cannons in too, which would essentially be a rapid firing dumb fire missile...I'm not a big fan of lasers, I consider them an impractical way to deliver energy, compared with hydrogen based explosives. I'll assume that the weapons are hydrogen (or some kind of hyperhydrogen) based, with big ginormous explosions that dwarf the tiny ships. Naturally the ships are hyper-metal, so they're pretty tough, and might just get deflected out of the way of the explosion at a high velocity, and possibly take some damage out of their "hit/armor points."
As for gravity, due to the practical necessity of having a large amount of thrust for the ships (remember that it took the Apollo missions, um, 3 days? to get to the moon, which wouldn't be very fun in a game) the effect of the force of gravity on the ships is essentially nil. It's in there, but if I comment it out there's no visible difference. The ships are thrusting currently (estimate) at 500 to 20,000 G's of force, so even with gravity in direct opposition there's only going to be a .01% difference in trajectory. I'll leave gravity in, but nobody will notice. The planets (earth/moon/sun) currently are motionless, since it's tricky to get them to orbit properly without crashing into each other. The effect of gravity of the ships pulling on each other is essentially nil, although that's in there too. Luckily calculating gravity is pretty easy and fast. I could enable planetary motion pretty easily, but I can't seem to find any data on the current position and velocity of the earth and moon and the "motionless" sun...does anyone know what the relative velocities of the earth moon and sun are, so I can plug them in and get a stable orbit? Semi-random or guessed values produce unstable orbits. :(
Because the spaceships can thrust in every direction, they have to be cube-shaped with thrust nozzles pointed in every direction. (heh) Otherwise they won't move right. I assume they have hyper-fuel stored in the middle of the ship, that can power the 6 engines facing in each direction. Naturally, this is very good for the framerate, since cubes are, uh, 6*2=12 polys. I'll use crappy (or no) textures too, so I can have tons of spaceships on the gigantic map that is Near Earth Space.
I'm also changing the name to Near Earth Space (NES for short!), based on the votes from the darkGDK forum...
Dogfighting is going to take place primarily with either dumb or lock-on missiles, depending on how good I am at programming. ;) I'd prefer lock-on missiles that lock on to a picked target in front of the aiming reticule. Naturally missiles have no maximum "range", but they do have a limited amount of hyperfuel...perhaps they will detonate when their fuel runs out, or when they strike a target. Some missiles will have more fuel/range than others. I assume that the detonation is a fuel-based detonation, so the explosion size will be dependent on the remaining fuel in the missile...or possibly the missile will have an add-on warhead with some detonating material inside for a larger explosion.
Naturally you can try to dodge the missiles (much easier if they're dumb-fire, if they're lock-on I might add in some ECMs)...I might put cannons in too, which would essentially be a rapid firing dumb fire missile...I'm not a big fan of lasers, I consider them an impractical way to deliver energy, compared with hydrogen based explosives. I'll assume that the weapons are hydrogen (or some kind of hyperhydrogen) based, with big ginormous explosions that dwarf the tiny ships. Naturally the ships are hyper-metal, so they're pretty tough, and might just get deflected out of the way of the explosion at a high velocity, and possibly take some damage out of their "hit/armor points."
As for gravity, due to the practical necessity of having a large amount of thrust for the ships (remember that it took the Apollo missions, um, 3 days? to get to the moon, which wouldn't be very fun in a game) the effect of the force of gravity on the ships is essentially nil. It's in there, but if I comment it out there's no visible difference. The ships are thrusting currently (estimate) at 500 to 20,000 G's of force, so even with gravity in direct opposition there's only going to be a .01% difference in trajectory. I'll leave gravity in, but nobody will notice. The planets (earth/moon/sun) currently are motionless, since it's tricky to get them to orbit properly without crashing into each other. The effect of gravity of the ships pulling on each other is essentially nil, although that's in there too. Luckily calculating gravity is pretty easy and fast. I could enable planetary motion pretty easily, but I can't seem to find any data on the current position and velocity of the earth and moon and the "motionless" sun...does anyone know what the relative velocities of the earth moon and sun are, so I can plug them in and get a stable orbit? Semi-random or guessed values produce unstable orbits. :(
Because the spaceships can thrust in every direction, they have to be cube-shaped with thrust nozzles pointed in every direction. (heh) Otherwise they won't move right. I assume they have hyper-fuel stored in the middle of the ship, that can power the 6 engines facing in each direction. Naturally, this is very good for the framerate, since cubes are, uh, 6*2=12 polys. I'll use crappy (or no) textures too, so I can have tons of spaceships on the gigantic map that is Near Earth Space.
I'm also changing the name to Near Earth Space (NES for short!), based on the votes from the darkGDK forum...
Author
I darkened the universe. Now I'm waiting for god to reveal the mysteries of Quaternion Rotation (or send me a copy of EZRotate...too bad I pissed off the author and now he won't sell me a copy...)...hey, will one of you guys (like XDigital?) please explain quaternion rotation to me? Or maybe just post a link to a good explanation, with code if possible. (heh) In particular, I need to be able to get a unit vector from 3 rotational angles... (yaw pitch roll)...does anyone know how to do that? Are quaternions involved?
Oh, here's the pictures with the new, darker universe...
and
Any tips on how to make the sun look...more...sunnish? Maybe with some lens flare? Or at least maybe brightening the screen if the mouse is pointed (near) at the sun...
Oh, here's the pictures with the new, darker universe...
and
Any tips on how to make the sun look...more...sunnish? Maybe with some lens flare? Or at least maybe brightening the screen if the mouse is pointed (near) at the sun...
Quote: Original post by aersixb9
Any tips on how to make the sun look...more...sunnish? Maybe with some lens flare? Or at least maybe brightening the screen if the mouse is pointed (near) at the sun...
Lens flare + billboard is how I would do it. If the combat is taking place soley between Earth and the Moon, you don't have to worry about the billboard scaling too much. Also, it reduces the number of polygons representing the sun from however many you have currently to one, so you get a slight (very slight if you have a good graphics card) increase in framerate and probably a more asthetically pleasing display. I wouldn't suggest brightening the screen, that could interfere negatively with the gameplay. If you want to maintain the "realism", I would suggest modulating the brightness of the background stars instead, i.e. when the camera is pointed away from the sun you can see them, when the camera is pointed towards the sun (or another bright object like the earth or the moon [that's why you can't see the stars in most ISS or Apollo images]) you can't.
Also, I would suggest adding a smaller lens flare to the fusion explosions, however you end up rendering those. Also, keep in mind that a nuclear explosion (or any explosion for that matter) is not going to look the same in space as it does on Earth...
Author
What would I draw on the billboard? Also I kind of like having a flyable-to-sun...:)
There's no background texture map. Everything that is drawn is an actual 3D object...
Uh...how tricky is it to add lens flare? I'm using DarkGDK, if that matters...
I think I can still directly access the D3D functions, if there's a nice easy "lens flare" function. :)
I was planning on rendering explosions as a white sphere that flashes on the screen for 1 frame...looks like a real explosion, I swear (minus all the dirt and debris that gets kicked up...which would happen a lot less in space...be nice if there was some spaceship debris, but that's low on the to-do list...)
There's no background texture map. Everything that is drawn is an actual 3D object...
Uh...how tricky is it to add lens flare? I'm using DarkGDK, if that matters...
I think I can still directly access the D3D functions, if there's a nice easy "lens flare" function. :)
I was planning on rendering explosions as a white sphere that flashes on the screen for 1 frame...looks like a real explosion, I swear (minus all the dirt and debris that gets kicked up...which would happen a lot less in space...be nice if there was some spaceship debris, but that's low on the to-do list...)
For lens-flare:
If you can find the location of your sun in screen space, you can use this tutorial to do a cool lens flare effect:
http://www.gamedev.net/reference/articles/article813.asp
See this image for example:
http://www.cnn.com/ ...sun.earth.lrg.jpg
and then combine that with a brightening of the screen proportional to the distance of the sun (in screen space) to the center of the screen. You can do that with a semi-transparent white quad stretched across the screen.
If you can find the location of your sun in screen space, you can use this tutorial to do a cool lens flare effect:
http://www.gamedev.net/reference/articles/article813.asp
See this image for example:
http://www.cnn.com/ ...sun.earth.lrg.jpg
and then combine that with a brightening of the screen proportional to the distance of the sun (in screen space) to the center of the screen. You can do that with a semi-transparent white quad stretched across the screen.
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