Since the project is starting to take shape I figured I could start a thread here too. I started it in February with the help of JavaFX’s 3D engine, but it outgrew its features and I needed to switch. JMonkey seemed like a good way to go. (havent been proven wrong yet haha).
What it’s about is basicly assembling a spaceship using parts floating around in space, visit other planets/systems and battle enemy ships. They also drop blocks when hit so you can use those to further extend your own. Other not implemented but planned features include company contracts, random events, trading, mining and boss fights.
Building system:
Here you can see a WIP shot of the placeholder sector map which shows locations of all generated solar systems to which you can travel to. Still needs a ton of work and a way to jump to other sectors when you get close to the edges of the first one.
There are currently 5 ship modules:
Command Module (the core of the ship, every ship has only one)
Block (basic structural element)
Engine (used for moving around or traveling faster than light)
Laser (emits high density light bursts that damage other blocks)
Tractor beam (work in progress, currently acts as a block)
There are 3 factions you can encounter:
normal generic ships (brown hull)
corporate sector task force (red & black hull)
space agency exploration ships (white & blue hull)
There is a ship saving/loading function that enables you to share your creations or save them for later. At the moment you can do so at any time you want.
Nifty gui came in handy for this, but its still not as nifty as its name suggests imo.
While AI controlled ships spawn and fly (and are also tagged with a marker to make them easier to see), their behavoral code still needs huge amounts of work. Any way to diplomatically interact with them is still missing since there are no dialogs yet.
The first JME3 build hasn’t been released yet since it needs some more work. If you think “hey this seems simmilar to TerraTech” then you’d be correct. I’m heavily inspired and influenced by it, but I always thought it doesn’t have enough space. Ergo more space.
Back from my holiday and I’ve have been doing some stuff and things, like an actual skybox, 4 different star types (sun-like, red giant, pulsar and an orange one) which provide slightly different light.
I still have no idea how to change the planets’ texture color on the fly. Any of you guys know of a way to layer a color on top of a DiffuseMap on a material?
For some reason ship-to-ship collisions make a huge performance impact, even without any block detaching code. That’ll definetly require a smart solution that I don’t have. Yet.
Thanks, well I plan to keep it single player since my network skils are crap, but a large world is planned since it’ll be procedural and the only limit to that is well, game memory hah.
@Cervantez Well at first I was thinking to have planets orbiting but then the ship flying would need a big redesign and so they’re just hanging around as you said.
The scaling is as follows: one ship module is 2 units across, the rocky planets have a radius of radius 400 to 3000 units and gas giants 3000-6000 units. They still feel a bit small but I remember playing Star Trek Legacy a while ago that had even smaller planets and it didnt interfiere with the gameplay as much as you might think. Distances between them are still pretty much placeholder since I just randomly generate them and repair overlaps.
Yeah but after some days of playing they bore you as you don’t have any objective expect nerd infinitely;and as you said there are already some singleplayer games with same mechanics so your game is not gonna be enough original to attract people. Also networking programming is essential if you want to program games nowadays and is not so difficult
But there are always old people like me that think i.e. X-COM should never ever have a multiplayer mode Lots of games work just fine in single player mode, in every genre.
Maybe MoffKalast is only doing it for fun and does not want to attract people… We do not know
An MMO game needs a large community to survive. Noone wants to hang out on a server where there are only 5 people logged in. Also for an MMO you need content. Lots and lots of content do deliver over time after the initial release date. Otherwise people will start wandering off because they get bored. And that is something no single person or small team can keep up very long.
In a singleplayer game no one expects all that if the game was free or realitvely cheap. It is much easier to have a happy fan base that way.
I seriously doubt network programming is essential nowadays… The Witcher, the Batman: Arkham series, the Elderscrolls series and the Fallout series come to mind. All highly praised by the media and fans. And all done by companies who have the knowledge, man power and money to create large multiplayer games. (and I dare say, they would not have been this great if they had been multi player games)
Now enough of me letting my inner single player fanboy out
@Cervantez An answer to the question in your first point: I’m working on this because this is a game I’ve always wanted to make, while combining the best (IMO) aspects of certain games. Note that I’m still in highschool and this is my first actual 3D game (I worked on some 2D unfinished projects before) so I do not have enough experience and resources to maintain a large community, much less an array of servers to power an online aspect of the game. What I’m trying to acheive is to make myself a little bit known and get experience that will benefit me in the future as a (hopefully) professional gamedev.
All games you said are released by big companies who have money to advertise and they have excellent graphics and gameplays. I really doubt a single person can build a game like that and you need to create much content anyway,especially because it’s singleplayer and longevity is reduced by that.
Well i’m in year 8 by now (doing a space mmo game ^^) , it is mostly much learning. As a singleplayer non massive scalable game I would probably already be near finsih.
Lots of games work just fine in single player mode, in every genre.
