Space Strategy Game/First Person Shooter (Pictures!)

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Background: I was thinking about the best way to write the backstory for my FPS. I thought, “How cool would it be to get a group of 5 friends plus me, 3 on one “team,” 3 on the other. Each of the 3 acts as a different part of leadership for the team (i.e. Emperor, Admiral, and Citizens), and we kinda build off of what happens.” Basically, if the Admiral wanted to create a massive warship, the person acting as Emperor would react, the Citizens as well, and that would dictate how things go. Then I figured it’d be even neater to be an actual game.

Gameplay: You start off in a galaxy. You own a single solar system. Each planet has a different material richness - Metal, Plasmid, or Conduits. Each planet can be constructed into only one of three types: Research, Mineral Extraction, or Construction. A Research Planet allows the player to build observatories on the surface, which can search for other inhabitable planets, as well as (more obviously,) researching to improve efficiency and strength of the fleet. A Mineral Extraction planet does exactly that. You build resource operations on the planet to get more materials to build with. A Construction Planet is used to build your ships, and acts more or less as a central location for fleets. Once you’ve got some probes, send them out into space and find the next nearest places. Maybe there’s enemies there, maybe there’s not - you find out as you go, you take places over, and you build your empire. The goal of the game is to control the whole galaxy as your empire.

Explanation: It’s a bit of a reach, I admit, but I’m going to do my best. There are 3 roles a player can play: Ship Designer, Fighter, and Commander. You can switch between roles as you want, and it’s as easy as a click here or there.
Ship Designers do exactly that - design ships. You’re given straight halls, turns, engines, missiles, bridges, etc. to comprise ships, or you can build from or use the pre-designed ships. This feature is already completed, and I’m in the process of redoing the models in more detail and texturing them better.
Fighters have a number of roles. In a space battle, the Fighter might find himself sitting in the pilot’s seat, directly controlling the ship. Or maybe, his ship gets boarded. It then becomes his choice - scuttle, escape, or fight them off in FPS. But then you’ve got the leeway between battles. Say you board an enemy ship, and get intel of the location of their homeworld. You can build a stealth ship, send it to that planet, and attempt an assassination on someone.
Commanders are the ones who micromanage the fleet. They give orders to ships, build research stations, etc. Basically, the Commanders do everything you’d do in a game like Sins of a Solar Empire or Homeworld. They make the big decisions.

Progress so far: Well, I did have a lot, but as is my custom, I got 5 months into development and started hating it from the inside out. I hate working on the code as-is because it’s such a mess. So, as of today, I believe I’ll be restarting. Not entirely, just on the major gameplay aspects. I delved right into it the first time, no planning or anything, and that’s come back to bite me. I’ll be spending lots of time figuring out the best way to write the code. But, as far as working features go in the messy version, there’s the following:
Ship construction, ship building in-game, mining resources, orbiting ships on planets, screen-locking on ships, and a basic HUD.
And now the fun part, (pardon my embarrassment), photos!

A 3-floor destroyer ship. See, I told you the models were void of detail and needed redoing.

En route to a red-planet (rich in metal.)

And apparently Plasmid too?

Did a LOOOOOT of shader stuff for on-surface views for the wonderful JmePlanet by @aaronperkins

Ice planet

A full, randomly generated (and perfectly aligned) solar system.

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This is really looking great.

What are your plans for the game once it is complete?
I didn’t quite get from the backstory if the game was indeed going to be team-based multiplayer? That would be really cool if it was an option for sure.

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Thanks! It’s been a long time getting all of the shaders and assets in place the way I wanted them, but I really like how it’s looking so far (excluding the inner workings).

As for the team-based, that’s absolutely right. Each player decides their role. For example, say you’ve got a friend that’s really good with RTS games, and another that’s great with FPS. During battles, your FPS friend will be fighting on enemy ships while the RTS guy is controlling the fleet and coordinating the battle. Then, battle’s over, the FPS guy can fall back and help design ships, help as a Commander, etc. anything you want to do. You decide what you’re doing, and there’s kind-of a niche for everyone I think. Another thing I’m thinking about is prefabricated battles - for those people that aren’t feeling like building up the army and doing the RTS, they just want the intense space battles. Start it up, and there you go, two fleets pitted against each other for your enjoyment or practice.

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@vinexgames said: Thanks! It's been a long time getting all of the shaders and assets in place the way I wanted them, but I really like how it's looking so far (excluding the inner workings).

As for the team-based, that’s absolutely right. Each player decides their role. For example, say you’ve got a friend that’s really good with RTS games, and another that’s great with FPS. During battles, your FPS friend will be fighting on enemy ships while the RTS guy is controlling the fleet and coordinating the battle. Then, battle’s over, the FPS guy can fall back and help design ships, help as a Commander, etc. anything you want to do. You decide what you’re doing, and there’s kind-of a niche for everyone I think. Another thing I’m thinking about is prefabricated battles - for those people that aren’t feeling like building up the army and doing the RTS, they just want the intense space battles. Start it up, and there you go, two fleets pitted against each other for your enjoyment or practice.

What an awesome idea! I can’t wait to see how you implement the gameplay/interaction for/between the different roles. Sounds like it’s gonna be a ton of fun.

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This may or may not be of interest to you:
http://www.blendswap.com/blends/view/17601

…It’s essentially a library of big ship parts that you could put together in various configurations to make different ships. Might save you some time on ship creation.

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@pspeed said: This may or may not be of interest to you: http://www.blendswap.com/blends/view/17601

…It’s essentially a library of big ship parts that you could put together in various configurations to make different ships. Might save you some time on ship creation.

Awesome find!

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@t0neg0d said: Awesome find!

Thanks. I used a ship built with it when testing out some space flight ideas I had and always meant to get back to it someday.

This video shows a fly-by of a big ship (untextured) but still looks pretty cool.
[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I33xWWYmmMo[/video]

It’s very modular and lots of different things one can build from it.

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@pspeed said: Thanks. I used a ship built with it when testing out some space flight ideas I had and always meant to get back to it someday.

This video shows a fly-by of a big ship (untextured) but still looks pretty cool.
[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I33xWWYmmMo[/video]

It’s very modular and lots of different things one can build from it.

That looked insanely cool! I’m really anxious for someone to finish one of these space sim games. My old favorites were WingCommand, X-Wing/Tie Fighter, Privateer … man, I miss those games.

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@t0neg0d said: That looked insanely cool! I'm really anxious for someone to finish one of these space sim games. My old favorites were WingCommand, X-Wing/Tie Fighter, Privateer ... man, I miss those games.

X-wing and X-wing vs Tie Fighter were my favorites. Great stories from an 8 player LAN party we had playing X-wing v Tie.

Not to derail this thread too much, but the above was the beginnings of an experiment I wanted to try after seeing a third person space combat game. Because the ship moved separately from the camera it made space feel really big. Lots of nice parallax between the background and the ship. I thought maybe decoupling the camera from the ship in a first person game… and then letting the head experience separate momentum and stuff might add some of that vastness and also make the motion of the ship feel a little more visceral. I ended up getting side tracked with Blender learning, though. :slight_smile:

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@pspeed said: This may or may not be of interest to you: http://www.blendswap.com/blends/view/17601

…It’s essentially a library of big ship parts that you could put together in various configurations to make different ships. Might save you some time on ship creation.

That’s probably one of the niftiest things I’ve ever seen! Unfortunately though, my Blender experience is basically non-existent, and even if it wasn’t, it doesn’t appear as though these models have an interior. That’s one of the big features I’m implementing - fully traversable ships. I may, however, continue using the basic stuff I have now for ship interiors and just sorta combine the two with a tad bit of modification. Either way, thanks for showing me that! It’ll come in handy sometime.

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Update: A video!
I redid the ship designer for the game, using the model-pack suggested by @pspeed and it’s pretty incredible. I can’t say a whole lot the video doesn’t, so here you go!

[video]http://youtu.be/EYWlLQkstMk[/video]

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@vinexgames said: Update: A video! I redid the ship designer for the game, using the model-pack suggested by @pspeed and it's pretty incredible. I can't say a whole lot the video doesn't, so here you go!

[video]http://youtu.be/EYWlLQkstMk[/video]

Holy crap! This looks amazing!! Can’t wait til you get to the point of releasing a playable demo!!

EDIT: I really envy you all for having the guts to work on a space sim. I can’t wrap my head around all of the tricks you would need to employ to handle large space on a reasonable scale. One of these days, when I grow an extra brain… I may try it… maybe >.<

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@vinexgames said: Update: A video! I redid the ship designer for the game, using the model-pack suggested by @pspeed and it's pretty incredible. I can't say a whole lot the video doesn't, so here you go!

Oh, cool. Glad it worked for you. I always thought it would be cool to turn it into a clean asset pack of ship parts already converted to j3o. Just never had the time.

@t0neg0d said: Holy crap! This looks amazing!! Can't wait til you get to the point of releasing a playable demo!!

EDIT: I really envy you all for having the guts to work on a space sim. I can’t wrap my head around all of the tricks you would need to employ to handle large space on a reasonable scale. One of these days, when I grow an extra brain… I may try it… maybe >.<

It can help to remember that from planet earth, the closest other planet is a tiny speck in the sky. So while you must handle vast distances, you rarely need to handle vast distances locally. LOD is your best friend.

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@t0neg0d Thanks! This alone took about 5 days, working 3-4 hours a day. Saving and loading ships will come soon.
@pspeed I’ve got some ideas for managing distance and stuff. Considering the point of the game is to control a full galaxy, there will obviously be some shortcuts :slight_smile:

Next on my list of things to do:

  1. Finish up weapons, write code for turrets and missiles
  2. Make more different types of weapons
  3. Start on city/building generation and FPS code

Why am I not starting on actual space/ship combat? Well, exactly that: scale. I can’t decide how I’m going to effectively manage the scale, but I’ve got some ideas. So, I’m moving on to another aspect.
For each planet you inhabit, you choose a main function: Harvester, Constructor, or Researcher. Harvesters are used to gain resources based on the planet’s richness in metal, plasmid, and conduits (the 3 main resources). Constructors are planets off of which you construct your ships. Researchers are planets on which you can build research stations, which improve your harvesting rates, weapon damage, ship hull density, etc. Also, on research planets you can build observatories, which find other solar systems based on the direction you decide to search. FPS comes in when you’re attacking an enemy planet.
Imagine this: Your fleet attacks a hostile solar system you found. One of the planets is a constructor planet with orbital defenses, and the orbital defense platforms are keeping you from taking the planet. So, you have a Carrier-class ship with a Crew Transporter - a part that allows quick transportation of your crew. Your carrier sweeps by the planet, charges the Transporter, and does an insertion on the orbital defense platform. From there, you have two choices: leave it up to chance, or take matters into your own hands and fight in first person to disable the defense platform. Or, you could insert 3 teams onto the surface to disable their construction capabilities for 10 minutes or so.
Or maybe, instead of an all-out battle, you choose the stealth approach. So you send in a ship with cloaking capabilities, and an EMP switch. It drops from Phase (FTL travel) just outside the planet, and bursts EMP immediately to deter the sensors from finding them. Then, you insert a team and phase home. That team would be on the surface, undetected, and from there you could attempt to assassinate the enemy’s leaders (causing lots of disadvantages to the leader-less team for a brief time) or sabotage things.

It’s a pretty big idea, I admit. In the end, it all comes down to how you build your ships. Big, powerful destroyers, or quiet stealth frigates. It all depends on how you play the game.

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@pspeed said: It can help to remember that from planet earth, the closest other planet is a tiny speck in the sky. So while you must handle vast distances, you rarely need to handle vast distances _locally_. LOD is your best friend.

Very good point. I don’t know if anyone here has played Galaxy on Fire (Android & iOS game… much like privateer), but even with the few elements that are in any one given zone, it still seems like it would be difficult to manage. Collectively, you have a space station, jump gate, patrolling fighters, potentially a debri field, etc… enemy fighters… and mission way points. Really not much going on in the scene… it’s just feels vast. They did a fantastic job with the texturing… only game I have played where it is next to impossible to tell that lighting isn’t being used.

Anyways… off on a tangent there… sorry. In every game I have ever worked on, the player is on the ground… the scene is limited to distances that one can relate to from day to day life, etc. A space sim just seems like a very foreign concept… though… still one of my favorite game genres (and completely ignored these days by major gaming companies).