License: Undetermined (but non-critical parts of the code could hopefully be released as open source)
Recruiting: Testers, possibly artists at a later stage
Contact: Tumaini
Status: active
Abstract:
Holicity is aimed to be a game set in a universe not unlike ours, but still not quite like ours. It will feature space travel with real physics calculations for many things, a political system where players can write their own laws and get them implemented, research minigames with different levels and in different scientific areas, where you can play a fun game and learn something about the real world at the same time, landing on planets and exploring new worlds, developing new technologies and designing ships and other things, building space stations and other buildings/equipment, immersing yourself in a mysterious storyline or one of the subplots, and more…
Right now it’s only in early pre-alpha stages and there are not that many game functions implemented.
Currently implemented functions include:
Space travel over great distances (although you’ll probably run out of fuel fairly soon)
Groups
Chat (including tabs, private channels, global chat and group channels
Mail (sending mail messages in game to other avatars)
Object selection
Basic auto pilot support (stop rotation, go to a point in space) - not exact yet
Basic asteroid mining (with lasers!; will include a mini-game later)
Rudimentary (and temporary) space station functions (selling ore, refuelling ship; docking at space stations will be a major focus in the next development cycle)
Avatar creation/deletion with initial ship selection
Ship key colouring
Testing sessions are sparse at this stage, but if you’re interested in testing, please register in the forum (registrations are closed at the moment due to spamming, but send me a pm and I’ll set an account up for you) at the above link and contact me to let me know you’re interested in testing.
Sounds cool, but I searched the entire forum and blog and there are no screenshots. It seems like development is pretty far in already so why not take some shots and maybe videos and put them online?
Yes, we haven't taken many screenshots yet, mostly because as we don't have a graphics designer yet, all the graphics are very basic models and textures that we threw together ourselves as placeholders.
I'll see what I can do about a screenshot/video though.
EDIT: A few screenshots have been posted on the forum linked above.
Do keep in mind that the graphics are all placeholder graphics and will be replaced later.
We're planning an online test on the 13th of February.
The theme is chat and gui and if you want to help us test you're welcome!
We're still in pre-alpha phase so it's all still very basic and might be unstable, but it still needs testing.
If you would like to participate in the test, please send me a pm here or in the forums linked to in the above post.
We use the forums to inform pre-alpha testers of what's going on, so if you want to keep really up to date you can register there as well and I'll add you to the tester group (please let me know you've registered so I don't miss you).
It will take place at 11.00 CET (Central European Time).
[05.00 EST, 02.00 PST]
There might be another test later in the evening CET, depending on the need and if there are testers who want to test but can't make it to the 11.00 test.
The early test will take place at 11.00 (AM) CET on Saturday the 13th of February.
The client will be made available via the forums (see link in top post) and you must contact me or post in the forums to get an account before the day to be able to test.
Thanks for the tweet, perhaps it will draw some testers and hopefully our game can increase interest in JME as well, at least when it gets closer to being ready!
Our plans are not quite sorted out yet, since we're still some ways away from release, but we're considering a free download and trial and then a pretty low monthly subscription. We don't like micropayment systems where people can buy progress in the game, especially our game would be unbalanced by that.
We also have some plans to develop demo-versions of some parts of our game, like the research mini-games that we can give to schools (as they deal with mathematics, physics etc.). Those would be free though probably with a link to our website to let them know the mini-game came from our game.
It's a long way to go still, including beta testing, so everything can still change.
Sounds like you've actually given this some thought
It's intersting looking at views on this particular topic (on indiegamer for example) as people seem to get extremely polarised on this subject. Can't say I view on over the other, but with subscription you do have a better idea of income projects (unless you get a unexpected exodus, of course).
Tumaini wrote:
We don't like micropayment systems where people can buy progress in the game
Don't forget there are alternatives to micropayments buyng progress, instead you can buy unique items, pimp characters / ships e.t.c. The buying extras seemed to work for ThreeRing's who produce Puzzel Pirates & Bang Howdy! (who used jme at some point in time with those products).
Tumaini wrote:
we're still some ways away from release
Plenty of time to hammer out the details then.
Looks like it could be an interesting game, best of luck with it!
We will post here when we host the next pre-alpha test and when we do any major updates of features.
Thanks, Eggsworth, for the link!
We've not yet decided how to do the background with stars (that's why we've got such a boring backdrop now), but we're thinking of functionality like clicking on far away objects in the skybox to select them, so I'm not sure how that would fit with the skybox program, but we'll have to look into it a bit more.
Just an update to let you know that this project is still active!
At the moment I'm working with switching the GUI from GBUI to Nifty-GUI and it's going very well.
Other things we are working on are a context menu, programmable ship's computers (by javascript), simple missions (delivery) and an inventory window with drag-and-drop support.
Well, I've definitely been adapting to Nifty (it's a great GUI!) and I'm working on some things there with void and others while at the same time switching Holicity's GUI from GBUI to Nifty. I haven't been looking into jME3 much though (hides), since it has too high graphics requirements (shaders) and jME2 is doing fine for us at the moment.
We might switch later, of course, if we find that jME3 can run on low-end computers as well, but for now we'll stick with jME2. Graphics are great, but there are more important things to a game and we still have some way to go before alpha!
Yes, I've read the interview and checked out the video, it looks very good!
Holicity will be quite different though, as we're focusing on research, community and storyline and excluding battles, so I think they'll fill two different use-cases, which is good.
Thanks for the link about SpiderMonkey!
JGN is fantastic once you get to know it, so we're fine with that too at the moment, but we would be happy to see another network library and since it seems to be based around similar principles to JGN, we might well switch to it when it's done.
Sadly darkfrog seems to have disappeared and the JGN forums are filling with spam, I seem to be the only committer left and I don't have enough experience to work on all parts of the library. A new actively developed library would of course be very good for all jME users!
Btw, I must add that you are doing a great job promoting jME and giving moral support to struggling game developers!
Glad to hear it! I see you’ve been contributing a lot of your time helping newcomers meanwhile adapting to the new concepts of Nifty and jME3 yourself; quite the model citizen
You might have noticed we recently interviewed Urban Galaxy, a fellow space game. I hope we can still expect to see an evident divide between the two designs?
I know you’ve also contributed some of your time maintaining JGN (you might remember our e-mail exchange), and I Holicity was the game you applied your work to. There’s a new network library just starting development called SpiderMonkey. I’m certainly not asking you to drop JGN; I just figured maybe you’d have some experiences and ideas to share.
