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ArjinFerman  Tinfoil Gigachad  9mo ago (text post)   Edited 9mo ago   1429 thread views

The Motte Moddes: HighSpace (August 2023)

The goal of this thread is to coordinate development on our project codenamed HighSpace - a mod for Freespace 2 that will be a mashup between it and High Fleet. A description of how the mechanics of the two games could be combined is available in the first thread.

Who we have

Who we need

The more the merrier, you are free to join in any capacity you wish! I can already identify a few distinct tasks for each position that we could split the work into

  • developers: “mission” code, “strategic” system map code

  • artists: 2D (user interface), 3D (space ships, weapons explosions)

  • writers: worldbuilding/lore, quests, characters

What we have

  • Concept art for a long range missle cruiser, curtesy of @FCfromSSC

  • A proof of concenpt for “strategic” system map we jump into on start of the campaign. It contains a friendly ship and 2 enemy ships, you can chose where to move / which enemy ship to attack.

  • A somewhat actual-game-like workflow. Attacking a ship launches a mission where the two ships are pitted against each other. If you win, the current health of your ship is saved, and you can launch the second attack. If you clean up the map you are greeted with a “You Win” message, or “You Lose” if you lose your ship.

  • A “tactical” RTS-like in-mission view where you can give commands to your ships.

Updates

  • The System Map and the Tactical View got minor pimp-ups. The System Map now shows the ship names, and the Tactical View has a grid to help with orientation, draws ship icons if the ships are too far away to see, and draws waypoint, and target icons to give some indications of the ship's current goals.

  • The System Map now supports Battle Groups, and the player is now in charge of one - the original GTC Trinity cruiser, and a wing of fighters.

  • We now have “just in time” mission generation. Like I mentioned in the previous thread, the scripting API gives you access to the file system, so it was pretty easy to generate a mission file on the fly. This has some advantages over using a “blank” mission file and setting up the mission via the API, because not all mission features are exposed to the API. The most obvious example here will be how there's no longer an “extra” player ship, just the ones explicitly declared for the System Map (in the previous versions you'd be flying a fighter, even though in theory there were no fighters in the System Map).

  • Thanks to the fighters and their current load-out it's actually not that hard to win the game at the moment. Your cruiser will easily dispatch the Shivan one, and as to the corvette, you can order your ships to run away, and take out the turrets yourself, then order your ships to attack. It will take a while, but with a defenseless enemy it's only a question of time.

What's next

  • The System Map didn't get a lot of attention so far, so I'd like expand it. It would be nice to move around an actual star system, add camera movement, and split/merge mechanics for fleets.

  • The Tactical View is somewhat functional, but still needs to give a player handle on what's going on, and better control over their ships. I wanted to add subsystem status, beam cannon charge status, and a handier way to give advanced commands.

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The only rub being, that I'd like space exploration to be part of the game, and getting bogged down in a solar system for too long would turn exploring the cosmos into a bit of a drudgery. Of course we could just have the early systems be relatively undefended, and have the massive solar system scale war be the Last Stand of the game.

I always feel like I've wanted a space exploration game, but also every space exploration game I've ever played has felt like a disappointment. Even the latest version of No Man's Sky has kind of boring exploration mechanics. Its just that they made so many of the other mechanics in the game workable and good that the lackluster exploration has fallen off as a point of criticism.

Realistically, Space is a whole bunch of nothing. A bunch of rocks, some glowing balls of fusion, and lots and lots of nothing. Freespace in particular is in a rough position to make exploration interesting. I'm not even sure what level of mechanics are allowed, but I feel that traditional space exploration would be limited to obtaining new skyboxes, or reading text of something happening off screen.

The only interesting thing a freespace player can really explore are new ships and new mechanics.

In my opinion, the issue here isn't exploration, it's the sandbox. No Man's Sky is boring because it doesn't have much to say, what you'll find through your exploration boils down to new life forms, gadgets, biomes, etc., in the end pretty superficial stuff. Contrast that with something like Star Control 2 that follows a "scripted main quest with no guard rails" formula. You're running around the galaxy, looking for allies, and clues as to where to go next to solve the main quest / current side quest. The clues you get are often vague, so you're never sure if you're headed the right way, and what you're going to find, and you have a good chance of finding something valuable by random chance. It's quite enjoyable.

But in this case I was thinking of copying HighFleet - clear direction, some degree of freedom of movement, goodies spread out on your path randomly.

Realistically, Space is a whole bunch of nothing

Realism is for training simulators and, ironically, sandbox games.

Ever play Escape Velocity? That is the only space exploration game I've really ever enjoyed.

No, I checked my library on steam. Nothing. Then I checked for the game on steam to see reviews and description. No space exploration game by that name came up. So I go and search for it on the internet, and find this wikipedia entry. If that is the game then holy crap. It was released in 1996 almost thirty years ago. No wonder I hadn't played it.

...Man, now I feel old.

Endless Sky is a free (actually free, no microtransactions) and modernized Escape Velocity clone. There are several others but that's the most polished and complete of them.

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