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ArjinFerman  Tinfoil Gigachad  9mo ago (text post)   Edited 9mo ago   1350 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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My IRL obligations caught up with me sooner than expected, so I didn't get much done this month, but I've been working on the System Map and there's a few things I would like to get feedback on:

  • Circular orbits only. To avoid contradictions between Freespace's non-Newtonian flight model, and basic orbital mechanics all orbits would always be circular. You can move around using conventional engines, and when you stop the resulting orbit will just continue to circle the body with the currently highest gravitational influence on you. This might imply clockwise-only movement as well, since there is no way to decelerate and change directions.

  • Lagrange points. If you have an inkling of where the enemy is, you can use them to keep the line of sight broken. OTOH, they're an obvious place to check / want to have control over.

  • Realistic distances, yay or nay? I'm opting for yay, with subspace allowing you to cover large distances, I don't see an obvious reason to forgo them, and they'll let ships hide in the vastness of space.

  • OTOH, there has to be a way to detect your enemy. This is where I'd like to the imitate High Fleet, and go with some active/passive sensor system. Active sensors being high-accuracy, and covering large distances but giving away your position, and passive systems being shorter range, but allowing you to stay relatively hidden.

  • Subspace jumps giving away your position? And the vague direction of the destination? It's accuracy will depend on the distance from the jump source?

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