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ArjinFerman  Tinfoil Gigachad  9mo ago (text post)   Edited 9mo ago   690 thread views

The Motte Moddes: HighSpace (September 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

  • @FCfromSSC - 2D/3D artist

  • @netstack - developer, tester, and suggester of great ideas

  • @Mantergeistmann - writer

  • @Southkraut and @RenOS - didn't formally join the team, but in appreciation for their feedback I am granting them the rank of Consultant

  • Me - developer

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

  1. Interceptor

  2. Pursuit Frigate

  3. Patrol Frigate

  4. Light Missile Cruiser

And we've made some attempts to import them into the game, just to see how they'd look:

  1. Interceptor: Mission Editor, In-Game
  2. Cruiser: Mission Editor, In-Game

  • 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

I didn't have as much time to work on the mod as I would like this month, but I managed to update the System View. It now has camera movement and zoom, but more importantly it is now a view of an actual solar system (our's to be precise).

Neither the sun, nor the planets currently do anything - they don't move, they don't block your movement, you can even fly right into them - but they do look cool in my opinion. I also added ship grouping (separate from the idea of merging fleets into Battle Groups) in case the zoom-out is so big, the icons start running into each other. It's still a bit glitchy, but it gets the job done.

What's next

  • I'd like to continue working on the System View. @netstack wanted to add real-time ship movement, with pausable/fast-farwardable game time, and planet movement feels like a natural extension of that. I'd also like to add orbit calculation and movement for the ships. After that, I'd implementing various forms of obstacle mechanics - you won't be able to fly into, or through the planets,

  • If I get tired of the System View, I might work on the Tactical View improvements I mentioned in the last thread: subsystem status, beam cannon charge status, and a handier way to give advanced commands. The scripting API also allows you to add objects to the background, so I'd like to calculate the appropriate positions for suns and planets, based on your location in the System View.

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