Since the original thread fell of the main page, I figured I'd turn this into a monthly thread.
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 pf 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
-
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
-
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.
-
*New:* a “tactical” RTS-like in-mission view where you can give commands to your ships (see more in comment below)
What's next
The fun stuff can now begin:
-
The system map is only a proof of concept, for one, it's not really a map of a star system. Also, the enemies cannot move, your ship is instantly teleported instead of moving gradually as time goes by, etc.
-
Missions start with the player in control of a default fighter craft, because we need a mission file, and a mission file needs a player ship. An easy way to solve it is to turn the single ship in the system view into a group containing a fighter wing, that the player will be in control of. A more complex solution is a bit more crazy, but I think it might work - the mission files are just text, and the lua API has read/write access to the file system. I think it should be possible to dynamically rewrite the mission file to setup the player ship to be the one that was moved from the system map
-
The “tactical” view is also pretty rudimentary. The camera cannot be moved, only basic right-click commands can be given (move / attack / protect), wheras the game supports pretty complex stuff (disabling, disarming, attacking specific subsystems). As battles grow in scope, finding a way to show what the hell is going on in a clear and simple way would also be useful.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Coding Update 004 - Tactical View Part II
I added camera controls to the Tactical View (W, A, S, D for movement, mouse scroll for zoom, CTRL + mouse move to rotate), a grid for orientation, and when the ships get too small when you zoom out, a normalized ship icon is drawn at their location.
One annoying thing is that CTRL is the primary fire key by default, and apparently that command gets listened on no matter what you do with the input settings. There's a way to yield control over the player ship to the AI, but it still fires the weapons. You can also disable the weapons, but then the AI is defenseless. There's a way around it, the Lua API allows you "simulate" a frame and in that case the user flight controls are ignored, but that function has a bug in rendering (the lights accumulate with every frame). The bug is actually pretty easy to fix... but it means it will require a custom build... Long story short - at the moment you will hear your guns when rotating the camera, unless you rebind the keys.
/images/16903999604983673.webp
More options
Context Copy link