I think 3D would only be useful for battles. During normal trading flight it would only be an annoyance. Imagine the difficulty of landing on a planet when you can actually crash, or run into the Leviathan which happens to be blocking the entire planet?
During a battle 3D would be nice, but I am afraid it would completely change the way battles are fought. While I must admit a 3D EV would look really cool, I don't know that it is worth the effort any time soon. There is still more to be done with 2D and there is the difficulty of making EV 3D without jacking up the system requirements and cost. And destroying the feel of the game. Whenever I think of how cool 3D EV would be I find myself drifting into the realm of strategy games, not EV.

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Do you have the rights to the game? Or the engine? Are you going to completely recode it? Are you planning on making money off of someone else's idea through a sequel?
I know you're well intentioned but there's a lot to think about before you venture down that road.

I'm probably going to fling it at Ambrosia if I can complete it (besides, there is the issue of compatibility with just about everything). Either that, or it will be the biggest free TC ever—and probably the first halfway decent 3D game EVER that gets released for Debian Linux (most Linux people I've talked to said "Debian? Never heard of it.")—and it will be for the ppc architecture—sorry, just about everyone. For the rest of us, we get to clutter your Avara Microtracker window (maybe). The OS X version will have to wait a few more weeks while the code gets tested. Or, if you think you can develop a working knowledge of Debian in those few weeks and want the edge of a few days' experience, put it on an external hard drive and know this command "shutdown -h now" so you can cleanly shut your system down and not kill any filesystems.

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I think 3D would only be useful for battles. During normal trading flight it would only be an annoyance. Imagine the difficulty of landing on a planet when you can actually crash, or run into the Leviathan which happens to be blocking the entire planet?
During a battle 3D would be nice, but I am afraid it would completely change the way battles are fought. While I must admit a 3D EV would look really cool, I don't know that it is worth the effort any time soon. There is still more to be done with 2D and there is the difficulty of making EV 3D without jacking up the system requirements and cost. And destroying the feel of the game. Whenever I think of how cool 3D EV would be I find myself drifting into the realm of strategy games, not EV.

3D won't be exclusively for battles. It is also for seeing how close you can take a Raven to a star before its shields are overwhelmed. Running into a Leviathan is probably not going to be a problem, considering how the planet is going to be set to scale. Just don't try to land a Leviathan on a planet. That's what the orbital docks are for. Yes, there is still more tweaking to be done with Nova's engine, but this game is going to take FOREVER, considering how it's just me vs. this whole new engine and these massive numbers of new ships, especially considering how I have to crunch it between my full load of college classes, and will probably intermittently lose interest. About jacking up the system requirements: my dev machine is a Power Mac 6500, with no upgrades to speak of. Because its CPU is a 250 megahertz 603ev, and its GPU has the text "ATI Mach64" on it (once again), I can't afford to jack up the system requirements. They might even get throttled back a little. Besides, I don't have the time to code more than a hundred or so triangles per ship, or mess with too many textures. I'm going to borrow a technique from the 3D devs of the mid '90s. Haze will be a filter, not a 3D textured, anti-aliased, otherwise processor-hungry object. Explosions will be scaled sprites with transparency, not objects. Passing space dust will be sprites, not objects. The game will run at 640x480. I won't be able to make more than a passing test of 800x600 or 1024x768, thanks mainly to performance problems. Once again (for those of you that just scroll all the way down to the bottom and read the most recent post), I will personally duel with the newb that thinks they can have a 2000-polygon ship in the game.
Progress update: something a good dev could build better in less than ten minutes.

Well, good luck with that.

I know a lot of people have said they will make similar things in the past, and I have yet to ever see any one of them pan out. So if you do make it, great, but I won't hold my breath.

By the way, I wouldn't mind getting my hands on Exobattle again. I haven't looked at it in ages. exobattle@mrxak.com would be most welcoming of what you can send me.

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Well, good luck with that.

I know a lot of people have said they will make similar things in the past, and I have yet to ever see any one of them pan out. So if you do make it, great, but I won't hold my breath.

I seem to remember putting something near the top of this topic about this having a 90% chance of being vaporware. I can't complain too much-without you people not reading everything, this thread would be somewhere on page 2 and getting no attention whatsoever.

Progress: another "minute of a good dev's time" aka more logic (I NEED A KEYBOARD MAP so you can be swinging your nose around AND shooting your <ahem> friend at the same time with something besides the twenty-six letters you know and love... and now I know why the <'> key is never the default for anything...), and work on the development of a Linux resource fork (if nothing else, THAT had better work, so Linux users can see some of the light we Mac users have enjoyed since '84).

EDIT: stupid Windoze piece of garbage double-posted on me. School computers...

This post has been edited by The Apple Cřre : 14 February 2005 - 02:07 PM

Andcarne, on Feb 14 2005, 01:41 AM, said:

Well, good luck with that.

I know a lot of people have said they will make similar things in the past, and I have yet to ever see any one of them pan out. So if you do make it, great, but I won't hold my breath.
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I have to agree. There are a million idea mean out there but not many actually willing to do it.

Making a game isn't about the fun of making it; Prepare to give up years to a project that may never matter at all. It takes some kinda serious determination to get something decent finished - just talk to any member of ATMOS. There was a newbie member in Trash Talk who formed the "Ares 2" team - He said, "Oh, my dad knows how to code stuff," like he meant that his father was going to sit down in front of his computer and magically produce the source code for a brand new game in 5 minutes. Can you see him handing the code over like a piece of candy to a 12 year old?

Heh, so yeah, sorry if I'm stomping on your dream - everyone has potential and you really can do anything you put your mind to, it's all a matter of how much you want it. I think, though, that everyone has to start small. If you don't want to burn out for the rest of your life be sure not to bite off more than you can chew. Start with baby steps to where you want to go; you can start running when you get legs.

This post has been edited by Shrout1 : 15 February 2005 - 09:13 AM

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I have to agree. There are a million idea mean out there but not many actually willing to do it.

Making a game isn't about the fun of making it; Prepare to give up years to a project that may never matter at all. It takes some kinda serious determination to get something decent finished - just talk to any member of ATMOS. There was a newbie member in Trash Talk who formed the "Ares 2" team - He said, "Oh, my dad knows how to code stuff," like he meant that his father was going to sit down in front of his computer and magically produce the source code for a brand new game in 5 minutes. Can you see him handing the code over like a piece of candy to a 12 year old?

Heh, so yeah, sorry if I'm stomping on your dream - everyone has potential and you really can do anything you put your mind to, it's all a matter of how much you want it. I think, though, that everyone has to start small. If you don't want to burn out for the rest of your life be sure not to bite off more than you can chew. Start with baby steps to where you want to go; you can start running when you get legs.

Baby steps... one object at a time, one behavior at a time, one stellar hazard at a time, and sixteen players at a time ;-).

You're telling me. No, I know a thing or three about C++. I have Linux and its free compiler. I have time to waste. If nothing else, I will come out of this with the knowledge and skill to build a space-based FPS with C++. The good thing about this is: the game already exists somewhat. Even I'd have to admit I was crazy if I tried to build something completely new. No, outfitting ships in a 3D game doesn't happen to be new, thankfully. If only I could find Wing Commander's source. The reason I'm building (somewhat) primitive and way obsolete is that I don't have the time to manually place 4000 triangles several times over. That, and to prove that Performas still have their capabilities (and to stop my friends from laughing at 250 megahertz). No, making a game isn't just for the fun of it. But it still is fun when you as the developer know every cheat in the game because you put it there, and that most of them only work with older Macs, thanks to the fact that just about nobody has a power key ;-). I'll shut up now before I say too much.
BTW, any newb that comments about jacking up the system requirements from this point in time gets permanently banned from the possibility of working with my possible dev team. Don't make me regret saying that...
And no, from the sound of that newb, I don't think that dev team will build a good Ares II-especially not without the source.

I still need that keyboard map so I can set up my boolean array correctly (and ExoBattle's source, among other things)...

Now I just need a keyboard map—and SHOOT ME for not finding ExoBattle's source right under my nose.

Erm...a bit of a topic digression here, but did you ever find the actal ExoBattle game?

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Erm...a bit of a topic digression here, but did you ever find the actal ExoBattle game?

Yes, but it's back in a nice-sized stack of MacAddict CDs. From now on, PM me with an email address if you want a copy.

One thing that I found really annoying about the Rogue Squadron games is that when someone gets behind you, they can chase you and it's pretty much impossible to shake them off unless you know some fancy maneuver that they can't counter. I suppose weapons like stellar grenades could prevent this somewhat, but please keep things like this in mind when you're designing the game.

Good luck.

I wouldn't mind a copy... Even better if you can get Matt's permission to have it hosted somewhere. Email's in the shiny new sig... I have to see if that can take attachments.

If that doesn't work, try hypermike (at) adelphia (dot) net.
~ SP

This post has been edited by SpacePirate : 18 February 2005 - 04:39 PM

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One thing that I found really annoying about the Rogue Squadron games is that when someone gets behind you, they can chase you and it's pretty much impossible to shake them off unless you know some fancy maneuver that they can't counter. I suppose weapons like stellar grenades could prevent this somewhat, but please keep things like this in mind when you're designing the game.

That's why your directional controls aren't your only movement options. Retroburners... strafing... and (why not) grenades?

You might want to check out oolite.aegidian.org for the Oolite source. It's a 3D space game, and it's pretty fun.

Thanks.

I need a simple program, either OS 9-compatible or Mac Linux (preferably a small Debian package, but I can handle KDE, Red Hat, and a few other types of packages as well), that will convert 3DMF, VRML, or DXF-format file to OpenGL C-syntax code in a text file. That would speed development a lot.

EDIT: or PoV.

This post has been edited by The Apple Cřre : 23 February 2005 - 11:00 AM