Ark

Oh great, well I’ll take that complement any day then.

Fantastic, I’d like to see your models. I’ll send you some textures I made and my current blends when I can.

One thing that EVE does convey really well is the sheer size of space, and the massive distance between satellites (planets, moons, stars, ect.). If you are going for any level of realism then travel would be a very slow, boring affair. Even a ship as big as an ark would be dwarfed by planets, so if you want the game to have an open world element you should give some thought to how you are going to have interesting zones and things to do in essentially open space. I love the idea of a game like this, the possibilities are almost endless. You could have upgrades to the ark that the player could get, weapons, armor, power cores, shields… Stuff like that. So keep it up, all your models look awesome. :slight_smile:

Yes, I always liked the way that EVE made space feel like real space, and not some warped and tiny universe.

So, I came up with an idea for a basic plan of controls and the way the game could possibley play, obviously Nayshun can choose to change or reject this, as its his game, but I thought it would be a good idea to map out a basic plan.

-OUT OF COMBAT- LARGE SHIPS -
WASD controls basic directional 2 dimensional movment along a local plane.
Holding right mouse makes the ship follow the mouse, letting you ‘aim’ the ship in different directions in 3d. allowing 3 dimensional movment.
Left clicking on various objects in the enviroment highlights them, or selects them.
Once an Asteroid is selected, SPACE activates mining lasers.
Once a station or planet is selected, press SPACE to DOCK or LAND (i don’t know about this, stations could be done, but planets could be made to be like large stations where you can trade ect. Making a whole ground element would require a mass of work)
Once a warp gate is selected, press SPACE to activate and travel to a new system.
Once an enemy is selected, press SPACE to initiate combat.

-IN COMBAT- LARGE SHIPS -
To allow easy control within combat, it will be 2 dimensional along a global plane, with WASD controlling movment.
Holding right mouse allows roation of camera around your ship in 3d. Making the combat feel 3d, even though it is only 2d.
Weapons (excluding automatic point defense weapons) follow the mouse when left click is held.
pressing keys 1-9 fires a different type of weapon where the mouse is aimed.
point defense systems stop a certain precentage of ordnance based on the quality of your flak weapons.

-IN COMBAT- SMALL SHIPS -
pretty standard, cockpit view.
Ship follows the mouse and is constantly moving forward.
W boosts.
S slows down.
A and D barrel roll.
1-9 selects a different weapon.
Left click fires current weapon.

-THE ENVIROMENT-
Essentially, seeing as it would be a good idea to keep the scale of space, as games like that are few and far between, the different areas of a solar system could be split into different scenes within the BGE, so there could be multiple scenes per system, such as the different planets, asteroid belts, station and other objects of interest. We would have to make quite a few backgrounds in order to make you feel as if you were still in the same solar system though, and this would require careful planning of the locations of all objects within a solar system.
Pressing SPACE out of combat with nothing selected opens the WARP menu. Select an object in the solar system to warp to and you will be taken to the corresponding scene, playing a warp animation.

Thats all I can think of right now, and I know the travel between areas sounds very EVEy at the moment, but I am still thinking on that one.

Let me know if you like it :smiley:

I really like what you have so far. I’m going to work on a the movement control system, and see where that leads us. I’ll also start on the battle system.

Sounds like a plan. I’m going to see if I can make any weapon effects in photoshop, and model some more ships. You can never have enough ships :smiley:

Amen to that!

806 Faces. Capital Ship.

Attachments


Those look good.

I can’t figure out a way to do the orbiting camera but I’ll keep looking.

I’ve designed a set of main batteries for the ark. They are subject to change:






Looking good!

About the movment system out of combat, I can imagine the logic that would be required to create the kind of movment I had in mind, I just don’t know how to put it together in the BGE.

W motions forward (along a local plane)
S motions backward (along a local plane)
A turns left (along a local plane)
D turns right (along a local plane)
when RIGHT MOUSE is held a property is applied to the ship.
when the property is applied to the ship, the ship will rotate with the mouse. (similar to the mouselook script prehaps? may need to do some modifiying)
when RIGHT mouse is not held the property is removed somhow.

it should work, like I said however, im not too shabby with BGE logic.