A new Star Wars game?

[Kuja]

AAAAAAAAWWWWWWWEEEEEEESSSSSSOOOOOMMMMEEEEE!!!!!!

[Cpt_Frank]

An ambitious project indeed.

[jegs2]

I'd like an online SW game that involves the ships as well as the ground stuff I've seen mentioned. What a way to go -- join the Imperial Navy as an ensign and work your way up to commanding an Imperator Star Destroyer or even an entire battlegroup.

[Bob The Great]

yes, online would be cool (like Galaxies), but I've always loved getting pulled into the storyline of a really good single-player game. It gives you far more interesting scenarios and greater immersion, imo.

[Kuja]

and you don't have to depend on other people.

[Master of Ossus]

This game will have to take up a hell of a lot of RAM to include all of these features. That's just the way I like games. And it seems pretty clear from the descriptions that none of that will be wasted.

[Bob The Great]

Indeed! With the battle damage and stuff, it will definitely be high-end machines only (like mine! ) I'm sure there could be options to turn off the damage effects and use low quality texturing and that sort of thing though.

[Kuja]

Or a population limit.

[Dolman]

Hi, I’m the lead programmer on this project.

Keep these great ideas coming, but be warned this is not being made over night, the time scale that is being looked at is 3 to 4 years for a finished product. So to give you a better idea of how the development is proceeding here is a summary of the process.

Phase 1: Development of Graphics Engine
Phase 2: Development of Physics Engine
Phase 3: Development of Game Play Engine
Phase 4: Integration on Mission etc Into Game Play Engine
Phase 5: Haven’t thought that far yet, but things like online play, multiplayer support, RTS planetary invasion etc.

At the moment I’m programming the Graphics Engine (Phase One) with DirectX 8 but I am waiting until DirectX 9 comes out to finish it, as it has a lot of features that are improved on. So I expect to finish Phase 1 in about one to two months, provided that DirectX 9 SDK is realised on time. At this time or sooner you can hope to see an example of the graphics engine in action.

Although the development is 3 to 4 years, you can expect to see lots of playable Alpha and Beta releases of the game throughout it development, and you can expect to see Phase 3 being nearing completion in the end of the first year of development.

Keep the ideas flowing

[Kuja]

Welcome, Dolman! Nice sig! Sounds like a good plan to me. Well laid out.

[jegs2]

Hi, I’m the lead programmer on this project.

Keep these great ideas coming, but be warned this is not being made over night, the time scale that is being looked at is 3 to 4 years for a finished product. So to give you a better idea of how the development is proceeding here is a summary of the process.

Phase 1: Development of Graphics Engine
Phase 2: Development of Physics Engine
Phase 3: Development of Game Play Engine
Phase 4: Integration on Mission etc Into Game Play Engine
Phase 5: Haven’t thought that far yet, but things like online play, multiplayer support, RTS planetary invasion etc.

At the moment I’m programming the Graphics Engine (Phase One) with DirectX 8 but I am waiting until DirectX 9 comes out to finish it, as it has a lot of features that are improved on. So I expect to finish Phase 1 in about one to two months, provided that DirectX 9 SDK is realised on time. At this time or sooner you can hope to see an example of the graphics engine in action.

Although the development is 3 to 4 years, you can expect to see lots of playable Alpha and Beta releases of the game throughout it development, and you can expect to see Phase 3 being nearing completion in the end of the first year of development.

Keep the ideas flowing

"Roger, roger!"

....sorry, couldn't resist....

[Kuja]

*cackle

[Mr Bean]

Just say the word and I'll smite any of them for you Dolman

[Utsanomiko]

Sounds like the project has quite alot of potential. I hope you have some people familiar/skilled with game design.

I'm too damn humble to make a shameless plug about myself, so just ask Spanky The Dolphin about my familiarity and competency with game design.

Anywho, while I think the motivation behind idea of controlling a fleet's ships and crew sections is interesting, you'll of course have to make the interface intuitive by finding a balance between form and function; in this case, whether it emphasizes on the 'realism' of giving direct orders to different officers, or providing the player with quick and easy controls to make constant checks and modifications to their personally customized armada. I can extrapolate on design goals later, if need be.

Anyway, sinse you don't necesarilly have the genre of the gameplay set in stone yet (and it doesn't seem like it'll need to be set for while, according to your development schedule), might I suggest that many of the concepts you want implemented could be done in something more broad than a real-time strategy game? Regardless of the implementation of planetary settings, suppose the game included independents/pirates and outlaws/bonty hunters? Afterall, in much of the SW Galaxy, the Galatic Civil War has little effect.

Are any of you familliar with the Macintosh Free-ware game Escape-Velocity, aka Override? There's a quick review of it at http://www.game-revolution.com/games/mac/escape.htm. There's also an old game known as Spaceward Ho!, which is also a great example of fleet customization and spacebattles.

Personally, I feel that a Star Wars game would have much more edge to it with that kind of scope. A player could start off as one of numerous species on countless worlds, and have the limitless options of either joining Imperial Academy in hopes of shooting up the ranks to Captain, join Rebellion and do covert ops and hit-and-run space missions, or just buy a Corellian Corvette and fly around blowing stuff up, and then running the hell away from the players and NPCs that choose to pick the previous two options. Now THAT's Star Wars.

Not to mention that considering the technological stagnation within SW, there's no need to bother with researching new stuff; whether it's using stolen and rebuilt ships to stand up against the vast Empire, or just souping up your light transport, it's just a matter of how much you're willing to pay, not whether you 'teched-up' faster than your opponent. that could help keep the gameplay focused on more intuitive choices.

That's about all I have to add for now. I'll post later tonight or tomorrow morning (one-class Thursdays! I love my college course schedule! )

[Laughing Mechanicus]

Are any of you familliar with the Macintosh Free-ware game Escape-Velocity, aka Override? There's a quick review of it at http://www.game-revolution.com/games/mac/escape.htm. There's also an old game known as Spaceward Ho!, which is also a great example of fleet customization and spacebattles.

Personally, I feel that a Star Wars game would have much more edge to it with that kind of scope. A player could start off as one of numerous species on countless worlds, and have the limitless options of either joining Imperial Academy in hopes of shooting up the ranks to Captain, join Rebellion and do covert ops and hit-and-run space missions, or just buy a Corellian Corvette and fly around blowing stuff up, and then running the hell away from the players and NPCs that choose to pick the previous two options. Now THAT's Star Wars.

That sounds like a very cool gamne, but I have a feeling it would become almost exactly the same as Star Wars Galaxies will be once they release its space vehicles expansion pack. Also Lucasarts may be civil to us or ignore us if we stay away from their current games market, but if we make a game that is very like one currently in production, theres a much higher chance they will try and put a stop to it. Another problem with that sort of design is we would have to model an entire galaxy complete with galatic civilisation, and if we were to do it properly (and if your not gonna do something like this properly theres not much point doing it) we would have to go over every canon and EU film/book/game in existence in order to get a complete listing of, and correct placements for, every space station/planet/solar system in the galazy and that alone could take a year. Also we wanted this game to be a little more action based and although it will have a singleplayer with some RPG elements this will still be scripted and wont allow that much degree of free roaming ability, we also want to include an instant action mode where you can customise a battle to fight (incidentaly we're going to have many more features than the usual instant action mode in a space sim, which usually entails choosing your force, the enemy force and one of three places to fight).

[pellaeons_scion]

*shudders with delight at the chance to command a ISD in combat*

A fantastic idea, one that I hope goes ahead. Why should the trekkies have all the space combat fun. Mods are all well and good, but a game like your proposing would be superb!

[Kuja]

I lke you already, PS!

[Bob The Great]

I prefer a very story-driven single player game, anyway, like TIE Fighter was (good god, that was a game!). It would be cool to have branching plotlines, decision points, and the ability to choose your battles in some sense, but I think it should all revolve around a single main storyline, and the above choices would affect the resources you have at your disposal at any given point in the game.

That being said, scripting can be carried too far. After all, you are the commander of a sizable fleet of ships, and should have some say in where you go, and what you do to accomplish certain goals. High ranking officers are not expected to be simply good tacticians and pawns for High Command. They should be long-term strategists too, especially if the game extends past ROTJ. I think at certain points in the game, the player should be given goals (sometimes more than one ) from High Command (e.g. eliminate rebel threat in this sector, or pacify this system) and then be given almost free reign over how to go about it, based on availible intel. Naturally, as a player moves up in ranks and experience (i.e. moves further in the game), these missions could get less and less precise (attack this installation for low rank vs. force rebel scum out of this area for high rank).

This has triggered another suggestion in my brain --> A degree of randomness in the missions. This would include enemy ship placement, enemy resources (not to a great deviance, though), timing of events, and other small stuff like that. This would eliminate the problem of players losing a mission, and then loading the game again and knowing exactly where all the ships will be and what they will doing. Also, it would be cool if, for certain non-critical missions, you could call a retreat when things weren't going well, then regroup and try again, or even proceed to another goal, without loading a saved game! After all, there are such things as defeats in combat, and a good commander needs to know when to retreat and try again another day. For critial or logically non-repeatable missions, like prevent the escape of the rebels at Endor, or save some VIP on board an assaulted StarLiner, if you lose, you could be executed by Lord Vader (or firing squad, depending on the situation) for your incompetance, thus having to load a saved game.

Of course saved games are good; don't misunderstand. But, they can be abused, and I think this would provide the means for a player to enjoy the game without having to reload a save every other mission.

Man, this started as a short "you're right" post, and now I have waxed verbose again. Sorry, but this game concept stuff just gets me all fired up.

[pellaeons_scion]

Ta bud. Nice to see a decent SW board with interesting ideas and discussions

[Kuja]

It's OK, it was great!

[pellaeons_scion]

Gods, wouldnt that be great? Full control of your ( and the Empires ) destiny? The choice of whether to destroy or pacify, and not get penalised when a retreat is in order.

Makes one wish to be a coder. I guess you could almost take the premise of (dare I say it) Bridge Commander, but actually give it a worthwhile or story line. Make it a sort of RPG/Sim. Much more than just go here kill this.

Long range plans is something that would be great, where every action has a consequence!

[pellaeons_scion]

Oops. My points had already been covered previously

Ah well, it happens on these kind of systems

[Kuja]

don't worry about it unless your trolling

[Bob The Great]

heh heh. That's all good. The same opinion from several sources just means it's a popular one.

[Utsanomiko]

Bob the Great: Yeah, I was just thinking about randomness in scenario scripts. Taskforce missions and fleet battles can be given alot of variety just by randomizing the opposition's fleet size, location, number of mission-objective targets, etc (imagine an expanded RTS version of the simulator missions for X-Wing Alliance). That'd really open up replayability, and also provide the option for a non-campaign single-player mode. Not everyone's going to stay satisfied with this game if once they go through the 30-hour-or-under campaign, the only refreshing mode of play is 'Instant-Action'. It's nice to get straight to the battles, but people get bored if every new battle lacks a motivating conflict; single or multiplayer. That's true especially for action games, but can go double when the game emphasizes on strategic missions.

As for Aaron Ash's response: if I remember correctly, SW Galaxies emphasizes far more greatly on role-playing and player-to-player interreactions than I implied as to what your space-battle-and-fleet-management-centered game could use. Even if LA included a large-scale trade system into their ship exspansion pack (which will probably just throw in 20 ships, simplified X-Wing Vs. Tie Fighter ship combat, and transportation), What I was suggesting could merely be adding a deeper feel to the setting, and broadening player choices. LucasArts has no more grounds to go after you than Ambrosia does. Or any other RTS/RPG developer (like Blizzard, who despite encouraging mod-making by including a map-maker with their Craft-series of games, has more than a couple of people out there convinced they're shutting down map sites and mods left and right). 'No profits. no problem' is the basic rule-o-thumb nowadays.

Right now, it seems you have it setup that the player starts off with a small, inexperienced fleet (rebel or Imperial), and over time and victories a they amass more ships, and their crew efficiency improves. This could easilly apply to independent groups, or at least pirates (many groups in the galaxy have become profitable enough to aquire entire fleets, and establish blackmarket fleet yards), so the game doesn't have to be exclusively for the Empire Vs the Alliance.

The ships' crews improve obviously via experience ponits frmo battle, I can see that, however I'm not sure what method you were going to allow players to aquire new ships. Is single-player planned as being a rigidly-linear campaign, allowing you to provide players with new ships only at certain plot-points, or did you have some kind of limited-economy model/RPG-style experienced-aquired money in mind? Does multi-player simply encompass 'Instant-Action' Mode and possibly a 'Co-op' version of the single-player campaign?

Let me just assume you don't have one in mind for the sake of this musing/suggestion:

I'll cite the implementation of resources used by Spaceward Ho!, and build on that. That turn-based stratgey game used a very basic, intuitive feature with automated resources. Every planet controlled by the player would generate money based on population and habitability (temperature and gravity, the closer to 72F and 1.0G, the easier it was to populate). Each planet cost $7,000 to maintain, but if the population grew once it had been colonized, it would eventually generate a profit. All the player had to manage was how much cash they pumped into the planet, how they balanced mining vs terraforming, and whether unterraformable planets were worth keeping (as once they're strip mined, they only mooched off $7,000 a turn).

How something similiar could be applied: Instead of simply having allied refeualing stations connecting the battlefields, why not implement the simplified-type of resource managing seen predominantly in turn-based strategies? Control not only a fleet, but several local systems from which to pool money/resources from? The Empire and Alliance have several dozen allied worlds (while independants have neutral worlds) to use as primary places to spend battle/earned experience points (and possibly recieve credits as a sort of 'salary' or bonus for completeing missions) with ship repairs, earning new crew/equipment, or goto neutral worlds (or allied worlds, for again, independents) and have spend credits on buying/trading options not otherwise available in allied systems. You could provide players with a deeper, more replayable world to not only interract with, but fight over (as the opportunities to capture well-populated worlds would be very tempting and fun to pull off. Imagine playing a game where you watch Kuat slowly become bombarded to slag, as the planet keeps changing hands every five minutes through mass invasions untill it becomes worthless.). This would also give 'Instant-Action' Mode a clearer definition from the normal method of multi-player; people who didn't want to wade through the simulation aspects of the game would still have an easy means of throwing 40 ships against a fleet of equal power, and still have that feel of customization. Ohterwise, you'd just be developing a singleplayer RTS campaign with a pretty version of the Star Wars: Rebellion battles.

Finally, what exactly do you mean by modeling an entire galatic civilization? Pardon me for sounding rude, but do you actually think that all the systems named by any Star Wars source amounts to even a fraction of a fraction of the twelve million inhabited systems of their galaxy? Jot down the names listed in the Essential Guide to Plantes and Moons, and the ones from half a dozen WEG sourcebooks, and you'll find the better selection of 100-120 systems available. Take note of the terrain type, and make a qualitative estimate of the population (outpost, miming colony, homeworld, economic center, etc), and nothing more (as there really isn't much more out there, technically). That's more than a fan-developed game will need to provide a setting with good variety. I hope you had planned on having more than just Coruscant, Tatooine, Yavin, Hoth, Bespin, and Endor, even if planets are to only serve as backdrops. Fans have been dying for freedom of movement in the galaxy, not Tatooine-related claustrophobia.

I probably left out a few points I was initially going to make, but forgot them or failed to support the suggestions I did jot down. Hope that clears things up for now, anyway. :Whew!: