Vega Strike Mercs project - DEMO

travis · Post by **travis** » Sat Jul 12, 2003 12:28 am

Hi everybody. My name is Travis.

I've been talking with HellcatV for a little bit about a little sister project to Vega Strike that I have in development. I wanted to post a little initial demo for bug-squashing and feedback purposes, and just to get general impressions of whether this is something that folks would like to play. HellcatV gave me permission to do so today, so here goes!

Basically, this is a separate game from Vega Strike, but it is set in the Vega Strike Universe and runs parallel. It uses a completely different engine and codebase. Thus far, it's called Vega Strike Mercs, and is solely a space-combat sim in the vein of WingCommander and FreeSpace. So. No trading, no dynamic universe, no pirating, and none of those really cool aspects of Vega Strike. It is totally focused on tightly scripted battles and story. Like Vega Strike, if the project continues, all source code will be made available (although some of it is pretty clunky. programming by yourself tends to make you lazy.)

This is currently windows-only, and requires DirectX 9.0. Sorry about that

I've been developing this engine on my own, before I even found Vega Strike, and I've been programming in DX for years, so that's naturally what I gravitated to. Hopefully enough of you have PC's that this won't be a lost cause

Currently this uses lots of FreeSpace 2 art and sounds that I used in initial development to get the project off the ground. I am in the process of replacing these now, so you'll have to forgive me that it looks AWFULLY Freespace-y.

There are no menus, and only one mission. You can complete the mission, but you'll just have to exit (press ESC) manually when you're through playing, or just fly around taking potshots at your wingmen

All ingame systems are basically functional though. AI is not too shabby, physics are pretty good (At least for a combat sim, which this unabashedly is), and you can give orders to your wingmen.

All controls are based off FS2's control scheme -

Numeric pad arrows to move and roll
=/- for throttle
TAB afterburner
CTRL fire
Space fire missile
T/R/Y - targeting
Ins/Home/PGUP/PGDN/END/DEL - power management
Q redistribute shields
C comm
* on numeric keypad switches view
M match speed
Backspace - zero throttle
\ - full throttle
./, - cycle weapons/missiles

The ships are all of H.E. Day's great new ships for Vega Strike - Thank You H.E. Day!

Ships included are the -

Lancelot
Admonisher
Ancestor
Mule
Huldra
Plowshare
Thrud
Vidar
Clydesdale

Some .jpg screenshots so you can see what it looks like

http://buildingworlds.com/VSMERCS/shot2.jpg
http://buildingworlds.com/VSMERCS/shot3.jpg
http://buildingworlds.com/VSMERCS/shot4.jpg
http://buildingworlds.com/VSMERCS/shot5.jpg
http://buildingworlds.com/VSMERCS/shot6.jpg
http://buildingworlds.com/VSMERCS/shot7.jpg

Some higher quality .png's of the same

http://buildingworlds.com/VSMERCS/shot2.png
http://buildingworlds.com/VSMERCS/shot3.png
http://buildingworlds.com/VSMERCS/shot4.png
http://buildingworlds.com/VSMERCS/shot5.png
http://buildingworlds.com/VSMERCS/shot6.png
http://buildingworlds.com/VSMERCS/shot7.png

Download the demo here! It's about 18.5 MB

http://buildingworlds.com/VSMERCS/vsmercs.zip

Please try this out.

I'd like to know:

A) did it run
B) How WELL did it run, and what your system spec is
C) was it any fun
D) general suggestions
E) any bugs you found.
F) do you think there's a need for a project like this, or would you rather not have it around?

Thank you all for any feedback you can give me!

Travis

P.S. I'm sticking one image right here on the end, to give you an idea. This is from the 3rd person cam.

bobdickgus · Post by **bobdickgus** » Sat Jul 12, 2003 12:44 am

Holly crap that looks good we need that interface in vegastrike!

travis · Post by **travis** » Sat Jul 12, 2003 12:50 am

The interface artwork itself must be replaced - it is lifted from Freespace 2. But all of the functionality, and the nice soft edges will remain. I hope to have a new HUD within the day.

Travis

peteyg · Post by **peteyg** » Sat Jul 12, 2003 12:53 am

This is cool, and I'll give it a try tonight.

But will it do for Vega Strike?

Post by **hurleybird** » Sat Jul 12, 2003 1:34 am

is/will multiplayer be supported?

Post by **hurleybird** » Sat Jul 12, 2003 1:44 am

we should try to cross these two projects as much as we can. Would it be possible for example, to include mercs direct3d renderer in VS and VS's OpenGL renderer in mercs?

pontiac · Post by **pontiac** » Sat Jul 12, 2003 1:51 am

The screens are looking really good.

Does anybody know where i can get dx9 for w2k without htis f****** webinstall?

Is the shockwave animation also freespace2-art? If not, this would look really cool in VS too

Pontiac

travis · Post by **travis** » Sat Jul 12, 2003 2:14 am

I think that if anything were to be done, that OpenGL support should be added to Mercs - being that it's cross-platform and all

I don't think adding Dx rendering to Vega Strike will give any big wins.
I've never done any OpenGL programming before, but from what I hear, DirectX is aping it pretty heavily these days, so it might not be so bad >:)

Travis

travis · Post by **travis** » Sat Jul 12, 2003 2:15 am

http://www.softwarepatch.com/windows/directx.html

Try this for a Directx9 redist minus the webinstaller

pontiac · Post by **pontiac** » Sat Jul 12, 2003 2:16 am

travis wrote:I think that if anything were to be done, that OpenGL support should be added to Mercs - being that it's cross-platform and all I don't think adding Dx rendering to Vega Strike will give any big wins.
I've never done any OpenGL programming before, but from what I hear, DirectX is aping it pretty heavily these days, so it might not be so bad >:)

Full ACK

Pontiac

Post by **hellcatv** » Sat Jul 12, 2003 3:10 am

question about how you do your transformations travis

can your engine handle realistic space distances (planets are 1,000,000 big, space is vast...)
do you use doubles for positions or floats?
do you let your vidcard do the transformations for the distances or do you do that on the CPU with full 64 bit precision?

just curious--I had to struggle for days making VS 64-bit-float compliant so that we could have the vast distances we do today

and of course then we'll be able to zoom through space in the franklin

also do you support xmesh formats (or have a converter) so that we only have to stat ships once

Duality · Post by **Duality** » Sat Jul 12, 2003 4:52 am

This game could of been a lot better if it didn't use most of the freespace media.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Sat Jul 12, 2003 5:52 am

question about how you do your transformations travis

can your engine handle realistic space distances (planets are 1,000,000 big, space is vast...)
do you use doubles for positions or floats?
do you let your vidcard do the transformations for the distances or do you do that on the CPU with full 64 bit precision?

just curious--I had to struggle for days making VS 64-bit-float compliant so that we could have the vast distances we do today

Mercs works like most combat sims - the distance is infinitely far away, and you can't actually reach distant planets. It's scaled for close-quarters combat. So basically, I'm just using floats - I get to be cheap

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Sat Jul 12, 2003 5:54 am

This game could of been a lot better if it didn't use most of the freespace media.

Yeah - remember, this is basically just a preview demo so that I can work out bugs and get feedback. ALL of the Freespace 2 media will be replaced.
It was just a lot easier to get the engine running without having to make fresh art for everything up front on my lonesome. I did this without a team, and there are only so many hours in the day....

travis · Post by **travis** » Sat Jul 12, 2003 5:55 am

Oops. Forgot to log in - the previous two posts were from me!

The xmesh question -

I don't have a converter, per se. I used texturizer to get them to .obj, then imported them into .max, where I exported them to .x The xmesh format is pretty simple, and if I get some extra time, I may write a .max script for importing them directly, or a command-line util for pulling them to an intermediate format that i can then batch up with another converter. It didn't take too long to do this way, and would of course be even easier if I had the original media for ships created in max, maya, blender, wings, or whatever.

The stats of my ships are slightly different, so I just approximated conversions this go round.

Hardpoints are of course, an easy conversion. More difficult are conversions dealing with handling - since my physics are not based upon the same parameters and rates, and has lots of adjustments for decay over time.

To make conversion easy, I will most likely build a table with multipliers for converting data from the original stats to my format, or something to that effect. A little experimentation should tweak the multipliers right.

Travis

Keelos · Post by **Keelos** » Sat Jul 12, 2003 6:59 am

hay traves heres a suggestion for u, if u can make the ships faster in game, u get a winner..

the reason why i don't like freespace style flight is because i fall asleep quickly when traveling from long distances.

Post by **hurleybird** » Sat Jul 12, 2003 4:37 pm

I may write a .max script for importing them directly

That would be awesome.... Myself and many others could greatly benefit from a max convertor.

Another thought... the atmosphere effect in mercs looks pretty cool. Any chance of getting that in regular VS?

Post by **hellcatv** » Sat Jul 12, 2003 7:31 pm

how did you do the atmosphere effect travis?
what VS does is make a mesh that always faces the player with several layers of fog...
what other options exist

Post by **hurleybird** » Sat Jul 12, 2003 8:21 pm

many space sims just add a glow like this:

http://cgi.actionvault.ign.com/display/ ... 062601.jpg

peteyg · Post by **peteyg** » Sat Jul 12, 2003 8:33 pm

I think that figuring out a solution for glows that doesn't involve meshes would probably be a good idea for the long-term.

Though I suspect it might involve something pretty deep in the engine.

Post by **hurleybird** » Sat Jul 12, 2003 11:57 pm

I think that mercs should have its own section on the VS website, as well as its own section on the forums.

Post by **hurleybird** » Sun Jul 13, 2003 12:29 am

Also, travis; i would very much like to help you with your project. I would be glad to be able to help replace the remaining freespace art as well as help with mission and possibly FMV.

Post by **hellcatv** » Sun Jul 13, 2003 12:41 am

we're planning to coordinate the release with 0.4.0
that way the effects of Vega Strike and the mercs will add instead of detract from each otehr

at least that's my feeling on the issue

then we'll do the website revamp, etc

Duality · Post by **Duality** » Sun Jul 13, 2003 2:11 am

One more question about VSMercs, will there be newton flight phsyics in this game?? It would spice it up a little more. :)

travis · Post by **travis** » Mon Jul 14, 2003 5:46 pm

hellcatv wrote:how did you do the atmosphere effect travis?
what VS does is make a mesh that always faces the player with several layers of fog...
what other options exist

Since my background is infinitely far away, I can be cheap and bake my atmospheric glow into the planet.

When I have done it in the past, I did it as HurleyBird suggested - with a billboard that overlays the planet at about 125% of its diameter with a nice add glow.

Travis