Feature list; next release and beyond

[peteyg]

Here's a list of features that we'll need for the upcoming release. After that is a list of features we won't wait on for release (but are just as important).

The next release is going to be a combat simulator pretty much along the lines of the previous release... except MUCH expanded, with the beginnings of the Dynamic Universe. It will be titled Vega Trek: Great Battles of the Dominion War (Volume I). Sounds exciting no?

Get a set of Dominion War era models in-game.
Coming along smoothly. We have most the required ships converted to xmesh with proper textures. We can probably get away with our current list of high quality ships (courtesy of Rick Knox aka P-81), but the more the merrier!
Status: Good enough

Add glow meshes for all new ships
We're just getting started on this. All this entails is playing around with some xmesh files, and a bit of copy+paste work. The result is a set of ships that will have glowing windows, nacelles, and pretty running lights!
Status: Needs serious work
Difficulty: Easy
Importance Level: Very

Add weapon hardpoints for new ships
We have a bunch of cool ships, they just don't have any weapon information associated with them. We're working with 4 firing arcs: Port/Starboard/Fore/Aft. Starfleet ships with phaser strips get a simplified phasers buried inside the saucer sections. Kind of lame, but that's what we have to work with.
Status: Needs serious work
Difficulty: Hard
Importance Level: Extreme

Get ships entered into units.csv
We aren't using individual unit files anymore. We're making entries into units.csv for each ship. This is something that I will probably take care of, since all ships have to be balanced against each other.

Create a 3d map of the Star Trek universe
Sounds like a lot of work... but for this next release we will totally settle for a placeholder. We need the core Federation systems (Earth, Vulcan, Tellar, Andoria, Alpha Centauri), a couple Romulan systems, a couple Klingon systems, some Cardassian systems, and some general battleground systems in between.
Status: Needs lots of work
Difficulty: Medium
Importance: Very Very

Craft star systems so they make sense
Make up some star systems for Vulcan, Alpha Centauri, etc. that make sense, and aren't completely random.
Status: We got Sol, that's it
Difficulty: Easy
Importance: Fair

Work out exact technical details on linking individual systems to Interstellar Space, and vice versa
See the Problems that Need Solving topic for more info.
Status: We know it will work... just haven't done it yet
Difficulty: Medium
Importance: Very Very


Now here's some stuff we won't wait on:
Star Trek style music
This one is for me. I'm doing up some music. I'm shooting for 10 minutes of flying music in about 4 tracks, and 10 minutes of combat music in about 4 tracks. See sample
Status: 6/20 minutes done!
Importance: Kind of

Star Trek HUD graphics
Status: No start yet. We COULD get by just on the default Vega Strike HUD... but it would be really great if we can get some LCARS graphics in there.

Star Trek cargo list and pics
We've got a guy working on this right now. We probably won't see much trading in the very next release, but this will be a HUGE part once the Dynamic Universe is up and running in the release after next or so. See the forum topic if you want to help!

Star Trek base screens
We need pics of landing zones and stuff to show the player when he lands at a base.



We can Always use help for any of this. Contact me for an assignment!
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