Vega Strike Forums

A few thoughts I've had the past few days for something that was wished upon earlier...

A) Overwatch view (with or w/o additional sfx). Get a top down map view (anyone ever play the old WH 40k game Space Hulk?) showing the positions of each combat unit and enemy unit (red dot/green dot) and maybe a health monitor on the right or left side (al la Star Trek or other Sci-Fi movies) displaying blue/green if alive or red if dead (with or w/o flashing deceased msg).

B) Tactical FPS! This might not require too much of a change in the engine (maybe) but would require a lot of 3D graphics work to create new art for combatants on both sides. To cut down on the amount of 3D code change though we could always plug in the Q3 or other open source FPS engine (graphics engine only) and only load the module when needed. This would be the coolest but also require the most work (art wise I think).

C) Tactical view (with sounds) Basically all you get is an abstract health monitor and radio chatter. No battlemap view from A and no way to control anything. Just sit and listen and hope it works.. only thing you do is fly em in...


Now, the bulk of this is flying in and docking with the target ship. I would suggest a docking range of no more than 10-50 meters for auto dock. Once docked you hear the big metal clang and the boarding party scrambling to cut open an airlock or cut a hole into the target ship.

So, do we want to try this one or leave it for (much) later??

pheonixstorm wrote: B) Tactical FPS! This might not require too much of a change in the engine (maybe) but would require a lot of 3D graphics work to create new art for combatants on both sides. To cut down on the amount of 3D code change though we could always plug in the Q3 or other open source FPS engine (graphics engine only) and only load the module when needed. This would be the coolest but also require the most work (art wise I think).

This one, option B. Don't worry about the content, make the code happen and the content will come. And even if it doesn't then I'll make it myself. We also have concepts up the wazoo for just this kind of content. And I've already made modeling the walkable interior spaces a personal requirement for all the ships, stations and the like that I create for VS, going forward.

On the code side, you should first check out the GPL code of this new Simerge project. It has already begun the process of implementing ship interiors (as well as dynamic LoD planets for the much requested seamless planetary flight feature). It might make the most sense to port over the code from that project as a starting place for this feature.

Walking in à Ship is quite easy. You had just to modify the Movement to à Simple 2D System and implement maybe later à 3rd Dimension with gravity for falling and jumping.
If you supply à 3D Station Map, i could implement Walking in it.
I'm supplying mesh animation in the Moment, so you could implement other Players, too like it is Done in the quake Engine.
Or i'll modify the Movement and let it Run with à Command line Option so that you can create Maps.
For example you Run vegastrike with "vegastrike --maptest my_map.bfxm"
to try out à Map if we have à First Map, i could activate the First Person Mode Later through docking on it.