RPG tool

[clamps]

Hi all,

I have just discovered this game and I was wondering if it would be possible to use it as a gaming tool for my SF pen and paper RPG game.
It's a game that revolves around the crew of a spaceship as they travel, trade and fight off pirates and have cool adventures. You know the type.

Anyway, my group is spread across 3 countries and I am looking for a tool to allow us to play online. What I'm aiming for is the ability to assign different roles in a corvette sized ship (Nav, Gunnary, Enginering, that kind of thing) to different logged in players. They would all play cooperativly as crew members of the same ship against AI players I setup for them.

I also need the ability to make systems for them to play in. Ideally I would like to start with real-world star chart data (this is set in our nearish future) and then populate each system with the appropriate planets, asteroids, space stations, ships in orbits, that kind of thing.

Anyone know if this game has these kinds of abilities? If it does not, does anyone know one that does?

thanks either way...

Clamps

[ace123]

Yes, the multiplayer engine will support many of those things. It also has a "Base interface" GUI system, written in Python, and also allows Python to send messages over the network, so you can basically do anything... however some things might feel a bit backwards in the way the C++ code is laid out (like you have to "dock" in order to get to a base interface, then you have to launch.)

However, one drawback is it does not at the moment playing different roles on the same ship (multi-player does not allow for turrets due to certain limitations in the engine). In the future I intend for turrets to work, but at the moment it will take a huge amount of work to add them...

There is, however a fair amount of stuff you would like to set up before-hand, however to varying degrees of complexity.

If you only want to use the engine for space battles, it is very simple to set up a deathmatch server, and then launch any appropriate AI ships with the "/launchme shipname faction quantity" command.

You can also easily script this in Python, and you can allow an interaction either by typing in text or with a GUI system behind it as I was describing above. Whether and how much of this is done depends on how much time you want to spend on this project. I can help guide you through what scripts might need to be written.

As to systems, it supports automatic system generation by specifying basic information like the number and types of planets in a system. This information is stored in XML format in data4.x/universe/milky_way.xml
Actually, I believe a lot of these came originally from star-chart data... however it has been significantly tweaked since then I think, because you ended up with a huge number of systems in close proximity around Sol, and then a few sparse systems around that, so it felt less realistic in a way.

-Patrick

[clamps]

Hi Ace,

Thanks for the reply.

My players and I were thinking that we'd do comms via Skype, so that's not an issue.

If system generation is simple that would be great. Is there a GUI for that? So one can quickly place planets, moons, ships and whatall where ever you would like?

Actually, I suppose that's all academic if it doesn't allow crew functionality. I'm not talking about turrets as such (my universe doesn't have practical beam weapons)... more like systems onboard the ship what players could interact with. The best solution would be a way to allow players to access sub-systems of the ship through menus that allow them to make adjustments to power, repairs and stuff on the fly. That's my dream game. There's an old game called "Bridge Commander" that did this, but it's REALLY cludgy and 2d. It did the coop party brilliantly though.

Thanks

clamps

[bgaskey]

Yeah...GUI's...not so much. Time to get some commandline out
In all seriousness, though, there is a severe lack of content creation tools for VS that don't involve the commandline. Most of the file formats are fairly readable tho, and if you have some scripting skills, any additions in the form of content creation would be welcome.

What you're planning would not be easy or quick, but its very doable when/if manning turrets etc is implemented. Right now, the best you can do is a corvette captain and the rest of the people in fighters/bombers with different missions. That could probably work well too.

[ace123]

There's no GUI, but the format is in XML, and I am serious when I say that it is very easy to edit by hand.

Indeed, I think you can simplify it further--the only things you really need are the "planets" tag, which is just a string of abbreviations of planets, all of which are defined at the top of the file, a "data" string which is a random number seed.

Things like num_planets and luminosity I don't think are used anymore.

Code: Select all

                <system name="Azzaanizz">
                        <var name="planets" value="v bsm *r gm fr fa"/>
                        <var name="data" value="-390326629"/>
                        <var name="faction" value="rlaan"/>
                        <var name="luminosity" value="0"/>
                        <var name="num_gas_giants" value="2"/>
                        <var name="num_moons" value="2"/>
                        <var name="num_natural_phenomena" value="0"/>
                        <var name="num_planets" value="1"/>
                        <var name="planetlist" value="planets.rlaan.txt"/>
                        <var name="sun_radius" value="16600.000000"/>
                        <var name="xyz" value="1424.255890 -186.450226 309.150204"/>
                        <var name="jumps" value="Aantutpt/Kabazzpt Aantutpt/Zeenzbzz Aantutpt/Yqqhaanazz Aantutpt/Tlaanpzez Aantutpt/Kabizzpt Aantutpt/Kabazztk Aantutpt/Tlazzahb Aantutpt/Ptbzztl"/>
                </system>

Power adjustments have been a requested feature for a long time... however at the moment only one person can affect ship systems, and I think the only power adjustment we have at the moment is turning shields on and off :-p


Do you want to stick with most of the stock Vegastrike data (planet textures, ship models, etc.), or do you have other data in mind for that?

[clamps]

Frankly I'll take whatever shortcuts I can find. While I have a clear image in my mind for what the ships might look like, it's the gameplay I'm more interested in.

Having everyone in seperate craft is not going to work for me. It's the team-play of everyone being crewmembers on the same ship that is half the fun. Play Traveller and you'll see what I mean.

Anyway, it looks like this is yet another great game / tool that is close but not quite what I need, and the distance from here to there is too great right now. I'll have to stick with pen and paper till I find something that fits.

Thanks for all the suggestions though guys.

Clamps

[ace123]

That's too bad--I see what you mean. However I don't see Vega Strike as falling directly into the RPG category... There's a lot of stuff that goes on behind the scenes.

I would suggest something like IRC (I'm not kidding--you can also build simple scripts for things like random numbers), but if you want internet play things tend to get a little more complicated.

I would be interested if you do find a multiplayer version of this. If not, you could be the first one to make it