Spacesim needs developers

Let the flames roll in...
Err... yeah, well I suppose you can talk about other stuff as well, maybe?

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razorjack
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Spacesim needs developers

Post by razorjack »

I'd like to present you the spacesimulation project Simerge. It will be a game similar to vegastrike with a some improvements like walking and seamless planetary flights. It's a sandbox style game where the player will be able to interact with countless different NPCs living in a dynamic universe. He will be able to trade, build diverse structures (including own facilities and marketplaces) and command an entire fleet. In addition, combat in space and on ground will be an essential gameplay element. And the best thing is, it's all opensource.

I would like to invite any talents to join this project:
* programmer
* Quake3 mapper
* 2D/3D artists
* game designer

More infos can be found at the website:
http://www.simerge.com/
https://sourceforge.net/projects/simergegame/ (SVN Repository)

Please contact me on PM if interested.
Neskiairti
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Re: Spacesim needs developers

Post by Neskiairti »

pity we dont have any of that ourself :p
Deus Siddis
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Re: Spacesim needs developers

Post by Deus Siddis »

Wow, you're really up to something, glad you went open source. Hopefully our two projects can work together, since we both seem to be after achieving the same long term features.

To start with, quoting what hellcatv told you a couple years ago- "Plus if you make [Simerge] open source with the GPL you can steal our code and art." So now that you've done it, I believe that applies. :)
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Re: Spacesim needs developers

Post by Shark »

Is the game engine one of completely your design? It's hard to tell since you've reused assets from other games.

It seems you already have features people here have been clamoring about for years: walkable ship/base interiors, planet fly-bys (though I can't tell from the Youtube video whether the planets have their own gravity/atmosphere).
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Re: Spacesim needs developers

Post by razorjack »

Shark wrote:Is the game engine one of completely your design? It's hard to tell since you've reused assets from other games.
Yes and no. I use very much 3rd part libraries at low level area. Also some at high level. For example cal3d for character animation and libnoise for terrain generation. But most essential parts of the engine are from my design... Only exception is the GUI system. This was originally Borland's TurboVision I partly adapted to work with graphics and made it a part of engine.
Then there are Visual assets I took from other games. I wrote importers or GUI elements. But I don't regard them as essential. I used station models, window skins and background from X3 Reunion. The model importer was written using documentations and tools from the X3 game site. The ship HUD was remade from the design I-War2. I remember, I really enjoyed to tinker on it. Unfortunately, I'll have to replace it. The sounds are borrowed also from I-War2.

Except for the HUD, the opensource release doesn't include any other 3rd part assets.
Shark wrote:It seems you already have features people here have been clamoring about for years: walkable ship/base interiors, planet fly-bys (though I can't tell from the Youtube video whether the planets have their own gravity/atmosphere).
The planets are also not textured. For now. I'm going to rewrite the visual part of the planetary engine because I want to squeeze out more performance through GPU side processing.
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Re: Spacesim needs developers

Post by -REBEL3- »

Do you have any forums? I'd be happy to contribute some concept art I did for VS, but didn't see anything...

If not...we might *very tentative* be able to let you have a temporary slot on our forum. Personally, from what I've seen, I'd support an eventual partnership between the two programs. I'd be willing to bet you could benefit from Cinemut and LeGrande (as well as some of our ships), whereas we could benefit from the seamless flight, as well as walkable bases/ships. Does anyone see any major problems with any of this?

One question-do you have any asteroid fields? If so, how are their physics/textures processed?

*Edit*-another question. What did you write the program in?
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Re: Spacesim needs developers

Post by razorjack »

-REBEL3- wrote:Do you have any forums? I'd be happy to contribute some concept art I did for VS, but didn't see anything...
Thanks. I'd like to see, what you have.
I don't have a forum now.
-REBEL3- wrote:If not...we might *very tentative* be able to let you have a temporary slot on our forum. Personally, from what I've seen, I'd support an eventual partnership between the two programs. I'd be willing to bet you could benefit from Cinemut and LeGrande (as well as some of our ships), whereas we could benefit from the seamless flight, as well as walkable bases/ships. Does anyone see any major problems with any of this?
There are no problems, I think. Chuck starchaser has applied as programmer few weeks ago. We are currently in the beginning phase. But, if everything goes right, we would implement some shader techniques you mentioned. But it's not decided yet. Vegastrike has different rendering methods than Simerge and there would be adaptation required.
-REBEL3- wrote:One question-do you have any asteroid fields? If so, how are their physics/textures processed?
I've no asteroid fields implemented yet. But I will in the future. Physics will be the same as for any objects in a game. Texturing will be done as it is done for any mesh. There will be also impostors for far asteroids and a background texture layer for the farthest of them. I want to do something like the guy with his grass renderer http://meshula.net/wordpress/?p=119
-REBEL3- wrote:*Edit*-another question. What did you write the program in?
C++ with Codeblocks for linux and Visual Studio 2005 for windows.
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Re: Spacesim needs developers

Post by Deus Siddis »

razorjack wrote: I've no asteroid fields implemented yet. But I will in the future. Physics will be the same as for any objects in a game. Texturing will be done as it is done for any mesh. There will be also impostors for far asteroids and a background texture layer for the farthest of them. I want to do something like the guy with his grass renderer http://meshula.net/wordpress/?p=119
You can use a set of asteroid models + textures I created and released under the GPL for VS and other space-set projects--

http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/forum ... =4&t=13343
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Re: Spacesim needs developers

Post by razorjack »

Thanks. I've taken a look at them. The first are looking quite good now. Suiteable for smalle kind of asteroids. Only the palastite and nickel iron seem to look a little too organic. My intention is, that's because there is not much turbulence in textures. Is it also possible to add some displacement and let them be a little more bumpy? What I thought is something like X3 has:
http://www.simerge.com/dev/asteroids.JPG (Poly 1712)
http://www.simerge.com/dev/asteroids2.JPG (Poly 1026)

[EDIT]
They use two additional textures. Specular level texture for lighting control and bump mapping texture to show craters (this one not visible in upper screenshots). Here is their ingame shot http://www.egosoft.com/games/x3/screens ... en_195.jpg . Also a cool one http://www.egosoft.com/games/x3/screens ... en_098.jpg showing similar craters on each asteroid because of shared texture.
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Re: Spacesim needs developers

Post by Deus Siddis »

razorjack wrote:Thanks. I've taken a look at them. The first are looking quite good now. Suiteable for smalle kind of asteroids. Only the palastite and nickel iron seem to look a little too organic. My intention is, that's because there is not much turbulence in textures.
Yeah, those might need more detail.
Is it also possible to add some displacement and let them be a little more bumpy? What I thought is something like X3 has:
http://www.simerge.com/dev/asteroids.JPG (Poly 1712)
http://www.simerge.com/dev/asteroids2.JPG (Poly 1026)
It is indeed possible; originally they were this way, and also half of them were oblong like those pictured. The reason I ended up making these so much rounder and more generic looking is to hide the fact that there were so few asteroid models in each field (from 1 to 4) in VS that I was afraid people might have noticed the repetition. But if there will be many different asteroid models in a scene then it isn't really an issue, imo.

One thing I'll add though is that I think for asteroids like the ones you linked to, that are so big and bumpy, more polys would be in order. They look very high quality except for two things, one of which is you can see their faceted-ness. Improving this is simply a matter of another level of subsurf though.
They use two additional textures. Specular level texture for lighting control and bump mapping texture to show craters (this one not visible in upper screenshots). Here is their ingame shot http://www.egosoft.com/games/x3/screens ... en_195.jpg . Also a cool one http://www.egosoft.com/games/x3/screens ... en_098.jpg showing similar craters on each asteroid because of shared texture.
Yep, the asteroids I made also use specular and tangent normal maps, and so will all future models I make, they are essential technologies nowadays. Note that those in-game screenshots look like they might be using (tangent space) normal maps over old fashioned gray scale bump mapping. This allows finer detail with fewer shading artifacts; a big improvement.

Though it can save a lot of space, I wouldn't recommend we use one texture set over different models. I've tried it and it doesn't work very well since it distorts the craters and other texture details as they are stretched over different shapes.
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Re: Spacesim needs developers

Post by razorjack »

Asteroids will be implemented in the future as I said. It's a complex situation. An asteroid is an atom of a huge field with it's tricky LOD methods. The models appear only at highest LOD levels. There will be all sort of techniques used to render this field. Imposters, Render to skycube, particle instancing and so on. It will share parallels with techniques we know from vegetation rendering. Look at the example http://meshula.net/wordpress/?p=119 Currently the priority number 1 are station and ship modeling. Both, exterior and interior.
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Re: Spacesim needs developers

Post by Deus Siddis »

razorjack wrote:Currently the priority number 1 are station and ship modeling. Both, exterior and interior.
Alright then, I'll model interiors to go with the ships I model from here on.
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Re: Spacesim needs developers

Post by razorjack »

Deus Siddis wrote:
razorjack wrote:Currently the priority number 1 are station and ship modeling. Both, exterior and interior.
Alright then, I'll model interiors to go with the ships I model from here on.
Sent you a PM.
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Re: Spacesim needs developers

Post by Deus Siddis »

Responded to your PM. :)
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