Vega Strike Forums

So I was looking around Desura for other examples of space simulators and I ran across a 2d Open source cross platform game called "Naev" that looks like VegaStrike, if it was not three dimensional. The game uses most of the same ships, and much of the same styling. I started to play hopping to get a feel for the game before putting in the money cheat to see the hole thing. I was thinking that either the game would be either too quick or too slow and I would quickly get bored, but it was quite entertaining; I could have just kept on playing without cheats. They did many things right in the interface that reminds me of things similar that would work in a 3d game. In particular the overlays menus and maps. Though the ship steering and aiming is not comparable, and many things are over simplified, or not good for multiplayer, there is much to say for the apparent ease of use. The controls for wing men, turrets, and utilities are interesting, easy, customizable, switchable and fast though basic. A similar graphical way assign weapons and set weapon groups in particular would be nice.

One thing that I think would be great to copy but do better is the ability to take along purchased equipment as cargo, or transport owned ships from base to base with a Currier service. Equipment could be put into deposits at each planet for a price. I think bank deposits of equipment like this is the essential appeal to give the game a MMO feel online, because what equipment one has represents their progress.

There are large benefits to customizing the ships upgrades in the game which is split in to weapons, Utilities, Structure. Though I prefer the upgrade space method used by VegaStrike rather than the slots used by Naev, a similar visual representation of how much space something is taking up would be nice; even if it is just roughly rounded to appear in a slot.

I would make a large black square that both utilities and structure upgrades can be put into representing the available space. The icons for equipment would be sized according to the space they consume and be placeable on the black grid to equip it. When full the grid would be approximately full, but if more space is technically available it would spill over into an unmarked overflow area.

Another thing that is comparable is the modifier controls for wingmen which use the [Ctrl] modifier in a similar way that I was planning. By modifying the controls further to be more like what I was planing one can fairly quickly get a feel for how they would work in a fast pace setting.

The easiest way to download it and get information is through Desura

You forgot to link the website: http://blog.naev.org/

Good game/project.

Nooo Well I.. I... I ... Okay, but I was thinking that the Desura site had links to everything on the right and I like the 3rd party comments, reviews, and articles . I was hopping that people would compare Vega Strike on Desura too. VS could use a few helpful articles and maybe an alternative version available because their browser supports easily reverting to previous versions. I'm not sure if one can have an older stable version as the main and the release candidate as the option, but if possible it would solve many of the user comments about no tutorial, and wont run.

We even got a nice mention in their authors file.

Vega Strike <http://vegastrike.sf.net>
* Ship Models
* Music
* Sounds
* Planet images
Wouldn't have been possible without the Vega Strike team, although they didn't actively participate, by allowing me to use their data they did me a great favour and let me concentrate on the coding.

Where it gets interesting to me is whether the fact that they use the art and models from VS make it a derived product of VS in terms of code. I'd say no, but who knows if the guy doesn't use some VS code?

Lanster, you who have played a trial version, what do you say?

VS being GPL means that whoever writes a derived program has to contribute his code back to whoever owns the VS copyright, which in effect would (probably) mean in the end he has to share it with the community. That's the very purpose of the GPL.

That project is also GPL

Yea it's GPL too, but I'll answer anyways for fun.

Lanster says to pirate back all the code that he stolez to help make this the 3d version of Naev mu ha ha ha . Make Piracy more of an aspect in VS, and the interfaces as good or better. Make missions as well written and funny, and game play faster by using realistic accelerations and interdiction tech to tame SPEC for combat.
That'll get that fix that noo goodnick

P.S. I think maze you where thinking the Escape Velocity series, that Naev is also similar to. I watched some videos then I tried to play the newest version, but I think my computer is too green to be capable of 256 color graphics and it would not play because of that.

pheonixstorm wrote:That project is also GPL

Ah ok so I guess he leaves his code for anyone to download freely somewhere. In fact I had mistakenly read Lanster's first post, in the part where he is (probably) referring to an in-game cheat, which made me assume that it was one of those things with a limited time time free trial period (which is possible in theory for a GPLed program but would hardly be done in practice).

Even though a program is open source does not mean you can not charge for it. Sadly, you can also compile someone elses work and sell it as yours.. there was someone doing just that on ebay awhile back with several popular foss games including VS.

pheonixstorm wrote:Even though a program is open source does not mean you can not charge for it. Sadly, you can also compile someone elses work and sell it as yours.. there was someone doing just that on ebay awhile back with several popular foss games including VS.

That is why I say it would be possible that the guy would charge for his program after a limited free trial period "in theory." In practice, the source code being readily available, it's still quite uncommon. Not saying that it's impossible to make any money out of a free program either, just today that it's quite uncommon that you can make some significant profit by charging for the program itself.

Well your guy on ebay would be kind of a counter-example, though I guess he did not become a millionaire through this. I would argue it's not sad that he could do this, he was just making use of his fundamental freedoms as a user. All the glory to whoever decided to license VS under the GPL for letting him do such things as sell the program on ebay (or at least attempt to sell it).

Stallman himself did some money at some point in time by selling magnetic tapes of emacs, but that was before this day and age where "everybody" (except Klauss) has online access, so there was room for him for receiving money in exchange for sending the tapes through physical mail.