Starflight-like Game in Torque
by Tyler Walton · in Torque Game Engine · 02/02/2004 (3:32 pm) · 2 replies
I have posted something similar to this before, however I have made some major changes to my project now and have actually altered the entire concept of the project.
This game will be based on the game by Binary Systems in 1986 Starflight was a game where you explore the galaxy and you have an objective of some sort. Since this time, there have been very few space exploration games made of this caliber where you could upgrade your spaceship and such. So I plan on making a game along the same premise in TGE. The main meat of the game is that you fly around the galaxy. What I plan on doing is making a 3 tier type space-travel system:
Tier 1: Intergalactic travel,
In this tier you see objects such as nebulas and stars. Your primary abilities will be to encounter ships in inter-system travel and such and you'll be able to see stars. The transition from this tier to tier 2 is basic collision with a star. This will enter interplanetary travel.
Tier 2: Interplanetary Travel,
In this tier you'll have a sun and planets to fly to. Each planet may have moons or other objects nearby. I've also considered having asteroid belts to fly thru and such. The transitions from these areas are:
1) Fly to a planet/moon and collide with it to enter atmosphere and land on planet. Fly near to a planet or moon to scan it and get information on it. Colliding with the sun would be rather fatal, but another problem here will be making this object as the primary light source for the entire map. (Any ideas here would be helpful) colliding with a planet or moon (or land able surface) will send you to Tier 3.
2) The other method of transition is to fly out about 1000km from the outermost planetary ring area (note the scale of the system will NOT be realistic by any means) this will transition to tier 1
Tier 3: Planetary exploration,
Each planet will be randomized (in a sense... I won't reveal all my trade secrets at this point) a single planet will be confined to a location on the planet surface. This generally represents the rest of the surface of the planet. Some planets will be primarily water, others desert, etc. This will relieve most players who will want to travel around the entire planet. Generally to travel around the planet "area" you'll want to land your primary travel vehicle somewhere in the center of the LZ. Your vehicle's fuel level will limit your distance you can travel. I'm not sure if I'll use a buggy-like vehicle or a tank-like vehicle. At this point it's not important.
Now my main problem here is gravity. If a space ship stops flying in tier 1 or 2 it should not fall or descend or anything. All the flying / hover vehicles in Torque seem to be effected by gravity by falling in the direction it determines as down. I want to turn off all gravity from a single function called "setGravity(int gravValue)". Also I want to be able to turn off any "auto-leveling" system in place to keep vehicles "upright". This will also be used to set gravity levels on tier 3 where some planets may have very low gravity (such as small moons or asteroids) and very high gravity on larger planets where it would be rather difficult for someone to even jump. (The part from Armageddon comes to mind when the guys jump the rover vehicle over the "grand-canyon" and land on the other side. Most of my "players" will be vehicles as this will mainly take place in areas which are not on atmospheric hospitable worlds. You will go down to planets and fight the native life as well as collect minerals and such so it won't be just a space exploring game.
Anyway, I've seen a lot of 0 gravity posts in here but none of them seem to be what I'm looking to do. I want to be able to manipulate the gravity control on all objects at once with a single function. A lot of folks post Hack-methods; I want to put a gravity control system into the engine that can be called from .cs files.
Anyway, this is a brief overview of the game. I'll provide some more details later. If anyone can help please do! Thanx
_____________
GokouZWAR
This game will be based on the game by Binary Systems in 1986 Starflight was a game where you explore the galaxy and you have an objective of some sort. Since this time, there have been very few space exploration games made of this caliber where you could upgrade your spaceship and such. So I plan on making a game along the same premise in TGE. The main meat of the game is that you fly around the galaxy. What I plan on doing is making a 3 tier type space-travel system:
Tier 1: Intergalactic travel,
In this tier you see objects such as nebulas and stars. Your primary abilities will be to encounter ships in inter-system travel and such and you'll be able to see stars. The transition from this tier to tier 2 is basic collision with a star. This will enter interplanetary travel.
Tier 2: Interplanetary Travel,
In this tier you'll have a sun and planets to fly to. Each planet may have moons or other objects nearby. I've also considered having asteroid belts to fly thru and such. The transitions from these areas are:
1) Fly to a planet/moon and collide with it to enter atmosphere and land on planet. Fly near to a planet or moon to scan it and get information on it. Colliding with the sun would be rather fatal, but another problem here will be making this object as the primary light source for the entire map. (Any ideas here would be helpful) colliding with a planet or moon (or land able surface) will send you to Tier 3.
2) The other method of transition is to fly out about 1000km from the outermost planetary ring area (note the scale of the system will NOT be realistic by any means) this will transition to tier 1
Tier 3: Planetary exploration,
Each planet will be randomized (in a sense... I won't reveal all my trade secrets at this point) a single planet will be confined to a location on the planet surface. This generally represents the rest of the surface of the planet. Some planets will be primarily water, others desert, etc. This will relieve most players who will want to travel around the entire planet. Generally to travel around the planet "area" you'll want to land your primary travel vehicle somewhere in the center of the LZ. Your vehicle's fuel level will limit your distance you can travel. I'm not sure if I'll use a buggy-like vehicle or a tank-like vehicle. At this point it's not important.
Now my main problem here is gravity. If a space ship stops flying in tier 1 or 2 it should not fall or descend or anything. All the flying / hover vehicles in Torque seem to be effected by gravity by falling in the direction it determines as down. I want to turn off all gravity from a single function called "setGravity(int gravValue)". Also I want to be able to turn off any "auto-leveling" system in place to keep vehicles "upright". This will also be used to set gravity levels on tier 3 where some planets may have very low gravity (such as small moons or asteroids) and very high gravity on larger planets where it would be rather difficult for someone to even jump. (The part from Armageddon comes to mind when the guys jump the rover vehicle over the "grand-canyon" and land on the other side. Most of my "players" will be vehicles as this will mainly take place in areas which are not on atmospheric hospitable worlds. You will go down to planets and fight the native life as well as collect minerals and such so it won't be just a space exploring game.
Anyway, I've seen a lot of 0 gravity posts in here but none of them seem to be what I'm looking to do. I want to be able to manipulate the gravity control on all objects at once with a single function. A lot of folks post Hack-methods; I want to put a gravity control system into the engine that can be called from .cs files.
Anyway, this is a brief overview of the game. I'll provide some more details later. If anyone can help please do! Thanx
_____________
GokouZWAR
About the author
Originally from Beaverton, OR I'm hoping to leave this online so my old friends from there can find me. Real name is Tyler Walton Find me on facebook: www.facebook.com/gokouzwar
#2
Guys have been doing starflight remakes all over the net. But most of them want to hold to the style of the times and keep it a top down 2d game. Most of those projects are falling short of what they need: interest. I'd like to see Starflight join the 21st century. So far my initial idea of the game is in place. I have a pretty good plan laid out for the game as well. I purchased Torque since I had made a game with Tribes 2 and I understand the scripting language and I know it can do what needs to be done. It's just a matter of getting the small issues out of the way so it'll work.
Anyway, I'll be importing most of the planet exploration code from that game since I already have mineral collection setup in that. Now I just have to figure out this gravity issue and add a few rendering concepts. I'll need a few good modelers. That is one area I haven't worked with yet. Plenty of tutorials out there tho, so I'll be doing some work there.
I'll check out the other projects you mentioned, maybe one of them can help me with the global gravity controller.
If anyone likes the project idea or has any helpful information, please send me an e-mail.
______________________
GokouZWAR
02/02/2004 (9:44 pm)
I posted an idea to making gravity a global variable but the class file I set up isn't really working properly. I want to think that maybe it could be done with a global variable or pointer, but I'm not entirely sure. I had hoped putting the variable in an object would allow for easy access and easy to change it on the fly. I got mostly simple syntax errors. My professor at school can probably help me with the minor stuff. It's been a while since I've worked with it. I stopped to do some Java Programming and Visual Basic.net stuff. I like having a good base to work off of. Java is a lot similar to C++ but does some things better. Course, the same applies for C++. Both have their strong points but neither seem to be able to do everything on their own. That's probably why microsoft made C#, but anyway...Guys have been doing starflight remakes all over the net. But most of them want to hold to the style of the times and keep it a top down 2d game. Most of those projects are falling short of what they need: interest. I'd like to see Starflight join the 21st century. So far my initial idea of the game is in place. I have a pretty good plan laid out for the game as well. I purchased Torque since I had made a game with Tribes 2 and I understand the scripting language and I know it can do what needs to be done. It's just a matter of getting the small issues out of the way so it'll work.
Anyway, I'll be importing most of the planet exploration code from that game since I already have mineral collection setup in that. Now I just have to figure out this gravity issue and add a few rendering concepts. I'll need a few good modelers. That is one area I haven't worked with yet. Plenty of tutorials out there tho, so I'll be doing some work there.
I'll check out the other projects you mentioned, maybe one of them can help me with the global gravity controller.
If anyone likes the project idea or has any helpful information, please send me an e-mail.
______________________
GokouZWAR
Torque Owner Jeff Tunnell
You are onto a good idea. I know there are some others in the community that are working on space games (Phil Carlisle, for instance). Maybe you can try to help them with their project. It is a very big project and will take a lot of teamwork and time.
-Jeff Tunnell GG