Torque for space sim?

#1 Well, I am working on a space sim at the moment:

http://kuiper.kuattech.com/

Also, two other persons are also working on space sims... they will probably post here when they wish.

#2 Absolutely.. There are a few people doing space games. Mine's kind of off the shelf right now.

I'm hoping for a programmer to take it over and finish it off of course.

But from a commercial point of view, space sims just arent a good idea I think.

#3 Nice work though btw.. wish you'd have asked this a year ago :)

Maybe you should get together with Jay Barnson and redo the artwork for void war :)

#4 @Pat er Phil. Curious why you think space sims are not a viable indy option. I was also under the impression that you were making a space sim pak for GG.

#5 You mean Phil? :)

There's a difference between a succesful pack and a succesful game. A successful pack should pique people's interest, and excite them about what sort of games they can make with it. But it doesn't guarantee success (it's a starting point, not an ending point). So you might sell a thousand packs, but never see a finished game come from it.

I think that a space pack would sell well - there are lots of people out there that can use the tech, lots of people that might want to prototype a space game, fill niche markets, that sort of thing.

A space game? Not so sure. Most of the projects I've seen in that niche are big - big and indie aren't words that go together well. Someone could probably make a sweet indie space game that sold well. But more often it seems like they want to one up the big titles - genre defining games like Freespace 2. That's usually not a winning strategy if you're the small guy in the pond. :)

Anyway, I'm sure Phil has his own thoughts.

Back to the main thread... Andrew, nice model. I like the look a lot. Do you have any experience doing realtime 3d models?

#6 Thanks for the replies guys! Like I said, this would be more of a spare time project for me, not really looking to make any profit off of it or anything, just to have a bit of fun making something cool. I do have quite a bit of experience making low-poly models for game use.

I agree with Phil when he says the space sim genre wouldn't be a great idea commercially, the market for those types of games seems to have all but disappeared lately... but hopefully this, like most other things in life, will run in a cycle and soon come back.

It's good to know there's at least a place to start looking for people who may want to get this thing going. Over the next month or so I'm going to be preparing a few pieces of finished art to try and use as a pitching point to start the project and get some programming help.

Was Void War done with the torque engine?

#7 Jay Barnson used his own engine for Void War I believe.

#8 Nice carrier model shot :)

#9 BTW, any reason people seem to just read over ANYTHING I say?

#10 Hey Mike, sorry about not replying, I just assumed that the nature of your post was to inform me that space sims could be done with torque. I went through the Kuiper website and damn that looks nice! This really looks like a great project. The only critique I can offer is that the cap-ship battles look a little redundant, just shooting over and over. Is there going to be more fighter action?

#11 Yes I definitely miss the '90s when Origin was king and I could just hardly wait for the next Wing Commander installment!

I remember when Wing Commander III came out - I video taped the monitor playing the opening sequence and first mission and had everyone sitting in the conference room at lunch looking at the game play video!
I had talked about the game so much, everyone wanted to see it!

Those were the days - Privateer single handedly made me switch from hardware engineering to software in the hopes of working for a game development company...
It was the first game I bought when I purchased my first 2x CDRW drive! It had SPEECH and at the time, for it, it was amazing.

I would get teary eyed thinking about flying around Junction and Pender's Star, Perry, and other popular places in that game.

I just recently discovered DOSBox and was able to fire up that game on my WinXP box and ENJOY IT again for the first time in years!

I've had in the back of my mind for such a long time a continuation of Privateer; ideas on how to expand the open ended game play and different plot missions.

I too just purchased Torque in the hopes that I can finally realize my ideas without having to write my game engine from scratch!

Last month, I purchased 3D GameStudio A6 in the hopes of a start but was frustrated in the convoluted state the documentation and some of the engine code is in...

As a C++ programmer by profession, I believe Torque is the better route for me but I'm wondering how and where to begin?? (I'm also now worried that Torque can't play movie files like A6 can??...)

With 3DGS, you could at least run the world editor, drop in some blocks and texture them and get basic levels up pretty easily - with Torque, I have to learn how to do everything - I'd like to make my first stop >creating models using my Lightwave package< and getting them dropped into the world editor.

I also purchased ShowTools for one, cause it LOOKs like Lightwave so I figured the two tool together will be bliss once I get going, so now it's just hunting and pecking for tutorials so I can learn how to drop in a room with some sliding doors and triggers and get going!

So I'm definitely another aspiring game programmer who'd LOVE to see the return of space flight sims - especially the open ended ones!

I want to relive the fun I had back in the Wing Commander days!

-Will

#12 Heh guys,
I was wondering how you create a space sim game when the terrain editor doesn't allow it in Torque?
I took out the terrain part in my .mis file and when I spawn anything it flies upwards and eventually locks up the engine.
I would appreciate any tips that anyone would have on how to go about it. I can understand how to do scaling and creating objects in a 3d space I just want to create a 3d empty space in the Torque engine.
Any help would be appreciated.
Cheers
Mal

#13 I'm not sure that just deleting the terrain is the best way, and I think there's a resource somewhere for removing it properly.

Could all your objects falling up, actually be the 'player / camera' falling down?

#14 Yes I think the camera is falling because of gravity however there is no terran to land on.

#15 In both TSE and TGE I went to lengths to properly remove both terrain and water from the engine itself.

#16 Hi Mike,
I want to be able to have a space sim type game that allows also landing on planets and uses the terrain as
well for land vehicles and ground combat etc..

#17 How did you remove the terrain an water? Can it be done easily in TGE 1.4?

#18 Carl,

Search this site. There are already a few posts telling how to do this. Essentially all you have to do is remove the terrain code from the scripts... (the mission file).

Check this link out... www.garagegames.com/index.php?sec=mg&mod=resource&page=view&qid=3007

-Tim

#19 Hi Tim, thanks for that.
Has anyone tried this with the TLK 1.4?

#20 Mike I like the look of your game screen shots. I also like the way you have modelled some of those ships. You still building the game?