Had a good long talk with Buck, and we agreed that whilst waiting for the game engine to be released, we can still model build, and release a new mod based on ColoursElite 2 for Freelancer.

New Mod, fresh start, hopefully no bugs too.  There are some clever things that we have thought about and plan on implementing from the initial release and will be developed onwards…

So… What’s going to be new.  No clans, all freelancers, you will only be able to choose 1 side against the other.

Other things planned – fully dynamic economy.  You choose the prices.  There will be NPC prices so it might be better to undercut them though…

Not going to give very much away at all at this time but I am currently working on cleaning out Freelancer so that we start from as empty a mod as possible.  Speed and stability is in the order of the day.

Oh – guess what we’re also going to introduce – No NPC missions, but missions against other players on the other side so you will have to cross, the neutral zone…

We do need Model Builders – they have to be built in a specific manner though – contact buck via the forum if you are interested.

Buck’s released a basic version of a single planet…. not to scale, but it show’s earth, the moon orbiting, the space port and the shuttle.

Wouldn’t mind some feedback on how it works on various builds.

But…. this is how it starts…

Why??? – Simples (like the meerkats) This is designed specifically for the engine and means that it automatically creates the extra files needed to make it look graphically pleasing.  there’s a new fx language to learn, the book was useless and a waste of money so this way, the models will be perfect in terms of pixels and now there’s no need to learn as much with the new lingo.

It’s also reduced the number of vertices for each model as we want it to be as smooth for as many machines as possible.

Also, no cheating will be allowed either – YAY….  As this will be written from the ground up, it will simply run rubbish on anything that is “overclocked” in the registry and be detrimental to the cheaters playing…  No “spamming of packets” will work either….

Still on track to release either a video or a working model of a standalone demo of the initial area so that peeps can get a feel of the handling.  nothing will blow up though

We have space dust in space now. no crackling, but gives a sense of movement.  what we are initially aiming for is a PVP release, nothing more or less.  This will then allow everyone to test the networking etc… and bring us to a point where we were with the current mod.  We can add the other stuff in after…

Off on hols next month for a couple of weeks thanks to ebay and a cheap caravan… you should all try it sometime

So, what’s changed.  We looked at ship avionics and looked at the ship doing a 180 roll, it didn’t work – go figure.  however, replicating freelancer’s movement is done.  We also investigated at keeping the ship stationary and moving the world around the ship, which would increase the manoeverability and distances (and therefore scale) but whilst it worked, it didn’t look like freelancer so it’s on the reserve list.

We now have replicated on keys and mouse the same movement.  Still contemplating space and physics and whether we make it as realistic as possible, or like a plane in an atmosphere (such as freelancer)

Models are being re-done…. again, as Buck found a better way to do them and remove any shimmering issues when layers were too close to each other (due to the scale) and now they are going to have a single skin. Still the same amount of detail too.

Planning on releasing a demo of the shuttly, able to fly it to the soverign class enterprise and then fly that to the other ships and bases.

Earth is rotating around it’s axis, lit by the sun and it has the moon correctly spinning around it too

that’s it so far

But, you don’t care about that.

Well, the good news is that the latest version of the engine is up and running, and whilst there are a few visual issues (i.e. the models look way better when rendered in 3dMax than in the engine) but there’s a planet, a tree and a soverign class enterprise.

Move the mouse left and right, and the ship angles and moves too.  It goes forwards

What is being planned next is a short non-interactive demo of the ships flying from one to another and transferring, so you can see the models so far and the earth, sun, space stations etc….
Nothing complicated…

The good thing is that rather than waiting for the developers to fix the issues with the plugins for movement, Buck’s written his own class to do it for us…

It’s been a long time since I’ve updated this and life has gotten in the way of this.  From my point of view, I have been busy at work creating a new domain for our 5 offices.  Good news is that the engine has had an update.

the models are still being re-vamped and re-created to keep the framerate high.  I am also working on learning C++ so that I can write an effective back end system for the trading.

apart from that, not much else has changed.  But it is moving along again I have no doubt that it will take at least another year to get a working demo out, and I am also looking to see what else is going on in the world as Microsoft have pretty much killed any chance of a sequel when they sacked the majority of their gaming staff to save costs

Still, the Soverign class Enterprise was built, but doesn’t have a skin wrapped, but instead has meshes attached and the model makes it’s own cover.  Result is a more detailed and less lossy craft that doesn’t take that much power to render.  So, we’re trying the same with the galaxy class one to make sure it’s not a fluke…

Since the engine is still in development, not much else has been happening apart from building the ships….

And I got married too….:)

Buck has become a beta tester for the engine we are using.  One of the features is that they will be moving to 64bit calculations soon.  What does this mean? – Frigging big numbers for a start.

To put it into context, if we made a scale sun to earth solar system, the sun would end up being about 1.4 million pixels wide and the earth about 22,000 wide, a starbase would be about 47 pixels high and a shuttle 0.0012 pixels – or there about…. you get the idea.

Now, with 32bit numbers, your universe can only be as big as roughly 90,000,000 pixels – pretty small.  However, 64bit numbers gives you an extra 32 bits to play with, and this means 32 doublings of the existing number – which is enormous.
What does this mean? – it means you could genuinly build the universe to scale and have solar systems all over the place and genuinely fly from one place to another.

The galaxy is modelled, along with a starbase, shuttle, pereguin, and a couple of others, – the Enterprise E is being moddelled at the moment.

We’ve been talking more about how we perceive the game to play but really want you all to come up with your idea’s as no one can say we are right. – so – your comments are appreciated.

But, a newer system has been found, and it’s very very scaleable.  With 64bit numbers coming soon, it would be possible to make everything to a decent scale – still not 1:1 but enough to be far more realistic.

We have a similar concept to FL, but you will have a universe mode as well as a system mode – so instead of going from one system to another, you will be able to “warp” between different systems.  You will only use impulse inter systems with possibly some speedier way of navigating intersystem if it’s needed.

The planets revolve, and it’s possible to land on planets now (in theory) but we’re not sure if that’s going to happen yet.

So, we’ve taken a step back to go forward.  It is likely that the background will be made up of the real systems so you should be able to fly to a star in the “background” and end up at a star with planets orbiting.

All good news.

To scale everything correctly, the shuttle ends up being oh so tiny…… 0.012 pixels from memory….. and the sun ends up being only 24pixels wide…. just to accommodate the disstance to scale to pluto (which isn’t a planet)

However, on second thoughts, why do we need an orbiting earth or solar system? are you really planning on sitting there 364 days 23 hours and 53 seconds (or whatever the time is) to see if earth comes past you again? You’ld be shot first. Nice idea but dismissed now.

The most important thing about this is the scale of all the ships to each other – planets and sun come second and can be proportionate but only for visuals.

Trading – more thought – pen to paper achieved too, and programming theoretical system has started.
One massive problem with Ogame is that after a while, players that start at the outset gain a massive advantage. We think we’ve solved this so that even after a year, new players will soon quickly catch up in terms of infrastructure.

There will be Mines – Dilithium, Sandstone and Iron Ore, Factories capable of refining, basic dynamic economy and an overall tech level control which will prevent old players from getting away from new players.

There will also be a restriction on 3 players per machine irrespective of who is on it, and no advantage gained by creating multiple accounts since the advantage is gained by having more players in the universe. We’re not sure yet about inter account trading yet – it probably will be barred.

A new way of depiciting the systems has been thought of which keeps it realistic and is being tested tonight.

You will need to trade as to create items such as ships will involve more than just mining the mines. You will have a specific type of planet, and to create any one item will always require something from a different type of planet to complete the build. Also, the type of planet will increase the speed of production of certain items e.g. a technological planet will produce computers quicker than an agricultural one (if at all) but an agricultural one will be able to produce food quicker than a technological one.

Possibly, population size may come into this which will also affect the speed of production. Whilst we don’t want it complicated, we need to make it more than a server that you would just sit on and pvp on. PVP whilst important, doesn’t sustain interest in a game.