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Main News about StarLife

tiagocc0

Arcane
Joined
Jun 29, 2007
Messages
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Brazil
New features:

Now you can hover your enemy to check which weapons are in range or hover your weapon to check which enemies are in range.
You can also selected which weapons to shoot, one or more.

Each time you shoot all weapons are selected again so you can deselect one weapon, shoot and then choose another target and shoot again without having to selected the remaining weapon.
All weapons come selected at the begging of your turn.

Here's the video:
hxtps://vimeo.com/42695154
hxtp://youtu.be/oum86U-X3YA

EDIT: Oh god, what is wrong with youtube, why they must dumb down a 2MB video?
EDIT2: Here's the original http://purpleorangegames.com/StarLifeTacticalCombatNewFeatures.mp4
 

Malakal

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Glory to Ukraine
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Poland
Sounds nice.

I would add some randomness to this though. Maybe range isnt always accurately shown and you need better sensors or something like that. I always found sensors to be GREATLY underrepresented in those types of games. They should be your eyes and ears in space...
 

tiagocc0

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Jun 29, 2007
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Sounds nice.

I would add some randomness to this though. Maybe range isnt always accurately shown and you need better sensors or something like that. I always found sensors to be GREATLY underrepresented in those types of games. They should be your eyes and ears in space...
Sorry for the delay, I just moved out and so I got no internet at home yet.
I will think about it, it should really have more meaning in the game.
 

Malakal

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Most games just abstract this into hit bonus but I find that to be underwhelming. But its just a thought if you want to flesh out the game a bit more.
 

tiagocc0

Arcane
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Jun 29, 2007
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Danilo (StarLife main artist) to the rescue:
char-cow.png

char6.jpg


For now he's studying and doing lots of concept art, later in development we will define all races and choose some of the concept art and refine it to fit better the races chosen.
 

tiagocc0

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Jun 29, 2007
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tiagocc0

Arcane
Joined
Jun 29, 2007
Messages
2,056
Location
Brazil
Here is one faction of the humans!
And two mockup screens on three images. One mockup is about the planet screen and the other is the main screen.
On the planet screen you will notice that there is no buildings, just services.

This is something that I wanted to do for a long time, on games like this usually you have to build a lot of things on your planet, but even in Civilization it's kind of strange, to put some buildings on a city that should be something with thousands of thousands of buildings but was simplified to just a few.

Now imagine simplifying a planet to the same amount of buildings and you end up with Civilization on space where planets resemble cities.
So instead of a building, you have a service. You are going to pay a high maintenance value but you can stop and resume the service anytime you want.
A planet is divided into two resources, population and infrastructure.
If you have a population of 3.2 billion, then you maximum and ideal infrastructure is 3.2 points.

There are two ways for population to grow, by itself so if you have low population it will grow slowly and if you have a lot it will grow faster.
And population from other planets may also immigrate to your planet so you can end up with mixed population if your govern tolerates other races. But it can also happen between your own planets.
A planet has a maximum population limit, but it can be surpassed and will be. This will cause a lot of trouble so think careful before trying to make your population increase too quickly.

Infrastructure increases slowly because your civilians are always investing in your own race, you can however pay for a service that helps civilians to increase a planet's infrastructure.
If you have a population of 2 billion and an infrastructure of 1 point it means that your planet is actually performing most services at half of it's maximum performance.
So keeping infrastructure as close as possible from your current population will result in maximum output for that quantity of population.
So a planet with 3 billion and 3 points of infrastructure will result in X production for example and a planet with 6 billion and 6 infrastructure will result in 2X production.

This way planets that can hold an higher number of population will produce more.
Planets that increase their population too quickly will be penalized, planets that increase their population above the planet's maximum will also be penalized.

With this I can explain the population type.
For every 0.5 billion you will get one person that represents that population. This person is symbolic and you can use it to set their focus.
A planet with 3 billion will get 6 persons. There will be 5 types of person for you to specialize:
Civilian - Increases infrastructure
Farmer - Produces food
Builder - Gives production points (Used in some services like to build starships)
Businessman - Produces credit
Scientist - Gives technology points

So most of the early planets will consist basically of Civilians and Farmers, then move on to Businessman and Scientists, or Builders for planets that produce starships.
Planets will have specializations, after a certain criteria they will level up, depending on your current technology you will be able to specialize them to get bonuses.

Ship production will be made empire-wide, that means that you will produce ships using all your planets instead of each planet builds their own ships.
You can however choose in which planet the ship will appear or if it will remain on a pool. Ships in a pool means that they are deactivated so their maintenance costs are low and that if a war arises you can quickly activate them and spread them over your empire. If you keep all your ships active you will be able to respond more quickly to an war but it will cost more to maintain.

On the other mockup you can see some buttons:
Economy
Planets
Starships
Research
Diplomacy
Espionage

char36_final.jpg


mockup_1.png


mockup_1_2.png


mockup_2.png
 

Destroid

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May 9, 2007
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Looking pretty good! You are probably better off colouring the whole star by faction ownership. Is the game intended for mobile devices?
 

tiagocc0

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Looking pretty good! You are probably better off colouring the whole star by faction ownership. Is the game intended for mobile devices?

That's a good idea, that little colored circle is hard to visualize.

I will think about mobiles after the game is released, right I'm focused on 800x600 minimum.

By the time I finish my game Qt should have a better support for iOS and Android, right now it's possible to compile using third party tools but require a lot of work and knowledge.
 

Destroid

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Another thing you might consider is have a few visualiser modes that scale the stars by selectable parameters, pop, industry, science etc. Would allow you to give a visual overview of how the empires are all doing and which systems are important. I also don't see a reason you shouldn't be able to over-invest in infrastructure to build it above the current level of population.
 

tiagocc0

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Jun 29, 2007
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Another thing you might consider is have a few visualiser modes that scale the stars by selectable parameters, pop, industry, science etc. Would allow you to give a visual overview of how the empires are all doing and which systems are important. I also don't see a reason you shouldn't be able to over-invest in infrastructure to build it above the current level of population.

On the mockup of the main screen, when you click on the 'city icon' it will show a screen exactly like you described.
From that list or from clicking directly on a star/planet will give the other mockup screen.

If you have over-population you will be able to have over-infrastructure, but having more infrastructure than population shouldn't give you bonuses because it's like having a factory with no people in there to work.

If for example your population decreases, your infrastructure will stay the same. If your population rises again it will be able to use that infrastructure that was disabled because of lack of population.

But I may allow for the player to set a infrastructure limit, so you can build infrastructure faster than your population grows.
You cannot however stop infrastructure from growing. And maybe having more infrastructure than population could result in maintenance costs or it would decrease until it reaches the population number again.
 

tiagocc0

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Jun 29, 2007
Messages
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On the infrastructure subject, there could be a race that can have double the infrastructure because of their large efficient with multiple limbs body.

Or races that requires no infrastructure at all (think of a Zerg like race).
 

tiagocc0

Arcane
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Jun 29, 2007
Messages
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Location
Brazil
Oh, I totally forgot about this, good to see more progress.
Thanks!

Things have been a bit slow this last week, I've been doing a lot of mock up screens of everything I want made in the game so I can guarantee a consistent look across the game and know exactly what I need to do for every part of the game.
And yesterday and today I've been tweaking my macbook back to life, this is how it's looking now minus the hd I hooked up later, https://twitter.com/purpleor/status/252128269011410945/photo/1
Everything that didn't work was removed.

This means that I will be able to compile for mac using my 6 year old macbook, I will install ubuntu later so the next version I release will be available for the three os.
 

tiagocc0

Arcane
Joined
Jun 29, 2007
Messages
2,056
Location
Brazil
The beauty of QML

I’m just finishing a new way to structure the code using QML, and I must tell you it’s a lot easier than the previous method I was working on!
Right now I’m forcing the hit points, movement points and turn order, but as soon as I finish editing the components they will be calculated based on all components.

Check it out:
Code:
Map
 {
  id: mapGame
  mapWidth: 23
  mapHeight: 20
  ships:
  [
   Ship { shipX: 6; shipY: 7; shipName: "Nautilus"; turnOrder: 0;
          playerSide: "Player 1"; sourceImage: "Combat/OfficialShip3.png";
          shipHitPoints: 85;  shipMaxHitPoints: 100;
          shipMovements: 4; shipMaxMovements:6;
          components:
          [
           ShipComponent   { itemType: "Command Center";   itemDesc: "Small Team";     itemHitPoints: 25;  itemMaxHitPoints: 100; },
           ShipComponent   { itemType: "Life Support";     itemDesc: "Minimal";        itemHitPoints: 85;  itemMaxHitPoints: 100; },
           ShipComponent   { itemType: "Propulsor";        itemDesc: "Rocket";         itemHitPoints: 100; itemMaxHitPoints: 100; },
           WeaponComponent { itemType: "Laser";            itemDesc: "Small Military"; itemHitPoints: 100; itemMaxHitPoints: 100; itemIsWeapon: true;  itemHasShot: false; itemDamage: 20; },
           WeaponComponent { itemType: "Laser";            itemDesc: "Mining";         itemHitPoints: 100; itemMaxHitPoints: 100; itemIsWeapon: true;  itemHasShot: true;  itemDamage: 12; },
           ShipComponent   { itemType: "Scanner";          itemDesc: "Mineral";        itemHitPoints: 100; itemMaxHitPoints: 100; },
           ShipComponent   { itemType: "Hyper Jump";       itemDesc: "Fusion";         itemHitPoints: 100; itemMaxHitPoints: 100; },
           ShipComponent   { itemType: "Crew Quarters";    itemDesc: "Small";          itemHitPoints: 100; itemMaxHitPoints: 100; },
           ShipComponent   { itemType: "Energy Generator"; itemDesc: "Fusion";         itemHitPoints: 100; itemMaxHitPoints: 100; },
           ShipComponent   { itemType: "Escape Pod";       itemDesc: "Large";          itemHitPoints: 100; itemMaxHitPoints: 100; }
          ] },
   Ship { shipX: 13; shipY: 7;  shipName: "Green Three"; turnOrder: 7;
          playerSide: "Player 2"; sourceImage: "Combat/OfficialShip8.png";
          shipHitPoints: 50;  shipMaxHitPoints: 100;
          shipMovements: 4; shipMaxMovements:6
          components:
          [
           ShipComponent   { itemType: "Command Center";   itemDesc: "Medium Team";    itemHitPoints: 70;  itemMaxHitPoints: 100; },
           ShipComponent   { itemType: "Life Support";     itemDesc: "Minimal";        itemHitPoints: 70;  itemMaxHitPoints: 100; },
           ShipComponent   { itemType: "Propulsor";        itemDesc: "Rocket";         itemHitPoints: 100; itemMaxHitPoints: 100; },
           WeaponComponent { itemType: "Phasor";           itemDesc: "Large Military"; itemHitPoints: 50;  itemMaxHitPoints: 100; itemIsWeapon: true;  itemHasShot: false; itemDamage: 55 },
           ShipComponent   { itemType: "Scanner";          itemDesc: "Small";          itemHitPoints: 100; itemMaxHitPoints: 100; },
           ShipComponent   { itemType: "Hyper Jump";       itemDesc: "Fusion";         itemHitPoints: 100; itemMaxHitPoints: 100; },
           ShipComponent   { itemType: "Crew Quarters";    itemDesc: "Medium";         itemHitPoints: 100; itemMaxHitPoints: 100; },
           ShipComponent   { itemType: "Energy Generator"; itemDesc: "Fusion";         itemHitPoints: 100; itemMaxHitPoints: 100; },
           ShipComponent   { itemType: "Escape Pod";       itemDesc: "Large";          itemHitPoints: 100; itemMaxHitPoints: 100; }
          ] }
  ]
  Component.onCompleted: { passTurn(); windowGameMap.setSizeOffset(mapWidth,mapHeight) }
 }
 

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