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Hello Everyone! While I'm new and have not finished a project, I'm really excited to try my first compo and change that! So, without further ado, here is my concept.

The game will pit you as the pilot/operator of a small space exploration craft, in a style reminiscent of The Urquan Masters. You fly around, from the cockpit of your craft, and visit planets all over space, where Alien species and other factions are living, and try to either help them or fight them. Furthermore, you can land on planets and look around and get resources and equipment.

The controls would be simple - directionals to turn, space to thrust. The mouse would control the Deep Space Scanner, which allows you to scan for Life/Resources/Other Cool Things from space, without having to search the planet manually. When you are landed, two different sets of controls: Conversations would just be dialog trees, with point and click, while exploration would just be arrow keys to rotate your craft, and click to examine something specifically.

I'm artistically challenged, but I made a _vague_ mockup of how the space part would look. I will at some point make the cockpick niftier. But, anyway, heres my concept sofar:

(http://i582.photobucket.com/albums/ss268/danspencer/mockup.gif)

I'm planning on trying to finish a very small version of this, contentwise, quickly, then spending the rest of the compo time adding more not-funamentally necesary features.

Oh, and I would like to add combat, eventually. But I think that would much more complicated than I'm capable of doing, so it won't be in this iteration of the game. Perhaps if this goes well, I'll continue it!

Wish me luck!



EDIT: Canceled.... sort of. The entire concept is too expansive for me to finish all on time. However, from the work I've done so far, a new concept is born... Expect a thread soon.

g'luck  ;D :handthumbsupR:

The concept reminds me of Captain Blood. Captain Blood was awesome.

Good luck with this!

A screenshot! Very unexciting, but if you can imagine that it moves...
(http://i582.photobucket.com/albums/ss268/danspencer/screenshot.gif)
Gotta improve navigation. Right now you always rotate around the y-axis and x-axis, rather than however you are oriented at the time.

EDIT: Got axis-independent rotation working, after a day of work.

Progress! I had initially been eager to make a working prototype, without caring too much for the structure of the code. However, I've restructured/split into all the different files/classes that I should have been using up to this point. This means I'll be able to start working on planet-side gameplay soon. For now, though, I've made the planets into spheres, rather than simple 2d objects...

Anyway, a screenshot! I'll spend a little more time playing with the lighting, but then I'm going to move to planetary gameplay.
(http://i582.photobucket.com/albums/ss268/danspencer/screenshot2.gif)

Came up with the back story - You are on a deep space mission from earth to Planet X. Unfortunately, your landing mechanisms malfunction, and your ship gets wrecked on the surface of the planet. Luckily, though, you and your lightweight cruiser survive with only minor damage. You must find a way back to earth - and to do that, you will need help from Alien Species residing nearby.

In other news, I have A) planned out the planetside feel, and B) come up with an improved concept of the cockpit (my mockup is very bad and painty, and I don't have a scanner to load my freehand drawing... so it is not posted).

Next step is allowing you to land on planets.

Quick post:
Churned out a simple terrain renderer - to be updated in the future, but for now it at least exists.
(http://i582.photobucket.com/albums/ss268/danspencer/terrain_render.gif)

Woo, now heightmaps can be expressed as files! Quite a necessary step. Its still hacked together, for the moment, but i'll fix that soon.

EDIT: Screenie!
(http://i582.photobucket.com/albums/ss268/danspencer/terrain_render2.gif)

It's looking good!  That is a fun looking homebrew planetary engine!

Ooo! I like the rendering style of the terrain.

Game and screens have a nice retro feel. Sweet

Thanks for the positive feedback! Just another screenshot - made the beginning of an actual level map, and added some lighting (I think, if I can, I'm going to try to write a lighting fragment shader... lights don't work with bigger polygons)

(http://i582.photobucket.com/albums/ss268/danspencer/terrain_lights.gif)

It clipped the far end of the passage, but I'm too lazy to fix it and get another shot.

I love that organic look in the newest screen. Real nice.

Canceled, sort of. See first post. Not the end of my work in this compo, though.