I really like the idea. It reminds me of an oooooold bbs door game I loved that had ansi arena combat. I can't remember the name :/

This looks gorgeous, following. Also very cool that you are working on this all together - I hope the development doesn't cause any tension withing the family .

Heh. we haven't killed each other yet... but it is early yet

Animated GIFS to chew on:
Solar Exploration:


Gravity Slingshot:


Krex Cruiser vs SunDagger

I'll be traveling tomorrow, so here's this weeks update a tad early.

StarDiver Solar Navigation:


Gravity Slingshot:


Krex Cruiser vs SunDagger:

Good stuff. I enjoyed it. I especially liked the guitar in the intro.

I'm working on a space game with one on one ship battles. I just implemented simple gravity for planets and the sun (Unity3D):

Code:

float dist = Vector3.Distance(sun.position, player.position);
player.rigidbody.velocity += (sun.position - player.position).normalized * (gravity/(dist*dampenAmount)) * Time.deltaTime;

This works fine for simple gravity, however I would like a fun 'slingshot' feel. My ships are using rigid bodies and AddRelativeForce to move around. I speed limit the velicoity of ships. The speed limiting allows me to have fast enough acceleration to feel good, drag auto slow down/stop, etc. However I need to remove the speed limiting or rethink it in order to allow the gravity to pull them in fast enough to get a 'slingshot effect'.

If I recall, mathematically 'real' you would have to have the planet/star in motion in order to  slingshot around it. I don't care about 'realistic' or 'real' just looking for a fun effect that isn't too computationally heavy.

Ideas?

Yep, I can do a mac build. I will do a webplayer first most likely (which works fine on mac/safari)

Looks good, though I wonder if maybe the background shouldn't be darker. Its quite bright, and active which makes the shots not as easy to track as possible.

I'm not sure what codec fraps uses but it seems to amplify the hdr/glowiness of the scene and over saturate compared to actual play. I'll be posting a demo build shortly to get feedback on controller support. When I do, I'm curious if you'll think the same in-game vs the compressed/glowy video.

Either way, good point because video/images needs to look good enough to to entice players interest to even check it out.

Krex vs SunDagger:

Krex ship is now playable, with long range flak cannons. Aim the broadside launchers and fire away. The longer you hold fire the further they go. Release to pop the flak.

SunDagger, Attached to the power of the stars, when they run out of power they dive through a star to recharge. Dive deep enough and pull star plasma to toss at your foe.



Next up, to add ramming to the front of the krex ship. Going to try two different methods and see what we like best. Either momentary forward burst of speed to ram, or launching the front 'claw' section forward to bite/chomp on impact. Not sure which will turn out better.

Krex vs SunDagger:

Krex ship is now playable, with long range flak canons. Aim the broadside launchers and fire away. The longer you hold fire the further they go. Release to pop the flak.

SunDagger, Attached to the power of the stars, when they run out of power they dive through a star to recharge. Dive deep enough and pull star plasma to toss at your foe.



Next up, to add ramming to the front of the krex ship. Going to try two different methods and see what we like best. Either momentary forward burst of speed to ram, or launching the front 'claw' section forward to bite/chomp on impact. Not sure which will turn out better.

We plan on having gravity from stars and planets, but a slingshot without the battlefield looping would be less helpful unless you really got that lucky sling in the right direction. With looping you could sling at warp speed and if you miss target just keep going around and angles usually would eventually line up

We have changed a lot since the build posted here. We have moved away from a looping battlefield and experimenting with a camera system the mostly centers player with a look-ahead when far away from enemy (and screen edge marker), then when close enough to an enemy, the camera lerps to center between player and enemy. This model will allow battles with more than a single opponent, something we are considering. It would also allow for single mode explore/fight. Still doing a lot of experimenting and tweaking to something that feels right. The looping battlefield has a lot of issues and overall, I'm just not liking how that system translates from old-school games to today. I'll try and post a video or build to show you what I mean.

If you plan on putting it on console, I'd think this would be a big win. If its PC only.. not sure.

Our goal is pc/mac/xbox1/ps4/linux(for steambox). I suspect console release(s) would be after pc but my crystal ball is broken and we are still in the process of indie signup for consoles.

I say in regards to Star Control 2, the thing that drew in a lot of people was the story and exploration elements. The music was absolute classic as well, and you've done the hard part there - capturing the sounds and instruments.

A lot of people loved the combat. In fact, I've never heard anyone praising the story of SC2 before.

So, I guess, YMMV.

I remember a few friends played StarControl 1-2 when I did, back in 1992, and they loved the battles, but didn't get into the rpg/adventure part. Personally, I loved both.

Combat is certainly looking like classic star control, which I think personally is fantastic, though you need joystick support.

I couldn't agree more! So much so that I added controller support last week It was a lot of fun to get two controllers going for 2 player battle. At the moment though the camera system was only made for single player. We had so much fun though, now we need to decide if it is worth the effort to change the camera system to allow 2 player, same screen battles. Without changing the camera, online battles would work fine.

The music you linked to is also in the style of Star Control, and I'd say you're using the same chord progression for your Hyperspace track as the actual Hyperspace track in Star Control!

Thanks for the feedback, we always appreciate it! Maybe I am deaf but I don't hear it.

Here is a link to star control tune:




And one of our songs, I think the one you refer to:
http://www.indiedb.com/games/stardiver/videos/hyperspace-music

Similar style of tunes for sure -- as we love electronic stuff for the game theme. I ran it by my son, the author, and he doesn't hear the same chords/notes. Maybe you are referring to a different song I can youtube?

I think you're following a little too close -- maybe too derivative?

We are definitely fans of Star Control 1/2 (and even 3 , as well as Starflight series, Sundog, Universe, Tradewars, and other similar games. It is hard to answer your question 'maybe too derivative?' without considering we are talking about a game that is 21-23 years old in the case of Star Control and even older for the others. I'm not sure we could clone it if we tried. That said there are a lot of aspects of Starflight/Starcontrol games we love. Love alien dialog, exploration, planet mining, and ship combat. Specific to star control, they improved on a ton of little things from StarFlight as we really hope to do -- be it with 20+ year newer technology. I would guess the StarFlight team wasn't all that thrilled about StarControl building on their awesome game ideas, but too derivative? Not for me, but others I'm sure would disagree. Then again if you follow the genre, StarFlight wasn't the first of the kind either.

We are so early in development at this point, I really couldn't say how similar we will end up. I'd love to say we have a stellar design doc all mapped out but far from it I do hope by the end we can compare favorably to classics like star control (or others) -- I'd be very flattered! In the end if our game is half as fun as I found any of those old classics, I'll be thrilled!

I say in regards to Star Control 2, the thing that drew in a lot of people was the story and exploration elements.

I loved the story telling in Sundog/StarFlight, and of course Star Control2-3 (1 I think was just battle mode?). We are big scifi fans and story for us is a big goal. Now if only we had it all written. We have 100 ideas floating about and nothing written yet. Good thing my wife is a much better writer than I!

I've done a few games where I found myself following a bit to close to the reference (in my opinion, of course.) It's easy to fall into a trap of someone else's proven formula and not even know you're doing it.

Then again, sometimes that's all people want to play anyway.

We'll keep the discussion going as we get further along. We definitely don't want to end up as a cheap knock-off of anything.

yep all hail santa. link fixed, thx

Thanks. It has been fun printing stuff, but I have to admit, the technology is no where near consumer level stuff. Seems like a fulltime job to sort out the software/hardware and babysit the printer while printing to make sure it does what you expect.

Working on the weapons for the Krex cruiser ship. Each ship in the game will have unique weapons. This one will have 3x broadside flak cannons. Hold fire and they dumb fire ahead until they either hit something, run out of time or player lets go of fire to explode them. Explosions do radius damage about the size of the ship.

Santa brought us a 3d printer so it has been nonstop printing 'stuff'... mainly our game space ships. Not too bad considering we have 0 skill tweaking 3d print options. Opinions?