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TIGSource ForumsCommunityDevLogsStardust Tycoon - 2D elite inspired space trading game - NEW DEMO available
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Author Topic: Stardust Tycoon - 2D elite inspired space trading game - NEW DEMO available  (Read 18853 times)
PetSkull
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« on: January 19, 2018, 08:59:24 AM »







Today I present you with my latest development Smiley

First of all: Thanks to KPas for the great name! Smiley

Stardust Tycoon
This game is a 2D sandbox space game, inspired by the original "Frontier Elite". I've taken some liberties regarding the gameplay, but overall, you're a space pilot and can choose your own destiny!

Link to Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/816850/Stardust_Tycoon
Link to itch.io : https://petskull.itch.io/stardust-tycoon (downloadable demo)

Features
  • Procedurally generated expanding 2D universe
  • Thousands of different ship brands you can fly
  • Numerous upgrades to your ships to help in your adventure
  • Interact with a lot of different NPC's and follow their daily routines
  • Help local enforcement in keeping planets safe
  • Stock market - Buy and sell shares to increase your wealth

Roles
  • Trader. Buy and sell commodities between systems
  • Passenger carrier. Transfer passengers between system
  • Pirate. Attack traders and ferries and loot them for their commodities, avoid the local law enforcement
  • Miner. Mine ore and find rare gems and minerals
  • Explorer. Discover new star systems, and reveal the story of an ancient alien race

Buzz words
  • Travel in a continuously expanding procedurally generated 2D universe
  • Choose your own fate and fortune. Be any role at any time
  • Increase your wealth, and use it to get bigger and better ships - or to upgrade existing ones
  • Reveal the mystery story regarding an ancient superior race, long gone
  • Encounter thousands of different other ships, some friends some foes
  • Help local community by taking on missions
  • Mine ore on the planets to further increase your wealth
  • Colonize new star systems - Make them your own
  • Become the ultimate tycoon in space

The universe
The universe starts out small, as not many star systems has been explored yet. But over time, it will expand as new star systems gets discovered from NPC expeditions.


Hyperjumps
You jump from system to system, by hyperspacing into other systems. Jumping between planets in a system doesn't cost anything regarding to energy.

Spaceports
Every system contains a number of spaceports, where you conduct all your business. This can be buying and selling commodities, ships or upgrades. Take on missions, buy and sell stocks, or take a trip to the casino. Anything that will help bring in money and get you closer to the title "Trading Tycoon".


And now updated with new layout and graphics:


Combat
Every ship is equipped with primary laser weapons and optionally secondary weapons and they do different kind of damage to other ships. Shield generators are purchable at the spaceports and will greatly help you stay alive. Be aware where and who you shoot at. Systems with local law enforcement dont take it lightly when you attack wessels in their vicinity. On the other hand, killing a slow moving trader, can get you a lot of floating loot  Roll Eyes


Trading
Each spaceport has a commodity market with supply and demands. Buy low and sell high to demanding systems. NPC traders will also trade goods and affect the markets.

Missions
From the message board in a spaceport, you can accept different kinds of missions, which will earn you money and influence your reputation among other pilots and people.

Devblog updates
I'm aiming for at least a weekly update of this blog, showing off new or revisited elements of the game. I'm also posting regularly new updates on Twitter https://twitter.com/PetSkull, but this place will be the primary dev-update site.

I hope you like what you've seen so far. I would be very grateful for all ideas, constructive critisism and cheers Wink

The title "Trading Tycoon" is my current working title. I'm not sure, this is the right name for the game - But on the other hand, the word "Space" has been so oversaturated lately...

Update 25.feb.2018 : With the help of user KPas, I've changed the name to Stardust Tycoon Smiley

(All pictures hosted at imgur)

« Last Edit: February 04, 2022, 12:50:44 AM by PetSkull » Logged

whistlerat
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« Reply #1 on: January 19, 2018, 09:04:02 AM »

Yessss, I need more good trading games in my life. Looks and sounds good, I'll be following! Toast Right
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PetSkull
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« Reply #2 on: January 19, 2018, 09:21:02 AM »

I've created a procedural spaceship generator, as I suck at drawing art. It can create ships of any sizes, from very small escorts, to very large and heavy cruisers







I'm still working on tweaking the function, because I'm not quite happy with the bigger ships yet.
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HuvaaKoodia
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« Reply #3 on: January 19, 2018, 09:55:02 AM »

Those spaceships, especially the medium sized ships, look mighty fine! There's a surprising amount of variation to them despite the seemingly small set of parts. Simple color variation does wonders too.
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PetSkull
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« Reply #4 on: January 19, 2018, 10:09:06 AM »

Thanks Smiley I like them as well. And I've made it so that once I get the urge or inspiration, I can create more parts and add them easily to the generator.
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KorbohneD+++
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« Reply #5 on: January 19, 2018, 12:41:11 PM »

Looks very cool! I like the spaceship-generation it looks pretty good!
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PetSkull
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« Reply #6 on: January 21, 2018, 11:18:22 AM »

Today I added the laser burst gun as a secondary weapon, attachable to all ships. It will be purchable in different sizes and therefore with different impact on shields. The color of the laser will tell how much damage it will do.

The GIF also shows both the pulse laser and the more powerful beam laser.

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PetSkull
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« Reply #7 on: January 21, 2018, 11:35:53 AM »

I've also finally finished my zoom routine. This was a tough one to get right, due to the huge amount of tiles I needed to draw when the zoom made the tiles go from 32x32 pixels down to 2x2. A full screen of tiles sized 2x2 is a LOT of tiles to draw. By merging the tiles into new tiles sized 4x4 I could keep the frame rate of 60 fps up Smiley - In the game this is fluid, by using the scroller on the mouse.

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flex$
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« Reply #8 on: January 21, 2018, 01:38:13 PM »

love the ship gen bud, keep refining that system  Smiley Hand Thumbs Up Right
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PetSkull
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« Reply #9 on: January 22, 2018, 01:07:59 PM »

Today I worked a bit on the HUD elements for the game. First the mini-radar, which shows other vessels within the vicinity.



I'm also in the proces of implementing the different meters for weapons, shield and energy. But not quite satisfied with the look yet. Need another iteration.

I also added info at the top of the screen, showing the player which star system he's visiting.

« Last Edit: January 22, 2018, 01:15:15 PM by PetSkull » Logged

PetSkull
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« Reply #10 on: January 22, 2018, 01:31:20 PM »

I also added information about the current system, when the player jumps out of hyperspace

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PetSkull
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« Reply #11 on: January 25, 2018, 01:16:15 PM »

Today I added more HUD graphics and implemented a simple collision avoidance check for the NPC vessels. It's purely cosmetics, as I've decided from the start, that vessels can't collide. But still it gives a nice visual gimmick, when they try to steear clear of obstacles Smiley



It's done by sending out rays in a 90 degree arc from the nose of the ship, and if colliding I calculate which side is colliding and steer in the other direction. I've made is, so that collision detection only occurs when flying at full speed. Otherwise I'd run into numerous problems around the choke points (landing pad and hyperjump portal).
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PetSkull
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« Reply #12 on: January 29, 2018, 01:16:27 PM »

A few more HUD elements has been added. Behind the scenes I've refactored part of my code, to optimize the collision checks I'm doing for all weapon elements.



I have planned for 6 types of weapons:

- Pulse lasers with different pulse lengths and damage
- Beam lasers with different beam sizes and lengths
- Burst guns
- Dumb missiles (shoot and hope it hits)
- Smart missiles (Fire and forget - Will hit target or die trying)
- Mines - Homes in on nearby objects and explodes within a certain distance - Shooting out a lot of penetrating darts

The only way to really protect yourself, is by having solid shields and/or a fast engine Smiley
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PetSkull
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« Reply #13 on: February 02, 2018, 01:23:35 PM »

Nothing really new and exciting to show, but I've been doing a lot of working in the "engine room". I've rewritten a lot of the code in order to optimize the procedural generation time and the memory use. I've cut the memory usage by a factor 10 and the proc-gen time is halved. I feel it's a good progress, even though it has taken longer, than I anticipated.

I use Hacknplan for project management and so far I've closed 45 stories and have 29 planned left for my first milestone. I feel I'm doing good progress and am still positive about the project Smiley

Next up will be more regarding the HUD and message popups and then I have to implement the shipyard, where you can buy and sell space ships. Still puzzled how I'm gonna calculate the prices for the ships. Haven't figured that one out yet.

I did implement the first babysteps towards the market place, where you buy and sell goods. This is very basic at the moment, and not influenced by supply/demand, but this will be implemented later.

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PetSkull
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« Reply #14 on: February 02, 2018, 04:01:33 PM »

Ok, I did do something new today ;-) I added a planet generator to my existing proc-gen code and made the transition from hyperjump into orbit. I think it adds a little something Smiley

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PetSkull
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« Reply #15 on: February 11, 2018, 06:03:53 AM »

I'be been spending the last couple of days creating a improved UI manager and redesigned all my dialog windows. I think this new look better fits the game. The colors of the dialog is unique per system.

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meshpotato
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« Reply #16 on: February 11, 2018, 07:22:58 AM »

This looks really cool! Love the concept and art direction!
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« Reply #17 on: February 11, 2018, 04:30:53 PM »

Sweet project!  The procedurally generated ships are awesome.  If you're looking for feedback on the larger ships, I think they would look better if there were some larger segments in the mix (even simple, solid color sections).  Overall, this looks great.  Can't wait to see more.  Smiley Hand Thumbs Up Right
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PetSkull
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« Reply #18 on: February 12, 2018, 11:49:23 AM »

Thanks for your idea. I've already implemented somewhat what you've suggested. I added more building parts and changed the routine for creating the body of the ships.

Today I continued working on the UI, especially the dialogs you'll see when you land on a landing pad. It is going really well, but I'm at a point, where I once again need to rethink and refactor some parts of my code. It's the part where I attach different outfits to my ships. This doesn't work so well with the upgrade function, I've created in the "shipyard upgrades" section of the landingpad.

To get away from that problem for a while, I started to work a bit on the main start menu, more precisely the background graphics. My idea is to show a procedurally generated planet in the background and so far, I've come up with this:



and another example:


And in front, there's gonna be the game logo and the usual menu options. Looking forward to have a full screen to show Smiley



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PetSkull
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« Reply #19 on: February 16, 2018, 06:20:30 AM »

I finally got around to adding ship explosions. Didn't quite know how I wanted them to be, but settled on this type, where I split the ship up into 9 pieces and let them fly off from the explosion.



For ships with cargo in their hulls, some of the cargo containers will survive the blast and float around for easy picking. But only if you have a "Debris collector" in your ship upgrades.
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