Armada 2255
So you may have notice there’s a new PC game posted on the website: Armada 2255. Where did this come from you may be asking? Well, shortly after finishing Armada 2250: The Rebellion, I began to experiment with various ideas using new and existing technology. Two projects were created from this process: Longbow which was announced back in 2005 which is a historical Real Time Strategy game (similar to Hands to Quarters) and the newly announced 2255. For a time, Longbow was the main focus of my attention and in fact 2255 was practically unused. Now however 2255 has become my main project with Longbow moving to the back-burner for the time being.
So what’s this 2255 stuff all about then ‘eh? I’ll be honest, up until just a few days ago, 2255 really didn’t have a sole purpose in life – instead I was using it as a test bed for other ideas. In fact, since its original creation over a year ago, 2255 has been a total of I think three very different games (all based in the Armada 2250 universe of course). Because I could never really decide what to do with the 2255 technology, it was put on hold for what I thought at the time would be permanently. Just a few days ago, a new idea hit me that the 2255 engine would be perfect for and so work once again resumed on finishing this project.
As it stands now (and nothing is permanent at this point), 2255 is an Action RPG that puts you in command of a United Earth Colonies (UEC) Line of Battleship. War is still raging between the UEC and the Reptilian Empire however this war is about to turn for the worse when a new party enters the conflict.
The game itself is a mix of action and RPG elements; you’ll be in direct command of your ship (telling it where to go, what to shoot at, etc.) however you’ll also be able to ‘level up’, purchase items, increase your ship’s abilities, etc. I don’t want to talk too much more about this right now as nothing really is stable. Suffice it to say however, I want 2255 to be much more open-ended than its predecessor 2250 – that means that I want the player to travel just about anywhere in the Armada universe without having to follow a set of very linear missions.
OK, enough about that, what’s the combat like? You’ve probably seen the screenshots by now and have noticed that these battleships are capable of throwing out quite a punch. Basically as it stands now there are three types of weapons: Flak guns, ship-to-ship missiles, and rail guns. Flak guns are your primary defense against missiles – for the most part they’ll be able to detonate an incoming missile before it even hits your ship’s hull. Missiles are the most powerful weapon available to UEC ships however they don’t always hit the target (see Flak Guns). Rail guns cannot be stopped by Flak guns however they only inflict a fraction of the amount of damage a missile does to a ship’s hull. A UEC Ship of the Line is currently equipped with 1 flak gun, 2 missile launchers, and 2 rail guns (each rail gun however is capable of firing several rounds at once – I think it’s 10 currently). These weapons can be targeted on a single enemy ship, or you can divide your firepower amongst many enemies.
Now combat isn’t anything like 2250 was (i.e. where you pilot your ship, point your guns manually, and press SPACE to fire). Instead, the computer will be in charge of aiming your weapons and firing (you just specify the target to shoot at). That leaves the player in charge of: maneuvering the ship to an advantageous position (perhaps you can use your weapons/hull to shield a smaller ship you have to protect or you might want to position your bow to an enemy ship while firing flak guns at a second – that way the flak guns will protect your broadside from enemy missiles while the other ship has only a small chance of hitting your thin bow, etc.), using items, managing ammunition (maybe… not sure about this one yet), etc. Oh, and yes there are items you can buy/sell/find/use in the game – I even have an idea on how players might be able to purchase items from other players via the Internet (using the game’s money of course, not real cash).
I must say that so far, this game is coming together very nicely; just a few days ago 2255 was an unplayable tech-demo; today it’s already an action game! Just today I installed a simple ship AI; later on I hope to begin adding the script engine in (the script engine by the way was developed for Longbow however it can be easily ported into other projects like this one). Once that’s in I should be able to start work on the main story quests.
So there you have it; keep checking out the website for future updates!
Longbow Technologies
Quite a bit of progress of late in Longbow. Recent features include technologies, production queues, and an AI that defends itself (finally). The production queue is of course a feature that slowly trains units (or researches technologies) so that when the "train" button is pressed, that unit will appear after a few seconds... not instantly (if you've played a RTS before, you should know what I mean). The technology system is pretty cool right now I think. How this works is there are 16 different techs divided into four categories: military, economy, construction, and navy. However the twist is that you can't research everything... instead you're given a certain amount of "tech points" which you can spend on a single technology (8 points as it stands now). Now these technologies all are very powerful (or at least they should be eventually when everything is straightened out), so you have to choose carefully. Also since you can't research every technology in a single game, each game will be slightly different in this regard. I think its a pretty neat system, but we'll see how it works out during play-testing.
Gems Cubed
Well, quite a bit has happened since my last post here (waaaay back in August... I apologize for that). Anyway, I'll start with the latest news that Gems Cubed has been released! Where did this come from you may be wondering, and rightfully so as I gave no prior warning to its release. Well originally this was just a small on-the-side project I was working on to help me learn DirectX 9.0. This was back in March of last year, and since then I really haven't touched it until recently when I finally decided to finish it off. Anyway, long story short, Gems Cubed is a puzzle game consisting of five unique modes of play and even an Internet high-score system! Have fun!
What else is new... in my last post I mentioned I was working on a game using the SPACE engine (which was the engine used in Armada 2250), well I stopped working on that in favor of Longbow... a fully 3D RTS game (not like my previous games which were 2D/3D hybrids really). This thing is really cool IMO, and if you haven't yet, you should really check out the development screenshots
here. Not much I can say about it right now, besides that it's a 3D real time strategy game which takes place in the medieval age.
Well, I'll try to keep this blog updated more often, so until next time,
Walter
3D Objects
In my last post I mentioned that my latest project uses an enhanced version of the SPACE engine. Well for the past couple of days, I've been working on one of these improvements which is the support for 3D models. This is actually the first engine I developed that will truly support 3D graphics easily. My previous games have all used 2D sprites for most of the graphics with a few 3D objects thrown in, all of which were hard-coded into the game, not modeled with a 3D modeling program. Now however I'm able to load up trueSpace, create a 3D image, and tell the SPACE engine to load it and display it easily! Currently I only have support for the actual mesh geometry, but I'll be implementing textures very soon, perhaps by then I'll post a few screenshots of this project. Anyway, my current plan is to use 2D sprites for some of the graphics, and 3D models for most of the graphics.
However I really want to get this thing in a playable state ASAP. Right now there isn't much to do but walk around. It's a very unique idea IMO, and I'm not entirely certain how well it will come out. I'm pretty certain it will be fun, but I can't truly tell until it's playable.
And then there's patch 1 for Armada 2250! As mentioned before, the main addition of this patch will be the single-player scenarios. As it stands now, the patch is able to load a custom scenario and it all seems to actually be working. Now all that remains is to design these scenarios and test them out. I'm planning on pulling a lot of old content from the original game I was planning (which was code-named “SPACE” a year ago). This game worked very similarly to Armada 2250, except that the missions weren't as linear. I actually got around to creating several missions for that game before changing my plans and creating Armada, so I hope that some of these will make interesting scenarios.
Patch, new project, Longbow...
Just today I started working on the first patch for Armada 2250. I've actually been playing around with several ideas for the past week and have finally settled on most of the features I want to add to the patch. On top of the list is the ability to play a custom scenario in single player mode. That way in addition to the 14 levels in the campaign, you'll have access to smaller levels to play through. Once implemented, the patch will of course contain several of these scenarios to play right away, and if I ever create more in the future, you should be able to simply download them at my website here (perhaps also in the future you'll be able to download scenarios made by other users).
Right now I have several ideas planned for the first set of scenarios including some old levels that never made it into the game, and I would also like to move the multiplayer maps over so that if you don't have anyone to play a MP map with, you can still load it up and play against the computer. In addition to this of course several minor bugs should be fixed (nothing major, just a few sound issues), and perhaps I might be able to boost the performance of the graphics engine. Keep in mind that everything I just said is of course subject to change :-)
Let's see, what else is new? I've begun work on a new project which is turning out quite well so far. I don't want to say too much about it yet as a lot of it is still under development, but I can say this: it takes place in the 18'th century, and it uses an enhanced version of the SPACE engine (that's the same graphics engine used in Armada 2250). As the game progresses, you should be able to find more information on it here.
My original plan for after Armada 2250 was to develop an entirely new and fully 3D graphics engine code-named “Longbow”. I actually did start work on this, but decided to try making at least one more game with the SPACE engine before moving on. None the less, I do plan to continue work on Longbow, so perhaps you'll see a screenshot every now and then in the gallery...
