Yet Another Remake Attempt

[Pilot]

That would be interesting a sudden inversion of all controls, would it also affect weapons or targeting? It could be interesting to scramble targeting so that it selects nearest (non previous target) and disrupts targeting info enough that the new target may get fired upon, causing another conflict from the previous opponent. Though it would also need to affect the user (Maybe a complete shut down?) so that they can not use that to gang up on a target.

[Deleted]

Is this still going on? It looks awesome, but I think you're overcomplicating yourself and you won't be able to finish it... You should first replicate the game as it is, then you can keep enhancing it as much as you like.

[irjayjay]

I've taken a break from development and had a bit of moving around/renovations around the house due to covid, etc.

Replicating the game as is.. isn't as easy as it sounds, and besides that, I don't want a remake if I'm honest.
So instead I've broken the game into chunks of functionality so that I can have a minimum viable product and just add features to it.

I'm keen to start work on it again in a month or so. My main problem was that the AI is super difficult to program. I got stuck with the pathfinding part.

I think when I start again I'll get back to the basic buying/selling and set up a few stores to buy from. Then I can maybe create a sort of Counter-Strike style deathmatch game from it, just to have an MVP for testing the combat so long.

[rendillian]

Man, I can't believe people are still playing this. I am wanting there to be a re-boot of sorts as well.

Some questions;

 Does the whole game have to be rebuild from scratch? Is it not possible to add to existing game?

why is there not a Kickstarter for this game already?

I have always wanted an expanded version of this game, and I don't honestly think that anyone has ever come close to the magic this game. It's depressing.

[Pilot]

Oct 21, 2020 11:29:08 GMT -5 rendillian said:

Man, I can't believe people are still playing this. I am wanting there to be a re-boot of sorts as well.

Yes, it would be nice to have a reboot or a remake.

Oct 21, 2020 11:29:08 GMT -5 rendillian said:

Some questions;

 Does the whole game have to be rebuild from scratch?

Pretty much, the original source code and IP rights are lost in a quagmire of someone owns it, but who?

Oct 21, 2020 11:29:08 GMT -5 rendillian said:

Is it not possible to add to existing game?

. . .

I have always wanted an expanded version of this game,

Well HardwarE (Enhanced) did expand the original game play even further than the UIM0.6 patch, however it also causes a lot of instability to the game. While not as popular, U3.5 had many features that were not in UIM0.6, since U3.5 was made by Ciaran G. and UIM 0.6 was created by Ian M. But the Enhanced was also mainly geared toward UIM.06

Oct 21, 2020 11:29:08 GMT -5 rendillian said:

why is there not a Kickstarter for this game already?

I'm not sure exactly what the rules are on Kickstarter, but first there would need to be something to demo, not just a grey box level either. Because people tend to be visual and want something tangible not just a paper or even book of plans.

Oct 21, 2020 11:29:08 GMT -5 rendillian said:

and I don't honestly think that anyone has ever come close to the magic this game. It's depressing.

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I can not agree more. Hardwar and it's bundled (in USA) Fragile Allegiance still captivate me far more than many of the games created today, if they had, had proper marketing I doubt SR, Gremlin or even debtplay... Interplay would have went bankrupt or had to close.

[irjayjay]

Yeah, I'm not planning a kickstarter anytime soon, that would mean I'd have to lose my day job and do game dev full time... then I won't have hobbies left.

Gonna resume work on this during my leave period in December. Finally all my moving/renovating has ceased and I can have a "life" again.

Firstly I think a new Youtube vid is due. I realised my last vid has so little of the new stuff in.

[irjayjay]

I've been at it for a solid week and I have nothing visual to show.
Been fixing lots of bugs and learning a lot about multiplayer and how I've been doing it wrong, so all-in-all I've made that a lot more solid.

I'm working on docking, basically getting the ship to dock with a landing pad and then open up the buy/sell menu.
It's been a rough ride, mostly with letting the landing pad control the ship to land on it and then also launching the ship afterwards.
Things I needed to consider is:
- removing the HUD when displaying the Inventory UI
- disabling ship controls when the landing pad hovers it to landing position.
- disabling weapons, so players can't damage or hurt other players in the building.

Next I'm starting on a waypoint class that will guide the ship through the entire airlock flight process, effectively allowing players to dock automatically.
This is mostly to ward-off exploiting buildings/blocking the airlock for other players/flying around and causing havock inside buildings, etc.

I can look at maybe adding back more freedom at a later stage, but causing a remote-override if players abuse having full control inside a building.

[irjayjay]

Thought this deserved a separate post..

Previously I'd been toying with AI flight and I worked my way into a corner... so now I'm taking a break and working on some aspects to just make the game playable/demo-able.

Here's what I'm thinking for a first iteration of the game:
-Players join and spawn in a random ship in a random building
-Ship has no hardware fitted, but the player starts with a bit of money to upgrade the ship.
-Once you get outside, there will be a war raging between all the players, you survive for as long as you can.
-If you kill a player, you get some cash, which allows you to repair and maybe upgrade.
-When you die you simply spawn again and the cycle continues.
-Survivors will face waves and waves of newby player ships coming at them and they'll need to escape to go upgrade/repair.
-This can be a death match game or a high-score based game at first.
-Light wells will be very dangerous in this mode, I might have to just charge player cells automatically when they enter a hangar for now.

Sounds quite boring, no dynamic economy, just dogfights, a lot like counter-strike in space, without having rounds

[irjayjay]

So auto-docking is nearly done. I have a solid system I'll be implementing, using waypoints. This means it'll be customisable for any building.
Once this all works I need to just get the airlock logic to be solid too before moving on. I'm expecting 2 days of work.

Next I'll work on projectiles/weapons. Need to test homing projectiles and play around with the base projectile class. Also need to add explosions when projectiles hit things, currently they just disappear.

After that I'm very keen to start working on a radar system. Basically if your radar is on, people can see you on theirs, if it's off, they can't. See and be seen style.

[irjayjay]

Here's a few previews of my new starter ship design. It'll be a while before I can import it into the game though. I tried to stay true to the spirit of the humble Silver Y.

Hope y'all like:

[Denacity]

Thanks for the update, looking good!

As far as a working demo, I might suggest just letting people fly around together in a map, don't need any AI or Combat for the first release but testing out the flight mechanics could be useful.

I can't remember if this was discussed, but we would ideally need to have a way to run persistent dedicated servers for the game, I'm not sure if that was in the plans or not.

[irjayjay]

I'm totally keen on dedicated servers. Not sure how to compile the game to do that, but I know that it already lets me run one while testing in Unreal Engine.
It also allows for listen servers, so you can host on your gaming PC too.

Main problem with getting all that to work is that I haven't even started looking at saved game generation. Apparently you need to serialise all your objects in the game and on load deserialise and spawn them back into being... which sounds complicated for things like inventory and ship weapons.

Just flying around sounds like a boring demo, haha, that's why I at least wanted to give people a scenario to work with. I guess people could already shoot at each other and recharge, so there's that.

[irjayjay]

This morning I got full ship launch working for a building. You enter a docked ship, hit launch and the building navigates your ship out of the airlock.

Docking doesn't work yet, but it's on it's way. Hoping to finish it today, because tomorrow is Christmas and I won't have any time to work on my PC.

Docking means I need to revisit the airlock logic. Already checking if the pilot is allowed to dock, but certain sensors need to be changed, eg. checking that the ship is in the airlock before closing the doors, etc.

Another big thing to handle is the docking queue. The airlock will manage a list of ships waiting to dock/launch, and work through them one by one.

[irjayjay]

Here's my new progress video for you all:
youtu.be/Go4tA_ozH_o

[irjayjay]

And here's the next one. Too much stuff to fit into one video:
youtu.be/Pi-qrZhirEw