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Forum Index : Microcontroller and PC projects : Dev Diary: Space RPG - Definitely not Star Trek.
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| Volhout Guru  Joined: 05/03/2018 Location: NetherlandsPosts: 4851 |
Hi Pete, I had the same fear for petscii. There was so much we could have added (although picomite memory was running out) and I had to cut some corners. But I gave myself a hard deadline: christmas 2023. It was quite hectic close to that date, and we (don't forget Martin) released what we had. And then Martin went on writing AS, and I didn't code for it for 1 year. I did play it though..just to check if you can finish each level. Now, 1 year later, there is a bug-fix release (robots603). Volhout Edited 2025-02-10 18:09 by Volhout PicomiteVGA PETSCII ROBOTS |
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PeteCotton Guru Joined: 13/08/2020 Location: CanadaPosts: 527 |
Not at all. I love hearing stories like this (and I learned some stuff as well). Despite the title of this thread - the real underlying topic is more about nostalgia and mental health. The game is just a catalyst for those sorts of conversations. |
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| PeteCotton Guru Joined: 13/08/2020 Location: CanadaPosts: 527 |
Thanks, those are definitely wise words. But I've come to embrace the "it might not be finished" aspect - and it's done wonders for my enjoyment (and ironically I seem to be working a lot more on this game - now that it isn't a "task"). When I got my first CMM2, I was excited about pushing it to the limits. Heliblaster was sort of the culmination of that. Once I had the full screen rotation working, I then needed to write a game to make use of it. And although I'm proud of the game, it did become a bit of a chore to get it finished. I think that as adults, we grow this little voice in our head that measures self-worth based upon how many tasks we complete. e.g. "I had a great morning, I got a tonne of things done" vs "Today was a waste of time, I got nothing done". Younger me didn't think like that. Don't get me wrong - it's not healthy to take that approach to all of adulthood - I still have jobs to do. But when it comes down to unwinding in the evenings; a nice glass of red wine, a favourite album on spotify and just tinkering with the Trek code is very pleasant. I almost always make some headway, but I'm not upset if I don't. Yesterday I re-wrote an entirely fine bit of code (the menu system) because I thought of a nicer way of doing it. Using the program, you would not notice any difference at all - but inside I "know" that it's now better. I will probably have the game in a working enough state that I can release it at some stage, but I want that moment to come along at it's own pace. Funnily enough I now recognise that my father came to the same conclusion decades ago. In his retirement he took to carving rocking horses for Children's hospitals. It would take him an entire winter to carve one horse. But he would go down into his basement, pour himself a glass of whisky and put on some jazz and then think about what cut he was going to do next. Some nights he wouldn't do any carving at all - and he was okay with that. I see it all of the time on the internet - people making things that require a massive amount of effort, yet have no purpose or end goal. I never understood it before - but now I do. Edited 2025-02-11 04:59 by PeteCotton |
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| PeteCotton Guru Joined: 13/08/2020 Location: CanadaPosts: 527 |
I added nebulas to the space this evening. There are two types (imaginatively called type 1 and 2 until I think of something better).  The type 1 are blue and the type 2 (shown above) are red. When you fly into them, your vision is reduced to 1 square. In the type 2 nebulas, your shields are also inoperable, greatly exposing you to attack. So, why would you want to enter them? The enemy captains won't follow you into a nebula (there is a 1% chance that they will), and will have a much harder time tracking you once you are in, so they can be used as an escape route in desperate situations. Of course, you can't see more than 1 square ahead when you are in the nebula, so you might pop out right in front of a squad of enemies - them's the risks you take! I'm trying to find a good balance of nebula to space. I don't want the whole playfield to be filled with them, but I want them to be around so the player can use them tactically. I'm pretty happy with this change. It adds a bit more depth to the combat and gives the players more options. Edited 2025-02-12 15:49 by PeteCotton |
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| Malibu Senior Member  Joined: 07/07/2018 Location: AustraliaPosts: 260 |
Loving this Pete, I'm amazed at the amount of work you've done and how good it looks! Not sure how much benefit it would give me for MY mental health - I'd have gone bananas by now, but glad it works for you  My two bob's worth with your nebula size: maybe have a psuedo-random size between 15% and 75% of the playfield size. The 15% size can easily be seen on the full playfield (so decisions can easily be made) and the 75% extents will JUST be out of the playfield and give some harder tactical choices because an 'unkown situation' exists. Then, only game experience (ie: tactical knowledge of the game) would be a benefit.  Edit: What if occasionaly, there's nebula that's 5 times the playfield size? The nebula might span across to the next screen, but possibly it's across the next 5 screens... As a player, you wouldn't know until you take the plunge to find out. Do you risk a quick 'hide opportunity' in what you see, vrs a possible situation of being lost in a void where you aren't sure where the edges are? ie: Risk being trapped, or risk a fire-fight... It's just an after thought Edited 2025-02-13 15:57 by Malibu John |
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| PeteCotton Guru Joined: 13/08/2020 Location: CanadaPosts: 527 |
Thank you very much for the kind words and ideas - they really do mean a lot. I love this idea. I have 25 star systems in the game. I am very aware that one of the issues with the original Super Star Trek is that it got very repetitive (warp into sector - shoot Klingons - rinse - repeat). So I want to give each of the 25 star systems some sort of unique plot/quest/objective that is more than just killing the enemy. An idea I'm expanding on is that all information on one of the systems is censored. There's nothing in the Encyclopedia Karathian (Yes - that's a thing in the game) about it. I don't know what's lurking in that system (yet), but I do like the idea that it's the one with massive nebula, so exploring it becomes very tense - especially given that it will be swarming with Karathian ships. The gameplay for that system becomes much more "cat & mouse". Sneak around, find out what the secret is (and steal it???). Another system has giant space spiders roaming through it. These are pretty much unkillable - deliberately so - I want them to be genuinely scary. The point of this system is that you have to be here to achieve some objective - but it's somewhere you really do not want to be. Having many more smaller nebula, would allow the player to dart from nebula to nebula to avoid the GSS's. Once again. mixing up the gameplay a bit. That's the weird thing. This should be stressing me out - but making that mental decision that my CMM2 is for FUN not work - and that I can just tinker, prod and poke at the code - without having to make any real headway, has been wonderful. My wife and I usually hang out until 9pm, and then she goes off to get ready for bed. I usually stay up until midnight, and often end up watching old movies or TV shows. But that seems like a waste of my precious free time. So, yes, writing this is also a waste of my time, but less so than just watching TV. It's almost like zen meditation. Sometimes it's a little bit of a struggle to get started, but once I do - it's such a pleasant way to spend an evening. This game might never get finished - and I've decided that I'm okay with that. |
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| Volhout Guru Joined: 05/03/2018 Location: NetherlandsPosts: 4851 |
Create a black hole, lots of exitement can take place there. It can suck up stars, nebula's, starships, enemies(*), and (although only in the game, not in the real world) can be hidden in a nebula. Add a pulsar, when you get too close, all your instruments will go mad. But if you keep the pulsar between you and the ennemie he can't spot you. Not sure (haven't played the game, not now, not ever), but add trade. In simple means, for every ennemie kill, add coin. With coin you can upgrader/repair your ship, but only at space stations or planets. Maybe this is already in the game. Upgrade does not mean a new ship, but simply more powerfull weapons, better radar, more fuel. So many idea's.... I sincerely desire your game to be finished, but it is TAO. It is not the end of the trip that is important, it is the journey itself. Volhout (*) design a trick manouvre where you can lure the enemy to close to a black hole, it is sucked in, without getting drawn into it yourself. Edited 2025-02-14 02:32 by Volhout PicomiteVGA PETSCII ROBOTS |
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Nimue Guru Joined: 06/08/2020 Location: United KingdomPosts: 369 |
Hey - long time not posting (personal ill health, family member with ongoing mental health challenges, house fire - the list goes on) - like a really sad sitcom ;-( Anyways, this thread has kept me somewhat sane(r) recently and brought a much needed smile. The hit boxes remind me of StarFleet battles (paper game I play bitd), and whilst this is "definitely not Star Trek" having a "manual" with the ship layouts in would be really awesome. For example...  For what it's worth, StarFleet battles had shuttles, which you could convert to weapons (at the expense of the shuttle) - they could be converted to homing missing or ECM drones to block enemy weapons (if I remember correctly they modified the perceived distance so enemy weapons did less damage) -- was my favourite feature. Also a "cloaking device" that used much of the available energy (and you cant fire weapons) but makes you invisible. Available to you and the enemy. Kudos for this work. Entropy is not what it used to be |
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| PeteCotton Guru Joined: 13/08/2020 Location: CanadaPosts: 527 |
I have been giving a lot of thought as to how I would handle a black hole in the game. It's a turn based game, so I could introduce "drift" where your ship moves towards the black hole a little bit each turn. The closer you are to the hole, the more you drift. But it's difficult (with a turn based game) to get that working well, do I move the player one grid towards the hole once every three turns etc. ? I will definitely get it working - I just need to work out how. The other issue I face is that I have my 25 star systems, and each of those star systems has 1 to 9 planets. The player doesn't jump to the star, they actually jump in to orbit around one of the planets (greatly increasing the size of the explorable space). This would be difficult for a black hole to exist that close to a planet. So I have a bit of a plan to make this more of a story element. Remember I said that I had 25 star systems, well by sheer co-incidence* (  ) each of those star names starts with a unique letter (A - Aludra, B - Branna etc.) which makes the navigation screen easy - type in the unique letter for your star and plot the course. Which gives me one free letter from the alphabet. What if that wasn't a star system, but the 26th destination was a black-hole system? Now, in theory there's no reasons black-holes can't have planets orbiting them - but the planets would be so far out/fast that they wouldn't see much affect from the black hole. But we could do two-black holes orbiting each other (a binary black hole). And instead of jumping to a planet, the player can jump directly beside either black hole. This would explain the massive gravitational forces. *The plot thickens - there is a religious cult in one of the systems who strongly believe that they are living in a simulation - and part of the proof is that it's a bit too convenient that all of the stars have a different letter - but there's one letter missing - and they need the player to track down this missing star system (which turns out to be a black hole nobody has seen before). Yes - I know it doesn't make much sense - alien alphabets wouldn't necessarily have 26 letters and names change, but it's just a small in-joke in the game I did think of using a Dyson Sphere for the same 26th destination - but it doesn't add as much to the gameplay as a black hole would. I love this idea. I can have the angle of the pulsar beam rotate slowly throughout the game, changing the safe spots on the map. The beauty of pulsars (for this game) is that they are small enough that they could in theory orbit another star (technically it would still be a binary star system), but because they are physically so small they would exist as one of the "planet" locations around the star that you jump to. Thank you  Trade/Money/Upgrades are going to be a huge part of the game. They're not in the original, but I want the player to be able to buy bigger ships, upgrade them etc. That's one of the reasons I now have the floor plans for the ships, so you can select various pods and change their use, or upgrade your engines, weapons, shields etc. I'm also going to give the player the ability to build modules in space, so they might build a satellite scanner that reports back on enemy movement in the area, or a phaser tower that adds some extra fire power in a fight. Maybe even a mining satellite in a nebula that extracts gas (for later sale by the player). It's one of the aspects that's going to be crucial to making the gameplay far more in depth. Brilliant. Please keep the ideas coming - and you have hit the nail on the head with the journey... that's what it's all about. Thank you! Edited 2025-02-14 04:54 by PeteCotton |
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| Malibu Senior Member Joined: 07/07/2018 Location: AustraliaPosts: 260 |
Ageed! As another suggestion... (and I presume your gamefield is a top-down view of a 2D environment?) If it is, my understanding is that you would line up the Not-Klingons, who might be at grid reference 7F and fire. It's a hit and they're gone. Is it possible to make the game as a top-down view of a 3D environment? So, the idea is that you line up the Not-Klingons at 7F and fire, but this time it's a miss, because they're on level 3 and your own ship is on level 5. That can only be determined by switching to a side-on view, checking the levels of the two ships and adjusting 'elevations' to match (move your own ship to level 3 as well). Switch back to top-down view and fire, this time it's a hit. (Presuming of course that the Not-Klingons haven't moved to grid 8F, or drifted down to level 4...) With superior intellect, Khan only thought in 2D and look where he ended up.  No idea if that's even possible because this game was WAY beyond my skill levels a long time ago!  Edit: Love your idea of the space cult... Edited 2025-02-14 06:44 by Malibu John |
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| PeteCotton Guru Joined: 13/08/2020 Location: CanadaPosts: 527 |
I am very sorry to hear this. I hope 2025 is a better year for you and your family. On the other hand, I am very happy to hear this. This stuff is meant to bring enjoyment  I took a lot of inspiration from Starfleet Battles (and Traveler). With regards to the ship layouts, the floor plan for the current ship you are flying will be integral to the game, as this will be the screen where you chose which systems to install/repair/upgrade. But I have another plan as well. When the user presses the Escape key to get to the "settings" screen, I have this sequence where the game says "Returning you to reality" and from there you can access the (imaginary) box art, and images of the (also imaginary) disks/tapes you would need to install the game. My hope is to try and evoke that old time feeling of holding the big box games from the 80s and 90s in your hands. As part of that "pack" I was hoping to include some fake posters (such as a map of the star systems etc.) which would just be .png images loaded on to the screen. One of the ideas that I thought would be cool would be that you would also get the Sales Brochure for the ship you are currently flying (including floor plan and rendering). Also you will keep the brochure for any previous ship you have owned. i.e. you start off with one brochure, and it becomes something of a reward for buying a new ship in that you get to add to your collection of brochures. I know I'm not explaining this very well, I'll try and put together a video this evening showing how I see this working. I had forgotten about the shuttles. That's an excellent idea. I also like the idea of a cloaking device. I will have to experiment a bit with the gameplay to make sure it's balanced, but I think it's an excellent idea. I don't know if you're aware of this, but there were three absolutely excellent implementations of Star Fleet Battles on the PC back in the very early 2000's called Starfleet Command I/II/III. I & III are available on Good Old Games: https://www.gog.com/en/game/star_trek_starfleet_command_gold_edition https://www.gog.com/en/game/star_trek_starfleet_command_iii I played the heck out of all three of them back in the day - and they absolutely factor into a lot of design choices I'm making with this game. I'm not sure why Number 2 is missing from GOG - it was my favourite. To be honest 3 is a bit soulless as they simplified some of the gameplay - but for the cheap price they are, they're definitely worth picking up and playing. Thanks - it really does mean a lot to me. Edited 2025-02-14 06:53 by PeteCotton |
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| PeteCotton Guru Joined: 13/08/2020 Location: CanadaPosts: 527 |
That's a very interesting idea. It might be quite difficult to do with the ASCII art though. The star map (for warping) is pseudo 3D, but it took me forever to make it look anywhere near decent. And even then I had to end up forcing the perspective angle and just allow rotation around one axis (previously you could rotate it in any direction). With the 2D sector map, I think there might be enough for the player to manage with just lining up their shots in 2D (there are firing arcs which have to be met - and the one for torpedoes is 0 degrees - i.e. you have to be pointing directly at the ship you want to hit). But I do like the idea (but might have to realistically pass on it unless I can think of a good way of implementing). Yes. Although I would argue that Star Trek was always 2D. Ships always meet up facing "upright" on the same plane. Thank you. I hope it gives the player a little laugh at least. Other "proof" they have of intelligent design is that if you divide known space up into a 101 by 101 grid, the star systems all align perfectly with grid intersections - almost as if they we being stored in integer variables. Their over arching goal is to discover the "seed" which is a formula that explains the seemingly random distribution of planets.... maybe that's how they discover the 26th system? By cracking the procedural generation algorithm. |
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| Malibu Senior Member Joined: 07/07/2018 Location: AustraliaPosts: 260 |
Interesting... I thought it would be reasonably painless. (As I said, this is way above my skill level!) I would presume that the top-down gameplay would be (almost) the same, just with an added Z-axis level(s) screen. Although, keeping track on X-Y PLUS the Z positions for multiple targets and features could start to get a bit hectic! It was just an idea, happy you took it on board John |
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| PeteCotton Guru Joined: 13/08/2020 Location: CanadaPosts: 527 |
As promised, here's a short video showing the ship brochures (or one of them at least). The video also shows the 3-D star map at the beginning. The 3-D star map is way darker in the video than it appears on my monitor - I'll need to sort that out for future videos. https://1drv.ms/v/s!AnkZn9N9Pt1fyZBVAuTSo0TCjdw9cQ?e=UeS1Ml After a few seconds of selecting different planets (to warp to), and reading their Encyclopedia Karathian entries, I press the Escape key - which is how to bring up the "settings" menu for the game. As you can see, this breaks you out of ASCII mode and back into the "real world". From here I want the player to be able to look at the box art, and the posters/brochures etc. that come with the game. This pack will also include the sales brochures for all of the ships that they have bought in game. Gotta catch them all! This first brochure (for the Casper Hanley X9) is a very rough draft. I need to come up with a way of producing them more efficiently. So, I think I will go through sales literature for modern cars and copy a lot of the sales speak off of those. A bit of tweaking should make it apply to space ships The floor plan for each brochure will be copied from the in-game floor plan. That drawing of the ship on the front page is just a random image/placeholder. I have a spaceship parts kit for Unity (slot together parts to make a spaceship). I think I'll use that to auto generate the outside look of the hulls (based off the floorplans) and then have Unity render the image and save it to my computer. That should allow me to rip through generating the images. Here's a close up of the test brochure:  Edited 2025-02-15 05:04 by PeteCotton |
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Mixtel90 Guru Joined: 05/10/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 7499 |
That video is Soooo... Coooool.... :) Love it! I wonder how many claim under the 12 day warranty on the X9? Edited 2025-02-15 05:17 by Mixtel90 Mick Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini Preliminary MMBasic docs & my PCB designs |
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| Malibu Senior Member Joined: 07/07/2018 Location: AustraliaPosts: 260 |
That's fantastic! 1) Aunt Stella's Notes : That's funny, and a great touch 2) If I want to get an X9, but don't have a first born child, is there another payment option available? 3) Is 12 day warranty local time, or universal days (adjusting for time-dilation of moving objects)? John |
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| PeteCotton Guru Joined: 13/08/2020 Location: CanadaPosts: 527 |
Thank you very much! Thank you ever so much. Aunt Stella is the person you inherit your first ship off. She might or might not be missing. I really want to do the propaganda speech for the Karathians, and having Aunt Stella's notes allows me to do that without people taking it too seriously. Funny you both mention the 12 days. I am struggling a bit with space distances. Light years are only relevant to Earth, so I need another unit of distance for measuring the jumps between star systems. Edited 2025-02-15 06:21 by PeteCotton |
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phil99 Guru Joined: 11/02/2018 Location: AustraliaPosts: 2414 |
About the only readily measurable universal length measure is the 21cm wavelength radio emission of neutral hydrogen. It pervades the universe. Perhaps use an ultra-mega multiple of that wavelength. Edit. A little more precision. The hydrogen line, 21 centimeter line, or H1 line = 21.10611405416 cm in a vacuum. = 0.2110611405416 m c = 299,792,458 metres per second so light year = c * 365.25 * 24 * 3600 m or light year = c * 365.25 * 24 * 3600 / 0.2110611405416 wavelengths of H1_line = 4.482459655e+16 H1_line wavelengths Now to get away from any earth based units "ultra-mega multiple" = 2^60 and is approximately 5.4 light years. Assuming the numbers didn't overflow the PicoMite. . Edited 2025-02-15 09:59 by phil99 |
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| PeteCotton Guru Joined: 13/08/2020 Location: CanadaPosts: 527 |
Excellent. Not to worry about the actual calculation - it's all arbitrary anyway. We'll just call them Standard Hydrogen Lengths (SHL) and given that we don't know what the base numbering system was or what power it was raised to in the original calculation for it, we 're going to assume that 1 SHL is more or less 1 light year. Thank you! |
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| George H Newbie  Joined: 03/07/2020 Location: United StatesPosts: 31 |
That video is really cool Pete! Very inspiring! |
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