Author Topic: Oddgrim, Newman, and I are making a space game! (Lord of Rigel, 4x strategy)  (Read 46980 times)

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Offline Ace

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Oddgrim, Newman, and I are making a space game! (Lord of Rigel, 4x strategy)
So a few months ago, a few of us sat down and wanted to work on a 4x space strategy game. Raven has also done some great work while balancing this with BWO. A number of people from HLP contributed very early on and all of their efforts were much appreciated, and the team is now settled on at least the programming side of things.

There's a number of indie 4x games out there like Stardrive and MORE, but we're hoping to add a bit of extra polish and character above some of the current titles out there.

We're aiming for basically an updated Master of Orion 2, fixing some of the more flagrant gameplay issues (micromanagement) and adding quite a bit of character into the game in the form of backstory and the design and play of different species.

We've had a bit of progress over the past few months, particularly on the programming front of things. But art wise we have some fun ships from two of the species so far the Humans and the Kzinti-like Katraxi.

Overall the idea behind the different fleets for each species is to have them instantly recognizable in silhouette. Each ship class (ex. frigate, destroyer, cruiser)  has a set model, but ship classes themselves are fully customizable.

We also recently launched the website:
http://www.lordofrigel.com

Human Frigate (.p3d)
http://p3d.in/6D4sq

With the humans we wanted a symmetrical look that felt somewhere between the sleek look of the Federation and the more militaristic look of Star Wars' Empire.

Katraxi Cruiser (.p3d)
http://p3d.in/iVrpR

With the Kats we wanted something that felt like many of the honorable warrior species in scifi (Kzinti, Klingons, Kilrathi). Their ships are "spiky" and asymmetrical too for a quick contrast.

Anyway I'm hoping to occasionally update this thread as art gets done. At the moment we are also looking for some additional art talent as our current art team is still rather small and there's quite a number of species and fleets.

Also attached is concept art for the frigate and two early screenshots of how things are looking.
« Last Edit: March 09, 2016, 02:48:40 pm by Ace »
Ace
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Offline niffiwan

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Re: Oddgrim, Newman, and I are making a space game! (Lord of Rigel, 4x strategy)
sounds very cool, I played MOO2 to death when I was in Uni and enjoyed it immensely.  And since you've selected the Unity engine there's a chance that you'll release a version for Linux :) :yes:
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Offline TrashMan

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Re: Oddgrim, Newman, and I are making a space game! (Lord of Rigel, 4x strategy)
I'm willing to lend a hand if you need some 3D models.
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Offline Ace

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Re: Oddgrim, Newman, and I are making a space game! (Lord of Rigel, 4x strategy)
Trashman we'll take you up on the offer if you feel your texturing skills are up to the task. :) We're going for rather low triangle counts for artistic reasons, but high resolution textures (2048x2048 maps) for the ships.

Shoot me a PM here or on the LoR boards and I can give more specifics on what we're after art pipeline wise.

Niffiwan: PC, Mac, and Linux are the platforms we're aiming to support. We are trying to develop it so we can easily port it to touch screens and tablets for a possible iOS/Droid release after the PC platforms.
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Offline niffiwan

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Re: Oddgrim, Newman, and I are making a space game! (Lord of Rigel, 4x strategy)
Niffiwan: PC, Mac, and Linux are the platforms we're aiming to support. We are trying to develop it so we can easily port it to touch screens and tablets for a possible iOS/Droid release after the PC platforms.

Woohoo! In which case...



:D
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Offline karajorma

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Re: Oddgrim, Newman, and I are making a space game! (Lord of Rigel, 4x strategy)
Well I've never worked with Raven or Oddgrim but I know both you and Newman are very good at what you do. I look forwards to this.
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Offline TrashMan

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Re: Oddgrim, Newman, and I are making a space game! (Lord of Rigel, 4x strategy)
Trashman we'll take you up on the offer if you feel your texturing skills are up to the task. :) We're going for rather low triangle counts for artistic reasons, but high resolution textures (2048x2048 maps) for the ships.

2048x2048?
That seems rather big for a MOO2 remake 4x.
Do you plan on having 3d battles with lots of zoom-ins? Zooming in too close seems wasted in a 4X, where you need oversight more than anything. Now I'm really curious as to how the space battles are supposed to look.
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Offline Dragon

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Re: Oddgrim, Newman, and I are making a space game! (Lord of Rigel, 4x strategy)
Eh, it could be great, but it's turn based... In this case, I'm not interested. IMO, we don't need another turn-based 4x space game. We need an RTS like Imperium Galactica II. I'd love to see something that could match it, but nothing ever even managed to come close.

 

Offline Aesaar

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Re: Oddgrim, Newman, and I are making a space game! (Lord of Rigel, 4x strategy)
Then maybe you should go play Imperium Galactica II instead of telling people what game they should be making.


As someone who loves Master of Orion 2 and still plays it because recent 4X games can't match it, I'm very interested in this.

Massive bonus points if you guys include an Antaran equivalent.  Antaran raids were fun as hell to try to repel, and were hugely rewarding if you captured a ship.
« Last Edit: October 03, 2014, 11:40:24 am by Aesaar »

 

Offline Ace

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Re: Oddgrim, Newman, and I are making a space game! (Lord of Rigel, 4x strategy)
The tactical camera allows for a close zoom in as well as a far zoom out of the whole combat area since there are cases where closer zoom can be helpful such as manually selecting point defense targets. Overall the choice for the high resolution textures is also a stylistic one.

Asaar: To help with avoiding curbstomps in the end game the main departure from MOO2 is adding in two elder races in huge galaxies the Rigelans and Arcturans who are in a Cold War. So things a galactic council are tied to their power plays as they try to force species to join their power blocs. A player could side with one or the other or carefully try to build a coalition to kick them out of the galaxy.

Smaller galaxies basically have a special planet to seize (Rigel) much like Orion served in MOO.

Dragon: Real time was ever on the table. I'd suggest Stardrive to scratch that itch.
Ace
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Offline Aesaar

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Re: Oddgrim, Newman, and I are making a space game! (Lord of Rigel, 4x strategy)
Ok, that sounds awesome.

 

Offline Mongoose

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Re: Oddgrim, Newman, and I are making a space game! (Lord of Rigel, 4x strategy)
The genre isn't really my speed personally, but all the best of luck to you guys in working on this. :yes:

 

Offline Ace

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Re: Oddgrim, Newman, and I are making a space game! (Lord of Rigel, 4x strategy)
We just got our steam concepts page set up, so feel free to check it out and post questions/comments!

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=323788034
Ace
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Offline Thaeris

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Re: Oddgrim, Newman, and I are making a space game! (Lord of Rigel, 4x strategy)
Forgive me if someone said this already, but what is your turn-based system like, or could it be configurable?

...For instance, one of my favorite ways to play a strategy game is with Battlefront.com's planning phase followed by a simultaneous execution phase, which occurs for a given duration of time. The down-side to going for that, should you be interested, is that it would more than likely require far more in the way of AI coding than a traditional turn-based game would. The up-side is that, like the Battlefront.com games, you could probably turn the game into an RTS very easily, because the AI for that would already be in place...

In short, perhaps everybody could get what they want after all.
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Offline AdmiralRalwood

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Re: Oddgrim, Newman, and I are making a space game! (Lord of Rigel, 4x strategy)
Simultaneous turns are a not-uncommon feature in turn-based 4X games; I don't think the AI for it is drastically more complicated than for sequential turns (in fact, the majority of the decisions should be the same).
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Offline TrashMan

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Re: Oddgrim, Newman, and I are making a space game! (Lord of Rigel, 4x strategy)
So give me approx polycount numbers for ships.

Also, do you plan to have a single look for a race or sets of possible models? (2-3 human ship apearances, 2-3 aline1, etc, etc..)
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Offline Ace

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Re: Oddgrim, Newman, and I are making a space game! (Lord of Rigel, 4x strategy)
Well we just got our first piece of real news coverage in Indiegamemag:
http://indiegamemag.com/screenshot-weekly-cute-bunnies-slaughter-diplomatic-sumomen
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Offline Hades

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Re: Oddgrim, Newman, and I are making a space game! (Lord of Rigel, 4x strategy)
This is a pretty cool looking game, when I'm more free/in the mood I might try whipping up some models for you guys if it's needed. :)

P.S. Where is Oddgrim? Is he still taking a hiatus from FreeSpace modding and is he doing ok?
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Offline Ace

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Re: Oddgrim, Newman, and I are making a space game! (Lord of Rigel, 4x strategy)
Oddgrim is alive and well, he's been balancing work with doing stuff on this.

If you're interested in modeling, we can use people who can do meshes, UV mapping, and texturing. So shoot me a PM!

Also we did an interview with Gamer Nation Radio:
http://shoutengine.com/GamerNationRadio

Plus a Q&A with space game junkie:
http://www.spacegamejunkie.com/featured/lord-rigel-qa-providing-players-full-space-opera-experience
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Offline karajorma

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Re: Oddgrim, Newman, and I are making a space game! (Lord of Rigel, 4x strategy)
Good Q&A but a pity you couldn't shoehorn in a Diaspora or Freespace mention. :p
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