[Firgof]

For those unfamiliar, Star Ruler 2 is a 3D Space 4X/RTS built with a custom, extremely high-performance, engine that launched in 2015. Notable engine features include being able to support massive universes, thousands on thousands of ships in RT combat, built-in planet, star, and galaxy creation/destruction and full newtonian mechanics (combined with several FTL methods, but excluding gravitational force and a light-speed limiter). The game's also extremely modable, even without the source code but the studio I used to work for just put the source code for the game and all its assets up on GitHub. (Minus the soundtrack)

The code and data for the game (scripts, data, engine, source code) is all MIT license - but the assets are CC-BY-NC 2.0. I was thinking about it and wondered if the HLP community would be interested in porting FS2 assets over to SR2's OSP to make the game fully MIT - assuming the present assets being used in FS2 Open are licensable in that regard. Similarly, the game no longer has a soundtrack and there's been lots of great music that's come out of FS2Open projects that would really fit in with this game.

Anyway, even if all that's not possible due to license restrictions, I'd love to see a Freespace-inspired TC of Star Ruler 2 given that FS2 is one of my all-time favorite games. If any of y'all have been itching to make a Freespace 4X or RTS this might be your golden ticket!

Some footage of the engine 'in action' - and the second one goes over the gameplay if you'd like to scrub through it (courtesy Scott Manley)

[Snarks]

Wait, you worked on Star Ruler 2?

Star Ruler 2 is probably my favorite space 4x game to date. It hosts a whole bunch of really innovative systems that makes for a 4x experience unlike any other. I remember spending hours in the sandbox mode designing and optimizing ship designs.

[Firgof]

Yes, I'm one of the three developers of SR2 and the only other staffmember of Blind Mind Studios. Well, I was the only other staff-member to be more accurate. These days I'm managing the largest VR Arcade in the midwest (or will be in a few months when the doors finally open) thanks to the financial support of my ex-boss.

I'm glad to hear that you greatly enjoyed it - I apologize that I lacked the marketing and advertising techniques and the luck required to really boost the thing up and get it noticed. I'm hoping that, now that it's open source, it may receive the attention and love -- and hopefully impact the 4X genre as a whole for decades to come -- I've always felt it deserved.

Perhaps even more importantly and urgently, I hope that StarFlare being available fuels higher-quality RTS and 4X games to emerge from the market since the barrier for entry should be significantly lowered with a fully functional engine out there for anyone to repurpose.

[Snarks]

Ah, no need to apologize for anything! I should be thanking you for making such a wonderful game. My friends and I seeded out a few copies to folks during the Steam sale in the hopes of giving the game more attention.

I noticed that Github says the code needs to be compiled in Visual Studio 2017. Can it be compiled using something else?

[Firgof]

I'm not entirely sure -- but we've only ever compiled it in VS. I don't think the particular version matters if that's the issue at hand; I used 2013 for most of SR2's development and it worked fine. Some folks who freshly installed VS also reported good builds too. e: I think Lucas may have compiled it in something else...? If he did though I'm sure he'd have to have emulated the same settings the VS project had though.

If there's other compilers out there that can read and compile vs-project stuffs then I guess it might work. I guess so long as you can find a way to compile everything that needs compiled there's nothing really stopping a not-VS compiler from building it. I can't claim whether it would work or not though as I'm unsure how dependent it is on VS-particular flags or settings.

[Firgof]

Well, first wave of stats are in - it's looking positive at the moment.

We've got 100 forks (more or less) off the existing main branch, some 1000 stars/bookmarks, and 65ish folks watching anything that gets pulled into or committed to the main branch of the open source project. Also, in this short span of time, we've already had something like 8 commits to the project which fix bugs and the like which have been merged into the open source project repo.

In addition, a member of the community put together a pre-compiled version that includes open source music for those who'd like to check the game out but aren't particularly handy with Microsoft Visual Studio: https://github.com/powercat/StarRuler2-Source/releases/

[SypheDMar]

I've never heard of this game, but it's gorgeous. Thanks for making it open source!