Just woundering if anything has been updated recently. Cheers.

Yes, there are many internal updates. You can conquer systems, you can trade, you can transport troops with ships and much more. With the next release, there would be MP support and the Romulans would be a playable race.

Very nice.

May I ask when do you think you maybe doing the combat system? Also what system will you be using, armada style? homeworld style? botf style? or top down style?

Cheers.

Atm there is a combat system. But you don't have the possibility to interact in any way. The PC calculates all in one step, so you only see the result of the combat. Later you can decide what tactic your ships will use, similar the system from botf or the system from MaddenNFL. But there won't be a 3d-Combat.

Damn, this guy works fast . I can't wait to see your next release. Keep up the good work!

No 3D combat? Thats a shame.. I rather like that type of action.. but I will play it regardless.

Ever onward and Forward!

Unfortunately there is no 3d combat yet. I don't have the skill to create a good 3d view. But all algorithms and attributes are written so, that a 3d combat can be implemented later. But how I said, I have not enough skills to program a very good 3d view.
In my opinion, the main part of Botf isn't the 3d combat. The main part is the economy system, the diplomacy and the exploration of the galaxy.

Truer words were never spoken.

I agree, tactical combat may be everyone's favourite system, but it isn't the most important part of the game. If the rest of the game doesn't work, people won't play for long enough to get to the tactical combat in the first place!

To my knowledge, Jig is following this same idea of adding in the tactical combat system in at a later date. This means more time can then be spent on the tactical combat system, polishing off the models, balancing the ships, and so on - it'll make for a better game in the long run. I can live with the wait, although the selfish side of me still wants it now.

I can live with a botf type ( way upgraded ) without the battle screens.

Besides as some are learning, I rather like the diplomatic part of game play. { Hush Matress_of_Ferengi! } lol After all, that is what makes, or at times breaks, an Empire.

Reminds me of an old proverb;

" As civilations rise to greatness quickly, so will they fall ever faster"

can not remember who said it. sorry. But I think is was chinese.

8O Sorry to say this but you need a 3D Tactical stop lying to yourselves. I'm an avid BOTF fan, still play 5 player LANs every week. Hats of to you guys so far you have made an EXEMPLARY game and well done to you but myself and my friends played this, and its just not fun without the 3D battles, you never get to see those glorious ships or fleets close up or watch as your friends station finally implodes.

All you have is some items on a piece of paper, they may be pretty but thats all they are, you shuffle your little squares about and get told your piece of paper beat your friends piece of paper. You see what i'm getting at. Tactical 3d fights add another level and until that is realised then BOTE will remain 2D and uninspiring.

Let me just finish by saying, I was astounded by the quality of your work so far, FIND A 3D programmer to make that last bit, I've seen talk of others in this forum using 3D STATE Engine to make some 3D sections, team with another mod team, anything. You can do this guys and the world will love you forever If you can make it happen.

Fairplay for taking so much time to promote and further something that so many hold dear, you are to be cheered for doing what all of us would love to but so few of us have the skills to do.

P.S Please get the 3D going guys, find someone, its all about recruitment. Idea maybe find a university student who's doing that sort of thing and you might be able to convinve them to do it as an educational project. Anything I BEG YOU!

WE ALL BEG YOU!

Good luck with the project and thanyou from all of us!

P.S - P.s Just got to point something out, how many would actually have played BOTF one if it hadn't had any 3D, doubt you would have even looked at it twice, everyone seems to forget it was pretty sexy when it was first released.

I think pretty much everyone agrees that 3D Tactical battles are great, and both BotE and Supremacy will probably have them at some point. However, I don't think you fully appreciate how much work goes into such an undertaking, especially when all of these games only have one primary developer. Finding developers is much easier said than done. Few people are willing to dedicate their time to a project when the only rewards are self satisfaction and the gratification of some fans.

again, true words spoken by a true man

well, there is a 3D engine called "Irrlicht" that would make this one a little bit easier but still no one of us has any knowledge about 3D programming and I certainly think that when the games are finally out and working fine, maybe the problem solves itself when the appropriate guys join the scene in here and do the work for us.

but still, this is nothin more than wishful thinking!

Hey guys I appreciate all that dont worry an thanks for posting back so quickly. I'm a web developer / gfx artist myself and when i'm not busy working as a software analyst I'm going to take a look myself at whether I can help with this at all.

Botf one engine has got some pretty simple maths behind battles, in fact im sure you will agree its got no maths, almost makes every fight completly random. Lol couldnt do much worse than that. I'll let you know what I find.

No this aint the place to say it but Rotharian interface, buttons, change them, not mint green it makes my head spasm and makes the interface look poor, couldnt pin it first time i looked but its those buttons they overload the eyes.

Could you give me any ideas of how the information exchange would occur between the 2D server and 3D engine, is the BOTE system database based?

lol okay if you wanna help, that's fine (very fine actually) but you've been warned

so, to change the mint green into anything else, that shouldn't be any prob for a gfx artist like you, so just open gimp or photoshop and change the coloring of every jpg in the graphics folder related to the Rotharians or the buttons only by the same rgb space "factor" let's say. That's the work of 2-5 seconds max

We appreciate this very much and thumbs up for your proposed engagement here anyway

Edit: sir pustekuchen can tell you more about the interna though I'm not a 100% sure about his 3D plans. The only thing I know is that it was till now somewhat "utopian" for him but that can definitely change if someone is willing to do the work thoroughly and can be trusted to do it (as to say does not jump ship as soon as the first dark clouds of heavy work appear lol).

Thorn, Welcome and thanks for your thoughts. Keep in mind that we also have a total of 4 games being built here. Perhaps if you can get that 3D graphics working it would bean added advantage to every game!

I think one step at a time. I do however have flight paths (for battles) that would work in a 3 d mode.

But I wont let them loose till we are ready to look at them in the correct light...

well of course! no clarification needed as of every project here should be able to use that 3D engine.

What I had in mind was a certain "blackbox" you know, some compiled exe that can be called by bote/supremacy or whatever and eats a preformatted txt-file with ships, stats and data and creates a 3D-combat-environment with this information and does the fighting all by itself. Afterwards it spits out another txt-file with the remainders of the battling fleets and ships and so the programs can use the data to go on "as if nothing happens" so to say

The obvious advantage of this approach would be that if the 3D-combat-exe somehow encounters an error and shuts down, the calling program can then do an automated combat when hearing no more from the exe and the game will not crash. Very user-friendly I think

I don't know if that's workable, I mean we still would need the source coded or even encrypted somewhere inside the exe, which is okay as long as we have the password to open it up

if blackboxing isn't possible, well that's also not too bad in my opinion. We'll work out something convenient, I'm sure about it!

I did some thinking and searching. Old BOTF in battle mode still ran (to me anyway) on a basic 2D type set up. My Guess is ( and purly a guess ) that Paramount was so cheap, that in development phase they blew off any thougt of 3D battle modes, simply due to file / techincal constraints and of course time.
{ I want to make this perfectly clear that I do wish and would love to have a 3D plane to do battles on}

Then I went further and set up a hand made map with the X,Y,Z cooridnate planes. I used the BOTF map on the game as my source for the 0 plane starting at point A1. (Yes I was bored stiff)

Problems I found;

1.) All current maps would have to be re-made to fit a 3D type plane. (Whoa that would be a ton of work to make it realistic as well as a nightmare)..
2.) Example only..... Say it takes 45 individual settings on the "X" plane to do a simple circle around an opposing ship. In 3D this same type movement (starting from above the opposing ship diving down) would take 312 settings to get 3/4 way around ( BUT !, I may have over figured a bit, remember I did this by hand).

I started to explain my whole movement but erased it due to how huge this post would be if I actually wrote it all out. Suffice it to say I took into account all 3 planes plus minute/seconds within the "Z" plane to turn the fuselage. ( Kinda why I said I may have over figured a bunch) but it would be realistic!)

I do apologize for this post. I know I have a tendency to over think things as well as confuse folks. So I'll stop here! but you all hopefully get my general idea. So I can see why the Devs would get a major headache even thinking about setting something like this up.

no no you're basically perfectly right. 3D stuff ain't easy, that's why botf did 2 and a half D and Star Wars Rebellion 3D with no real modelling (those models didnt turn, they just were jpg's flying through space). Basically the latter is what I'd propose for starters. Let's just get the physics done first and have "balls" of different sizes fire "smaller balls"(=torpedos here) and "lines"(=phasers) on the enemy balls(=ships). If that's done and working perfectly, the hard points and vectors for the different ship shapes can be set up while overlaying a simple jpg like in rebellion (that would be the alpha of the 3D combat then).

The beta would be if the textures and rest are finished and working which will take quite as long as the alpha step if not more in my opinion.

I don't think it's impossible and when done separately like this, I even bet on it to get done pretty fast since one can see results even if it's balls chasin balls at the beginning. The only problem I think is if one lets oneself be discouraged by the texturing amount of work. That should be left over for the fans/modders cause they can do that best! We're just there to provide the engine to work with IMHO.

Not impossable at all I agree. From disscussions thus far I feel the Devs are moreso worried about the overall size the games would grow to. I will not even try to speak for them, but only go on what I have read, Mainly it might be that it would put the games farther behind from development to actual release. BUT it does not mean that it could or would not be added at a later time as more and more people understand how to work it in properly.

yep. as i said, this can be totally separated from the other development and thus the release since auto-combat always steps in when needed.

I was thinking... I can build a 3d playing field on OpenGL. I can also add wireframes (I would need some percise demisions, though). I can texture the frames with pre-rendered textures in certain formats. I can even move the frames in simple directions. However, getting them to move properly is more difficult for me and would require a crapload of research and tweaks. Plus, there's the whole problem with Vista and OpenGL. Vista isn't exactly going out of it's way to support OpenGL programs; it is instead forcing programs to use an older version of OpenGL while they (M$) push DirectX.

It'd essentially be a seperate program. It'd also likely be programmed in C++ if I were to do it. That might not be a problem, though, in relation to Supremacy. The biggest roadblocks, though, is my limited knowledge of OpenGL and, well, OpenGL itself in relation to Vista technologies.

Currently, each of these programs are pre-alpha's. If there is ANY combat at all, I'd be willing put money down that they are simply random generations. It is pretty clear that is not the ideal solution for a final project, but everyone knows that

well me too has limited knowledge about OpenGL, but I think the mentioned "Irrlicht" is an interpreter of this language amongst others. Maybe you can shortly read through the description on their wiki and see if it helps with the vista compatibility thing. I'm pretty sure if not m$ then those guys from irrlicht will do a vista patch for their engine.

erm "percise demisions" as in...? (precise defintions maybe?)

anyway I cannot guarantee you but I'm pretty sure some if not many of the "core" guys in here will join you after a while, so the crapload of work can be subdivided. I mean the idea of a working 3D engine for all the games here is an enticing one, I can see that on the many replies on the forums here.

I think mstrobel and the others will agree on me about this one, that if work starts now (even if it doesn't get finished or very far at the beginning) and it's done in c++ and some non-proprietarian language, it's not done in vain and actually speeding it all up significantly. Just wanted to make that point clear again. Don't expect too much from any of us programmers after we completed the game in 2D. I get sweating even now when I think what neverending crapload of AI programming still lies ahead of us. If ppl in here want 3D in the game, go help us/him. It's the only way regarding all the probabilities here (and I doubt someone's got it all programmed in here and not tellin us )

btw. which programs do you mean are pre-alphas? supremacy and botE? well, they are in some way (though I'd say having now played the most recent versions of both, they are definitely more than pre-alphas fortunately) but auto-combat isn't random, it's worked through pretty much.

btw. I'd rather not be worried about if it gets perfect right off-hand or not if I were you. Anything's appreciated that comes out and we'll be glad to help you out in any way with the specs, stats and calcs. For the latter I'd propose you start by any hit probability and default stats you like. It should be working later on with the pre-formatted txt-file in which the hit probabilities of (modded) ships from both games can be found for your program to work with.
We will get them for you out of our auto-combat-system any time if you wish to start this trip.

Well, as already been said, you can take as much time for it as you need and maybe re-sort your thoughts and ideas about it to get a good start with.

Sir Pustekuchen and I will for the time being continue to improve the internals&graphics of the game and in the meantime, you get totally free hand here. I think, learning how to do 3D-programming can certainly be satisfactory since so few guys out there seem to know about it really in depth

Technically an 'alpha' release is feature-complete, so Supremacy is still firmly lodged in the 'pre-alpha' phase .

Malvoisin - just to clairify my upper posting. What I have wrote is not any code that could be used in a game. (Actually it is from an old old CNC program I used to use, very outdated to be sure) What really stinks is I built my model (which I know it is not correct, with yard sticks, Fishing line, and a lot of measuring over and over again. Plus I used a match box car as my ship... LOL

But at least I fully understand how things WOULD look... lol When I can afford to get a program 3D wise. I will dive right in.. ( and most likely crase and burn! )

this is also why I am sooooo happy with 2D graphics.. You guys developing..Whoa. every day I delve into something... I am just even that more amased! You all Have earned a Whole TON of my respect.

alright, our's too according to the definition. hm, just thinking, the difference between an alpha and a beta must be not so big after all for turn-based games like ours where the features are the core-problem..

Just seeking understanding, when you say core features, are you meaning the planets, ships in movement and other types of space features?

no no I were only generally speaking as to say the core problem are the features (all features). So if all features like intel, sophisticated auto-combat and whatever you can look&feel in the game are implemented and functional, then the alpha-stage would be reached in mstrobel's book of definitions. By that one (which is more true than my "estimates" here certainly), we still lack the intel, the total-AI and the 6 player-mp-functionality (the latter has only to do with the current lack of graphics but as I said, we have 2 guys including me workin on that).

so if that's complete, then I would say beta-stage is reached, but mstrobel says that would first be alpha so I think beta is actually when everything's totally balanced to the max and working really smooth&fine.

Thank you... Would that be saying that once a certain amount of turns is reached or the game has been taken to it's cunclusion in the Alpha state, that then we would move onward to more difficult playing? I.E. possable 3D mode or deeper involvement with the A.I. and other aspects?

yeah, that would be the case then.

though as I said, 3D combat, I'd like to have at least some playground to start with when we reach beta stage. It would be utmost difficult to implement and create something valuable then when nothing was done before (at least the 3D would not keep up in quality with the rest of the game). So that's my only concern here regarding the game..