After playing the game, I must say I am impressed. Yes, I kind of knew it was a from scratch game already (don't know why I put "mod", silly me...). But yes, I definitely want to help with this project. I've always wanted to help a Star Trek game in any way, and so I will help this one . All of my above stated qualifications still stand, and I will definitely send out PMs. And thank you for the welcoming .

EDIT: My XP machine hasn't been working 100% lately, so I guess that's it. Still a great job.

Welcome to the forums Captain Andrew. I got your PM. We are glad to see you here and thanks for the offer to help. Matress_of_Evil can review your problem with the XP better than I.

As to helping with the game I guess you have seen the list at the beginning of this thread. I think most of the writing in English has been covered but we can check with Matress. As for managing the forums you sure can help there as you gain more knowledge of our game. Working through your issues with XP will give you some insight to answer visitor's questions for starters. I learned cgi 3D models in order to help with the game. If you want to take on new skills that is one thing to look at. User mstrobel, Mike Strobel, is our coder. We are looking for help there but you really should be highly skilled to do that job. Mike did mention some data work in the past that did not require a higher skill level. You can PM Mike about that. We can use more voice clips in the voice actor library for the combat engine. Those are the major things I can think of. Again welcome and we are glad to have your support.

Hi Deggy and Andrew, welcome to the forums!

I'm the resident forum know-it-all around here, and i'm the general manager for the project as well. Unfortunately, I started a new job recently so my time is rather restricted compared to my previous days of unemployed freedom, so sorry for my slow reply here. Ordinarily i'd pounce on posts like these within an hour or two. Damn I want to be unemployed again!

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As Kenneth said Deggy, many of us are simply fans with some time on our hands and a willingness to help. I have few skills myself, and yet just by being on the forums more often than is healthy and by poking around with MS Paint, i've been able to make myself useful.

Mike is most definitely looking for people with your particular skill set. XML coding is a large chunk of the way the game currently works. Ordinarily, the game comes with an editor so that people can perform updates or create mods, but Mike is working on a brand new editor so he didn't bother to update the existing editor in the last update (May 2009). This unfortunately means we now have an editorless game, and the sheer amount of content updates that I need to add to the game means that manual XML editing is risky to say the least. (Some of the game files are non-human readable database files, so manual edits of XML files run the risk of causing incompatibilities)

The creator of the combat system, CdrWolfe, has also said that he's looking into converting the combat system into XNA in future, so having XNA skills is definitely a bonus too.

If Mike hasn't yet contacted you about Kenneth's PM, send him a message (His username is Mstrobel) detailling your skills, what you are interested in doing, and what you are willing to learn. Mike's usually pretty good at replying to messages but as with the rest of us, his boss can treat him like a slave at times, eliminating his ability to reply.

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Captain Andrew, Mike has been developing Supremacy with the latest available technologies that he can get his hands on. In fact, the next update (Whenever that is) will require players to update to .Net 4.0 - which hasn't even been released yet. Mike actually built Supremacy on many Vista technologies even before Vista itself was released, which is one of the reasons why game compatibility has generally been extremely high. We do however still get little compatibility oddities such as the one you've mentioned. I've compiled a thread Here with any known issues - and where available, fixes to those issues. Please have a read and see if anything in there helps. If it doesn't though, please report back here and i'll see if there's anything further I can do.

Mike also has plans to increase hardware compatibility even further as well, in respect to high resolution displays and some Netbooks. You'll have to watch this space to see what sort of improvement he can come up with.

Anyways, Mike is always on the lookout for programmers. As I said to Deggy, send him a PM detailling your skills, what you'd like to do, and what you're willing to learn, and he'll be able to tell you where you can provide the most help for the project.

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For both of you, there are other, little jobs that you can help with. As Kenneth said, there's voice acting and 3D models, but we also need 2D artists, writers, and translators. We've got a forum dedicated to providing specific details Here.

And of course, general forum management can start with simply reading what we already have ere and getting to know it, so you cna respond to other peoples questions. That's exactly how I started on here just over five years ago.

Don't forget advertising, we need someone to get the word out and inform other forums and communities about our effort. They are the biggest source of talented game modders that can help us. I was on of them

Holy Borg! There's much to be done, I see. Well then, I'll start sending out the PMs. And yes, advertising may be an issue (maybe. Although I found Supremacy because it's in a websites top list for 2009 games). I will offer up any services I can provide, and I'm glad once again to be a part of this game (did I mention how much more amazing it is already than Master of Orion 3?).

EDIT: The mention of Borg had nothing to do with Kenneth_Of_Borg. I just really like the Borg.

Supremacy is in a top game list? By any chance do you still have the link? I'd like to see this list.

Oh noes, I forgot to save the link! I should've known that it would come in handy . I just remember thinking "oh look, a star trek game i don't know anything about. How rare. I MUST check this out." that and i remember the cool graphic that went with it. I think it was when one of the ships was selected. It's a good thing I checked it out, too, or I probably wouldn't have known about it in time to be a part of the construction.

EDIT: Still no PMs on possible jobs yet. But that's ok, I know everyone else also has a job (just me and the boredom of unemployed life). However, it has given me time to introduce myself to XNA development (rather different from C++). I have also seen some tech descriptions that DEFINITELY need working on. I will (hopefully) find the description files soon, back them up, and write some new ones (the boredom of unemployed life again, allowing me time to express my creative side in the terms of descriptions ).

Do you remember what you googled the search as?

No I don't. Oh dearz............ I know I was looking for something for Christmas..... what was I looking for??? Oh noes I can't remember! I'm terrible at remembering stuff. Oh well, back to assimilating knowledge

I do admire your spirit Captain Andrew. It reminds me of myself three plus years ago. I do hope you stick around.

Don't worry. You can't get rid of me that easy . I'll definitely be sticking around for a while (a long while). Once again, back to assimilating knowledge

Obviously that was before we crushed your spirit.

I just sent the Captain a PM with info on how to start working on the game, Kenneth, so that'll give him something to do. We'll crush his spirit before long.

oh noes what to do . MoE, crushing my spirit will have to wait until development on Supremacy starts to slow down (there's simply far too much work to do. I don't have the time to have my spirit crushed right now, maybe later). I also worked on a Trek RPG forum before, so my spirit is sufficiently strengthened. Hmmm..... now I'm having a thought..... what if, after I help finish the combat engine system, I pitch the USS MoE against the USS Kenneth? Or would that just result in this: ? After all, if you have two admin ships against eachother, what do you scream if one goes down? I mean, what do you scream without offending the other admin? ooooh...... deep thinking. Maybe I'll be the one doing the spirit crushing before long. Noes, the worst you can do, I think, is send me into this: . And that comes with programming .

Hmm...personalised death screams...that's an idea...

Indeed. In the background. just as the ship's shields go down, you can have someone going "Shields are down... this is the part where we're doomed". Or something like that. But imagine pitching the USS Kenneth vs. the USS MoE. Who would win? Obviously, the precious USS Kenneth would have some sort of souped up weapons, and the USS MoE would feature flying quantum mattresses? I dunno. Just random thoughts. SOOO MUCH KNOWLEDGE!!! I might explode later, so if I don't report back within a week, that's what happened. lol. I found the tech descriptions! I'm looking at them now, so I will obviously be PMing feedback later. Well, that's it for now.

EDIT: Personalized death scream for USS MoE: "release the quantum mattresses!"
Personalized death scream for USS Kenneth: "send out the flying drones!"

We did record some very short vice clips to be played by the combat engine. the Roman files are found here. The idea was that you would hear some comments typical of trek during the fight. We kept them short because with larger fleets there would be a lot competing to be heard. There are files for all the major races.

oh I see. But still, it would be cool to hear personalized screams from the development team and admins in respect to their vessels. Hmm.... who knows how powerful each ship could be after the coder(s) are done ripping through them . I grabbed a couple of the Borg and Fed models to use in case I do ever get a toy engine to play with running. What do you guys think? Should it be Fed vs Borg like the other demos? Or should it be more different races this time like Romulan vs Fed, etc. BTW, when are the Admin-class models coming out? It would certainly be nice to toy around with those too..... umm.... you know.... to find a balance.... that's it... a balance.

This is the USS MOE, Federation Cruiser V at tech level 10.

You could send it up against this Romulan Cruiser IV at tech level 8.

Ah, but does the Romulan Cruiser IV come close to the USS Kenneth? Those are the two ships I wanna pit against each other. But not right now. The combat engine isn't done, and so I need to actually build the combat engine (a toy one, of course ) before I can start posting screenshots of epic starship battles ........

If anyone wants to help in building this game by doing easy task without special skills, please send me pm. Thanks

Indeed. Simple tasks go a long way.

Qereq reporting for duty! My particular skill is writing, particularly, but not limited to, the Klingons and their culture. If help is needed in this regard please contact me. Qapla'.

Hello all. I've just signed up.
I've coded in C# before but don't have any XML experience. I also have a lot of experience with 3D models.

Welcome Anti-D, I am so glad you are here. We could use some help with models. I have done some of the work myself. Here is a link to the basic information you need to know about our models at this time.
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1760

That said the truth is we do not yet have a 3D combat engine. One will be developed but for now the basic game is going to be made to run without it. That is so we can demo the game at the next Star Trek Convention in Las Vegas, August 5 to 8.

I have stopped work on the models for now. Instead I am concentrating on 2D images of the ships for used in the main game interphase. I am also working on some backgrounds that will be used in diplomacy and spying. You could pick up work on the models. That would be great. Where to start? Look at the link; pick a ship or station that you think you could improve or replace if you like.

Again welcome

Thanks, I'll take a look at that stuff.
However, if you wanted help with the 2D stuff in order to meet the deadline, I can do that too.

The 2D image for ships and stations are 270 x 225 .png image of each ship. We have a library of them but some need to be redone. In the game these images need to be on a transparent background. The game provides the background for the ship. In some cases the window the image is set in will be larger than 270 x 225 so no part of the ships, glow or weapons fire should noticeable touch the frame of the image. We need to fix some of the images where this happens. I did this, for the most part, to all the Federation images but it needs doing for the other major races. So were fixed and others replaced from the models themselves.

I was going to toy with the idea of putting a line frame around the image that looks like a weapon sight. This would be one way to cover up the issue with framing. I create these images at 540 x 450 and downsize. 270 x 225 is just too small to edit on.

Where is the library of the images and which ones need to be redone?

EDIT: I think I've found them in the shared documents folder. So are these images generated from 3D models? Sorry if I'm asking seemingly stupid questions.

The questions are not odd at all.
I keep a .jpg of the images here.

(this is for reference only)

These let me see what the model is at a glance, how it looks on a dark background and just for fun.

The real images are here with the transparent background and in .png.

The Federation and Borg are OK as they are now. The Cardassians, Romulans, Dominion and Klingons need some work on individual images.

The models arehere.

Thanks again.

Concerning the 3D stuff: are these models for use in game when the 3d engine get's put together? Do we know if they need bump/normal mapping at this stage?

Also, are the ships and their respective names canon? I'm used to the old botf classifications (e.g. a Miranda class being a destroyer) and it's quite discombobulating

Yes, 3d models are going to be used in 3d combat engine and yes, normals,bump and self-illumination maps are ok.



We try to be very canon