moe once you have it upload it to the main site to make it easier to share around.

This is just the code Jig nothing more, so no need for anyone else to have access to it.

Regards Wolfe

Can you make a demo, then? I thought that was already done, but would sure be nice to have something to show to the fans.

Err there have been several , though the most recent one was lost with the implosion of sharepoint. I'll look to getting the next one up soon.

Regards Wolfe

lol . Could you pm me so that i can place it on the site with a nice article with it?

i meant your demo wolfe

Ahh i see, well it hopefully won't be to long *cough*

Regards Wolfe

I can post it myself easily enough, but if you've been working on it then you've obviously got the most up-to-date version, Wolfe.

If you've solved any of the code bloat then it should run faster...how about an update?

LOL, that won't work hehehee ,

Code bloat is only associated with the WPF code which no one has seen yet, and to be honest has little effect on speed.

Next version to hopefully include:

- Start menu GUI, along with race selection screen, ship selection screen, ship battle and group formations, perhaps environment setup screen aswell.

- Add new camera type, probably free camera
- Pause feature
- Particle damage working
- Explosion ring effect
- GUI MiniMap
- Add more commands
- Beginnings of adding in vocal sounds, need more though
- Add pulse weapon fire system
- Begin to add functionality to speed, manuvouerability and sensors
- Add shield effect
- Begin thinking about scripting language for driving events

How long it takes who knows......

Regards Wolfe

I take it you mean the voice acting in the original BOTF. The lines that came with ship combat unique to each race. I will up load the recordings we had on SharePoint as soon as we can log back in.

Actually i was going to use the ones we recorded, but these are now few and far between, i managed to get some before sharepoint went down.

We will need more though as the previous recordings focued on turn based combat, while for this one we need differant lines. i.e "Taking Fire", "Shields Down", "Hull Damage!", "Ship Destroyed", "Engaging Ship" etc all quite generic.

Regards Wolfe

I saw last night that much of the voice acting was old and had survived on SharePoint. The voice acting lines in the folders with names including ship were inspired by those in the original game's combat. I will go to work on recording the new lines. Luckily I can record the Romulan female commander today. She is home on a visit.

Currently SharePoint is down so the old stuff may be gone now as well.

Here is what I came up with for the Romulans . These lines are recorded. I guess it would be nice to vary the wording for other races. Do you think we will need anything else?

Shields up, charging weapons

Engaging enemy

We have lost a ship

We have lost a station

An enemy destroyed

Taking fire

Shields down

Hull taking damage

Fire weapons

Disengage from combat

At the moment it is probably best to keep it to a finite set of recordings, we can always increase them at a later date.

Differant races should probably have some variation i guess, however remember to keep them brief as multiple events could happen at once.

Thank Kenneth for doing them though.

Regards Wolfe

fire phasers, fire torpedos

Sticky territory , as they are generally Federation specific.

I will edit these to:

Ship Lost

Station Lost

Disengage Enemy

Hull Damage


That will make it shorter. I will save those lines above for the federation. So it is disruptors for the Klingon. Anything else race specific?

There are no sound effects mixed into the background with these lines. I am guessing that would be run separately.

Fire Weapons can be used as a generic message for the time being; it can be expanded to "fire Phasers" etc later on, and it's not that difficult to think of lines.

Federation
Firing Phasers
Firing Torpedoes/Firing Photon Torpedoes/Firing Quantum Torpedoes

Klingons
Firing Disruptor Canons
Firing Torpedoes/Firing Photon Torpedoes/Firing Ion Torpedoes

Romulans
Firing Disruptor Canons
Firing Torpedoes/Firing Plasma Torpedoes

Cardassians
Firing Phasers
Firing Torpedoes/Firing Photon Torpedoes/Firing Quantum Torpedoes

Dominion
Firing Polaron Beams
Firing Torpedoes

I could even throw in some Klingon if people want it to stay authentic with my random events.

Good suggestions - I have also now recorded the Klingon and Federation. We need Mike and you to do your Cardassian and Dominion respectively. Other renditions are welcome. My Federation is not that inspirational and Logan, our Fed Captain voice, is now living in Mexico.

If SharePoint is very usable again I will put them in the Combat folder for each race.

I'm Welsh Kenneth. I don't think there's ever been any Cardassians or Changelings in the shows with Welsh accents.

The newer Dominion voice acting that Wolf did is gone from SharePoint but I hope he can record the new stuff.

I am guessing the triggers in the 3D engine code for the voices could start coming too fast once we have more than a hand full of ships. We can keep the lines as short as possible but in the end there will need to be some rationing of the audio in a major conflict.

Here is, more or less, what I covered for the Klingon and Federation. We would need to cover similar ground for the Dominion and Cards.

Power shields vs Shields up
Power weapons vs power weapons
Attack vs Engage Hostiles
Ship Destroyed vs Ship Destroyed and Wessel Destroyed
Station Destroyed vs Station lost
Enemy destroyed vs Hostile destroyed
Incoming vs Incoming fire
Shields failing vs Shields down
Damage to Hull vs Hull damaged
Fire Weapons vs Fire weapons
Torpedo fired vs fire torpedo
fire disrupts vs fire phasers
Strategic withdrawal vs disengage hostiles

I think there will be an upper limit on the number of voices that can be called within a certain time limit.

Regards Wolfe

Wessel destroyed?

Once cloaking and opening hailing frequency gets implemented, we should consider improving botf's way of handling this. I assume that the number of enemy ships is not shown before the fight like in botf (only vague numbers depending on scan strength of your fleet). If during combat, the cloaked fleet decides to hail for cease-fire, all ships except a chosen one should immediately cloak and do evasive maneuvers. The latter also with non-cloaking-capable fleets. In botf, hailing in mid-combat always resulted in heavy losses since all(!) ships ceased any movement and were ripe for turkey shooting.

Since combat works real-time, a cease-fire offer should lead to time being halted for a quick decision to order cease-fire too to all ships.

That does bring up some interesting questions,

One, how should we handle scan strength and enemy ship detection, do we go with a simple fog of war, but say allow ships to have a good chunk of spacial area they can uncover so you don't end up on a wild goose chase.

Handling hailing frequencies may become difficult, should you have an automatic override which sets all ships to stop firing, stand down when the enemy hails? could see it being gamed. Hou could have a big button appear in front of you giving you the option to stand down all ships awell as an option.

In this engine you won't get reamed as easily as you would in the original veen if you stay still .

Regards Wolfe

I would only let scan strength matter in the case of cloaked fleets. Uncloaked fleets are always visible at any time on the battlefield. If all ships of you or your enemy are cloaked and remain so there should be a "draw" window ending the battle if desired by both players (draw is not the same as retreat obviously but both end the combat).

I'd go for the big button .

Oh, I wouldn't say that if I were heading up against cardassian ships..

Ships should definitely continue to evade while they hail. Battles should also take longer so even if your ships did stay still it shouldn't matter.

I know i've mentioned this a few times over the last few days, but Sins of a Solar Empire might be a good model to base things off. Even Capital ships need at least a couple of volleys of weapon fire to destroy even the smallest ships. And fights between two capital ships can take several minutes. Other than attacking or using special orders/weapons though, you can't really give ships that many orders.

Another thing we need to dicuss is planetary assault - will this be a map order, or will it be 3D combat? Sins does it in glorious 3D, as a planet I attacked found out yesterday.

I really need to pick up a copy of Sins of a Solar Empire. That game looks cool.

Hi, did we already got a combat demo? If no, how is the status, and can you create a version for us to put up for download?

Thanks!

Well the good news is i've somehow managed to get the Demo to run in a Winforms Panel, The bad news is that i've only managed to get it to run in a Winform Panel .

I'll have to speak with MStobel about how to get it to run in a WPF Window, i hope which should be trivial for him .

After that i need to rewite all the event recieving code.

I'll try an release what i have got now without the majority of updates ASAP.

Regards Wolfe