Just wanted to show what I've been working on for a while now. Basically its an online multiplayer EV style game (Disclaimer: Its not EV4 and its not trying to be, I'm trying to make a multiplayer compliment to EV). The best way to describe it is a mix of D2 + EV, not a full MMO, but keeping the online game benefits (Global play/community, cheat protection). Its still pretty early in terms of gameplay so I'm not sure just how much "EV" I can stuff in along with the new ways I want to take the game (I've tried to tackle the annoying stuff first so I can get back to the fun coding as the project gets older). I've got some feedback so far that I haven't explained the game itself in enough detail, so if you have any questions, comments or flames feel free to reply.

You can check out a couple vids on the game that I uploaded to YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/user/teamtwentythree

It looks awesome.


Mad props man. Mad props.

Some of the ships looked pretty darn nice.

You do good work.

Can't wait to see more from this.

Really cool!

Someone in #ev3 linked to that old topic. We doubted....

I linked to it.

http://www.ambrosiasw.com/forums/index.php...p;#entry1640186

That looks awesome. Good work!

Wow, I remember the last time you came around here with this idea. Everyone thought it wouldn't happen. The videos aren't working, but if they do start I'll watch them, and I guarantee if the game comes out I'll play it.

This is beautiful. When/if you finish it I'd definitely be willing to pay tons of m4d c45h for it... or at least like $30

Thanks for taking a look. Not sure why the videos might not be working for everyone, first time uploading to YouTube so I'm a bit of a noob there.

The models you see are a mix of freebies I've found on the net (Actual freely licensed models) and some models from 3drt.com (An awesome site for low poly game models, but it does cost $). I have absolutely zero artistic skill myself, but I try to do the best I can with what I have.

As for my first topic I was sorta asking for it. Posing in EV BnB was probably not a great idea (I figured it was better than posting in the Nova board which I had seen numerous previous posters do, but more EV related than posting in Just Games). And I used the term clone which in retrospect probably wasn't a good word to use. Its something that I use (And I think is semi-common in gaming circles) to describe a number of games that don't fall into a genre like FPS/MMORPG, not neccesarily meaning that its an exact copy of the refernced game.

Very nice work. The game definitely looks like it has the feel of EV.

Also, the editor looks like it's very intuitive and easy to use. Kudos for that.

I've not played Diablo 2, but I read the wikipedia article and it seems like a very cool multiplayer system. You're going to do it the same way, where multiplayer is essentially identical to singleplayer mode? How many players are you planning to be able to have in a single game?

Looks great. Keep up the good work, and hopefully you'll have it done before I get too deep into DoI.

I don't currently have a singleplayer mode available, but if I implement it then yes, the two will be identical. As for the number of players, I'm hoping to get 60-100 players per server for good private internet connections. With maybe 20 players in one system at a time. But I'm still working on optimizing the network code so I'm not sure just how much performance I can squeeze out of it.

Very very nice. I'm amazed to see something like this coming along and will be interested to see in what ways this branches off. Also seeing such a simple ship editor was astounding although turning animations might be nice(granted im guessing you're still mega early in development). Good luck with the project though, it already looks amazing.

Oooh...ahhh...

You really outdid yourself. Props to ye.

One thing that I would like to note that merits improvement would be the warping animation; the blurry star effect was pure awesome, but the "charging" animation seemed rather weak, compared to the rest of your work, and it was a little odd that the ship arrived at a dead stop once it exited hyper-space.

Also, given that this is intended to be a multiplayer game, I might suggest that you make the stellars objects larger, and the ships themselves a bit smaller.

Yea, the warp effect needs some work. The charging animation is going to be a PITA as I need to make it cool looking, but pretty quick (Its a 2 sec charge I think). I also need to blend between two possibly different skyboxes in the systems. And yea, I need a fly in rather than the dead stop. I'm also going to make it a semi-random drop, so that people can't camp the warp location.

So many things to do...

Wow, this is looking to be a really good game. Hooray for other Seattleites doing awesome stuff! If you need help with anything, I will be back in the Summer, and fairly free. What else have you done besides graphics and planets? Have you jotted down a general storyline or anything? I'm curious, and more than willing to help in any aspect. PM me if you need any writers (dunno if you just want to do this project yourself or not), or really just anyone to bounce ideas off of that you can actually talk to instead of just messaging online.

Either way, keep up the good work, it's looking great.

My current plan is mostly to implement a default scenario as a proof of concept. Showing off the capabilities of the game, and hopefully making at least a decent game experience. From then on I hope to seduce some actual creative people to make the real content for the game (Either as a first party team or multiple third party teams). Right now the project is mostly a solo effort (Myself trying to get all the base components of the game in). Once I release a public test version, thats when I'll be changing my focus from coding to more overall game stuff.

Have my babies!!!

Very impressive, team23. I think any game designer would enjoy using your editor: it's very functional and polished. The game itself looks to be working smoothly as well, although I would've liked to see multiple player characters, to see how well the networking is going. While purists may disagree, I applaud your use of Ogre 3D and public domain art to fill out this proof of concept.

I know you were one of the ones following my last work on Dawn of Infinity. I encourage you and anyone else to browse our forums as a gold mine of information. For instance, after implementing bounding circles, we worked out a cheap algorithm to get pixel-perfect collision detection with our 3D models.

I suspect you'll have no difficulty tacking a scenario to your engine. Because the editor looks so robust, and the kinds of content are basically the same as in EV, I would just head over to the EV developer's corner when you're ready, and you should be able to put together a plugin development team that can adapt to Infinite Ascension.

By the way, I notice the similarity between the names Infinite Ascension and Dawn of Infinity, though I also see a connection to the name Escape Velocity. Am I reading too much into the name?

The editor is still in the pretty early stages. It works but there are a lot of efficiences to explore (Opening up top menu to switch between textured + wireframe is annoying).

Well my plan is to implement bounding shapes, and base collision on that, so you'd have an outer bounding sphere/circle and then a innter set of objects to check collision against. Primarily this is in an effort to keep the server from loading up the model data and keep it as quick as possible. If a situation arises that per-pixel collision is needed I may rethink this, but atm I think the bounding shapes will do the job nicely.

As for the name, I don't remember specifically when I came up with it, and I don't know if it will be the final name (Its a bit long). But its 1/2 due to EV's two word name, and partly due to a game feature that I'm trying to work into the game.

I can help you with a web site if you need one.

Most intriguing. From what little you've unveiled so far, you've clearly made great progress in getting the game up and running. I particularly like the way you're developing the mod tools in parallel; this game has great potential.

Tell me, have you considered going open source with this project à la Battle for Wesnoth? You've got the bare bones in place, which could allow you to attract fellow coders and artists, and from there you could pick up additional momentum to boost you to the kind of full release and massive community Wesnoth enjoys these days. Going Open Source would also allow you to freely incorporate all kinds of code and content from other Open Source projects, such as the Dawn of Infinity bounding algorithm Captain Bob mentioned.

It's up to you, of course - I was just wondering what your thoughts are.

I was thinking, how do you plan to stop PKers? Do players have to agree to fight the person, or could one guy fly around in <INSERT UberSHIP Here> and own everyone?

As for a website for now I'm ok with what I have, until I release something its just a new site for the most part.

As for open source, primarily I've been developing the project as a part-time endeavour. I'm not really looking for the overhead of maintaing a public code base. If at some point I decide that I don't want to finish this project then I'll probably release it open source.

As for player killers. I'm currently pursuing a WoW style PvP system. Certain systems will allows PvP, certain won't. That will be configurable at the mod level, so you could have a 100% PvE mod or a 100% PvP. Thats the first part of the PvP system, afterwards I'll be looking at other directions PvP needs to take in order to make the game compelling. I've got a couple ideas with regards to PKs as well.

It sounds like you know what you're doing. Don't forget to let us know when you do release it (open source or not) so we can spread the word.


It strikes me that using per-system PvP flagging in a game like this could turn out to be so much more than just the WoW setup. I can see a "badlands" vs "patrolled zones" distinction, with badlands on the edges of space offering a wealth of bounty opportunities. Better still, patches of badlands could lie between profitable trading centres, making the player choose between risking combat or taking a longer route but avoiding PvP... lots of possibilities here.

Maybe have PvP available in every system... but if you attack another player in an inhabited system, that system then hates you. Kind of like in the EV games, but different. Then if a known PKer appears in the system, there could be an alert such as 'the pirate [name here] has arrived in system, beware.' or something. And NPC ships belonging to that government would attack the PKer as well.

I'd like to do something like that but am worried about people exploiting the system. I figure whenever theres a way to have the computer/AI system either reward or punish a player people will attempt to exploit it. And I don't know that I want to try to code a perfect system in that regard.

In regards to the above example, Player A could fly his shuttle between Player B and some NPC who are exchanging fire and then get killed, and Player B could become hated in a system without cause, whereas Player A can now log onto another character and ammuse himself as Player B is chased around by the local NPC guards.

Hmm, true. Maybe only if the ship is targeted?

This actually is a rather familiar scenario - I've been replaying Nova recently and doing some asteroid mining, fed ships like to make excuses to attack me so they fly in between my ship and the asteroid I'm shooting at. If I have the ship that's flying around me targeted they tend to attack immediately, but if not they'll usually wait a while.

Of course, in some systems, you might *want* them to make excuses. For exactly the reasons Divals stated.

Any plans on making the server program return a file with statistics so, if we're running it on a computer that's also a webserver, we can have live stats (Players connected/Registered users/etc)?

How about a system where you can challange someone to a duel. Player A would request a duel from player B and if both parties except then the sytsem's goverment would send a message to them saying something along the lines of, "The (?) empire acknoleges your duel request. No shots will be fired within 3k miles of the system center, and no legal action will be taken on either party unless the rules are broken.". This duel system might only be available in some goverments, ones that think dueling is honorable (Aurorans?). If either Player A or Player B brakes a rule the systems goverment could send a message ordering them to pay a fine or action will be taken against them, (such as revoking a liscense or even up to an attack).

Also, it would be fun if a player could brake the law, smuggling goods or fake IDs would be a start. Some people like living on the edge where there's always a chance you'll get caught and have to suffer the consequences.

That sounds a lot like the PvP system in Diablo 2. I rather liked the pvp system in D2, since I don't usually do pvp in MMORPGs, and I didn't have to be bothered with PKers.

Yup, duels will definitely be allowed. I'm not sure exactly how I'm going to work them in terms of collateral damage but I'm pretty sure I'll be able to tweak something. I'd like to use a targeting system, but in this game projectiles fire without a specific target, which is different than in WoW where all fire is directed to one target (Aside from AoE spells that is) so that makes a target based system a little tricky.

As for illegal trade/pirating I'll definitely be allowing that, I just want to make sure its a choice a player makes, not an accident or circumstance they find themselves in.

Currently the server does respond to pings asking for the current mod running and number of players online. I haven't used it for a while but it was originally based on exactly what you describe, having a web server side to the game server.

Very interesting work, looks like a good combination of space rogue and MMO.

Also, might take a look at some similar games and think about using some ideas from them.

Transcendence: Is in the vein of space rogue, and has some pretty interesting features that might get some ideas rolling. [For one thing, you might wanna copy the real time system map]

Armada Online: This one is more like an MMO, with some space trader features thrown in, and seems pretty applicable to what your doing.

A few suggestions that you might keep in mind, try and make your editor itself very flexible, capable of defining new resources and such, and you could get some hefty community involvement. Just think about the WCIII world editor, where the game's been turned into tower defense, 3rd person paintball, arena games, etc.

And will you be having it where a person invests in a single pilot, or more focused on the pilot of the pilot? [I.E. WoW vs WC3, if I can get this across] If you make the engine flexible enough, people might even be able to make rts like mods/maps, throwing armys of starbridges at each other and having swarms of miners deconstruct solar systems for that yummy ice roids

Well, you've got at least one more avid onlooker, and I'll be sure to play any alpha you put out.