2016 update news:
notice there's no mention of waiting for the next update to happen in 2016. After working on the skycruiser update, I realized this project isn't going on how I first envisioned. It just wouldn't work the way it is. (ie, 3rd person camera view) This whole project actually looks better as a top-down like the original starcruisers. so there'll be no more updates with a 3rd person ship game.
latest video:
This project was formally known as Mobile Battle Fortress. Each space vessel has been changed to look more like star ships, hence the name change. Its been a while since this project was updated, and here's a new video to reflect the new change. All the other gameplay elements will remain the same. Each star ship is made up of modules that upgrade into weapons. The starship is powered by reactor modules and moved by engine modules. Everything requires power, so the idea is to manuever your vulnerable reactors and engines away from enemy fire. There's a lot of different class of star ships.
That's pretty neat actually. Only thing I would suggest is using more of the doodads instead of buildings to make them look more like actual spaceships, or combine them (like you have in some parts) to make them look less recognizable.
ok to begin with i personally have to say that while i like the concept i don't like the way the ships are designed. To me i think the designs themselves are ok but the way you've put them together just makes them an eyesore.
i probably like voidcraft's way of sticking things on to the ships better than this but the concept of hitting a single part of a ship to disable it is something i really liked ever since i tried it on star wars empire at war
i am also wondering if you will do something that no one else seems to do, your cruiser had a button to spawn wraiths it seemed, have you considered adding additional models to the wraith unit so it looks like a squadron of wraiths rather than just a single wraith?
all in all good concept but if you make the ships look a bit neater imo it will be much better
i probably like voidcraft's way of sticking things on to the ships better than this but the concept of hitting a single part of a ship to disable it is something i really liked ever since i tried it on star wars empire at war
The grand problem with VoidCraft's method is that there's only really 1 usable ship model.
yeah, making them look more like a real starship ... i don't know. That's a tough cookie to swallow, maybe someone can do it. But for now, its something to think about. These are 1st generation starcruisers, and the future versions might look completely different. They weren't really meant to look like a real spaceship, its obvious that they are made up of starcraft building so players can see, ah its a missile turret. Or ah, its a bunker. But a future version might make it less obvious..
The squadron of fighters is pretty tricky. It was actually implemented in the old version, where they will launch and travel in a squadron of 5. Once combat starts, they do split up though. But for the protoss fighters, they might stay in formation while in combat, so that terran and protoss fighters will look different. The zerg fighters move in swarm formation.
hehe, yeah. The 'scarcasm' was the main reason I wanted to make the video, thought it would be kinda funny. :) And the starships turned out pretty awesome too. That real inspiration was actually the video of the zealot dancing on Ultralisk. After watching that, I decided to go all out and do tons of attachments to the terrran buildings to make it look like a flying ship. Originally, the modules were just bland buildings.
and so people need to start making usable spaceship models then?
i'm not trying to be an ass by saying that but i seriously do think befriending a good 3D modeller would be a brilliant help for giving voidcraft more ships (if you find a good modeller ask him/her to do a star wars star destroyer that would be AWESOME since you would have plenty of room to put your platforms on that shape of ship)
i know it would be tricky, that you've attempted it says alot to me, because since it's not standard units few people will play around with the idea, and the few who actually would are to busy being overly creative on other things.
but seriously i'm impressed that you tried the squadron problem but when you say the ships split up in combat do you mean that each individual ship does it's own little dogfight? how did you manage that? behaviors on entering combat or something?
a side thought on the squadron unit, was each squadron the equivalent of one unit card? and if so how did the unit get destroyed? all fighters at once when the unit reached 0hp or one model dropping after (you said 5 so i'm assuming 100%/5 = 20%) lost 20% of the units HP? the only other question i would have would be did your weapon do say 50 damage by 1 shot or 10 damage over 5 shots?
(in case you haven't guessed i am really impressed and curious with your squadron concept)
Each fighter is just a single unit. The trigger place 5 units a time in formation and order them to move to target location. Simple and they aren't really in formation, they just appears so. That's why once combat begins, each unit split up and never go back into formation again.. However, it definitely looks very cool to watch 10 squardons of fighters all flying in a V formation toward their enemy. And the squardrons in front breaks up into dogfights row after row until there's a huge dog fight everywhere..
I'm going to add missiles to each fighter too, so right before they engage, each fighter will launch a long range missile first before each fighter gets in range for their dog fights. There's so much I want to add to the map...its actually kinda depressing because there's so much to do, it feels like the map will never get finished. :)
so just a theory which i don't know if it would work in practice but could you not do something like copy a wraith fighter rename it to something like wraith leader then when a wraith leader is created, create the wraiths around it, and then assign all the sqaudron to a unit group so that you can do a trigger along the lines of "when unit group x leaves combat have unit group go into formation around wraith leader"
in theory that should work but my triggering is crap so i don't have a clue if it actually would
Also the ship fights look pretty good. Are there any special abilities for the ship commander or just the turrets? Ah wait, there was a speed boost, right?
Yeah, that's a good idea. Maybe they'll be a fighter formations will get added in..dunno.
--
I don't know how many ships are possible. Probably not many, I would think.. 100 starcruisers would definitely lag the game down.
At the moment, there's some commander abilities planned. The engine boost was one. Others would be stuffs like focus weapon fire, focus shield strength to a side of the ship, a small 5 sec buff called brace for impact that reduces damage by 50%. And there's energy management where players can overload modules. Overloading damages the sub-system of a module, and if you watch the video carefully, you can actually see the enemy attack causing sub-system damage (the electric arcs and fires and the red texts). And the player can launch shuttles to pick up 'stuffs'. And players can warp also. Some of the abilities are tied to the modules. To use shield abilities, the player must have a shield reactor. And to launch nukes, the player must have a missile silo. And there's special objects on the map call Red Energy. Players can pick them up and use them - they can be used to supercharge the cruiser or as a weapon to create black holes on the map. Players can send repair crew to different modules so they'll want to priortizing the repairs as well.
There's a few other abilities like hacking enemy modules, and anti-hacking. Launching marine dropships, constructing space bases, launching fighters to attack a far away point, launching point defense drones to shoot down missiles, launching scouts to map reveal..
Ok, actually sounds like you have enough abilities already. Don't overdo it either, the first thing you will realize when testing with strangers on bnet is that they dont get "it". Now replace "it" with every game mechanic you ever implemented.
Ok, actually sounds like you have enough abilities already. Don't overdo it either, the first thing you will realize when testing with strangers on bnet is that they dont get "it". Now replace "it" with every game mechanic you ever implemented.
QFT
the average IQ of a battle.net player is negative so you might need to "dumb" down your map (e.g. add a big text on the ground saying "this is the repair area" or something)
Actually, the plan is to make this game as complicated as possible. The game is already pretty complex. Half the people probably wouldn't even know how to move the ship, and other half wouldn't know how to upgrade modules. So they'll just be flying around with a empty ship thinking its stupid, hehe. :)
Since the game is already pretty complex, the idea is to make the game as complicated as possible. In the end, players will need to read a 1000 page manual and take a college course, Starcruisers 101, to play the map. That's how complicated the game will be! There's a few more ideas to the map that wasn't mentioned. Like Research, Fighter controls, fleet control, prestige, artifacts, neutral creeps, sector command (where the top player of each team gets to decide how the entire cpu forces will act), etc.. And the other races will play differently too, the zerg and protoss will play totally differently. Zerg will focus on biological 'theme' and the protoss will focus on the 'ai robot' theme. Overdoing it is the motto here.
when is going to be on battle.net or is it already on it. is it on EU or US servers
PS: looks really awsome looks a little better then voidcraft no effence eiviyn
:)
PLEASE REPLY
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
2016 update news: notice there's no mention of waiting for the next update to happen in 2016. After working on the skycruiser update, I realized this project isn't going on how I first envisioned. It just wouldn't work the way it is. (ie, 3rd person camera view) This whole project actually looks better as a top-down like the original starcruisers. so there'll be no more updates with a 3rd person ship game.
latest video:
This project was formally known as Mobile Battle Fortress. Each space vessel has been changed to look more like star ships, hence the name change. Its been a while since this project was updated, and here's a new video to reflect the new change. All the other gameplay elements will remain the same. Each star ship is made up of modules that upgrade into weapons. The starship is powered by reactor modules and moved by engine modules. Everything requires power, so the idea is to manuever your vulnerable reactors and engines away from enemy fire. There's a lot of different class of star ships.
Here's a sample video:
That's pretty neat actually. Only thing I would suggest is using more of the doodads instead of buildings to make them look more like actual spaceships, or combine them (like you have in some parts) to make them look less recognizable.
OMG THIS IS SO AWESOME :D. Excellent choise of music and yes im impressed! :D
Lets throw voidcraft and starbattle to the carbage bin and get this on bnet!!!
Seriosly the video looks really nice.
ok to begin with i personally have to say that while i like the concept i don't like the way the ships are designed. To me i think the designs themselves are ok but the way you've put them together just makes them an eyesore.
i probably like voidcraft's way of sticking things on to the ships better than this but the concept of hitting a single part of a ship to disable it is something i really liked ever since i tried it on star wars empire at war
i am also wondering if you will do something that no one else seems to do, your cruiser had a button to spawn wraiths it seemed, have you considered adding additional models to the wraith unit so it looks like a squadron of wraiths rather than just a single wraith?
all in all good concept but if you make the ships look a bit neater imo it will be much better
The grand problem with VoidCraft's method is that there's only really 1 usable ship model.
yeah, making them look more like a real starship ... i don't know. That's a tough cookie to swallow, maybe someone can do it. But for now, its something to think about. These are 1st generation starcruisers, and the future versions might look completely different. They weren't really meant to look like a real spaceship, its obvious that they are made up of starcraft building so players can see, ah its a missile turret. Or ah, its a bunker. But a future version might make it less obvious..
The squadron of fighters is pretty tricky. It was actually implemented in the old version, where they will launch and travel in a squadron of 5. Once combat starts, they do split up though. But for the protoss fighters, they might stay in formation while in combat, so that terran and protoss fighters will look different. The zerg fighters move in swarm formation.
yeah looking nice :) bring the ships together a bit more and you will have yourself a great map :)
Keep working on this, Its going good so far.
I like the "sarcasm" you used in your video too ha.
@Ash4meD: Go
hehe, yeah. The 'scarcasm' was the main reason I wanted to make the video, thought it would be kinda funny. :) And the starships turned out pretty awesome too. That real inspiration was actually the video of the zealot dancing on Ultralisk. After watching that, I decided to go all out and do tons of attachments to the terrran buildings to make it look like a flying ship. Originally, the modules were just bland buildings.
@Eiviyn: Go
and so people need to start making usable spaceship models then? i'm not trying to be an ass by saying that but i seriously do think befriending a good 3D modeller would be a brilliant help for giving voidcraft more ships (if you find a good modeller ask him/her to do a star wars star destroyer that would be AWESOME since you would have plenty of room to put your platforms on that shape of ship)
@sandround: Go
i know it would be tricky, that you've attempted it says alot to me, because since it's not standard units few people will play around with the idea, and the few who actually would are to busy being overly creative on other things.
but seriously i'm impressed that you tried the squadron problem but when you say the ships split up in combat do you mean that each individual ship does it's own little dogfight? how did you manage that? behaviors on entering combat or something?
a side thought on the squadron unit, was each squadron the equivalent of one unit card? and if so how did the unit get destroyed? all fighters at once when the unit reached 0hp or one model dropping after (you said 5 so i'm assuming 100%/5 = 20%) lost 20% of the units HP? the only other question i would have would be did your weapon do say 50 damage by 1 shot or 10 damage over 5 shots?
(in case you haven't guessed i am really impressed and curious with your squadron concept)
@deathkad: Go
Each fighter is just a single unit. The trigger place 5 units a time in formation and order them to move to target location. Simple and they aren't really in formation, they just appears so. That's why once combat begins, each unit split up and never go back into formation again.. However, it definitely looks very cool to watch 10 squardons of fighters all flying in a V formation toward their enemy. And the squardrons in front breaks up into dogfights row after row until there's a huge dog fight everywhere..
I'm going to add missiles to each fighter too, so right before they engage, each fighter will launch a long range missile first before each fighter gets in range for their dog fights. There's so much I want to add to the map...its actually kinda depressing because there's so much to do, it feels like the map will never get finished. :)
@sandround: Go
so just a theory which i don't know if it would work in practice but could you not do something like copy a wraith fighter rename it to something like wraith leader then when a wraith leader is created, create the wraiths around it, and then assign all the sqaudron to a unit group so that you can do a trigger along the lines of "when unit group x leaves combat have unit group go into formation around wraith leader"
in theory that should work but my triggering is crap so i don't have a clue if it actually would
Awesome!!! I see the ST inspiration in Galaxy class starcruiser:D
edit:
How much process eat the ships? Would it be possible to have 100 ship like that on the map without lag?
Loving the video, funny stuff!
Also the ship fights look pretty good. Are there any special abilities for the ship commander or just the turrets? Ah wait, there was a speed boost, right?
@deathkad: Go
Yeah, that's a good idea. Maybe they'll be a fighter formations will get added in..dunno.
--
I don't know how many ships are possible. Probably not many, I would think.. 100 starcruisers would definitely lag the game down.
At the moment, there's some commander abilities planned. The engine boost was one. Others would be stuffs like focus weapon fire, focus shield strength to a side of the ship, a small 5 sec buff called brace for impact that reduces damage by 50%. And there's energy management where players can overload modules. Overloading damages the sub-system of a module, and if you watch the video carefully, you can actually see the enemy attack causing sub-system damage (the electric arcs and fires and the red texts). And the player can launch shuttles to pick up 'stuffs'. And players can warp also. Some of the abilities are tied to the modules. To use shield abilities, the player must have a shield reactor. And to launch nukes, the player must have a missile silo. And there's special objects on the map call Red Energy. Players can pick them up and use them - they can be used to supercharge the cruiser or as a weapon to create black holes on the map. Players can send repair crew to different modules so they'll want to priortizing the repairs as well.
There's a few other abilities like hacking enemy modules, and anti-hacking. Launching marine dropships, constructing space bases, launching fighters to attack a far away point, launching point defense drones to shoot down missiles, launching scouts to map reveal..
Ok, actually sounds like you have enough abilities already. Don't overdo it either, the first thing you will realize when testing with strangers on bnet is that they dont get "it". Now replace "it" with every game mechanic you ever implemented.
QFT
the average IQ of a battle.net player is negative so you might need to "dumb" down your map (e.g. add a big text on the ground saying "this is the repair area" or something)
Actually, the plan is to make this game as complicated as possible. The game is already pretty complex. Half the people probably wouldn't even know how to move the ship, and other half wouldn't know how to upgrade modules. So they'll just be flying around with a empty ship thinking its stupid, hehe. :)
Since the game is already pretty complex, the idea is to make the game as complicated as possible. In the end, players will need to read a 1000 page manual and take a college course, Starcruisers 101, to play the map. That's how complicated the game will be! There's a few more ideas to the map that wasn't mentioned. Like Research, Fighter controls, fleet control, prestige, artifacts, neutral creeps, sector command (where the top player of each team gets to decide how the entire cpu forces will act), etc.. And the other races will play differently too, the zerg and protoss will play totally differently. Zerg will focus on biological 'theme' and the protoss will focus on the 'ai robot' theme. Overdoing it is the motto here.
@sandround: Go
I like the way this man thinks. He has potential. Great potential.
@sandround: Go
you mean your planning on making a complicated map that no one on B.net will play because it has intresting gameplay and mechanics????
"Hell, It's about time"
@sandround: Go
when is going to be on battle.net or is it already on it. is it on EU or US servers PS: looks really awsome looks a little better then voidcraft no effence eiviyn :)
PLEASE REPLY