Open Universe

OK, so I recently decided to work on a new multi-level system, which basically boils down to an open universe players can explore. They have a ship in space that they can fly around, and 'land' on a number (LARGE number) of planets, each being a full level in and of itself. Well, it and any moons, space bases, etc. And in space, there would also be AI ships flying around- merchants flying between planets, and pirates raiding them, and navy ships blowing the pirates into flaming debris. :D But I was also hoping to make this bigger than I could make myself. I was thinking if, after I completed mine, I could perhaps make a space template and planet template available for general use, and get other people to add in their regions of space. Anyone interested? Even vaguely? obviousl, I reserve the right to tell you your region is crap and shouldn't be included and so forth... ;)

This sounds seriously cool. Your idea reminds me of Frontier Elite which is one of my favourite games.

Depending how it's implemented I'd be interested in contributing a star system for sure.

Im already doing this but all my levels are on 1 planet. Im using a Airship instead of a spaceship.
Will add another planet later but its gonna be more of a teleport instead.

http://www.ffuniverse.nu/ff11/gfx/worldmap.jpg

Going to start doing this as soon as PSN is back for me for JP.

Doing this all in 3D ^^

sounds like a really cool idea, id definitely make a planet to go into your universe when youre ready for it !! :)

Sounds like an interesting idea.

Kinda remind of of a Mass Effect/Spore Hyrbrid thing.

I would do something, but im pretty much bogged down on projects right now.

Well, it'll take me a while to get the first bit of it going. [sarcasm]AI is... fun[/sarcasm]. In any case, there are basically three things I'm looking for.

1) Ships. I'm working on AI for them now, once I have it I'll make a template available for warships, pirate ships, and merchants. Ship designs very appreciated.

2) Individual planets. A planet is basically a level, but it can be more than one if you want a big one. It would incude any moons, space bases, etc.

3) Complete regions of space, which I'll call sectors just because that's the standard term. A sector would include 10-50 planets, roughly. Not all of them need to be by the person who submits the sector, if people submit single planets they go up for inclusion in sectors others are making on a first-come-first-serve basis.

Implementation of a sector is essentially a very large top down area with the planets scattered around. The player shp going near a planet triggers the option to land, which in turn activates a level link. Sectors will have inter-sector gates at the middle of the top, bottom, and sides. Going into one automatically activates a level link to another sector. I'll start a map as soon as I get a second sector, with mine being (0,0).

I'd do it in 3D, but I can't seem to find a good fully rotating 3D camera. Any suggestions?

Second part of post, because longpost appears to be too long :D :

Technology present, so ships and stuff can be built right: No teleports of any kind, it's all shuttles. Main weapons are plasma cannons, laser beams, and seeking missiles. No such thing as an energy shield, unless I can find a decent way to implement them. Ships range from tiny little frigates with a couple plasma guns and maybe a missile up to monster superdreadnoughts with five or six massive lasers, a dozen or so heavy plamsa plasma guns, a couple dozen more lights, and maybe ten or twenty missiles.

A bit on the universe: Only one real political organization at first, the League of Starfaring Races. In other words: Make weird ships and invent weird aliens who built them. You want space dolphins with ray guns, make a ship a space dolphin would build. :D


And that, ladies and gents, is about as complete an infodump as I had on hand at the moment. Any questions? :D Please? Questions help me flesh things out. And apologies for making you suffer through that. it'll be worth it when this is done.

This sounds very interesting.
Will this be similar to super stardust HD?

That an actual game or an LBP2 level?

super stardust is a real game for download on PSN , but Blast Radius by Johnee from Mm is a really good level thats heavily influenced by super stardust.

just wanted to say that i think this project sounds super cool, although i would slightly worry about is the plan of 10-50 planets per sector - is that not quite alot?
ill defintiely give you a hand if theres anything you need help with, but my first hint would be maybe scale the project down just a little bit?

5-50 planets a sector then, meaning no less than 6 levels. I'll be making the first sector...

Also, one other thing. i'm going to be using points to set entry conditions into any given sector, so no score bubbles. Prize bubbles are fine, but if and only if the points are removed before they leave the planet.

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Originally Posted by doom3607

Technology present, so ships and stuff can be built right: No teleports of any kind, it's all shuttles. Main weapons are plasma cannons, laser beams, and seeking missiles.

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That's interesting because just a few days ago I started working on a semi-realisitic spacecraft design.

http://i92.photobucket.com/albums/l3...l/7ce85695.jpg

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Originally Posted by doom3607

No such thing as an energy shield, unless I can find a decent way to implement them.

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Maybe you'd be interested to know that there's already electrically charged armour and active protection systems. Hell, navy boats have had anti-missile systems for donkeys years - with short range http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close-in_weapon_system and long range anti-ballistic missiles.

Realistic space combat would be pretty boring in a game. You'd be able to change your axis of rotation easily with vectoring rockets meaning no dogfights but otherwise manoeuvring from your current direction of travel isn't really a possibly, even with reverse thrust as strong as forward thrust it'll take an equal amount of time to decelerate as it would to accelerate (from tens of thousands of miles per second) so fights would take place at high speeds in a straight line, assuming that the fight isn't already settled from hundreds of thousands of miles away with missiles that is. For those reasons I'm guessing you'd take some liberties when it came to realistic space combat.

There's a galaxy-spanning FTL civilzation. Of course I'm taking liberties wit combat. :D

Hey, i can do music and scenery if you need any help i can do whatever, just ask (:

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Originally Posted by doom3607

There's a galaxy-spanning FTL civilzation. Of course I'm taking liberties wit combat. :D

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That's not exactly what I meant. Unless there's some really exotic technology beyond ion rockets or nuclear motors you can't pitch up or down like in an aircraft because there are no aerodynamic forces - your turning arc might be over hundreds of thousands/millions of miles, and your craft can be pointing in the entirely opposite direction to which you're travelling without a problem.

If you rotated the craft to point 90 degrees from it's current direction of travel for instance and used the primary thruster(s) all that'll happen is you'll keep your current momentum and fly in a slight arc until you decelerated from your original axis of travel and accelerated into your new one. XD

Ah. Well, that's how I'm trying to make it work. Facing a direction other than the one you're flying in is easy, I had that working immediatly. Unfortunately, LBP seems to make the movers have a set maximum speed so if I start thrusting at 90 degrees from my current course I'll start slowing down along it while accelerating to that side. I'll probably just handwave that as some side effect of the FTL drive/ artificial gravity without a centrifuge.

All the people in this thread who offered to help and/or make a planet or something: Planets are appreciated. They'd speed up me having the first sector ready, if you're willing to let me use them in it. A couple things- I'll start distibuting copies of the generic landing craft, all planets begin with that landing and it contains the initial spawn. It should land at either a spaceport or, if the planet isn't inhabited, somewhere reasonably flat. A listing of all Easter Eggs and suchlike in a PM would be appreciated. And no obvious teleports- you can use them, but only if you have the players climb into a shuttle that takes off, cut to black, then have an identical shuttle land at the destination, with the players inside it. That's all if you want to create a planet- I'm still workng on the ship AI, the initial level, the mechanics of space, and an overall map of the universe. So don't expect it to be in use immediatly.