Since the last update we began making progress towards further developing the game. It was decided that rather then wasting time on an in game editor that we should use Ogitor for building the level, at which point we can simply load levels into the game. From my perspective it takes a lot of work off my shoulders and means that world builders can start making the level straight away simply by downloading the editor program.
nirokugraphic posted a great piece of concept art showing the exterior of a communications relay.
Since starting the project I have been experimenting with different libraries and have come to some conclusions. When it comes to user interface libraries I’m coming to the point where I can see a lot of flaws with MyGUI and am considering to switch back to CEGUI. There are a few things that MyGUI can’t do such as correctly aligning base UI elements and although MyGUI is initially easier to use, it has too many limitations to make it practical for everyday use.
A good productive couple of weeks in the forums meant that a lot of planning, artwork and other details got discussed. Everyone got into an interesting discussion about what the main story should involve on the forums.
nirokugraphic wrote:
To me the very core of this game is around ‘greed’, unlike the original where it was merely a tagline which didn’t relate in any real way to the story . “Future is greedy, mission: ESCAPE!” . To me this would have more to do with joining one faction and outright annihilating the others, which might actually be a good way of taking it rather than the objective being to escape Titan.
Andrew replied:
If we’re going with multiple endings then I think we should encourage different view points of the game as well.
For example the very core of greed could be the theme of the criminal arc where everyone is out to do you over. Where as other story arcs could be about a different side of the game altogether. I really think that the view you get of the different elements should change depending upon what role you play in the game.
A quick example. You play as a criminal you see the world as only greed. Everyone wants your stuff or is trying to kill you for the bounty. Every interaction with the police is viewed as corrupt. However, when you play the police role you see a completely different side, you go on missions with other police units that aren’t corrupt but struggle to to keep justice in an underfunded and understaffed force that has to keep the peace of a huge violent area.
Infrahate on the forums began work on the music score for the game and has taken over creative control of music..
Infrahate wrote:
One thing I would like to point out listening to a lot of these tracks from the original; I had forgotten completely about the softer, less aggressive tracks and a a definite theme that comes to mind is ‘driving’ . Driving (or flying in this case) around the moon dealing with the day to day . I think this is an important vibe to maintain and so we don’t have quite as much ‘in your face’ music, which would probably more suited for dynamic mission related stuff ?
Something else I liked too was that the music sounded like it was from the future, especially from my own experience of listening to it for the first time having never really been that introduced to Warp and electronic music . Trying to maintain that never before heard music from the future feel could be tough to achieve but I think would really benefit .
This is a quick shout out to say thanks to Open Game Art for giving this project the web space and bandwidth needed to keep us all together working on the game. The owner Bart funds the entire site out of his own pocket because of his love of open source and free artwork.
If you have any spare cash please consider donating on his website so that projects such as this one continue to have a home.
This weekend I spent 48 hours trying to make building the game on windows a much better experience. I first started by grouping together all the dependencies required to build the game into one repository dedicated to building the game on windows. Normally you would get these yourself however it is so complicated that I wanted to make it much easier for people that want to join in. This means if you want to quickly get into building and working on the code you simply download an extra repository before running the build system.
I also updated the windows instructions on the forum. Anyone who saw it before will notice that it is a very big improvement. Unfortunately I have not been able to get a visual studio linking the code. If it doesn’t build then do not be surprised, however please do file bugs or post in the forum’s code section. It should currently compile but there is some issue with the libraries that needs sorting.
Hopefully soon we will have the game working on windows and not just linux then we can start working on an OSX port too.
Since my last news update I’ve been working on porting the code base to MyGUI 3.0.X and placing the editor into a window. At first I didn’t want to do this because it’s wasting time that could be better spent building new things, however on second thought I decided it better to get it right first time.
A common complaint about open source projects is that the user interface always looks bad. It isn’t something I want my project to suffer from; unfortunately I’m one developer and haven’t got much skill in UI design.
Apart from programming I’m also interested in getting more people involved in the game. A few people have expressed interest in helping out, however no one has yet got back to me with anything. If you have any ideas on generating interest then stop by our forums and post them.
nirokugraphic posted a great piece of concept art showing the exterior of a communications relay.