Here I'd like to present a project I've been working on for some time now.
What is it?
Transcendent is a multi player orientated space simulation game combined with elements of 4X and strategy games. The player is predominantly based inside the cockpit of his or her own personal fighter-class command ship, which is completely constructed and customised by each individual player. Players can also take the role of a commander potentially controlling entire fleets of ships of various sizes, from massive capital ships to other fighter-class ships or drones, controlled by other human players or using AI.
Thanks to a seamless universe engine, battles are placed in a wide range of space environments from beautiful sunrises on the surface of a planet to harsh derelict debris fields or dog-fighting inside the ring system of a gas giant. All the game play is dictated by Newtonian physics; changing direction will require the ship to fire various thrusters accordingly to adjust it's trajectory, and explosion shock waves will be felt if you're unfortunately enough to be near one.
All in-game ships are constructed from a hierarchy of parts. There are different types of parts; ships start of as a Core part which will have a number of hard-points and navigational thrusters, and additional body or weapon parts can be attached to the hard-points on this ship. Body parts extend the core design by providing additional hard-points. Weapon parts include turrets, lasers, missiles, drones and/or artillery shells. The design of a ship is limited by mass - the more parts added on to the ship then the heavier it is so to compensate – additional engines and manoeuvring thrusters needs to be equipped to allow the ship to continue being manoeuvrable.
In all games, each player has their own command ship and can create outposts on planets or deploy mining stations to gather resources and build a fleet. Some game modes will require control of the entire solar system whilst others will have a specific target in the system to capture. In team based games, one player can elected as the commander and other players follow their orders or each player can have their own fleet but share a pool of resources. Another idea is to instead rely on an AI director to organise battles and the players simply take part with their personal command ships.
I know this project is quite ambitious but it’s come quite well so far and I’m excited to keep working on it.
Development
I'm aiming to support a wide range of platforms including Windows 7+, Mac OS X 10.7+ and Linux (Debian and derivatives, with other distros if time permits). I'm using Ogre 1.9 for rendering, Bullet for physics, RakNet for networking, Luabind for scripting and cAudio for audio and music. I'm also making use of Particle Universe for most of the games particle effects.
I'm quite an inexperienced 3D modeller so as a result most of the models you see in the screenshots are simply un-textured place holders to make sure that the underlying code is working correctly, but I plan on updating them all very soon.
Transcendent is currently based around a client-server networking architecture where players host and join games via the use of a master server which provides matchmaking and NAT traversal. If a host leaves the game then transferral to the next best host is done automatically and the master server is informed of any changes. Data like command ship designs are also stored in the master server and as a result require a free account which can easily be set up in-game. As most people are fed up with having to register accounts all the time, I'll try to get this system integrated with other digital distribution services like Steam and Desura (assuming this game passes and gets in the stores!).
Screenshots
Screenshots are in chronological order from left to right and top to bottom, the later you click the better.
Click on a thumbnail to view the full resolution screenshots.
