Where has Quanto been?

[Quanto042]

And what has he been doing?
I have been getting bugged by some guys who have my SteamID who have been asking why I haven't been on spring in two months and why BOTA hasn't gotten the update love.

There are a multitude of answers, but the biggest thing that has kept me from spring the last few months, has been the Freespace Engine, and a TC I am working on for it.

Ever since I was a little little kid, I have been obsessed with outer space. And that obsession grew when I started playing video games and arcade games. My favorite game at the time (Early 1990s), was an arcade game called "Galaxy Force II" I played the shit out of it.

It was that game that lead to me wanting to be a game designer when I grow up. (Keep in mind, i was like 10 years old then) I have kept with that dream ever since, but a lot has changed in 17 years since then. The genre I love (Space Combat Games), has been dead since 1999, since that time, I've enjoyed the other major Genre's of the PC, RTS and FPS. However, at the age of 27, I am thoroughly sick of them.

I want to play my space combat games again. Badly.
So badly that I took it upon myself to remake a game that I loved back in 1995. Shadow Squadron for the Sega 32x. For the past 6 months, (the last two months mostly), I have spearheaded this project and actually completed a working proto-type on the Freespace Open Engine.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwTDVZhPgZk <-- Video of Early Test build

At the moment I have three members in my Dev team (including myself) and we have been corresponding in Skype. Work has been pretty fast paced. But we are hitting a bottleneck. We need some LUA scripters, and maybe 1 or 2 more Modelers (I've done a lot of the modeling, but I'm getting exhausted). Plus maybe a texture artist who could do better than me.



So yeah. This is kind of an advert for experienced ppls, and I know most of you will be like "I'd rather keep working on spring." And I expect that and respect it. I figured that if anyone would be willing to try their hands on something a little different, please try this out.

[1v0ry_k1ng]

I just remembered how badly I need to play through freespace 2 again

[Neddie]

Well, if you will at some point come back to Spring/maintain both relationships, I can fish around for people to help you. Do you have a repository?

[Regret]

Does it have lua scripting?

Also you might wanna try X3 Terran Conflict for a spacegame fix.

[Quanto042]

Yes
Kinda why I mentioned LUA. They are using it to redo the UI.

I gave X3 a look. It was too open ended for me.
Looks like a space trader game. Like Freelancer or Vegastrike. (I hate that sub-genre.)

[Pxtl]

Amen. The space-trader games are good when you're a kid and you've the time to get lost in space, but as an adult I just want action. I'm disappointed there are so few space games that focus on pure action. Even the pure-multiplayer-combat ones tend to fixate on some incredibly baroque system involving user-manned capships and RTS elements (IE Naumachia or that Source Engine one... nobody is making a nice, pure, space-combat game.

[Quanto042]

So coming to the point of the matter, Stellar Assault FSO is a PURE space combat game. Pure action, lots of enemy fighters, and a brutal difficulty level. (But easy to understand controls).

This is the formula I'm following and I've attracted attention to the project already. People want to see it get done, but none have really offered their own help or expertise. Which is kind of frustrating from my perspective.

[SeanHeron]

What kind of licence model are you going for ?

Looks pretty sweet, that much should be said :).
Edit: woah, the screenshot does it no justice (even though I said it looks neat, it also makes it look a bit like a 8 year old game). But the video rocks!
Edit2:
Love the background music : http://www.xfire.com/video/203e10/

[knorke]

Cool!
I liked Freespace and Starlancer but now I would probally not play it anymore because of the long missions. Just some action in space sounds good. will there be multiplayer?
Something like Subspace/Continuum in 3D would rule

[Spawn_Retard]

inb4 recent advances.

[Quanto042]

inb4 recent advances.

what is that supposed to mean?

[KaiserJ]

when taking a break from spring, you're meant to ask if there have been any recent advancments (even if it was just to take a dump)

anyways im sad you wont be coming back; i enjoyed bota, but really what i loved from your work is the mission editor

best of luck sir; your TC looks quite good already! post here when you're done and we'll give it a go!

[Quanto042]

I will still be dropping in again from time to time. And there are some lingering bugs in BOTA that I promised i would fix three months ago that I still haven't done. So yeah...

I'll probably get to fixing those and then resume work on Stellar Assault. Spring is still fun to play for me, but spring mods are a lot easier to make than FSO mods. And if I want to get a job, I need experience with more difficult engines. Not so say games like PURE and Gundam were easy for their devs to make.

Its just that the tools to make stuff in spring are far more accessible than they are in FSO. (Even though FSO does have a full blown toolkit, most of the tools are buggy as hell.)

[SirArtturi]

I played BOTA yesterday and I loved it. It really looks right and feels right. I hope you get back updating and improving it. Couple comments and critique allthough:

1. Slope tolerances are fail. They dont work in most of the maps. You should at least get rid of different vehicle types. I would go with commander even...

2. Abandon the shoot through friendly units concept. I dont know how to explain this clearly but It makes concentrated raiding and assaults impossible.

3. Balance issues. Flashes/instigators are OP

4. And a lot of minor bugs that cant remember anymore except that units forget their waypoints assigned while being constructed.

Damn, I forgot the most of the things I wanted to say. But I'll come back whining when I remember them again.

[Spawn_Retard]

I played BOTA yesterday and I loved it. It really looks right and feels right. I hope you get back updating and improving it. Couple comments and critique allthough:

1. Slope tolerances are fail. They dont work in most of the maps. You should at least get rid of different vehicle types. I would go with commander even...

2. Abandon the shoot through friendly units concept. I dont know how to explain this clearly but It makes concentrated raiding and assaults impossible.

3. Balance issues. Flashes/instigators are OP

4. And a lot of minor bugs that cant remember anymore except that units forget their waypoints assigned while being constructed.

Damn, I forgot the most of the things I wanted to say. But I'll come back whining when I remember them again.

please play total annihilation D:

[Gota]

Sir artturi When units shoot one through the other it actually makes it easier to attack with groups of units since concentrated forces become more effective than in ba.

You can raid fine with shoot through units/turrets both in BOTA SA and TA.
Making BOTA not shoot through would also entail a big rebalance not to mention it would make "B"basically "O"riginal "T"otal "A"nnihilation to not be what it set out to be.
If you want to give BOTA a shot play some more and you will see that shoot through is just a bit different but in no way lacking,you just need to get used to it.

By the way,to BOTA devs:
I'm not sure if it's in BOTA but It is now possible ot make bombers line bomb and also allow a very similar fighter behavior to TA using some lua tweaking.
If you are interested you can have a look in Supreme Annihilation U33 which should be released pretty soon.

[SinbadEV]

shoot through is basically every old-skool RTS... missile fields FTW

[Gota]

shoot through is basically almost every RTS... missile fields FTW

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