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Another Stars!-inspired game: Cosmic Crises Mon, 09 July 2007 16:41 Go to next message
ekolis is currently offline ekolis

 
Petty Officer 2nd Class
Stars! Nova developer
Stars! Nova developer

Messages: 51
Registered: May 2006
Location: Cincinnati, OH, USA

I know I've tried this before, but I figured this time I'll mention it here in case anyone else gets interested... I'm working on a new 4X game which, while not technically a Stars! clone, draws much of its inspiration from Stars!. (Other sources of inspiration include Master of Orion and Space Empires.) I'm writing it in Java, and the title is "Cosmic Crises".

To play what's implemented so far (there's not really much Razz) you can download the first 3 files from this website:

http://kolis.dyndns.org/cosmic/

The source code is also available, but that's not needed to run the game. Place the jar file somewhere convenient, and unzip the mods and media files to the same directory as you put the jar. You'll need the Java 6 runtime available at http://www.java.com to run the game, of course.

Comments or anything? Wink



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Re: Another Stars!-inspired game: Cosmic Crises Sat, 15 September 2007 18:20 Go to previous messageGo to next message
ekolis is currently offline ekolis

 
Petty Officer 2nd Class
Stars! Nova developer
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Messages: 51
Registered: May 2006
Location: Cincinnati, OH, USA

Aw, c'mon, this thread has over 100 reads, but no one bothers to comment? Sad
I've got a *ship designer* now Wink



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Re: Another Stars!-inspired game: Cosmic Crises Sun, 16 September 2007 10:00 Go to previous messageGo to next message
joxang is currently offline joxang

 
Crewman 2nd Class

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Registered: July 2005
Hey! Sounds and looks great. Need any help with any graphical elements?

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Re: Another Stars!-inspired game: Cosmic Crises Sun, 16 September 2007 13:21 Go to previous messageGo to next message
ekolis is currently offline ekolis

 
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Hmm, I dunno... I used to have PNG graphics but I figured it might be easier to have decent-looking (though not great-looking) graphics if I used vector graphics, so I switched over to SVG... What do you think about the SVG graphics versus raster ones? I thought the change would make it easier for me and other folks to add graphics that look decent, but I haven't really received much feedback about the game yet, so I don't really know... Inkscape (www.inkscape.org) is pretty easy to use, no special skills required... I could let the game support both vector and raster graphics, but then it wouldn't be as consistent-looking... Razz

Oh, and thanks for your enthusiasm! Very Happy



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Re: Another Stars!-inspired game: Cosmic Crises Sun, 16 September 2007 17:13 Go to previous messageGo to next message
tinnut is currently offline tinnut

 
Civilian

Messages: 1
Registered: September 2007
I think that using svg is a good idea. Among other things, it allows you to easily scale both the screen resolution and individual images.

I hope it all goes well for you. Smile

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Re: Another Stars!-inspired game: Cosmic Crises Mon, 17 September 2007 05:46 Go to previous messageGo to next message
joxang is currently offline joxang

 
Crewman 2nd Class

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I think png - I'm assuming this clone is going to be graphically limited so there shouldn't be any need to scale. You can have multiple pictures of each ship (for instance), each a different sized png file, and each viewed from a different angle. This would give far more variety to the game as well, than having vector shapes in different sizes for the different screens.

More importantly, png means you can have much nicer looking ships! Need any help with ship design?

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Re: Another Stars!-inspired game: Cosmic Crises Mon, 17 September 2007 10:33 Go to previous messageGo to next message
ekolis is currently offline ekolis

 
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Hmm, I dunno - requiring multiple images per ship is something I want to avoid, seeing as it made making shipsets for Space Empires IV and V very tedious! And though PNG ships can undoubtedly look much nicer than SVG ships, it's much easier (in my opinion) to get at least a "clean" design using SVG than it is with PNG...


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Re: Another Stars!-inspired game: Cosmic Crises Mon, 17 September 2007 21:12 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Coyote is currently offline Coyote

 
Lt. Commander

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How much scaling would you absolutely need to do? It might be more elegant to reduce that instead. As far as ships from different angles, you could probably get away with mirror-imaging or rotating the original image to reduce the number of images you'd need... how many angles are we talking about? If it's a lot - ie, sprites simulating 3d - it might be a better option to use full-out 3d models instead.

[Updated on: Mon, 17 September 2007 21:15]

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Re: Another Stars!-inspired game: Cosmic Crises Mon, 24 September 2007 18:22 Go to previous messageGo to next message
yartrebo is currently offline yartrebo

 
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You can use raster graphics like PNG and downscale using bicubic interpolation at load-time. The results generally look much better then either downsampling or bilinear interpolation and the algorithm doesn't take too long to process (it's fast enough that it's the default on the MPlayer video player for rescaling video).

Bicubic also works well for any scaling factor, even ones that aren't powers of two.

Bicubic interpolation (or any interpolation based algorithm) can also be used to rotate images by arbitrary angles and it can handle most other transformations too. I've implemented rotation using bilinear, and that is already a world of improvement over the usual technique that aliases like crazy. Bicubic should be nearly flawless.

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Re: Another Stars!-inspired game: Cosmic Crises Sat, 29 December 2007 20:45 Go to previous messageGo to next message
MRing is currently offline MRing

 
Crewman 3rd Class

Messages: 5
Registered: December 2007
Location: Orlando
Ekolis, I recognized that name from SE forums!

Is there any specific community location for your game, or.. is this thread it? Perhaps a subforum at SpaceEmpires.net wouldn't be out of place either. It's not SE-related, looking at your site, much more Stars! related, but a large number of people playing SE:IV and SE:V you know cut their 4X Space Strategy teeth on Stars! before discovering Space Empires.

Looks great so far!

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Re: Another Stars!-inspired game: Cosmic Crises Fri, 18 January 2008 17:35 Go to previous message
ekolis is currently offline ekolis

 
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Stars! Nova developer
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Registered: May 2006
Location: Cincinnati, OH, USA

Well, I used to have a wiki set up, but when I went back to Windows from Linux so I could play SE5 again, I never got around to setting up the wiki or working on Cosmic Crises anymore... Sad

However you can get the files from here:
http://kolis.dyndns.org/cosmic/



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