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Re: Don't Let the Stars Fade Away Wed, 02 May 2007 17:34 Go to previous messageGo to previous 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

Well, I'm a wannabe Linux geek (the only thing keeping me hooked on Windows at the moment is Space Empires V) so I was thinking just for something easy to do starting out, I could try building and running Nova under the Mono framework (an open-source, cross-platform implementation of .NET) - if we can get Nova running under Mono, and it's really as good as Stars! was (it'll probably be better!) I can see myself sacrificing SE5... well, as soon as all my multiplayer games I'm in come to a close!

Another idea I had was (forgive me for coming from a Space Empires mindset) that it really would be more useful to have all the game data (component/hull/race-trait definitions, formulas, etc.) stored in plain-text files (perhaps XML?) rather than a binary format - this would make editing much more open; you wouldn't need a singular, inflexible GUI-based editor; instead you would have the plain text files which could be edited by hand or anyone could write their own editor.

Oh, one more Space Empires related thing... Ever given thought to defining components in terms of "abilities"? What I mean by abilities is attributes that you apply to them in the game data files, as opposed to "this component is armor and that's all it does" - you could have a component which is both armor and shield, or engine and weapon, or any combination. (Armor and shield - hmm, Croby Sharmor? Wink) So instead of defining a Component class and deriving a bunch of subclasses such as Armor, Weapon, Shield, etc., you would have the Component class, an Ability class, and then ArmorAbility, WeaponAbility, ShieldAbility, etc., where a Component would have a collection of Abilities which define its behavior.

Combining this with the XML idea, and perhaps for a bit more clarification, here's a sample component:

<component>
 <name>Reactive Armor</name>
 <description>Electrically charged armor which absorbs energy and emits it back into space at nearby enemies.</description>
 <picture>ReactiveArmor.png</picture>
 <tech-requirement field="Construction" level="5"/>
 <tech-requirement field="Electronics" level="3"/>
 <cost resource="Ironium" amount="10"/>
 <cost resource="Boranium" amount="5"/>
 <cost resource="Germanium" amount="5"/>
 <cost resource="Resources" amount="15"/>
 <hardpoint>Armor</hardpoint>
 <armor-ability hp="50"/>
 <weapon-ability damage="5" range="1" gatling="true"/>
</component>


edit: oh, sorry, I guess I gave you more ideas than things I could program Razz I suppose I could work on racial traits, though - those sound fun Wink


[Updated on: Wed, 02 May 2007 17:36]




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