SpaceJourney!
Community Forums/Showcase/SpaceJourney!
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| Hi everyone I finally got around to posting my project that I've been working on for at least 6 years! Please keep in mind that it is still a work in progress. In SpaceJourney, you assume the role of a lone space pilot in a small cruiser. You fly through the galaxy exploring the unknown. Being that you're the sole commander of your ship, you command it manually from the inside. And not only can you walk inside your small ship, but you can also walk outside of it, with anti-gravity. Through your travels you'll run into natrual hazards, which you will shoot with your gun (like a first person shooter)....and enemy star ships ready to annihilate you, which you'll fight through your ship's systems in the style of a tactical combat game. The objective of this game is to go to four different sectors and find four pieces of an artifact, using your tractor beam. Download  Trailer: Screens NEW! version 1.2.1 Screens    Screens from previous versions             Controls: Use WASD keys to move forward and strafe. Press R to switch between hand and gun mode. Hand mode allows you to pick up objects and click on interface buttons. While gun mode is for shooting enemies and grabbing objects. Left and Right arrows turn your ship, but only when you are at console at the front of the ship's bridge. Pressing esc \ escape pauses. F1 - help screen F2 - options screen The rest of the controls (like for the ship) are pretty self explanatory but feel free to ask! (and there's a help screen for reference) So what's to come? Right now SpaceJourney combines both first person shooting \ action and space simulation. However I would like to expand scope to include some light RPG and Adventure elements. Being able to communicate with fellow ships, the player could engage in trade using a centralized currency. There could also be larger quests and more problem solving \ puzzles. But here is a run down of more specific features that I'd like to put into the game (order of which is going to be seen in the game the soonest): NEXT UPDATE (v1.2.2): (*) Being able to save your game (*) Smoother gun aiming DOWN THE ROAD: (*) Achievements (*) Improved Spiders that can walk around the sides and bottom of the ship, like the player can (*) Some more graphical updates (like possible motion blur when warping) (*) Communication system (i.e. A radio which can play music and receive distress calls) (*) A form of currency and trade with friendly non-player ships. (*) moar polish! (*) items that can be picked up and moved around. (*) A tow-able freighter (will expand on this when I get closer to releasing this update) (*) boarding enemy vessels and having gun fights (*) Sleeping \ dreaming (*) moar polish! Enjoy! |
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| Nice! I like how you can move around the exterior surface, must have been a pain to get that working? I love the structural architecture of the interior, it implies a lower level which might be fun (engine/storage room etc) |
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| Thanks for the reply and feedback! Yeah, that was definitely a pain, haha. For a while I didn't think I could pull it off, until I found the AlignToVector command in Bltiz3D's help files. And I still need to make the spiders do the same thing. Yeah I'd definitely do a engine room if it could add to the gameplay. A storage room might be done with the towable-freighter idea I've had. Thanks again! |
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| Wow, that's a very long time - it must be a very special moment for you. From the screens alone I can tell you it's looking great. Could you tell me what you used for the lightmaps? that ambient occlusion you added gives it a very impressive look. |
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| Thank you so much! Yeah, it definitely is a great moment! Here's a screen of its humble beginnngs:  I used Gile[s] 2 Beta 4 for the lightmaps! Its a great program. Thanks! |
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| You're a bit of a star trek buff, right!? 8))) This is a very neat concept. It's strange to even think that after 6 years it feels a bit early in its development, but what you've started here also feels like a very promising "enterprise" [haha]. I don't get the flying much, yet, because you just look through this narrow window and can't quite tell where it's headed. A kind of radar display or other 3d navigation projection would be very cool, just so you can find orientation. Anyway, great start! Could become lots of fun. |
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| I have to say it doesn't look bad at all. There's definitely a good concept behind it and I can see you have been thinking about a lot of things, such as design, mechanics, the setting in general... not bad :) As a suggestion from my end, I would refine the models a bit (leave the general shape), and put in more details. I would also suggest some kind of shader that makes certain part of the nacelles glow, as well as the neon lights (2nd screenshot you posted) ... I'm sure you'll know what I mean. All in all I have to say hats off, looks like this good be quite something. Keep us informed about the progress :) Last edited 2012 |
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| This is an interesting concept you have here, and the graphics are ok. I have tried the demo and i was a bit lost on what to do. Maybe you can add some help messages in game in order to help the player learn the game possibilities ? |
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| so, i haven't played the demo yet (downloading now ;) ) but i already see a lot of promise. the gameplay idea is very very interesting and i love it. i would love to give you a few interesting ideas for you to chew on if you dont mind sometime. |
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| First of all, thanks Taron, SystemError51, RemiD and psychicbottle for taking the time to check out this thread and post! Taron, yes I am a total Trek buff, haha. The early development part I guess is because I recoded everything at the end of last year after my code became one big tangled mess (I used very few functions). So after I recoded it, I wanted to just get the game out there (off my chest in a way) before my ideas got incorporated into other games, after alot of the work I spent on it. Great point about navigating around. One thing I'll try to incorporate for my next update is an arrow mesh that will hover above the ship, pointed at the currently targeted object. I also think having at least one landmark in each sector will help, and I am thinkiing of putting in "space buoy's" around the main perimeter of each sector. Thanks again! SystemError51, thanks for the compliments. Good idea about the nacelles glowing and room lights. Now that you mention it, I might also put in effects on the nacelles when you warp, kind of like the Enterprise does in the classic movies, and maybe even effects on the primary thrusters \ impulse (the yellow parts on the back of the ship) when you cruise around. Those effects will be easily done with sprites, so I'll definitely try to put it in for the next update. I will consider refining the models, probably something later down the road. And I'll definitely keep you guys up to date, thanks! RemiD, thanks for the feedback! Thanks to your post, I'm now convinced that a tutorial is needed. psychicbottle, awesome! Thanks for downloading my demo! Yeah, feel free to post any ideas, I can't guarantee to accept all of them, but I'll definitely let you know what I think of each one. If there are good ideas, and its something I didn't think of before, I'll give you credit. Probably down the road, I would like to allow sending rovers on small planets or even being able to walk around on a small planet. I've considered adding an escape pod that can fly around and have a junkyard sector (where I might put the freighter). I also planned to put in a damaged friendly vessel that you can rescue (where I got the idea for a radio can receive distress calls) so that's something else I'd like to put in. Last edited 2012 |
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| Lava, I tried out your game, and I really enjoyed what you have done so far. I like going to each console to do things and how your repair system works. You should add a lower floor (cargo bay) for the elevator to go down too. Can you use the ship guns to destroy asteroids in warp? Or is the handgun the only way? I look forward to future updates. Thanks! Jason |
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| Hi Jason Thanks for playing my game! And I appreciate that you like it. The hand gun is the only way to destroy the asteroids. But you can do a trick (not sure if its a real trick since I'm telling you how to do it, haha) with the repair system to stay alive without leaving the bridge. What you do, is turn on your shields when you go to warp, and when they get damaged a bit (to about 65%) you turn them off and let the ship body take some damage while you tell the ship the to repair the shields. Go back to the helm \ front console and once the shield button pops up (meaning that they're repaired) you turn back on the shields and repair the ship body....then you repeat the process all over again. Essentially you alternate the repairs between the shields and body. Letting one take damage as you're repairing the other. Giving it enough time to repair each one fully before switching them. Many thanks again! |
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| Looking good from wha I see on the screenies. Downloading. Will try it later, offline, so don't hold your breath. |
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| Haha, ok, cool deal. Thanks for downloading it! :) Last edited 2012 |
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| i liked it a lot! it would be cool if you could board other ships/be boarded in the future ;) |
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| Thanks psychicbottle! Yeah going on other ships will definitely be coming, like an abandoned freighter and possibly a smaller cruiser. But being boarded would be awesome and boarding enemy ships. That's definitely something to think about. Fire fights to save your ship would be fun too. Thanks for your feedback and sharing your ideas! Last edited 2012 |
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| any time, happy to see you sticking with a project and not dumping it like many people do! :P |
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| Gave it a shot, Reminds me of what I think of as the glory days of indie titles. Where the developers always had interesting mechanics and mix matched playing styles to keep you interested. I like it. The interact everywhere concept has always appealed to me Last edited 2012 |
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| Thanks for playing RifRaf! And thanks for posting :) |
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| niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiice |
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| Thanks Cap'n! |
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| I know its been a while, but I've finally completed the update! I took a while because I wanted to get the game more up to standard with alot of other games. But now SpaceJourney is back with a vengeance! So what's New? I could list all of the changes, but for now, here is the gist of them-- I've made major graphical updates to game (ship, laser gun, environment), as a general drift to a more stylized artistic direction. I've made attempts to make the game more accessible (with some in-game directions and a help screen) as well as some basic features (sound effects, options screen, help screen, 1024x768 resolution) and lastly some bells and whistles (particle effects, a puzzle, scanning items, etc). I also want to thank some of our resident members here for their great feedback which helped shape this latest update. Like RemiD for his suggestion about the help messages. I want to thank SystemError51 for suggesting that I put in particle effects. And lastly Taron for mentioning the need for 3D navigation, which gave me the idea for the space buoy's! So where do I play this game (I don't see a link??!??) To avoid confusion, I've updated the original post to include new screens and a new download link. So either scroll up or go here. |
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| UPDATE: SpaceJourney has been featured on the front page of IndieDB. Its the 5th entry on the animated \ moving headlines banner, at the top of the page! |
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| I love the looks and style of this game. |
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| Thanks GaryV! I appreciate the compliment! |
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| First let me say I love the feeling of loneliness presented as well as the interactivity of the ship and its systems. When I finally figured out how to get in the space suit and eject out into space I was like "ohh ahh this is so neat!" before freaking out thinking I could fall off sides of the ship... Luckily my character was smart enough to space walk instead. The only complaint I have is that is runs a bit choppy for me and the image tearing is really bad despite forcing vertical sync and triple buffering on. I will try this on another machine and a CRT to see if the problem persists. I really dig the concepts of your game. Imagine if you had to send your buddy out into space while your piloting the ship? To keep it from drifting into the atmosphere of a moon or something. Then those spiders attack and you have to make the choice of sealing your comrade out into space thus saving the ship and yourself or risking everything to try and fight off the spiders and save him. There are so many different possibilities and scenarios you could come up with. Good work! |
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| I have tried your new demo. What i like : ->As NostalgicAlgorithms wrote, it is a really interesting and captivating concept, there are many ways to continue from there. ->I like the graphics, a very nice particles spread when a spider explodes What i don't like : ->The movements, rotations, seem to not be done according to time so on my machine sometimes it is normal speed, sometimes it is too slow, sometimes it is too fast. ->In the menu, if i click on a "bar" and then i move the cursor over an arrow, the button is considered as clicked, when it should not. ->I still don't get what to do except shooting spiders. ->I don't like spiders. (this is not your problem i know ;)) Some suggestions : ->movements, rotations, done according to time whatever the fps ->add oxygen reserves management ? ->add water reserves management ? ->add foods reserves management ? ->add others kinds of entities ? humanoid ? ->add others space ships with friendly or neutral or harmful entities ? ->add others bases with friendly or neutral or harmful entities ? ->Possibility to mine ? to trade with others entities ? ->first person view exploration of planets ? ->Possibility to upgrade the ship, the shield, the weapon. I think that you should focus on the first person view, space ship control and management, combat, exploration. I know only one game which tried to do this : Mace griffin bounty hunter And it was boring to play. (->By this i mean that you can only do better) |
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| On a decent Win7 machine the game ran way too fast. Turning on Vsync and triple buffering solved the problem but movement still doesn't feel smooth like it should. |
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| Had a quick play through - looks good...after 6 years I admire your perseverance...inspiring that you kept plugging away at it. The solitary experience reminded me of 2001 a space odyssey, so was reluctant to get in the space suit and go outside at first lol. |
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| @NostalgicAlgorithms: Thanks for playing! Also, thank you for the compliments and the feedback about the atmosphere when playing the game. It helps me know how people feel when playing the game. Also, that's a really good point about having co-op. Adding multi-player would add alot to this game. Maybe someday! I also appreciate that you tried it on two different computers. Would you mind me asking what Operating System you first tried it on? Following the directions of the Blitzbasic help files, I used CreateTimer() to regulate performance. But for some reason, I used CreateTimer(90) when the help file says to use frameTimer=CreateTimer(60). So hopefully this change will help. Thanks again for your feedback! It helps! @RemiD: Thanks for giving SpaceJourney another go! And thank you for the compliments of the game. As for the speed of the game, as I told NostalgicAlgorithms, I might've used CreateTimer() in the wrong way. So hopefully this will fix things! Thanks for bringing it to my attention! Thanks for bringing up the menu bar thing. I think the fix for that is easy (like a flushmouse issue). As for what to do: you have to collect 4 pieces of an artifact in each of the four sectors, using the tractor beam at the back console. This is also mentioned if you walk up to the chair. But that message will appear at the start of the game in the next update. There is a space station with a hostile turret in sector 2 (that you can dock at, but make sure you dock using the ship's computer, not manually) and there are enemy warships that you encounter in sector 3. In the future, I would like random encounters with friendly ships which can conduct in trade. Mining is also on the table in the future-- as the science panel is kind of the precursor to that (so far you only can probe planets, but that will be the basis for knowing whether you can mine it). And I would like 1st person exploration of planets. Maybe I could let the player explore chunks of it. Also, I would like small planets, like the one in sector 3, to be explored using a rover. Just to need figure out the code to implement spherical movement. I'm trying to avoid upgrading the ship \ gun, to keep things more simplistic. As I feel alot of games get too deep into nitty gritty updates and such and I want give the ship and gun new functions rather than just increasing a bunch of stats. But who knows! In the next few updates, the gun will give the player better aid when they're outside of their ship, with buttons on a display panel in the blue screen. Resource management is interesting. Someone has also suggested fuel management. If those things can make the game more fun, I'll consider implementing that. Good suggestion! Thanks for all of your suggestions and feedback! Its appreciated! @Steve Elliott: Thanks for playing! Yeah, sci-fi movies and shows like Star Trek and 2001 were definitely inspirational in many ways! |
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| Ok, I made a new update. Go to the top of this thread to download it! NEW! version 1.2.1 Screens (*) Three new features added to the gun: RUDDER, JUMP and STAT All of which are designed to make the game play more fluidly. For instance, the rudder mode allows the player to control the ship while standing on the exterior of the ship. The other two functions give the player info while they are outside of the ship. The new trailer shows these function off so you can see them in action! (*)Laser on the gun has been improved: That annoying glitch where the laser would move with you after shooting it is GONE. Now...I admit that this isn't much. My intended plan was to release smaller updates in shorter spans of time. However, since I haven't had time to work on anything until this summer, I was basically sitting on this update and thought I might as well get it out and move on to the next version. I also wanted to make more updates to optimize the game's performance, and wasn't able to find a solution-- primarily because I don't own a computer that was having the same issues that people were reporting. In the future I might consolidate some of the textures, since I did use multiple textures for one model, which I'm sure eats up memory on the game, but that would be a pretty extensive update. At best, I can smooth out the gun's aiming motion in the next update and I did flix the glitch on the gun's laser for this latest version. So hopefully it will be slighly less irritating. |
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| Looks really cool . |
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| Hey Lava89, I have tried your new demo and the menu was really slow. The game seems to work properly except a few weird things that i have noticed : ->it is possible to go out of the scene (through the textured mesh with space and stars) ->when in interact mode, it is possible to interact with a keyboard/screen even when not facing the keyboard/screen (take a look at the DeltaYaw function it can help to prevent that) ->when shooting bullets with the ship, it is difficult (impossible ?) to aim properly Else it is a cool demo, well done. :) Good luck for the next steps ! |
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| Thanks Panno! Thanks for playing RemiD. You said the menu was really slow? Could you please tell me what kind of hardware you're using? Primarily your Operating System, Video Card and Processor. I am asking so I know what kind of computer I might look into as a test subject. Yes, it is possible to fly outside of the main sphere. Not sure if I will prevent this in the future or even add some kind of "free roam" aspect when you go out of the boundary and maybe add randomly generated ships to fight. Yeah, I might make it so the hand won't animate unless you're looking at the console directly. But making it so you can only use a console when looking directly at it might get restrictive. but I guess I could test it out to see. If you're firing torpedoes from the ship, it will only shoot what is selected in the target dialog (press the orange "target" button to change what is selected). So far I haven't added any "manual" shooting, but it's possibility in the future. |
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| Lenovo ThinkPad E325 - DualCore AMD E-450, 1646 MHz - 6 Go DDR3-1333 SDRAM - AMD Radeon HD 6320 Graphics 384 Mo VRAM - Windows 7 Home Premium - DirectX 11.0 |
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| Thanks for the specs RemiD! This will help alot. By the way, how slow was the game once you got past the menu screen? |
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| Only the menu was slow. The game is fast enough. |
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