Games Galactic Armada : Fleet Commander - Overview, Mechanics,Videos

GALACTIC ARMADA

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I have since re-envision the game since this original post. So I have decided to come back and edit it.

Originally I wanted to have ships with interiors, and for a while i worked on a prototype with a large ship with an interior and a custom rigidbody controller that I designed that was able to traverse the ship as well as planets.

You can see some of my early work on the channel involving ships with interiors.
I actually had a working elevator on a space ship moving at hyperspace-velocity.. with elevator music!

Long story short, I quickly realized that it was way to much work for one person and on top of that the investment required for such models would be... expensive if a modeler capable of building them could even be found.

So.. I re-envisioned the game as a cockpit experience similiar to that of the X game series from EgoSoft. (Entirely different game though).

A website for the game will be forthcoming after the design phase which will take several weeks to a month to complete. (I am working full time on designing building this game).

A proof of concept protoype for the new vision of Galactic Armada:

This prototype is a demonstration of a custom-made collision avoidance system that I designed and developed from scratch, capable of running hundreds of ships with high performance and a high degree of accuracy. Ships avoid both each other and environmental geometry simultaneously.

This is a core component that I had to ensure I could make work before beginning the process of building the entire game.

Since I have proved the core component can function with high performance, allowing CPU capacity for the rest of the game's systems such as AI to operate, I have begun the Design Phase for the game which includes a full library of concept charts involving every planned mechanic within the game.

Some charts have already been included at the bottom of page.

Due to my limited time, since I am literally slave-driving myself on this game I may or may not post everything in this thread so follow the fanpage:
https://www.facebook.com/galacticarmadagame/

Thank you for reading:
Johnny Brown
DeepLogicGames
DeepLogicGames.com (Coming.. eventually) (game comes first).

 

I am now the proud owner of GalacticFleetCommand.com

It's a decent choice if there is a trademark with the name "galactic armada", I can go with Galactic Fleet Command.

Good thing, I'm a experienced web developer as well, don't have to pay anyone to build the site and I can also setup databases to collect stats and rank players based upon performance and speed to victory. Whatever I can come up with to make it interesting and engaging. I don;t know may attempt multiplayer on my own before I do that we shall see.

 

Comments, Questions?

 

Looks really cool, the ideas behind the game sound great, hopefully putting them into action works out. One thing I would encourage at this stage is really to make the player feel like a ruler of a space empire (if I understand correctly that is the goal of the game). Just some ideas that can help with this are have many NPC characters, a cool captains chair, and better viewing out of a larger space cockpit to make the player feel more important. Also having some big accurate maps wouldn't go amiss.

Anyways it looks good, best of luck with getting this whole thing done! That's quite a lot of mechanics you've got there. Also if you don't mind me asking, how long do you plan on making this game for?

 

I'm not a modeler but i can edit models and prep them to be game ready assets i dont have the time to build massive ships from scratch and build the game. So what I am doing is building the game with the models at my disposal for free and hopeufll some modelers see the potential of the game and join my team for part ownership of the game. Or i can raise kick starter funding or get an investor to pay for modelers.

I am about the release a another major update video, everything is ALOT better than that last video. Planets are now Stellar size objects. The scenes diameter is over 2 Million units. The sun is about 100X times its scale in the previous video. LOTS of other changes like a chase/externa; cam on overlay as well as working on puting all the data into an overlay UI tabbed, captain,nav, engineer,weapons. The first interface i make may not be what it will be 100%, definitly subject to change I just need it done so I can move on to other things after I have a UI controller that can adapt to my needs and also be able to implement new variations of the menu interface as time goes on.

I know for a fact this game is possible to build and I know I can build it.I have played every space sim game there is and I know unity pretty well as you can see in the video. I know what it can do, which is almost anything I can imagine.

In next video my LOD system is complete, full ship interior, Animated door controller system expandable to any ship, making it easy to drop in new ships and prep them. Planets are massive. I have added some orbital space stations with full interiors, there is one in earths orbit and I am making it do a close flyby of the station on the new tour of sol. With that said, I have to get back to it. I have been working every waking moment of my life on this and I intend to do so until it is completed, Or at least a playable alpha is released.

So yah im implementing a chained waypoint system now when that is done and a few other things I will make a new vid. My planets look just as good as star citizen if not better. I have an actual REAL sun in my scene and they do not. They would be even better with some super hi res textures given their scale.

 

Yes, that will come after the certain controllers are done as well as the UI.

Right now my focus is the tools to drop ships in quickly, environment and the ship interior. I want the player to feel like they are on a real spaceship in a real galaxy/solar system.

there will be a dose of realism and arcade to the "extreme" in certain ways it is part of the games theme.

These systems will be part of the games mechanics. Take the Sunlight being super bright and blinding you when you reach the sun until your SunScreen automatically turns on or isnt "damaged". There will be stations near suns that harvest energy/recources in systems that you must capture to capture a sector.

There will also be gravity wells around planets and black holes that can destroy you and your fleets near these stations, there will be a slight pull that you and AI must fight against. as well. I am working on these mechanics before I do NPC basic npc faction system and movment controllers for fleet and a basic AI for fleet command then a mock battle but before that I have to do weapons systems. I am keeping it basic so i can rapidly prototype and expand systems as I go.

This game isnt going to be "no mans sky" its going to be a space strategy game where you conqure the galaxy from the bridge of your starship, or you homeworlds star base and where you have the option to personally get involved in fleet engagements.

The focus of the game after weapons and combat will be a really really nice AI system, way better than anything you have seen in a 4x strategy game. You will have the option to move ships around like in stellaris but mainly you will be issuing orders and letting your fleet commanders carry them out.

The player can decide how much strategy they wont to employ personally int he war effort or how much action they want to involve themselves in on the front lines, or defending their empire.

Once single player is done, it will be proof multi player is possible and this game will be WAY more fun than star citizen could ever hope to be in my opinion because it isnt a boring repetitive MMO, its a space strategy game /conquering the galaxy from a "star citizen " perspective. Stellaris + a dose of star citizen.

Ths game will be scaled back though to have simple controls, I dont want the learning curve of star citizen and I have no plans for First person combat with a gun. this is about ships and space no a FPS shooter.

 

Here I am testing a very basic flight controller as well as the ability to manually fly in hyperspace mode.Can fly inside the ship as well as outside from chase cam view. Can switch between auto pilot and manual pilot modes. Flew out of the solar system to 4 million Unity meters from scene origin.

If you like this, like the fanpage:
https://www.facebook.com/galacticarmadagame/

 

Come On!!! Are you doing it on your own?
That's amazing!!!!

 

Yes it's a one man show at the moment.

I could really use a modeler to make me some ships with interiors lol.

 

Well I've done it ladies and gents.

I am landing on MOVING planets and walking around on them for the first time in video game / engine history.

I had to start over from scratch with my player controller. Switched from character controller to RigidBody as it is pretty much a requirement for what im doing. Of course I had to work out all of the kinks, getting stuck on walls and such.

My player controller camera is separated from the collider (meaning the camera rotation does not effect the collider rotation giving me full control of the collider rotation without interference from the camera look).

Instead of applying a forward force or velocity, I apply a force in the direction the camera is viewing without rotating the capsule which gives me more control with clamping it to normal's when it is independent from the camera.

A video will be coming in the next few days as I am working on some details such as a "moon jump" and moon walk as well as some addition flight controller features.

After I master the moon (which is a 64K sphere that is deformed with a heightmap) so there is craters. I will be making a comet with particle effects which will be moving through SOL and i will land on it as well... just like out of the movie Armageddon.

Here is a little teaser, sorry not ready for video yet.. SOON! Soon after a downloadable build I will make available to the public

 

Galactic Armada: The Fall of Humanity
The first game in the series will be a single player story driven space action combat game
where you play the role of a squad captain. The game will feature some open world game play as well as some linear story line
arcs with a flow similar to that of the space sim classic "FreeSpace 2". My intended target for total play time before the game ends is at least 10 hours.
Because I am a solo developer doing pretty much everything, the game will mostly feature text based GUI prompts for the story in which the player must read, with some
voice over's that i get my friends and family to help with.
In the first game in the series you will be introduced to the
"Galaxy", 400 years in the future in the year 2,518. In this distant future, mankind has expanded into space, constructed colonies on other worlds and established a
militarized presence in space. For 100 years mankind reveled in their accomplishment, arrogantly believing in their technological hegemony over
the few alien races in which contact has been established.
And then.... They arrived, with fleets so large, not even light could pass their awe inspiring presence. That is when everything changed.

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Galactic Armada: Fire,Fury & Conquest (expansion)
If the first game in the series is successful, the second game will be an expansion which will add a Conquest system to the game.
This system will feature Sectors which contain Solar systems contained in a Galaxy Map similiar to the X3 game series.
Players will be able to construct new ships and give orders to fleet commander (AI's). Form fleets and capture sectors for resources.
The game's conquest will be simple based upon a "Risk" model where sectors produce a certain amount of resources & ships each year, which the
player will allocate for building new ships and researching ship upgrades.

My goal is to create what X3 was not, a conquest game, but without the trading. Exploring will be a possible addition, however
the point of the game will be strategy,conquest & fleet command. Exploration type missions could be implemented to grant players "bonuses" through artifacts.

Additionally, the fleet engagements in Galactic Armada will be much larger, with many more ships than what was possible in X3 using mods to drop ships in. The x3 engine and software design simply could not handle anything
past 100 or so ships without completely bogging down the engine.

My system is being designed to run up to 200 smoothly on an i5 CPU, 300 on an i7 and up to 500 (within a single scene,spread across a solar system with active collision avoidance, path finding and multiple AI systems working in concert) on the latest generation Intel CPU's.
The game will be designed to allow (scaling number of ships) options based upon the CPU the game is running on.

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The game is ambitious for a solo developer and the software design to run it will must be a technological marvel to behold as well as a
true demonstration of the power of the Unity Game Engine. (Amazing). I think it would also be the first "true" space game built with unity as all i could find was some very basic prototypes.

Building this game has been my life long dream, my passion. I was a programmer for 15 years prior to starting to learn game development over 2 years ago.
In the past 2 years I have not given up, I have banged my head against the wall a few times but I have persevered and I have finally achieved
the first and most difficult component required to run Galactic Armada, the Collision avoidance path finding system, capable as well as efficient enough to
run hundreds of ships with enough CPU left for weapons systems and AI.

So tell me, Who is ready for a new Space Sim Classic? Who wants to relive the days when space sims were new and refreshing and pushing the
boundaries of technology as well as "fun" with a good, interesting original story. I know I do, and I know it won't happen unless I build it.
The time of waiting is over. The time of creation has begun.

People I will need to make the game reach it's true potential:

Modelers + Artists:
If you are a modeler and reading this and would like to take part in the creation of Galactic Armada, I will do what I must to get you on board so
please contact me: GalacticArmadaGame@gmail.com. I need ships, ships, ships, stations and environmental objects ((Exteriors only, with the exclusion of cockpits for player flyable ships), asteroids, debris ect. Sketchup AND 3dsMax modelers welcome!
I will also need a concept artist for portraits and backgrounds, if drawing art (aliens) is your thing please contact me as well.

Writer(s):
I am fully capable of designing and implementing the story as well however this can be time consuming so a writer would not hurt, since it would allow me to
focus all of my time on the software + interfaces for the game.


Programmers (optional):
GUI designer. To speed things up a UNITY GUI designer will useful in freeing up my time to focus on AI systems (where my passion is). I will be designing the GUI in similar representations of previous successful space games.


Volunteers for Voice-Overs:
People that want to read and speak into a microphone to do voice overs for NPC factions in the story.

Volunteer Testers:
People with at least some basic knowledge of game development and testing to run prototype builds on a wide range of hardware and report
performance recordings, bugs and glitches, suggest improvements and changes for a better experience.

 

Please disregard the videos at the top of this post I have since started fresh on the game, I won't be having ship interiors and FPS controller as it was just too much work for one person so I re-envisioned my same idea for the game but experienced from a cockpit or a fighter or (capital ship (bridge) only if i get funding for the models).

 

I have entered the design phase for the game which will last for a few weeks as i create numerous concept design charts and software diagrams.

These charts will cover:

DeepLogic AI Agents (Admirals, Captains, Pilots)
DeepLogic AI Agent (Empire Leader)
DeepLogic AI Behavior Algorithms + Fleet Command & Control Player Interface
DeepLogic AI Collision Avoidance PathFinding System
Ship Weapons Systems + Weapon Types
Ship Classes Diagram (Fighter,GunShip, Frigate, Cruiser,Carrier, Battleship) (Supply Ship)
Ship Boarding System (Troop Transports) -> Troop Transport Ship Class
Ship Resource Usage Systems (fuel, energy cells, ammo,galactic currency (*maintenance)).
Morale Management System (GUI) + Mechanics
Procedural Galaxy System (Concept Design)
Galaxy Map GUI (Concept Design + Functionality & Player Interaction Systems)
Economy System & Resources Concept Design + Resource interactions and uses
Unity Asynchronous Scene Loading System (Prefabs + resources will be stored in multiple scenes organized by type due too 4GB scene storage capacity).


There are probably a few more I will need to do before I begin construction of the game, starting with the procedural galaxy system. I have enough on my plate for now.

 

Economy Resource Types & Resource Production System.

 

It is hard to find time to update everything so if you want to follow along with what I am building and see the mechanics charts and diagrams along with other things please like and follow the facebook fanpage:
https://www.facebook.com/galacticarmadagame

 

It's Saturday and i needed a break so I had a lazy day. Did get something done though. Time Scale. A rather simple system but I decided it was best. A lot of 4x real time strategy games use Day/Month/Year time scales but because Galactic Armada is a 4x strategy game that you experience in 3d space instead of just on a 2d board, I'm not displaying month and year because I don't want the player to feel like a year has passed during the time it takes to hyperjump from one solar system to another. Instead, every 20 minutes (to be determined) a (Day) will pass and the StarDate will change.The system will be used to trigger systems like resource production and assignment updates, galactic events ect.

 

Ship classes..

 

Fleet Capacity & Purchasing Mechanics.
https://www.facebook.com/galacticarmadagame/

 

Keep up the work Johnny, some achievement!

 

DeepLogic AI is working and much more you can go back and watch previous vids if you want or just sub to the channel, I dont have time to post them everywhere.

 

So, I am looking at ways to make the "acceleration" of the ship more realistic.

Currently, I am imposing a speed limit on the ship when you use the afterburner where it caps off at 1600 M/S.

What I am going to do instead is make it more realistic with a mass based acceleration that starts off slow and then accelerates faster and faster as you get up speed.

Instead of limiting the ships speed i will let the ships resource systems do that since you will be consuming resources when you use the afterburner so the ships max speed will more or less be relative to it's resource capacities such as "heat".

Using the afterburner will add heat and eventually start damaging your ships hull integrity as well as other ship systems.

So you could continue accelerating and gaining speed even after you have overheated your ship at the cost of damaging the ship and eventually killing yourself if you overextend the ships capabilities.

With this model there is a "speed limit" but that limit will be up to the player and how close to death they want to take it.

 

Hrmm the problem with that is that the player can slowly keep accelerating to extreme speeds, which i don't want .. so.

What I will do is this, the faster your go, the more fuel it will cost to use the afterburner. So if you are already going really fast eventually it will cap you off because you will run out of fuel and won't be able to use the afterburner.

I can apply this principle to normal forward thrusters as well.

When you kill NPC ships they will drop fuel pickups (sometimes), there will also be supply ships that arrive from the core worlds of your empire which will carry fuel.

You will also be able to refuel at space stations that you control that have been supplied.

There will be consequences for running out of fuel.. which is going really slow and being an easy target for hostile ships and space entities & creatures that may appear to eat you. (literally, not figuratively) (there will be space creatures with large mouths that literally attempt to swallow your ship, so you won't want to be a slow moving target when they appear).

I'm going to allow the player to use the afterburner though even when out of fuel but at great energy cost as well as heat which will damage the ship and potentially kill you the more you use it.

 

I did this for fun

 

You got tendency to do weird claims.

According to your vid description.

Despite people do stress testing on daily bases, running very weird stuff and on their PC machines ... so chances you are "first" again, is least likely.

I don't know where you get 2.4 Billion vertices ( 2 400 000 000 ) value from. The models don't even look that near high verts count.

I don't think you realize, your PC would really struggle to run smooth scene with loaded such amount of data.

 

Prove my claim wrong. To my knowledge the only other large star trek ship to exist with an interior was Stage 9 and it was stationary.

And Yes it was causing my Titan to run around 30FPS with no exterior LOD system for components on the exterior of the ship, however I have turned the models into solids so there is a low draw call count.

If you are going to refute my claim provide some evidence that it is not true.

Yes the ship itself is like 800 million but there are many other ship models in the scene the capital ship you see in the distance for example has a massive poly count as well.

These are sketchup models obviously and are not optimized.

 

I'm backkkk!

 

Improved Projectile Collisions - Performance Test
Projectiles now fire a sphere cast the length of the Max distance the projectile can travel when instantiated as well as a frequency based short range sphere cast in the projectiles forward direction while the projectile is in transit in order to improve collision accuracy. I have also tried the system using primitive sphere based trigger colliders but the system bogged down the physics engine and epicly failed. So the only way to achieve large volumes of projectiles is by using Ray/Sphere casts with a frequency system and possible an "area awareness" system for "guessing" whether the projectile can or will hit something and then deactivating the frequency fired sphere cast that is running while the project is in transit.

 

314 Ships 60FPS Stable, Weapons & Optimization Systems Updates

Battles with up to 500 ships will be possible with some more effort in optimization systems, will need to test once I have capital ship weapons systems installed. In this update I spent some time doing optimization and reworking the physics system with the pathfinding system to use primitive colliders only for incoming spherecast collisions which greatly improved performance along with other pathfinding system optimizations. Also added: -Weapons Target Lock system for AI ships (ships now have to acquire a target lock (with adjustable lock speed) which can be blocked by objects in the environment preventing the ship from firing at it's target) - Angular rotation to a maximum angle for AI ship weapon hardpoints giving the AI ships "auto-aim assist" with an adjustable axis (currently set to 35 degrees) -Improved Projectile Collision Detection and Syncronization -Adjusted Explosion SoundFX -Brought back the corvette class ship which has a cargo bay large enough to dock a fighter which will be made fully functional and combat ready in the not to distant future. -Added several Render Textures to test performance changes to ship consoles. -added a pool table and arcade game which will be made into fully functional physics simulations in the future. (these will be mini games that players ("crew") can do together while the ship is traveling at warp speed across the galaxy. -Greatest improved my "visual debugger/pathfinding visualizer" for pathfinding to make flight behavior development easier in the future. It is worth noting that the models I am currently using are not optimized for gaming and the Babylon 5 model is a very high poly model as well as the StarFurys. With that said I am pleased with the performance of the Unity Engine as well as my systems design to make this possible. It will be further enhanced with Mesh based distance LOD system to reduce load on the GPU.