Straylight
04-28-2004, 02:57 PM
It's been a while since anything was posted here, but fear not, Kaldris has not been abandoned. Now ph3ar my disorganised post. (sorry about that)
New stuff
First of all, a lot of changes to the plans have been made, here's a run-down:
1) Kaldris will be hosted on a seperate domain, affiliated with CAA
2) It will be running off a PHP system built from scratch, with a seperate login system. I'm building it from scratch because I hate trying to decipher code written by other people. Thus starting from nothing will actually speed up the development process. I'm also seeking a few other programmers to jump in with me on this project, more on that later.
3) The game structure will be different, Aaron and I have talked a while about this stuff. Here is a summary. (This will be easier to understand if you've played games like Masters of Orion, Ascendancy, etc.)
Kaldris will be a large, online browser based strategy game of interstellar warfare. The aim of the game is to expand your civilisation and level up by taking down enemy fleets of ships or Scarabs (a weird alien race that's controlled by the computer). Levelling up gives you access to better technologies depending on what class you pick. The class system will be similar to D+D - you can multiclass but there are penalties etc. and each class has its own strengths and weaknesses. Haven't decided what the class names will be yet.
Originally we were going to go for a big planet with a map and lots of cities, but figuring out how to code this effeciently without breaking the server and pulling hair out was a nightmare. (lots and lots and lots of tiles have to be indexed away somewhere, furthermore they have to be generated somehow)
So instead, I wrote a 3d isometric rendering engine and discovered that it's a lot easier to plot circles and lines in a cube.
The gameplay area will span an entire galaxy, with the following structure:
The galaxy (ie total gameplay area) contains clusters of stars.
Each star cluster contains a number of star systems.
Each star system contains a number of different planets orbiting a star.
The star systems and clusters are linked together by wormholes, which allow people in the galaxy to travel around.
All this stuff will be displayed in isometric 3d view and all aspects of the game will be controlled within the browser, furthermore, no Flash or Java will be used. This will cut down on loading times and improve accessability. The game will move forward by "ticking" - basically updates will occur say every half hour.
For example, in one turn, you might decide to move a fleet to an enemy planet, next time the game updates you'd see that fleet on its way through the wormhole to cast ph34r into your victim.
There are many more things to be said, but it would probably take forever, so ask questions in this thread if ya want.It hasn't all been figured out yet.
This is important though:
Help needed
I am actively seeking help in the following areas.
Note: If you're talented in these areas chances are you might well have your hands full already, which is fine. I should point out though, that this thing could well end up being quite big, and I want to ideally put you guys first. It would also be better to jump in at the beginning (now) because then you will get a good "feel" for the project, which will help things move faster.
Also, you'll need to be quite dedicated.
Here's the job list
1) PHP and MySQL development - You will join djnoz as part of the core development team in an epic quest against the evil mysql and php bugses.. You should be reasonably good at coding in above languages, with preferably HTML/CSS knowledge as well. If you're interested send me a link or script or some kind of example of your work and I'll take a look. Don't worry if you're not an uber leet programmer or lack in some of the areas, I'm sure we can learn from each other.
As a rough guide.. consider intermediate level, ie. you can write a php powered website beyong the simple "Hello World" stuff or perhaps write a mod for an existing script (beyond changing a few variables)
2) Spriting - You'll help transfer concept art to the screen by spriting, and probably also help out drawing concept art (if you want). We're aiming for a fairly uniform format, so there should ideally be at max two people on this. Note that a lot of sprites will be needed (probably 100-200)
3) Testing - At some point the whole site will disappear behind a login system and only those on the testing team will be allowed access. The only requirement for this job is CAA membership (there will probably be a small post count limit). I should point out though, that this beta testing phase is unlikely to launch any time soon, as the thing aint even built yet.
Important note to other people: I appreciate that you might want to help, however ONLY the jobs listed above are available so please do not reply offering help with designing game concepts etc. To be totally blunt, we need people to help make the game work, not people to dream up ideas about how the game might work - that's been the main problem with this from the start.
However, if you do fulfil the above criteria and are interested (bar Testing) drop me a PM.. ;)
Preview
Here's a quick interface design, along with something that demonstrates the 3d thing I built.
http://www.animesource.co.uk/kaldris/index.php
The sticks coming out the bottom of the grid will eventually have stars on the end, and there will also be a load of other info displayed in the cube, eg. fleet movements, who planets belong to, etc. Pretty much all navigation will be conducted using the isometric map as a visual aid.
New stuff
First of all, a lot of changes to the plans have been made, here's a run-down:
1) Kaldris will be hosted on a seperate domain, affiliated with CAA
2) It will be running off a PHP system built from scratch, with a seperate login system. I'm building it from scratch because I hate trying to decipher code written by other people. Thus starting from nothing will actually speed up the development process. I'm also seeking a few other programmers to jump in with me on this project, more on that later.
3) The game structure will be different, Aaron and I have talked a while about this stuff. Here is a summary. (This will be easier to understand if you've played games like Masters of Orion, Ascendancy, etc.)
Kaldris will be a large, online browser based strategy game of interstellar warfare. The aim of the game is to expand your civilisation and level up by taking down enemy fleets of ships or Scarabs (a weird alien race that's controlled by the computer). Levelling up gives you access to better technologies depending on what class you pick. The class system will be similar to D+D - you can multiclass but there are penalties etc. and each class has its own strengths and weaknesses. Haven't decided what the class names will be yet.
Originally we were going to go for a big planet with a map and lots of cities, but figuring out how to code this effeciently without breaking the server and pulling hair out was a nightmare. (lots and lots and lots of tiles have to be indexed away somewhere, furthermore they have to be generated somehow)
So instead, I wrote a 3d isometric rendering engine and discovered that it's a lot easier to plot circles and lines in a cube.
The gameplay area will span an entire galaxy, with the following structure:
The galaxy (ie total gameplay area) contains clusters of stars.
Each star cluster contains a number of star systems.
Each star system contains a number of different planets orbiting a star.
The star systems and clusters are linked together by wormholes, which allow people in the galaxy to travel around.
All this stuff will be displayed in isometric 3d view and all aspects of the game will be controlled within the browser, furthermore, no Flash or Java will be used. This will cut down on loading times and improve accessability. The game will move forward by "ticking" - basically updates will occur say every half hour.
For example, in one turn, you might decide to move a fleet to an enemy planet, next time the game updates you'd see that fleet on its way through the wormhole to cast ph34r into your victim.
There are many more things to be said, but it would probably take forever, so ask questions in this thread if ya want.It hasn't all been figured out yet.
This is important though:
Help needed
I am actively seeking help in the following areas.
Note: If you're talented in these areas chances are you might well have your hands full already, which is fine. I should point out though, that this thing could well end up being quite big, and I want to ideally put you guys first. It would also be better to jump in at the beginning (now) because then you will get a good "feel" for the project, which will help things move faster.
Also, you'll need to be quite dedicated.
Here's the job list
1) PHP and MySQL development - You will join djnoz as part of the core development team in an epic quest against the evil mysql and php bugses.. You should be reasonably good at coding in above languages, with preferably HTML/CSS knowledge as well. If you're interested send me a link or script or some kind of example of your work and I'll take a look. Don't worry if you're not an uber leet programmer or lack in some of the areas, I'm sure we can learn from each other.
As a rough guide.. consider intermediate level, ie. you can write a php powered website beyong the simple "Hello World" stuff or perhaps write a mod for an existing script (beyond changing a few variables)
2) Spriting - You'll help transfer concept art to the screen by spriting, and probably also help out drawing concept art (if you want). We're aiming for a fairly uniform format, so there should ideally be at max two people on this. Note that a lot of sprites will be needed (probably 100-200)
3) Testing - At some point the whole site will disappear behind a login system and only those on the testing team will be allowed access. The only requirement for this job is CAA membership (there will probably be a small post count limit). I should point out though, that this beta testing phase is unlikely to launch any time soon, as the thing aint even built yet.
Important note to other people: I appreciate that you might want to help, however ONLY the jobs listed above are available so please do not reply offering help with designing game concepts etc. To be totally blunt, we need people to help make the game work, not people to dream up ideas about how the game might work - that's been the main problem with this from the start.
However, if you do fulfil the above criteria and are interested (bar Testing) drop me a PM.. ;)
Preview
Here's a quick interface design, along with something that demonstrates the 3d thing I built.
http://www.animesource.co.uk/kaldris/index.php
The sticks coming out the bottom of the grid will eventually have stars on the end, and there will also be a load of other info displayed in the cube, eg. fleet movements, who planets belong to, etc. Pretty much all navigation will be conducted using the isometric map as a visual aid.