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GSB and AI War
Admiral:
Impulse the other week had a sale on the pre-order for this game (Gratuitous Space Battles), and combined with my annual customer survey discount could get this for even less than AI War's occasional sale price, so I did. It comes with immediate access to the game in it's incomplete state - a huge incentive for someone like me who likes to see how games evolve and also likes instant gratification, although frankly it took me almost a week to get time to install it.
I have to say, I'd love for Colonel X to meet his equivalent on the GSB team. I'd love to put the GSB graphical engine into AI War. Not that I'd use it much (I play on icon view most of the time) but it sure would be neat to see a huge AI War fleet doing their thing in GSB style graphics.
There isn't much in the way of gameplay; the "game" is aptly named. There were graphical rendering bugs on my screen (2560x1600) as well, but it is early days. It's really a toy more than a game; you set up the initial conditions and watch the fireworks. There is some design to it, but in my 20-30 minutes with it I haven't breached that part yet.
Cheers!
eRe4s3r:
I bought GSB as well and i have to say - the Graphics engine of that is inferior to Ai War - On the surface the stuff looks flashy but it doesn't use any decent graphical features that would be possible in a 2d game. Exception might be the missile trails but we have more missiles so we can not use these glow trails as GSB does.
Stuff like Overglow / Directional dynamic Damage of hull / Holes in ships caused by heavy weapons / locational damage are all missing. Something x4000 could code over 2 nights - if he would code a GSB clone ;P (Just figure of speech)
My main gripe is how GSB uses particles and animations - they are all in 1 file (1 animation frame sequence is in one large file) and the game just frame-shifts through them - this is a huge clusterfuck because NO 3D APP produces animations like that. If i had to do the red explosions in ai war frame by frame - then merge them all in a file, observe borders and pixel measurements, they would never have happened.
I already made a mod for the game (gfx, what else) but because all particle textures are in 1 large file i can not do overglow (or stuff like diffuse smoke coverage) So the effects will always remain mediocre, though it does have a particle engine thats pretty nice.. and impossible to work with (artist wise) ^^
Edit: Just so you get an idea see attachment ;p Thats the kind of graphic detail one could do but ask yourself, what for? A good space battle sim does NOT work with such hulls (they would need to be fairly modular in structure)
I tried getting this sprite in-game (in GSB) so i dug deep into the file structures and how stuff works.
Actually, i have a idea how one could make a GSB clone truly tactical but nobody is gonna make that game (basically each component you put on is a sprite element that you have to actual place on your main ship sprite - Sort of a like a 3D Ship builder, in 2D with actual tactical implications (you put the bride outside in the front, 1 hit can down you) etc.
ldlework:
heres some work on an idea similar to GSB + Escape Velocity:
http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0Ab7q_WkNh3bxZGZqenFrOF8xY2g0Mno2&hl=en
Echo35:
--- Quote from: ldlework on October 17, 2009, 12:10:13 pm ---heres some work on an idea similar to GSB + Escape Velocity:
http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0Ab7q_WkNh3bxZGZqenFrOF8xY2g0Mno2&hl=en
--- End quote ---
Mmm, Escape Velocity...
eRe4s3r:
It'd be also cool that have actual personal simulated walking through the ship, so if you sound the battle alarm people are moving to the stations, and if you are hit before that you could loose entire crews and sections.
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