Project Eres is a space adventure game in the style of Escape Velocity by Ambrosia Software. (
http://www.ambrosiasw.com )
The player is set loose in a large galaxy with nearly empty pockets and a small shuttlecraft, and is then free to do as they please. Trading, exploration, pirating, mining, and faction warfare will all be options. I think a common pitfall of this style of game is that while there are many things to do, the only interesting/fun thing is combat. I'm going to try do my best to make all the options equally interesting, and I expect that most players will dabble a little in all of the fields.
There are very few space games out there with true Newtonian physics, and Project Eres will be one of them. From real friction-less space to gravity fields created by planets and suns, Project Eres will be as realistic as possible, while making sure the game remains fun and playable.
Here is a quick feature list:
- Randomly generated galaxy, filled to the brim with hidden treasures AND horrors awaiting your discovery. This means that every time you start a new game, you have an entire new galaxy to explore!
- Realistic Newtonian physics. You keep moving in the direction you started in. Planets other massive objects will draw you into their gravitational field. Be wary, for black holes DO exist.
- System failures. Ever wonder how a ship with 1% hull integrity can even move, much less continue engaging? Every part of your ship can take damage or fail.
- Options. What will you do? You could take your mining ship and ( more or less ) peacefully make your living. Watch out for those nasty pirates though. Or perhaps you'd prefer to make a living pirating those vulnerable miners? Flying from planet to planet trading goods? Joining the war effort with one of many different factions? Or maybe you'd rather spend your days exploring the galaxy and seeing all there is to see, hunting for that rare artifact worth millions.
- Ship customization. Buy new ships, trade in and out parts on your current ship. You can fly anything from the smallest fighter to the largest carrier. Store all your stuff in various hangers on different planets/stations, and even hire transports to move your stuff! Better make sure they are well protected from pirates...
- Mod-able content! Create new ships and factions through editing simple text files and making your own images.
A sample index.txt file might look like this:
Media/Planets/Image/Rock/0.png
Media/Planets/Image/Rock/1.png
The files are numbered just because the previous method I was using just tried to load every file starting at 0.png and ending at 50.png. But now since it just reads index.txt, the images can be named anything you want.
I imagine that if people released content packs for this game, they would include an index.txt that had the filepath for each image already written out, which you would simply add on to your own index.txt.
The loading of ships and their respective images is unchanged, because there is a set number of images to be loaded. ShipA will always have the same associated images as ShipB, although the image content will probably be different.
I also fixed some memory problems that were causing the release .exe to crash on startup, the next demo will be about 2mb smaller because the debug .exe won't be included
I think the next big feature is going to be a shipyard that is accessible from planets. I have a nifty idea of how to display the available ships ^^. This will probably replace the ship selection dialog at startup.