Outerspace Crew

I took off comment moderation for now. What we need is a comment captcha image to get rid of the spammers. I'm sure they will be back before you know it.

One of the main functions of Starport will be trading goods, services, life forms, and anything else you might stumble upon in space. This will require a good economic model where prices will fluctuate realistically.

Economies run through cycles of recession and growth, rather than purely random (brownian motion). They are also effected by world events and attitudes.

In order to simulate this in Starport's Trade Depot, I'm thinking that a fractal mountain range would do nicely as a short, five-year, pattern for the economy. Here's an example of one:



Each point on the mountain range would be an overall rate of the economy on a specific day of the year. This rate would be used to calculate bank rates and the price of goods. Events could raise or lower all future points to show an effect on the economy. So say you go to war, then we would lower the graph by a certain amount, thus simulating a downward shift in the economy.

We need to implement a time keeping system to make this happen. I'm proposing:
In interstellar space 1 day = 3 seconds.
For intra-system travel 1 day = 30 seconds.
For planet exploration 1 day = 3 minutes.
Starport time would be normal time.

Each time the player comes to Starport, we could look at the economy graph at the current day and extrapolate the economic rate.

More info to come as I try to work this out. I may update the web page with some new screen shots soon too. those out there now are pretty old I think.

After a couple of weeks of trying to get Starport to render properly I think I finally figured this Direct3D thing out.

Now we have the starport planet rotating in the background and a starport mesh rotating in the foreground. You can even click each module on the starport mesh (called picking) and it will do something.

I have all of the starport functions as buttons right now also, but those may be removed later.

Screenshot (click for larger version):

I've grown optimistic for Outerspace in the past 3 or 4 months. I feel really positive about it's development for the first time in a long time. After working for so long, I can honestly say that I see a light at the end of this tunnel. The project now has stable quality contributers.

I wanted to post this because I had just gotten sick of working on things for a while there, a new job a new house, real life got in the way. But things have settled down and I've determined that myself and others have invested far to much in this project to let it die. I'm starting to enjoy it again.

Anyway, not to be all gushy...

I'm continuing my work on the Life form movement. The functions have undergone a major cleanup and are now almost bug free. I've also made a few extra meshes for our friendly little planet side critters. I'll try and post a screen shot soon.

Well, I've been working on plotline elements mostly, a few concept drawings and staring at the code trying to build that card house of ideas that string together a complex algorithm without it all falling over.

Here are some concept drawings for you to look at. As for the races they belong to, well that's a secret.

The code base has been updated to use our new universe generator as I mentioned earlier. I also updated the graphics for more star and planet types.

Here are what the stars look like now:

Click for full size.

Stars are now based on the Morgan-Keenan spectral classifications. The order of classification in the above graphic is O B A F G K M and 0 (zero). Zero being black holes.

Here are new planet graphics:


There are four graphics for each planet class. Planet classes are Volcanic/Molten, Inferno, Poison, Terrestrial, Radiated, Exotic, Jovian, Barren, and Frozen.

I would like to start on new solar system code soon so the above image could be discarded for larger and more detailed images. I think I'll go back to the Starport first though.

We got a flood of spam in the comments section so now all comments will be moderated. Stupid spammers.

Its been over a month since our last post on OuterSpace but just so you know, we are still working on it...

I recently finished writing a new universe generator to save our universe in XML files. This will make it easier for the developers to modify the universe in whatever way they wish. I should have the program loading these universes very soon. Just have about 3 more issues to fix.

I uploaded some more files.
A species profile for the Buroomali, plus some possible xml formats for various things.

UPDATE: Here's a profile of the Warvol.

Star Systems
Space Stations
Colonies
Races

Tajorg (pronounced Ta-h-urge)

Please critique.