Plans and a bit more of teaser

Jeff and I worked out some more details, and with feedback from previous post, here's what we plan to do:

For sure:

1. All people who have bought Beyond Beyaan (either through kickstarter, paypal, Desura, or a sci-fi promo from a while ago) will get Dominus Galaxia.
2. The source code for Beyond Beyaan will remain open source, available for anyone to use.  Dominus Galaxia will be closed source as Jeff is a full-time developer and has to make a living somehow.  I will re-use a lot of internal game logic from BB into DG to speed development up

Tentative plan:
We'll try and salvage as much artwork as possible from BB into DG, as long as they fit the graphic style.  How?  Jeff and I just found out about Sprite DLight, and it does exactly what we wanted.  So it's looking good for us to salvage some ship artwork from BB to be used in DG's space combat.  We'll see about other artwork (Jeff isn't too much of a fan of the pixel art, but with this, he's a bit more willing :) )

Here's a sample of what it can do.  A Zero People's ship before being processed by Sprite DLight:

It's flat, has no 3Dness to speak of.  Compared to pretty 3D, it's rather bland.  But look at what happen when we add 3D light magic thanks to the awesome tool (I just loaded it up in Sprite DLight and it automatically did everything, I just turned on the light!):

And here's a rendered still:

Pretty awesome, huh?  This allows for awesome lighting effects during space combat.

Teaser

By fate, Jeff Graw and I met somewhere on the interwebs.  He was working on his own MoO 1 clone, he has saved up enough so he don't have to work for a while, so he can work on game development full-time.  We got together and discussed about the idea of merging our two projects.  After extensive discussions, we agreed that this is the best course of action.  As a result, we came up with a new name for the game.  What we gain from merging is:

His multi-platform (developed in Unity with C# scripts) that can be published for Linux, Mac, and Windows

His fantastic 3D graphics/UI

My nearly complete game logic

With those two combined, we solved the three main issues that Beyond Beyaan faced:

No multi-platform support

Unattractive graphics (I personally liked the pixel art, but it's not for everyone)

Non-descriptive name of game. (Beyond Beyaan doesn't imply a grand 4X game)

Plus the development will go along a lot faster due to Unity's support of C#, and Jeff being a full-time game developer solely for this game while I will continue to work as a hobbyist.

It is now my pleasure to introduce the new project going forward, Dominus Galaxia!

More details will be forthcoming shortly.

Progress report Oct 30, 2014

We have great news to share. Our team continues to work on BB. Currently Laszlo is spearheading the technical upgrades to make BB cross platform.

I quote one of his many contributions:

"I vote for using QT.
Here is why:
- support for Mac,Win,Linux, Android, IOS, Raspberry Pi (SFML is only for Desktop currently, but it is under development)
- good support in Linux repos
- high level abstraction or low level programming is also possible
- good documentation, a lot of examples
- Qt is complete framework, not just OpenGl wrapper:
- easy to install IDE for all Desktop platforms
- GUI description language with easy syntax ( QML )
- support in qml: buttons, lists, sprite, animated sprite with smooth transition, web browser, video, image, rotation, transition,...
- new QML objects can be implemented in C++
- javascript scripting
- sound wrapper
- build system (like CMake)
- and so on....
- you can also embed SFML widgets in QML programs! So this is also an option.

Disadvantage:
- the performance can be slow because of the high abstraction but I think there is not much animation in BB

Pros:
- it makes easy for new developers to start using it
- it is productive for GUI development.
- we can achive better results later, if new components are developed for QT.
With SFML only we have to implement each GUI feature".

He already implemented several demos including screens, custom buttons, galaxy windows, and stars. So far so good, but too early to declare full success for all platforms.

So we are moving from C# to C++ and use QT runtime environment for now unless we find a dead end or major performance problem. We maintain open source repo.

Meanwhile Brent and I had lots of discussions and made some key changes in design and have early implemenations, such as hex based space battle.

Ivan contributes with technical expertise, experience, and testing for now.

In addition, I have searched for and hired 2 master composers who agreed to compose original music for this game. Fingers crossed that they will actually deliver as promised.

So everything is heading in the right direction, but please volunteer if you think that you can help and feel the burning desire like us to do something good about this project. We do it in our free time as a service to the community and our progress is slow.

GSSB race done!

The artist just finished another race, bringing up the total races to 12.  The 13th and last race is currently being worked on.  Here's a look at the new race, called "GSSB".  It parodies the fact that if aliens are female, they must be attractive, thereby humanoid with distinct human features, with one or two minor differences such as color of skin or some other such cosmetic feature.  Note, this is not intended to be derogatory toward women, but rather, how female aliens are portrayed in older sci-fi games and shows.

I nearly called them Orions in a nod to both Star Trek's Orions and the name of Master of Orion, but realized that there's already another race called Morions, and it would be only a difference of one letter.  So I'm going with GSSB which stands for Green Skinned Space Babes.  However, I'm open to suggestions for other names.

This race is equivalent to Master of Orion 2's Elerians.

Pudelhunds, Linux, and C++, oh my!

Good news, everyone!

Laszlo (the Linux programmer) and I investigated different approaches to C# and C++ that would be cross-platform.  C# was a major pain in the butt porting over to Linux (I couldn't even set up the Windows version of the test program that Laszlo threw together for Linux).  So we felt that even if we manage to get it working, it'd detract many potential contributers away with over-complicated setup requirements.  So we decided to look at C++ alternatives.  Laszlo found a very good alternative, SFML, that is almost identical to the Gorgon engine that I was using in terms of framework and way it handles things.  The only thing missing is word-wrap functionality.  We're currently looking at a third-party GUI library, but if it don't work out, we'll add the functionality ourselves.

I've created a test SFML branch to test various features that will be required for Beyond Beyaan to work (shaders, image manipulations, text drawing, etc).  Both Laszlo and I was able to run the same code on both Linux and Windows.  So once we've finished investigating the GUI library, we'll start converting Beyond Beyaan into C++, and also test on Mac.

Ivan Kravarscan has also offered to join in the development efforts, so please welcome him!  Also, I'm giving Arpad access to post posts on the blog, so expect to hear from him from time to time.

Last bit of news, the artist finished the Pudelhunds race artwork (They're the Gnolams equivalent).  Here's a preview!  They're mafia-esque, with ships inspired by old popular mafia cars used in Chicago.  Yes, the pudelhund in portrait is holding a tommy gun :)

Fleet Overview Screen done

The UI layout for Fleet Overview screen is done.  I just need to hook up mouse events and add a dialog for confirming of scrapping ships to both Fleet Overview and Fleet Specification screens, then I'm moving on to Diplomacy and Ground Combat.  After which there'll be only Space Combat and Random Events left, along with general bug fixing, UI tweaks, and minor feature implementations.

The discussion on cross-platform and what to do is still ongoing.  We've discovered that OpenTK works pretty well (Remember the ReMoO project that I started a few years ago?  Laszlo was able to run it after simply updating references in MonoDevelop).  So we might stick with C# but convert to OpenTK.  We're determining which of the two choices (C++ and 2D engine, or C# and OpenTK) we should pursue at this point.

Finally, here's a screenshot of the Fleet Overview:

The idea is that you can click any fleet, and it'll take you to that fleet in the galaxy view.

Fleet Specs and Git

We've got several exciting news!

Arpad invited his friend, Laszlo Gerecs, to help with the programming aspect of Beyond Beyaan.  Laszlo is a Linux developer, and we're currently discussing what direction we should take with Beyond Beyaan.  I believe that we will convert it over to C++ for easier crossplatform development (Linux, Windows, and Mac), but the discussions are still ongoing.

We've also decided to move the source over to git, so from now on, you can find the source code and assets from here: https://github.com/Beyonders.  We will clean up the source files and assets so they match open source format (Assets will be in their own repository, with source code separate in another repository).  You may notice that we have "Mono".  This was an attempt to see if Mono is feasible for our crossplatform goal, but turned out to be difficult to set up.  Hence our discussion if we should go the C++ route.

The code will still be on SVN at google code, but it's depreciated and won't be used anymore.  It's there for reference (I still have the UI XML and other nifty features that I ripped out in there).

I also worked on Beyond Beyaan a bit, and finished up the Fleet Specs window, the one where it displays if you're trying to add a new design but you have six designs already.  Here's a screenshot (For reference, the old one is seen here):