Stellar Emperor Alpha testing

Stellar Emperor Alpha testing. Builds may have a short period of working operation. Gameplay operations may change drastically from day to day. Feel free to join in the testing.
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Cossid
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Stellar Emperor Alpha testing

Post by Cossid »

Greetings pilots.

Despite the lack of news, progress has been fairly steady in recent months. The general mechanics of flight are coming together rather well. I'm finally ready to expand the alpha process to start getting a little bit more feedback. The alpha process is meant to implement missing features, and better shape the current features.

If you are interested in helping out with the alpha process, you are free to join. I have started a wiki for development located at http://devwiki.stellaremperor.com which will contain an up-to-date link for current alpha versions. It will also have notes on sections of areas in progress. I encourage anybody testing to edit any pages as needed (you need to register an account to be able to edit). I will also try to post notifications when new builds go up in a thread in this forum.

If you are reporting a bug (such as something that causes a crash), please reply to the forum thread corresponding to that client version.
If you want to give suggestions or offer corrections to any aspects, please put that on the wiki as those types of items may not stay version specific.

As of the time of this post, the following items are mostly implemented in a "it works" type of way:
  • Ship movement, including redlining and energy/heat, and mouse-driven interface
  • Radio
  • Planet establishing/abandoning & surveying
  • Ship visibility
  • Galaxy & Prov maps with star locating
  • Probes (not yet using energy)
  • Shields (currently instant changes, no temperature changes)
  • Local library of visited stars
Things currently in works:
  • Drydock system
Things in queue:
  • Combat (lasers/torpedoes/missiles)
  • Planetary attacks
  • Team management
So if you are interested in helping out and giving feedback, you are welcome to join!
--Willis 324402
--Cossid AKA Caleb
setalon
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Re: Stellar Emperor Alpha testing

Post by setalon »

Nice....pretty smooth. established a few bases...and fly around abit:) I like it:)
thevisad
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Re: Stellar Emperor Alpha testing

Post by thevisad »

Hey, I am a game developer/gameshost now and seriously interested in helping out and even hosting a server if at all possible. I was an avid player of the SE game and seriously loved the gameplay. I think this would definitely be a bonus on our servers at http://www.hngamers.com. I look forward to hearing from you guys!

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Cossid
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Re: Stellar Emperor Alpha testing

Post by Cossid »

There will be a new war running starting on Friday night at 8:30 PM CDT, 9:30 PM EDT which will run through 11:00 PM CDT, 12:00AM EDT July 29th.

I will have a new client to download before the launch of the galaxy. Still no improvements on combat, but I'm putting in radio rooms and will start structuring team management and scoreboard menus, and possibly PM menus as well. Combat implementations will come in small doses over the course of the war.
--Cossid AKA Caleb
thevisad
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Re: Stellar Emperor Alpha testing

Post by thevisad »

Willis wrote:There will be a new war running starting on Friday night at 8:30 PM CDT, 9:30 PM EDT which will run through 11:00 PM CDT, 12:00AM EDT July 29th.

I will have a new client to download before the launch of the galaxy. Still no improvements on combat, but I'm putting in radio rooms and will start structuring team management and scoreboard menus, and possibly PM menus as well. Combat implementations will come in small doses over the course of the war.

Willis, keep me in the loop if you like and if you want I can lend some of my development resources to the project. I have the following stuff that I use constantly and to be honest was thinking about using my Game Engine to create a 3d version.

Privately hosted SVN system with 20+ projects
Privately hosted Project Management system using the Project Overlord system (made by game designers for game designers)
Torque 3D Game Engine
Tons of other resources!

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Cossid
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Re: Stellar Emperor Alpha testing

Post by Cossid »

Thanks for the offer, I'll keep that in mind in the future.

I currently have a personal server in my residence that is completely dedicated to this project, which contains SVN, and all the required server modules and software, so I'm set there for the time being. Since this is currently a 1-man project, a wiki is sufficient for project management.

Due to this project's history and my own programming knowledge, everything is currently being built on C# .NET technologies, including server/client communications. This does narrow capabilities somewhat, in terms of platforms and clients, but I feel at this point it will cover the vast majority of potential players. Unfortunately, this rules out using engines that cannot communicate well with managed code. Also, it is still my feeling that SE wouldn't see a large benefit from a 3D engine. The game is designed to be a top-down view, and 3D won't help much. 2D is good enough to get the ball rolling, and I will look into top-down 3D in the future, but it is far too early at this point, but game programming is only a hobby for me, so I have very little experience with 3D programming.

After 2 years of off and on hobby programming, I'll just be happy to get something together that is relatively complete and relatively close to the original.
--Cossid AKA Caleb
thevisad
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Re: Stellar Emperor Alpha testing

Post by thevisad »

Completely understandable and unfortunately my C# is very shaky, C++ is a bit better, not much though. I am seriously interested in this though and want to play in the next war. I played the first couple of wars on the old client and a war or two on the new client (I really did not like the new client and the changes they made).

Anyways, I would love to see the server running 24/7 and again would absolutely love to be part of the redesign of this game in any way I can.

TV
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Cossid
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Re: Stellar Emperor Alpha testing

Post by Cossid »

Well, when I run a war, it is for it's entirety, however there currently isn't any combat or planet attacking, so all you can do is scout and pm.

As for the client, I started on 0.16 in open beta test in fall of 1997, played pretty extensively through the closed beta, and on and off through out 1.02's run on Gamestorm which ended somewhere in 2000. The client I am creating is a bit of a mixture of the two. The biggest problem most had with the 1.02 version wasn't functionality, but rather that it could be quite difficult to tell the difference between ship classes, many looked quite similar. At this point, I haven't invested into artwork yet, so all ships are just a twinky shape (modeled after the 0.16 scout ship) but use different colors for classification, but this will change once functionality is complete.
--Cossid AKA Caleb
thevisad
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Re: Stellar Emperor Alpha testing

Post by thevisad »

Lol, yeah keep the old ship look... I liked that a lot better then the newer designs. Keep up the great work here, I will definitely be in your next war. I will try to get all my mates at HNGamers involved in as well :D
Arkangel
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Re: Stellar Emperor Alpha testing

Post by Arkangel »

when is the next war i feel like a junkie needing a fix???
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Re: Stellar Emperor Alpha testing

Post by beaker »

There currently is one going arkie ;)
if there isn't one when you want to test and such, just send willis a good ol pm to pester his lack of game :P
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Cossid
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Re: Stellar Emperor Alpha testing

Post by Cossid »

Yes, I've been keeping wars going continually, either 1 or 2 week wars until I get something where competition is possible, at which point I'll change active war rotations.

Currently it is running, but there is no planet attacks or combat, and because of this, the player base is pretty much non-existent. I'll keep this place updated when additions of planet attacks and combat occur.
--Cossid AKA Caleb
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Re: Stellar Emperor Alpha testing

Post by WarpRat »

I tried out 0.4.0 I loved floating in and out of Hyper..Great stuff. Please keep up the good work.
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