Where to start

W

Waxman

Spaceman
I love the wing commander universe and I have some experience in making games.
So I want to make a WC style game. Since others own the title and the engine and I don't wish to waste the time and money acquiring either, and frankly. neither is required. The name Wing Commander is great for Notoriety but is not required for this except for tradition. The engine is so out-of-date it would require a major overhaul just to bring it current

This is a big community so someone has to know how to do an engine. I am not trying to lead this. I want this to be a community effort. Who is with me

List of projects I have done
Mechwarrior 4 Mercenaries clan wars, Mercnet Online/ Single player campain maps. mutiplayer maps.

Freelancer arizona mod
Freelancer New Beginnings
Intro to Freelancer Privayeer the reckoning mod by Warzog

Current Projects
Tempered Storms: Project Lead main writer

MercNet Studios Founder
 
I recall a while ago someone making a Wing Commander 1/2 engine that could use the original assets. I don't know what happened to it.

Have you looked into Flight Commander (easy) or Vega Strike (hard) as possible engines?
 
The most successful fan games so far have been Unknown Enemy and Standoff. You may want to ask those guys what to use.
 
Yeah, that was a bit harsh.

I'm just tired of certain posters using every subject to tell everyone how incredibly super-awesome Standoff is. Don't get me wrong, Standoff really is an amazing mod, it's just something you'd expect from creepy Vegastrike fans.
 
Dyret said:
Yeah, that was a bit harsh.

I'm just tired of certain posters using every subject to tell everyone how incredibly super-awesome Standoff is. Don't get me wrong, Standoff really is an amazing mod, it's just something you'd expect from creepy Vegastrike fans.
Click to expand...

No, Vegastrike fans would be telling you that your mod should be run in Vegastrike than it would be incredibly super-awesome.
 
Dyret said:
I'm just tired of certain posters using every subject to tell everyone how incredibly super-awesome Standoff is.
Click to expand...
I don't see any post in this thread saying that Standoff is super-awesome, just a post that suggests the original poster to ask the makers of UE and Standoff about their experience with Vision. I don't know why you got that impression.

About the engine choice: Vision isn't super complicated nor difficult at all; however since building a game for Vision means modding WCP/SO, it's mostly limited to the tasks and abilities of an old engine. The choice to use Vision of not entirely depends on what you want to achieve: If you want to make a WC-esque game, have the power to do whatever you want with it and have super awesome graphics, Vision if not the way to go. To use Vision you gotta accept to live with it's limitations... if you do, you have a great engine to work with that actually feels like WC right out of your first build.

Personnaly I love working with Vision, but other member of my own team don't feel this way... but ultimately I feel it suited UE and Standoff just fine.

You can consider using the Vegastrike, Flight Commander or Freespace engines like other projects did, and it'll be fine. None is perfect, so I guess it a matter of choosing what suits you better. Just start with making a list of what you want to achieve, and ask around to see which engine can let you implement the features at the top of your list.

As for making a new engine from scratch, it's a huge endeavor for a community of fans... possible, but big, hard project. If you want to consider it you have to start off on the basis that you'd most likely make it on your own, like Eddie and is Flight Commander engine.
 
Eh, it seems like anytime someone pops up and says "Let's do this project, I don't want to lead it", it usually ends up being that that someone isn't terribly interested in doing the actual work required to do something so ambitious in the first place.

Cool idea, great community spirit, but I don't forsee a real start, much less a completion. That said, you're more than welcome to prove me wrong.
 
PopsiclePete said:
I don't see any post in this thread saying that Standoff is super-awesome, just a post that suggests the original poster to ask the makers of UE and Standoff about their experience with Vision. I don't know why you got that impression.
Click to expand...

Yeah, this wasn't the place for me to bring it up.
 
My team has already created on engine for a game and that did take time.
This project is only in startup phase so it's all talk right now.
MercNet Studios does intend to do this project. So far on the new website that is going up the project is unnamed but it is a wc privateer style game.

I run the studio, I have a lot of vision but I am limited by a disability so that is why I said I do not wish to run it. Still most of my time is website related.
Having an engine that is already done would expedite production
So if you would like to help with anything, art, environment, music, writing, webdesign, anything at all. please send an e-mail to wax@mercnetstudios.com with a list of skills. why you like the series. and some kind of example of your work.

Joshua "Waxman"Stalcup
MercNet Studios founder
 
Waxman said:
Please visit the website at Mercnetstudios.com
Click to expand...

It sounds like what your trying to do is already happening. Check out Wing Commander Pioneer here.

That's a pretty neat site, especially that girl who acts like she has a clue about what she's talking about. Image gallery? Heh.

EDIT: Ah, you didn't personal make the layout, shame, it's really cool.
 
Ah you visited no I did not make the flash templates yet. Still a wip , but I thought it best to have something up.
 
Dyret said:
Why, cause the vison engine would be so super perfect for a Privateer game?
Click to expand...
It's actually feasible and, although it might not turn out as great as Gemini Gold, it would turn out better than the bazillion projects who are announced with nothing to show for themselves and disappear after one week. :p This is the reason everyone always brings up Standoff or UE into these conversations - not because we make "super-awesome" games, but because we do make them at all, with the tools we have at our disposal, investing our free time and coming up with our own assets.

That is in contrast to coming up with a great idea for a mod, putting up a website, claiming that you will eventually pull through although you know it will be a huge undertaking.... and then proceeding to post here asking other people to help you make your game. Well, forgive me for not being impressed by this after witnessing the same thing amount to nothing over and over again, in the 8 years since I've started frequenting these forums. None of these people ever got anywhere, as good as their intentions were.

The history of this community has shown me that the people who did get anywhere are the ones who have given the community something, before they asked for something. Chris Knudsen wanted an ASCII version of Privateer, so he went and basically coded a whole damn game by himself, instead of asking someone to do it for him. HCl, Pedro and Pierre keep finding new ways to push a 10-year-old engine its beyond what everyone else thought were hard limits, instead of complaining about how old it is. Myself, as well as the Saga art team, or Howard Day from Pioneer, dedicated ourselves to creating practically the entirety of the art for our games, instead of butchering up Origin's original work or expecting random volunteers on the internet to provide us with their models and textures. Etc.

That's why we get brought up in these conversations. Because the community's respect is earned, and not given... and sadly, out of every billion projects that are announced, only one or two get to earn it. Not by being super-awesome games (they don't even need to be finished games) but by giving people some degree of good old fashioned Wing Commander fun, even if just from looking at cool screenshots or concept art, or from playing a one-mission demo, before we ask anything of them.
 
Eder said:
It's actually feasible
Click to expand...

I think someone who know their way around the vision engine (Quarto? Pete? HCl?) said it wasn't in some thread, but that's probably a long time ago, so I don't know.

This is the reason everyone always brings up Standoff or UE into these conversations
Click to expand...

And they should, as I said, this was the wrong thread for me to bring it up. Where it bothers me is in the "favorite wc game", "favorite character" threads, ect. Sure, it's an amazingly well made mod (not a game, though), and sure Spoons can be your favorite WC character, just don't be a weird fanboy about. In all fairness though, I've only seen one or two posters ever doing it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top