Battlecruiser / Universal Combat

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Battlecruiser / Universal Combat

D_Smart: May 11, 2010; by FactsAreUseless; College Slice

I designed and started to develop my first game, Battlecruiser 3000AD, back in the late eighties. You all know the history surrounding the first game, which was released while still in late Beta by Take Two. So no need to rehash that. You can read more about that and more, in this blog.

After I went to Interplay to release v2.0 of the game, and which did very well, I went back to think outside the box in an attempt to finish my original ideas which I couldn't do at the time due to lack of tech, inexperience in some areas etc. In the interim, I released two more titles, Battlecruiser Millennium and Battlecruiser Millennium Gold while still working on other tech.

The culmination of those efforts, led to Universal Combat released through Dreamcatcher in 2004. I renamed the franchise because the publisher felt that the "Battlecruiser" name was too tainted as being niche, the drama of the original release still loomed etc. I rejected a bunch of names (e.g. Battleforce) they came up with. So as a compromise, I settled for Universal Combat seeing as I had moved the game from a single carrier (the Battlecruiser) to the command of every single asset (ship, vehicle etc) in the game IP, along with adding full blown fps on planets.

The game did well, and so I continued to work on improving it, thus leading for four derivative works in the Universal Combat IP.

Due to the direction that the industry was going in, and seeing as game dev became more and more expensive, while not yielding the same financial rewards as the past, I decided to retire the Battlecruiser/Universal Combat IP. To that end, in 2009 I released a compilation of all the games in both IP, as Universal Combat Collectors Edition.

That same year, have branched off to do a fighter combat game for Turner's GameTap service as Galactic Command Echo Squad, I ported the graphics and other updates from that more modern GCES engine kernel into UCCE and released it as Universal Combat Collectors Edition v2.0, but without multiplayer (too much work for very little gain).

I have always had a fondness for that original IP; but unfortunately it became clear that the decline of the space combat genre, not to mention complex games themselves, was not exactly going to be something to spend money on if the core audience simply wasn't there anymore.

Then 2012 came around and for some reason a bunch of space combat games started to appear. Including that on-going train wreck Star Citizen, as well as the outstanding Elite Dangerous.

Though they were getting all the attention even though neither one was really doing anything different or which I hadn't done before, I was already committed to doing Line Of Defense (SA thread) which I started designing since 2009 and which went into development in 2010.

Then people started contacting me and asking why I was MIA from the great "space combat game resurgence". Including my old fans.

So I went back and cleaned up UCCE v2.0, added a bunch of new stuff to it. Then released it for free on Steam in order to gauge interest.

The response was enough to convince me to, at the very least, go back and overhaul the old gal. Also, I wanted to prove to those Star Citizen White Knight assholes who kept harassing me, that they game they were attacking me over, wasn't doing anything groundbreaking, that I'd done all before - though at much lower visual fidelity - and thus knew the challenges that awaited them. Plus, they didn't have the tech that I had built from the ground up and which completely overshadowed anything croberts could possible dream up.

That interest led me to draw up plans for, not a new game, but a complete overhaul of the UCCE 2.0 graphics, fix some underlying nagging bugs, tweak a few features etc and add a few features that had gone into the All Aspects games.

That was how Universal Combat - The Lyrius Conflict came about. And I branched the entire engine suite to v3.0x that it's now on. Then I released it on Steam Early Access as a $29.99 DLC for those who want to follow the development through to release, via regular updates. I will be increasing the price to $60 at the end of the Early Access period.

In keeping with the tradition of the original Battlecruiser game, it is still the most advanced space combat game ever built; and is the only space combat game to date that has a complete modeling of an entire capital ship command, complete with crew modeling, persistent space/planetary universe etc. Even though it is still a massive sandbox, it still has various open-ended missions which take place in space and on planets.

Nobody - to date - has ever built this sort of tech or this type of game. And they won't because it takes decades of toil, research and experience to do it. And it's costly.

Apparently even $100m isn't enough. But that's largely due to the incompetent clown they gave the money to.

The premise of the original Battlecruiser 3000AD game still holds true today, but amplified by x100 due to the slew of options and new tech implemented over the years and right up to the 2009 Universal Combat CE.

quote:

Total command and control

Command and control a military Battlecruiser complete with manual flight control of 4 fighters, 4 shuttlecrafts, 4 all terrain vehicles in space and over gorgeous planetary landscapes. Assign orders to over 150 ship personnel including officers, engineers, medics, marines and fighter pilots. Mine planets and moons. Attack space and planetary targets using fighters, all terrain vehicles or marines. Deploy or extract personnel and items from space or planets. Orchestrate invasions in any part of a huge game galaxy including strikes against space borne starstations. Order your ships and personnel using a variety of commands such as search and destroy, strike, escort, defend and many more. Use transporters to beam personnel to and from surface strike zones. Attack surface assets from space using devastating orbit to surface weaponry. Launch probes to remote regions to gather intel and stage your attacks. Trade hundreds of items with dozens of stations and bases.
Immense, fully-dynamic universe

Features a fully dynamic and evolving universe with over 13 alien races, including the feared Gammulans and irritating Vesperons. Interact with 25 castes including military, raiders, assassins, scientists, traders, diplomats etc. Each with a unique agenda. Visit 25 starsystems containing 75 planets and 145 moons all modeled in 3D. Traverse this huge universe using wormholes, jump gates and other anomalies. Search asteroid fields for cargo pods or lure your attackers in and watch them die. Soar above the cloud layers of Earth, drive over the craters of the Moon and Mars or explore the vast rings of Saturn complete with rocks and debris. Visit a variety of moons and planets with different topologies, climate zones, cities, bases and other attractions. Watch in real time as the Sun goes down, night falls and stars fill the sky. Explore planets or space regions for days on end with no restrictions or limitations. Observe as this huge universe evolves around you and continues to evolve regardless of your actions. Visit regions as alien nations wage war on each other or watch such skirmishes as military ships engaging in combat against raiders threatening traders, diplomats and other harmless castes. Join in the fray or cloak your ship and go about your business undetected. Destroy stations and other surface based assets and observe as they are rebuilt over time and reinforced with more advanced components. A universe like none other in any game this side of the known universe.

The first fully-modeled starship

The first fully modeled starship. Access a variety of computer systems for personnel control, engineering repairs, tactical command, cargo manipulation, communications, navigation, power allocation etc. Repair and upgrade your ship systems with a detailed parts database containing dozens of components. Observe your crew as they move between decks or get stuck and take injury at locations with broken decks. Monitor their stats including artificial intelligence, fatigue, health and a variety of other attributes. Personnel move to a myriad of ship locations including their quarters, the galley, bridge, engineering etc. Watch your marines spring into action as they go in search of escaped prisoners or engage in combat with intruders that board your ship. Evacuate your personnel from decks that are subject to radiation due to reactor core breaches or quarantine your away teams that come back with infectious diseases. Clone dead officers from stored DNA signatures or hire marines and engineers at starstations. Stock up on rations or watch your personnel die of hunger. Assign your combat pilots to fighters or your marines to all terrain vehicles based on skill. With access to this complex ship, an awesome array of weaponry and a dedicated crew, the decisions you make can mean the difference between life and death as you assume full command control of your ship and crew.

Decide how you play

Most games lock you into a linear plot and if you manage to break free and finish the game, you have no choice but to shelve the game and go in search of another to fill the void. In this game you decide how you play, short term, long term or forever. The choice is yours and the variations are endless. With three unique modes of play, you can choose to either wander the universe as a Commander in Earth�s galactic force, Galactic Command, carrying out your duty of maintaining law and order in allied territories or explore the vast reaches of space. You make your own rules but step out of line and face a court-martial or worse, make a bad decision and your crew die. Decide what you want to do, where you want to go and how you�re going to carry out your goals. Do you invade a planet today or join an NPC controlled force as they attack an enemy station deep in hostile territory? Do you mine for valuable Iridium or do you destroy hostile assets for experience points that eventually lead to increase in the ranks? You can also join a campaign in the Advanced Campaign Mode scenario consisting of a series of missions that are directly affected by the ever changing universe. You can either follow the mission path or ignore orders and move on to the next task in the campaign. To get you going and hone your combat skills, enter Xtreme Carnage and take on space and planetary hostiles as you familiarize yourself with the operation of your fighters. The choice is yours, either way, one day, you�re going to die. You may as well die with a medal and for a good cause.

So if you are playing Universal Combat CE v2.0 on Steam, you are playing the original Battlecruiser 3000AD on steroids and with over two decades of technology improvements and tweaks.

That's how you build this kind of game. You can't do it all in one shot. And that's why I have made the comments about Star Citizen since my first blog in July.

My plan for this DLC is to completely upgrade the graphics engine, fine tune the GUI, replace the entire asset database with new and improved models for every single model in the game. This includes characters, weapons, vehicles, aircraft, planetary buildings, starbases, stations etc. Everything. Since all my games share the same IP, newer assets from more recent games such as All Aspect Warfare / Angle Of Attack, as well as Line Of Defense, will be used so as not to have to re-create them from scratch. And the planetary terrain engine, which is procedural btw, isn't going to be replaced because it works just fine. However, all the texture assets are going to be replaced with higher quality versions.

One thing I would like to do is add a 3D bridge to the game. With 28 capital (transport, carrier, cruiser) ships in the game, it's a lot of work, but it's just one of those things that you either do it or you don't. I would have like to build all of these capital ships similar to the multi-deck Starguard carrier we built for Line Of Defense, but that's over $600K to build all of them; and I don't have $100m of other people's money to do it with. So with the 3D bridge, at least you get a more immersive feel.

Depending on how things go with this Lyrius Conflict DLC (aka UCCE v3.0x) which I hope to complete and release by end of 2016, I will then do Universal Combat Advanced in which, using the UCCE v3.0x engine kernel, build all 28 capital ships, and all stations so that from start to finish, the entire game takes place in first person mode like in LOD. This will allow commanders to run through their ship fighting alongside their NPC marine crew against intruders. Also with the ability to board other ships (since all will be build in 3D now) and stations. With at least 128 client multiplayer, similar to what I did with All Aspect Warfare/Angle Of Attack. Not an MMO as that's too much work.

Make no mistake, at no point in time am I ever going to dumb down these Battlecruiser/Universal Combat games. They will remain as complex and niche as they have always been, and with zero compromises on my part.

Game Info
Game Docs
Game Commands
Game Tutorial
Galaxy Map (color)
Galaxy Map Links (color)
Galaxy Map (standard)
Game Cheat Codes
Game Galaxy Maps
Game Appendix
Changelog // v2x paid & freeware
Changelog // v3x The Lyrius Conflict DLC

Sometimes Steam client won't run the executable that creates shortcuts to the above docs. This KB article shows how to manually install it.

If you prefer the Blackness of space, download this skybox file and copy it into the .\gfx folder. Be sure to rename the existing skybox.zip file in there! This file works with both the freeware and The Lyrius Conflict DLC.

Also Captain Lazychan has a slew of mods and tutorial videos.

D_Smart fucked around with this message at 04:07 on Jan 3, 2016

# ¿ Dec 6, 2015 21:20

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 16:43

D_Smart: May 11, 2010; by FactsAreUseless; College Slice

Universal Combat posts culled from other threads

quote:

Sarsapariller posted:

Quality is not very good, but I made you a video. This is showing tech that I developed back in the nineties and which is currently on which UCCE v2.0 (free on Steam) is based.

https://vimeo.com/147947830

The quality is not very good (the original was about 3.5GB and I didn't have time to mess with Handbrake settings), but you should get the gist of it in terms of scale, real-time and hyperjump travel, seamless space/planetary (not some fake sphere) etc.

And yeah, though not shown in the video, you can also EVA from your ship. In space. And fly around with a weapon. Walk around on top of your ship, station etc.

quote:

Omi-Polari posted:
Derek, in Universal Combat is there a way to warp to a waypoint or a specific user-determined point in a system, say with using TACOPS? Or can you just warp to planets, moons, stations, etc.?

Yes. I showed it in the video actually.

Just set a waypoint in Tacops. Then you can either fly there manually (good luck if it's far away) or have the auto-pilot do it. And if it's a distant point, it is intelligent enough to use hyperspace intelligently.

Just this week I added the ability for the ship's auto-pilot (AI powered) to use hyperspace to jump to a waypoint. This is in the 3.x engine build which is currently undergoing a major graphics upgrade for 2016 release.

Previously, since the entire game world is "real" space with no cheating, instancing, sharding or any of that crap, it would fly at top speed without using hyperspace. Considering that each of those "known space"* regions is over 1m km across, well, you'd be there awhile.

You can fly anywhere using real space. You only really need to use hyperjump for long distance travel. And even so, the world is still being updated in real-time. You can jump to any target, regardless of what it is. If you can select a target on radar, you can jump to it.

* If you go outside the Tacops grid, you're still in the world, but it's considered uncharged "null space". So I had placed a convenient jump anomaly in there to return to known space because people were getting lost.

quote:

Sarsapariller posted:
You know, I watched this- and it's interesting how the people who bag on you the most tend to go after your games, when they are surprisingly similar to Star Citizen in their ambition and scope. From the video, it seems like with all the stability concerns out of the way, the UI is the major thing holding it back. It feels kind of dwarf fortressy- like there's a whole world of stuff being simulated under the hood, but the game doesn't really have a great method of displaying it to the player (or to give them a way to affect it meaningfully). I feel like if you took an engine like this, narrowed down the range of information presented to something that the player could meaningfully understand and base decisions on, and gave it a bit of a visual pass, it'd be quite popular.

Beyond that it seems like the greatest difference is that Star Citizen is trying to represent the player's first-person perspective at all times. Other space sims have let you go to first-person some of the time, but SC is the first one (that I know of) that uses it exclusively at all times. I'm not saying this is a good or a bad thing, but I suspect it is what makes a lot of the technical challenges significantly worse. At the same time it also makes the sense of scale much more apparent when doing something like running around on a ship or station. It's an interesting design choice.

Yeah, the UI in my games have always been a bit of an issue. But once you accept the fact that it's different, it gets easier with time.

The biggest issue is that the game has so many options that there is no other way to slim down the UI, while still presenting relevant info to the player. But I am going to overhaul the UI in the UCCE 3.0 DLC because I'm going to convert it to use Flash (via Iggy, which I use in LOD) and that will give more options for visual fidelity, slimming it down etc.

And yes, Star Citizen isn't doing anything revolutionary in terms of tech. It's just mostly fps and a high visual fidelity (which is going to be a serious problem if they ever finish the game and with all features as promised). But then again, I'm doing the same fps type thing in LOD, but without the in-your-face interactive bullshit (because realism) that doesn't add anything to the gameplay. At the end of the day, smoke and mirrors tend to wear off quickly, leaving you wondering where the hell the game is.

As to sense of scale, you do realize that LOD has massive stations - and an entire multi-deck carrier right? True fact: that carrier can be flown. I just don't allow it in LOD.

quote:

Omi-Polari posted:
Hmm. It might be a bug. Hitting F9 and going into 3rd person and *then* jumping into hyperspace takes me out of 3rd person and back into 1st (but no HUD, though I can toggle it back with F1), and hitting F9 while in hyperspace also takes me to a view that's similar to hitting F3 (it's at a slightly different angle, but basically the same view -- maybe my ship is just invisible?). However, F10 seems to work fine for radar targets in hyperspace.

In your video, it looks like you're watching your ship as it blasts through the system at hyperspeed. That's cool as hell.

I have the DLC.

Yeah, I like 90s games and never played any of yours back in the day, and this thread got me interested. It really is a huge, underrated game for its time. The look and the UI will turn people off but whatever. I've just been tinkering around with it in roam mode, learning systems, etc. And ... it's hard. But that's the point. Enemy boarding parties will sabotage your ship, then steal a shuttlecraft and make a getaway. You'll win a battle only to come out of it shot to hell and drifting while on fire.

Edit:

Ah, it kinda looks like this. I skipped ahead to when he goes into hyperspace. But I'll try to upload a video of my own later and will post it here. (Also Lazy Chan's videos are good tutorials for the basics.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6utp9H55TA&t=494s

It's not a bug. Those are all valid camera views but with different camera types. In fact, F9 and F10 have multiple views which you can cycle through while pressing the keys. See p5 of the game keys.

When you are in hyperspace, the ship is invisible. The parts (around 3:30 and beyond) where I was looking around at the ship, and it was visible, that's real space; though moving very - very - fast because I had my finger on the thrust.

Also, ships that are in hyperspace have a Blue box visible in the HUD or in Tacops. That's why when you click on them, there is nothing to see.

And yeah, intruders are a pest. Some (depending on AI) will just sabotage poo poo and leave. Others will steal poo poo and either transport out back to their ship (if still around) or steal one of your fighters or shuttles and bugger off. The assholes who steal all your valuable cargo, are the worst because they come heavily armed and can take out all your marines.

You can go to PERSCAN and enjoy the fun as they play hide and seek with your marines through the entire ship. That's a completely separate AI tech running the crew simulation. Which is why the crew can get tired, go off-station, go eat, get rested etc. It's all simulated in real-time and runs completely independently of what is going on in the outside world or other parts of the ship. That's why in the video, I sent a team to the transporter, then beamed them to the planet surface. That's how you go on away missions. And if you beam a team of marines into the middle of hostile territory, you can leave them there to battle it out, while you observe from Tacops or just bugger off and go do something else. The game won't stop because the *entire* galaxy (space and planets) runs in real-time. No instancing. No sharding. No bullshit.

Once I built that engine, all I did was build the games (Battlecruiser which morphed into Universal Combat once I added fps and a bunch of other crap) on top of it. Which is the reason why I needed to build a new engine for LOD because this legacy engine just didn't have the graphics prowess for that game and it would have taken way too much time to retool that (because of the planets) and I would lose a lot of functionality that just works.

So I figured that the best way to preserve the old gal (BC/UC), was to give it a graphics boost (engine, redo ALL the assets, fx etc), while retaining all that ground-breaking tech. That's why no new features are promised in that DLC.

Though one thing I always wanted to do, was add the 3D cockpits (from All Aspect Warfare / Angle Of Attack) to all the crafts. That would allow me to also have 3D bridges for all the capital (carrier, cruiser, transport) ships in the game. If you have seen Into The Stars, then you already have an idea what I am planning. But better. The original BC3K (see below) had that, but it was just a 2D image. If I do it in 3D, you will be able to see bridge personnel go on and off the bridge as they go to other parts of the ship. I'm not going to model the entire ship (like the three deck Starguard carrier in LOD) because that's an exceptional amount of work and will cost over $600K to build all 28 capital ships since each one costs approx $20-$25K to build inside/out like the Starguard in LOD.

# ¿ Dec 6, 2015 21:22

D_Smart: May 11, 2010; by FactsAreUseless; College Slice

Omi-Polari posted:

quote:
D_Smart posted:
Depending on how things go with this Lyrius Conflict DLC (aka UCCE v3.0x) which I hope to complete and release by end of 2016, I will then do Universal Combat Advanced in which, using the UCCE v3.0x engine kernel, build all 28 capital ships so that from start to finish, the entire game takes place in first person mode like in LOD.

One of the things I want to do with this is that, since the whole game is in fps, if you get boarded, you can just grab your weapon and go fight alongside your marines wherever intruders happen to be on your ship.

Also, the most requested feature, the boarding of other ships as well as fps inside all the stations. Just like I did in LOD, but for this far more advanced game.

# ¿ Dec 6, 2015 21:42

D_Smart: May 11, 2010; by FactsAreUseless; College Slice

Hillary Clintons Thong posted:

Derek I could never get anything to happen except CTDs in the free release of BC in like 1997, so as I install this I am asking if I should hook up my joystick or is this mainly mouse driven.

It's been like 20 years since the last time I've tried one of your games I hope it goes better this time!

Yeah, UCCE 2.0 is generations more advanced than that original game. Give it a shot.

Also, note that the freeware version on Steam is using the v2.0 engine, while the DLC using the v3.0 engine which has various improvements and will continue to be updated as development continues through 2016.

# ¿ Dec 6, 2015 21:46

D_Smart: May 11, 2010; by FactsAreUseless; College Slice

Kraven Moorhed posted:

Posting in the same thread as a PC gaming legend.

Never tried one of these and I've always been a sucker for sims (I lusted after Steel Battalion, but the folks never relented). What's your input device/combo of choice for this?

You can use anything you like. It supports keyboard, joystick, mouse and controllers. I prefer joystick of course.

# ¿ Dec 6, 2015 21:47

D_Smart: May 11, 2010; by FactsAreUseless; College Slice

If you prefer the Blackness of space, download this skybox file and copy it into the .\gfx folder. Be sure to rename the existing skybox.zip file in there!

Also Captain Lazychan has a slew of mods and tutorial videos.

# ¿ Dec 6, 2015 21:56

D_Smart: May 11, 2010; by FactsAreUseless; College Slice

Blacktoll posted:

Let me get this out of the way: Will I be able to marry my space waifu of choice? Is there romance? You might be pushing boundaries in the space-war simulator genre but I haven't seen your emotional side, Derek.

Yes, you can. But you would need the multiplayer version of the original UCCE for that, since v2.0 and v3.0 do not have multiplayer.

Since you can deploy yourself and your entire crew onto planets, nothing is stopping you from having a virtual wedding on a planet.

# ¿ Dec 6, 2015 21:58

D_Smart: May 11, 2010; by FactsAreUseless; College Slice

Omi-Polari posted:

quote:
D_Smart posted:
One of the things I want to do with this is that, since the whole game is in fps, if you get boarded, you can just grab your weapon and go fight alongside your marines wherever intruders happen to be on your ship.

Also, the most requested feature, the boarding of other ships as well as fps inside all the stations. Just like I did in LOD, but for this far more advanced game.

This would be awesome, but can you pull this off? That seems like a lot of work and money.

The tech is already there (you have played LOD, right?). It's more about time and money, than it is about the tech.

# ¿ Dec 6, 2015 22:01

D_Smart: May 11, 2010; by FactsAreUseless; College Slice

Hillary Clintons Thong posted:

I'm still downloading this. Can I name my crew members????

Not yet. I am planning on adding that in the DLC since it's also one of the most requested features. It's trivial to do honestly, I just never found the time to do it. I was planning on just adding a text file, then read the user created data from it which then overloads the game's own built-in names. I didn't do it. So the proper way to do it would be from within the game's UI when you are creating a new game. Right now you enter your name and ship's name. In the DLC you would be able to name your crew (all 100+ of them) if you wanted to from that same screen.

# ¿ Dec 6, 2015 22:03

D_Smart: May 11, 2010; by FactsAreUseless; College Slice

BMan posted:

I have played such games as X3TC, DCS World, Falcon BMS, and vanilla Dwarf Fortress. Is this game for me?

Absolutely. Just check out the game manual in the first post

# ¿ Dec 7, 2015 00:51

D_Smart: May 11, 2010; by FactsAreUseless; College Slice

Gilganixon posted:

I'm going to give this a whirl but goddamned if it doesn't look as hard as nails to figure out.

It can be. But once you get the hang of it, it's a breeze. The entire game can be played using only a mouse and keyboard. But you should play the tutorial first.

# ¿ Dec 7, 2015 15:15

D_Smart: May 11, 2010; by FactsAreUseless; College Slice

I finished the new blog (which the first post in this thread is based on).

# ¿ Dec 7, 2015 15:17

D_Smart: May 11, 2010; by FactsAreUseless; College Slice

Agent Escalus posted:

Do you still do most of the programming/art/sound yourself like back in the BC3K days? How much collaboration do you engage in on a project? Any interest in tablet/mobile development, or would you rather leave that up to the Galaxy on Fire crew and similar arcade-like takes on the genre?

Also, any thoughts on the forthcoming VR devices? Any plans for supporting them?

Yeah, I still do quite a bit of programming. Not as much as back in the day though, since I now have various teams and projects to run. I actually wrote a blog about this yesterday.

Since I tend to do all my game design work, act as producer etc, I collaborate quite a bit with my team leads, as well as interface with my content providers (art, modeling, writing, audio etc) on all my projects.

My first foray into mobile/console was with Line Of Defense Tactics, the RTS companion game to Line Of Defense MMO. I had put together a separate team to build that game back in 2013 with Unity4. We shipped it in 2014 for mobile (ios/android) and on PC (where it got lambasted on Steam for being a "mobile port", which it wasn't). I then did a deal with Microsoft and an improved version is coming out on Xbox One this Friday, Dec 11th. This is the trailer for that version https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5p7LzdFlkZc

I have been keeping up to date with VR, but for me, it's still more of a novelty that only the big boys and hobbyists can engage in. I still don't believe that it will go mainstream in games. I actually owned several Occulus devices, but sold them at a tidy profit last year. Naturally if the landscape changes, I will take a closer look. But until then, I simply don't have the time and resources to waste on it.

# ¿ Dec 8, 2015 15:02

D_Smart: May 11, 2010; by FactsAreUseless; College Slice

duck monster posted:

I had UC, god, maybe a decade ago? Was completely mystified by it. But I'm glad it exists Maybe when I get some time I'll have another go, if it still runs.

Yeah, UC first came out in 2004. Don't bother installing that one though. The free UCCE 2.0 on Steam is far more advanced, runs better etc though it has fewer (it's free, and you need the DLC to get all the missions) missions.

# ¿ Dec 8, 2015 15:03

D_Smart: May 11, 2010; by FactsAreUseless; College Slice

Omi-Polari posted:

Here's a question. How did the different main battlecruisers/carriers (MK1, MK2 and MK3) come about?

The MK3 seems like the Starship Enterprise of the franchise. When I see people playing the game, they're usually piloting MK3s. And I started playing UC ... this year. So I don't know the history.

They are all part of the game's mythos. I designed all of them from scratch. As I did with the backstory and such.

The Galactan class Battlecruiser MK3 was the first carrier ever made and featured in the BC3K games. That was back when the first game, Battlecruiser 3000AD, only had that one carrier and it's complement of 12 (4 fighters, 4 shuttles, 4 ATVs) support craft.

It's also a very capable craft. I think the reason you see most people playing the MK3 is because of nostalgia. Plus it's a great ship.

The game's legacy appendix holds more info on these ships and how they compare.

# ¿ Dec 9, 2015 00:45

D_Smart: May 11, 2010; by FactsAreUseless; College Slice

Omi-Polari posted:

I decided to decloak above a base, turrets firing and launching interceptors.

I died.

heh yeah, not surprised.

# ¿ Dec 10, 2015 03:24

D_Smart: May 11, 2010; by FactsAreUseless; College Slice

FYI for those of interested in my plan going forward for the series

# ¿ Dec 10, 2015 03:25

D_Smart: May 11, 2010; by FactsAreUseless; College Slice

BMan posted:

Actually I was talking about the part of the tutorial where you get into a fighter and fly it manually. The missiles were effective, but the AI seems too stupid to salvo them.

The AI is just fine. It's dialed down for the tutorial.

And yes, main guns in capital ships are patently useless against fighters because a) fighters are faster, more nimble b) the main guns have a "convergence gap" between the gun mountings making it easy for them to miss smaller targets

Turrets are laser beam guided and auto-tracking. So they are far more deadlier than "burst enabled" guns.

I released a minor patch earlier today.

# ¿ Dec 15, 2015 01:46

D_Smart: May 11, 2010; by FactsAreUseless; College Slice

Gilganixon posted:

That looks like an unbelievable amount of work. I'm seriously considering dropping the �22 on this DLC just on the basis of the horrendous amount of effort that's being poured into this, regardless of whether it's a good game or not (I haven't had enough spare time to figure that out yet)

Not as much as the amount of work it took to build the game. But yeah, it is. But it's mostly all content. The graphics upgrade is only about 25% the effort since I'm just porting the graphics engine from AAW/AOA, doing some optimizations etc. So it's not a complete re-write at all.

Also note that those are three distinct projects there; not one.

More info in this recent Battlecruiser 3000AD � The Legacy blog

D_Smart fucked around with this message at 01:54 on Dec 15, 2015

# ¿ Dec 15, 2015 01:47

D_Smart: May 11, 2010; by FactsAreUseless; College Slice

TheHoosier posted:

space sims arent my thing, but i decided a cure for insomnia would be to try out UC. I followed the tutorial to the letter and actually had fun. couldnt get the hang of the ground stuff unfortunately. might actually try out the DLC.

didnt die to that "youre gonna die" ship. lit his rear end up with missiles as soon as he emerged from jump

your tutorial is very snarky, derek

hehe, glad you like it. I wanted to break the monotony of learning such a complex game, which is why I wrote the tutorial the way I did

Also, the Lyrius Conflict DLC is currently on sale and you should definitely get it because aside from the on-going tweaks, bug fixes etc, I'm completely overhauling the graphics engine, updating the entire model dB etc. I hope to get that all done by the end of 2016. It's poo poo ton of work, but it sets the ground work for what I want to do with a sequel few years from now.

e. as you guys can see, the Star Citizen twats have been doing their review bombing poo poo on my game's pages. So if could take a moment to rate the free and paid DLC, that would be smashing.

Omi-Polari posted:

For me that's part of the charm. You'll get to a part and he's like "okay, now reload the game because you definitely just died "

It's like a headgame. Oh? I'm gonna die? We'll see about that.

And then you die.

LOL!! Yeah, pretty much.

Deadmeat5150 posted:

I have an unironic love affair with the Battlecruiser series. Myself and three friends pooled together our meager savings (Not bad for a couple of 15 year olds) and bought a copy and a joystick in 1996. I've purchased every iteration since.

I cant wait to see what this will look like.

Thanks for your support!! I think you're going to be impressed with what I have planned for the old gal in these upcoming updates via the DLC.

D_Smart fucked around with this message at 22:50 on Dec 24, 2015

# ¿ Dec 24, 2015 22:43

D_Smart: May 11, 2010; by FactsAreUseless; College Slice

Drunk in Space posted:

Entire planets had been done just fine earlier though in Elite 2, and better too to be honest, since the transition from space to planet and vice versa was seamless

They weren't "entire planets" though. And they were "empty" and made up of mostly low res Gouraud shaded polygons. This is what the planets in the original BC3K looked like back in the day. Good times

quote:

whereas in BC3K I'm pretty sure there was a loading screen.

There is no loading screen in any of my games prior to LOD. Here is someone playing BC3K and going from space to planet.

What I did was cache the planet you're going to once you engage the jump engine with the planet as the target. Then if you commit (after being asked Y|N) to the planetfall procedure, I cut to an external camera view of your ship showing it flying into the planet. That's why during that transition, you don't see any loading screen, no pausing etc. Even now in UC, it's the same procedure, but with a different camera angle, atmospheric burn effects etc.

And there are loading screens in LOD because :

1) it uses a completely different engine, and doesn't benefit from any of my earlier tech. In fact, when I finished the design in 2009 and we started the development in 2010, it was with my pre-existing tech (the iteration used in the AAW/AOA games from 2009. It then dawned on me that I would end up making yet another BC/UC game, and bringing along a lot of legacy tech, a bunch of stuff that had to be stripped out etc. So I scrapped it, and started to build a completely new game engine in 2011.

2) the planetary terrain is not procedural, since it's hand-crafted due to each base being stylized according to a specific climate (desert, (hot, (moderate, (artic) zone

3) the hand-crafted (in a level editor) planetary scenes are massive and won't fit into memory

4) in order to handle multiplayer clients efficiently, since the game is neither instanced, nor sharded - and all players exist in the same server - separating the game world into "scenes" provides complete control. It also allows the game engine to support both an MMO multiplayer model, as well as a standard client/server model with a server browser. The latter, on the console (or PC if we went that route), allows players to either host the game as server + play as client, or play as client connected to a dedicated player hosted server.

quote:

That said, I enjoyed BC3K when I played it (around 1999 or so), and don't even remember the copy I played being particularly buggy.

You probably got it after I released that first mega-patch. Or maybe two years later after Interplay released v2.0 to retail.

quote:

The complexity of the simulation and the fact you were in control of a capital ship with all its subsystems, crew, docked fighters etc instead of a little X-Wing or dinky tradeship hit a lot of the right buttons with me, so I was able to overlook many of the more glaring issues it had with UI or whatever. The fact that the universe was 'alive' as well with different factions fighting each other, and how you could jump in somewhere and see this huge battle going on was really cool for the time and obviously something that had been lacking in many games of the genre up to that point (hell, it may have even been the first game of its type to make a serious effort of doing that - was it, Derek?)

Yeah. It was the first game of its kind to do it. And last I checked, it still is. All of that is still maintained (obviously improved upon since that first 1996 release) in the UC games. It's because the BC/UC games have such a large following, that after I released UCCE v2.0 free on Steam, that it dawned on me that it's probably a good idea to improved on it. Hence The Lyrius Conflict DLC update. That DLC is what will determine where I go with the series in the coming years.

# ¿ Dec 25, 2015 14:53

D_Smart: May 11, 2010; by FactsAreUseless; College Slice

Drunk in Space posted:

That's fair. I wasn't aware of the technical side of things regarding how they accomplished it in Frontier vs what you did with BC3K, and it's clear that graphically the planets in the Frontier were a lot simpler.

Nevertheless I do like the fact that the transition was seamless, or at least visually seamless, to the player, which was very immersive for a space sim, whereas in the video you posted, and as you yourself explain, you can see that as the battlecruiser approaches the planet, it switches to a transitional external sequence (what I had mis-remembered as a loading screen), there's a brief (a few seconds) pause, and then suddenly it's down by the surface. That to me is just not as impressive visually as what was accomplished in Frontier, i.e. flying through the atmosphere from space, seeing clouds appear and the ground gradually start to form details (albeit very primitive details) as you got closer and closer to it. And since that game, which I played about '93 or so, was still relatively fresh in my mind in the late 90's, I do distinctly remember thinking at the time that this was an area where BC3K was weaker. Of course, at the same time, it also had many features that Frontier lacked, such as the aforementioned active universe, which was pretty cool.

Yeah, those are all fair statements.

Remember that Elite's world was procedurally generated; even back then. Hence the primitive showcase.

btw, the slight pause you experience in the BC3K planetfall sequence, are the textures (sky, terrain, buildings) loading from disk. The raw planetary data was already fully loaded. And you will only experience that hiccup depending on how much memory your video card has. That's why, though the same tech is used in UC games, you tend not to notice is anymore due to the sheer amount of memory in video cards now.

I had procedural generation tech from way back then; but never used it due to limitations of the computer systems at the time. e.g. the planetary terrain back then, and even in the current Universal Combat games, are procedurally generated.

It is because of those tech limitations being no longer prevalent in modern systems, that we're only now seeing seamless space <-> planetary transitions in upcoming games like Battlescape, NMS, ED: Horizons etc. I am not including Star Citizen in the mix because theirs is i) a glorified hack running in the CryEngine editor ii) it will never see the light of day as a finished product.

When I am finished with The Lyrius Conflict and which determines whether or not I move forward with one of the two new titles (UC Advanced | BC3K remake) I am planning, I intend to do seamless space<->planetary transitions as well, thus removing the external camera flyby sequence.

# ¿ Dec 26, 2015 15:36

D_Smart: May 11, 2010; by FactsAreUseless; College Slice

Deadmeat5150 posted:

You know, I have always hated simulation games like Flight Simulator and Farm Simulator, the ones that are over complicated. However I still love Battlecruiser.

heh yeah, love or hate them, my games are an acquired taste. Which is why there is never a middle ground. You either like them or you don't. And if you're an idiot, you hate them because you hate me.

# ¿ Dec 27, 2015 01:50

D_Smart: May 11, 2010; by FactsAreUseless; College Slice

TheHoosier posted:

im gonna say the ground stuff didn't go real well for me. let me preface that by saying that deploying ground troops while hovering my CC above the battlefield and blanketing enemies in pew pew lasers is a really awesome experience. however, sending my own guy down there and playing it as an FPS was super clunky for me. i probably need to just read the manual more, but that part of the tutorial didnt go as smoothly.

Yeah, the FPS module in the UC games is kind clunky. I aim to fix that in The Lyrius Conflict DLC though, since the FPS engine in All Aspect Warfare which is the engine I'm porting to the DLC, is far more superior.

Deploying your marines from the ship (via transporter or shuttle drop launch) smack into the middle of hostile territory, is a sight to behold.

# ¿ Dec 27, 2015 15:43

D_Smart: May 11, 2010; by FactsAreUseless; College Slice

The Interloper posted:

I wanted to enjoy this, but both times when I tried to play seriously were wasted due to saves corrupting, which has put me off. Apparently the quicksave function (shift+ctrl+G) is unreliable, which might have been nice to know beforehand.

Not sure which version you're playing, but the saved games work just fine. Most people don't know how the quick-save actually works. See if that helps. But you should use the full save if you want a full saved game image.

Also, if you are running the freeware version on Steam, that version is 2.00.02. The paid (full version) is 2.00.03. The Lyrius Conflict DLC (for the Steam version) is 3.00.07

# ¿ Jan 1, 2016 19:15

D_Smart: May 11, 2010; by FactsAreUseless; College Slice

In other news, Battlecruiser 3000AD is 20 years old this year. Were you part of the 1996 revolution?

# ¿ Jan 1, 2016 19:17

D_Smart: May 11, 2010; by FactsAreUseless; College Slice

The Interloper posted:

I have the Lyrius Conflict DLC on Steam, and yes I'm running the game through that option every time. I'm calling it "quicksave" because that's how it's referred to in the command reference sheet. The one that saves to the "autosave" slot without quitting the game. Normally it works (which is why I was using it so as not to have to quit to the menu every time I save), but on two separate occasions I've had saves that don't work when I try to load them. The loading bar stops at 50% and doesn't move no matter how long I wait. The program isn't frozen though because pressing ESC exits it.

One of the saves was from the free version before I bought the DLC, but the second is all with the most recent version of the DLC.

This is the first time that I am seeing or getting any such report. Can you please run CHKDSK on the drive? It could be that the games are being saved to a bad sector, one that's flagged as going bad or bad, but files are being moved to good sectors.

Also, start a new game. And if you run into this problem again, please open a support ticket and attach the saved game files so that I can analyze them.

e. CTRL+SHIFT+G (Quick Save) is the same as COMMAND/SYSTEMS -> QUIT & SAVE WITH RESUME but doesn't quit the game.

D_Smart fucked around with this message at 20:32 on Jan 1, 2016

# ¿ Jan 1, 2016 20:27

D_Smart: May 11, 2010; by FactsAreUseless; College Slice

Mandibular Fiasco posted:

I was on the CompuServe forums and on USENET back when this went down. The threads were epic, and Derek, to his credit, was right in the middle of it all. It was pretty wild watching the developer wade into everything that was going on. It was pretty unheard of to see or hear of a developer who was as visible as Derek was back then. The only other one who came close was Andy Hollis, when he was developing for Jane's Combat Simulation / Electronic Arts.

While Derek's approach to the situation is well documented, I did and do admire that he didn't quit on the project. He fixed it, got patches out, and eventually released the thing for free, while continuing to develop and improve the game. I remember 2.0 coming out on a PC Gamer cover CD and thinking how wild it was that a full game was actually out there for someone to play for free. That takes a lot of internal fortitude and determination. Others would have likely abandoned the thing and moved on to something else, but Derek didn't choose that path. Full points for taking the hard path.

Indeed.

As I wrote in this Gaming Urban Legend blog, it's not like there was ever a choice of what I needed to do. What Take Two did affected me from my standpoint as a gamer, because they shipped and were selling a product they knew was still in Beta.

Then made the mistake of trying to pin it on me by making up poo poo (e.g. I got angry, attacked a Coke machine, left the project etc). I can deal with all kinds of things, but when you make that sort of attack, all you end up doing is declaring war on the one person who never saw a conflict he didn't like. Which is precisely why, those who know me, knew what was coming back in July when those pricks over at RSI/CGI, pretty much did the same thing when they accused me of doing something that I didn't do.

Unlike most from back in the day, I was never a part of the industry as I had never worked in it - for anyone. And to this day, I still haven't and don't intend to. So it was all very strange to me what was going on. So it was easy to make it personal. And that's precisely how what has been dubbed The Greatest Gaming Flamewar in history, came about. It was glorious.

# ¿ Jan 3, 2016 02:59

D_Smart: May 11, 2010; by FactsAreUseless; College Slice

The Interloper posted:

Did chkdsk, no problems or bad sectors found (and I should hope not, all the parts of this computer are less than a year old).

So is this the problem then? If I'm reading your support article correctly that should mean it doesn't save anything to disk, but it definitely does for me. A player*.sg9 file, titled "AUTOSAVE" under that character's profile in the Restore menu (including if I haven't made a "Quit and Save with Restore" with that character). In fact, I never use the Resume option from the main menu at all - I always use Restore.

Basically, if I save with Ctrl+Shift+G, then quit the game with Alt+Q, go to Restore and select AUTOSAVE, it'll be at the correct point where I saved - even if I exit the whole program in the meantime. I just assumed that was how it was supposed to work.

Quick Save (CTRL+SHIFT+G) just acts as a check-point. If you use it when you don't already have a full save (ALT+G), it can't be resumed or restored because the player profile is never saved; only the game state.

Try the tests mentioned in the support article as it gives a better explanation.

ps: I forgot to add that you can't save Instant Action scenarios. Only ROAM and ACM scenarios.

# ¿ Jan 3, 2016 03:03

D_Smart: May 11, 2010; by FactsAreUseless; College Slice

Omi-Polari posted:

Weird. 3000AD links are down.

You can find them on the Steam page.

Yeah, looks like we moved some things around and broke the links. I have fixed them in the OP now. Thanks!

e. I also added a link to the standard galaxy map which can be printed

D_Smart fucked around with this message at 03:23 on Jan 3, 2016

# ¿ Jan 3, 2016 03:11

D_Smart: May 11, 2010; by FactsAreUseless; College Slice

I am looking to do a minor patch release this month. I did some stuff over the holidays and have updated the changelog to reflect what's done thus far.

# ¿ Jan 3, 2016 03:13

D_Smart: May 11, 2010; by FactsAreUseless; College Slice

LowellDND posted:

K, so I went and grabbed the DLC, but it looks like the Guides in the OP dont have working links.

btw, sometimes Steam won't manually install the links to the docs. This KB article shows you how to manually install them.

# ¿ Jan 3, 2016 04:04

D_Smart: May 11, 2010; by FactsAreUseless; College Slice

McGiggins posted:

I am starting a weeks holiday next week, the first in many, many units of time.

I am going to play your Line of Defense game Derek.

Will I dream? Will I test new features, explore new frontiers of fidelity and pew pew pew?

Will post trip report, and also gameplay report.

Well don't expect too much though. Just explore the massive game world. The massive update (aircraft) is inbound this month and will have a huge impact on the game.

ps: SA - Line Of Defense thread

# ¿ Jan 8, 2016 15:51

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 16:43

D_Smart: May 11, 2010; by FactsAreUseless; College Slice

Omi-Polari posted:

Star Citizen fan plays Universal Combat:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQ8hRuz4r5E

There's so much spite. But he'll come across neat things and say "that's actually kinda cool ... BUT ANYWAY." Keep driving them into a frothy rage D-Man.

Heh yeah, saw that when it first went up.

Comment comedy Gold

quote:

You had to alt tab out to pause the loving game when you just read out press the loving pause key no wonder DS thinks we're all retards ffs. How you can label the video "condescension" when you just proved his point is loving hilarious.

# ¿ Jan 27, 2016 22:06

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Battlecruiser / Universal Combat