Galaxial (Space Strategy WIP)

[StuartMorgan]

Galaxial

Hello I'm interested in getting some general feedback for the game I am developing. Galaxial is a 2D space strategy game that features a sandbox mode allowing the player to explore, colonise and conquer star systems in a vast randomly generated galaxy.

Some of the features include:

• Epic battles with hundreds of ships on screen at once and seamlessly zoom in and out to view the entire galaxy of up to 1000 star systems each containing multiple planets.

• Drawing inspiration from games such as EVE Online, X3 and Sins of a Solar Empire the game allows you to take manual control of any individual ship to have an even greater influence on the outcome of battles.

• Research and build hundreds of different ship and module fittings to deal with the threat of ever evolving enemy factions and raiding pirates.

• Hundreds of modules that can be fitted to ships that enhance their abilities and give them specialised roles.

• Explore the galaxy to discover valuable planetary systems and mine resources from asteroids to build planetary facilities and new ships.

Development Blog
Galaxial on IndieDB (Has some more info/video about the game)

[Bram]

Dude....!

Just wow...
I watched the video... mesmerizing!

Why the 'this is early development' warning?
Are you afraid people will judge it negatively?
It is freaking awesome.

I love the visuals
I love the UI design
I love the free zooming
I love the grand scale
I love the engine trails

Everything I see blows me away.
What is hard to judge is how the actual gameplay is.
If it is anything as good as the visuals, you will have a hit game on your hands.

On the right track I would say!

Sorry for the lack of usable criticism.

One tech question though: you claim 10s of thousand of ships.
How many are actually simulated at a single time?
Are all 10K ships updated every frame, or are you only simulating 'the active star system' or maybe 1000 nearest ships to player focus?

Would be fun to try it out, but I don't have a PC. I will await the Mac, linux and iOS ports though. Maybe iPad3 will have the horsepower to do the stuff you are doing.

Bram (seriously impressed).

[StuartMorgan]

Why the 'this is early development' warning?
Are you afraid people will judge it negatively?

It was mainly to let people know that the game is not finished yet and some of the gameplay features are still missing, also the fact that this is the first 'proper' game I have started to develop and wasnt sure of the reaction it would get.

However I'm really pleased people are liking the visual style as my artist skills are rather limited.

One tech question though: you claim 10s of thousand of ships.
How many are actually simulated at a single time?
Are all 10K ships updated every frame, or are you only simulating 'the active star system' or maybe 1000 nearest ships to player focus?

All ships are simulated in full detail at all times, for example theres no simplified logic for a battle taking place at the other side of the galaxy (the outcome will be exactly the same as if the player was there watching it)

Most of the engine is heavily multithreaded so a fairly decent multicore processor will be recommended for the really really large games. I would say the game is more graphics card hungry than CPU (a graphics card with at least 256 MB will be required) and its certainly not going to perform well on integrated cards.

I will await the Mac, linux and iOS ports though. Maybe iPad3 will have the horsepower to do the stuff you are doing.

I would like to do a Mac port as the engine is already OpenGL based and "should" be fairly straightforward. However that will have to come after the PC release as I cant afford to buy a Mac to develop it on...

[Nutter2000]

Looking good Stuart.

Good luck and keep us posted!

[chaosavy]

looks great!

Might want to post here as well about it: http://www.spacesector.com/ (has a forum with "Your announcements" section"

[Applewood]

This looks pretty awesome - keep up the good work.

Best part yet is a debut post with something good in it!

[dannthr]

Definitely, it's looking really sexy.

Although, I will say this. At first when I started watching your video, I was like, oh, interesting a space base defense game? Oh, no, the asteroid belt doesn't really prevent ships from passing through that I can see, but it still looks like a cool defense strategy game, nice, nice (zoom out, zoom out, zoom out) whoa, uh whoa crap, that's a big game--how are we supposed to defend all those systems?

That was my first impression--I started whining right from the get-go--ha!

Nonetheless, very cool, very engaging first post and I'm really interested to see how this game develops/evolves.

There was a strategy game I liked long, long ago, that allowed the player, if they so wished, to program mini ai scripts for their units to give them conditional parameters so their general behavior could be managed from a distance or without constant, direct intervention. I always thought it was a cool feature that most people would never use. I could see something like that, maybe simplified, as useful for a game like this.

As Leia says "the more you tighten your grip, the more star systems will slip through your fingers."

Either way, very good work, looking forward to more.

Cheers,
- Dan

[BantamCityGames]

Looks awesome! I'm making a space-based game myself and these types of videos always inspire me.