Moved to Dublin – interested in meeting up

[Anonymous]

Hi all,

tl;dr: I’ve recently moved to Dublin and would like to meet up with others who are interested in game development. I’m working on a prototype in my spare time: http://www.dropbox.com/gallery/35770843/1/UNION?h=aa9248

I’m a month in Dublin now, having moved up to advance my development career (web applications) with the aim of getting into a game development related position at some stage.

I’m finally getting settled in and would really like to meet up with others who have an interest in game development. Are there any regular meetings occurring? I’m not sure how many of you are familiar with TOG, the Dublin Hackerspace, but it could potentially be a place to meet up (I haven’t been there yet but I’ve been involved with 091Labs in Galway).

The one caveat is that I’m only in Dublin Monday the Thursday, I spend the weekends with my family in Galway.

I’ve been working on a prototype for a game, currently titled UNION Spaceship Simulator. I am just getting back into it after the move. This is just a project I’m doing in my spare time, I ran my own business for six years (a pc gaming centre in Galway) and I’m under no illusion in regards to setting up a game development company.

It is a co-op pvp space simulator. Co-op in that up to five players join the bridge crew of a ship, each taking control of one or more stations (Captain, Helm, Tactical, Engineering and Science) to operate the ship. Ships are then grouped into Factions/teams, which battle each other. That’s the goal for the prototype, AI ships would be fantastic but that’s beyond the scope of the project in it’s current form.

The game is inspired by Artemis Spaceship Bridge Simulator. I played it once during a LAN and I really loved the idea, but not the implementation. I had many ideas on how I’d do it differently, so I started to design my own. It also draws inspiration from Silent Hunter III, which I loved. In many ways this is like submarines in space.

I have a lot of work done on the architecture/framework of the game, including the menus (game state management) and networking. The game is being developed using Unity but I’m using the Lidgren Network Library for communication between the clients and server. I started with the client using Unity and a dedicated Mono console server but I’ve since integrated the server into the client, this speeds up development (I can use Unity’s API for the server) and lowers the barrier to entry for the end user (you can very quickly and easily set up a listen server).

Right now I only have the menus to show, but they do show the networking in action, with factions, crews and players being synced across clients: http://www.dropbox.com/gallery/35770843/1/UNION?h=aa9248

Beyond this point I’ll go into some details of the game prototype.

I have planned out the majority of the prototype, but not in digital form (I like to plan on paper). Here’s how the ship itself works:

The ship has a simulated (simplified) power system. Each element of the ship (weapons, shields, engines) has a battery/bank. The rate that these recharge depends on how much power the engineer has assigned to them.

Each element has a power rating, with optimal and maximum input. At optimal input the equipment operates as normal, but by increasing the input power beyond that they risk an overload.

An overload is caused by a build up of heat. Heat is generated by normal use, but this is rarely an issue. It can also gained when the section of the ship that the element is in is hit by energy weapons.

Increasing the input power of an element above optimal increases the heat generated by use and hit. If an element overloads it is damaged and power to the system is cut. Damage decreases the optimal and maximum input power ratings (this is something an Engineer has to watch for while in battle, as a damaged system can quickly overload if the input power is not adjusted).

Adjustments to power allocation by the Engineer takes time to propagate, so an Engineer needs to be thinking ahead of time to ensure that systems do not overload.

Power is provided/output by the "Core". The core also generates heat but it has a heatsink. The amount of energy that the heatsink can dissipate sets the maximum output of the core, as overloading the Core… is not a good idea. Heat from individual elements can be "dumped" to the Core’s heatsink, but again this could lead to a potential Core overload if it is abused.

This all ties in with sensors. The amount of heat that a ship is generating affects the range at which that ship can be detected and the accuracy of any weapons targeting the ship. A ship running on low power is both harder to detect and harder to hit when a lock is achieved.

Some systems, like shields and "warp" engines, are powered down when not in use as their power draw is significant. Both systems need to charge before they can be used. In the case of the warp engines this means a delay between starting the engines and going to warp. There are some interesting abilities though, like the ability to dump power from one battery/bank to another. It has it’s risks, and some power is wasted, but for instance if you really need to get away you could dump your front shield bank to the the warp bank, allowing you to jump to warp instantly, or at least faster (and since you’re running away you don’t need those front shields…).

I’ll just add in that flight is in three dimensions, but to keep crew members from becoming disorientated all ships maintain the same orientation (like in Homeworld).

That’s it for now, but if anyone’s interested I’d be happy to talk more about it (I’d go on all day.. :) ).

All the best,

Mark (aka. Faerdan)

[Anonymous]

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[Anonymous]

I am in Paris , maybe could come over, I am looking for work now.

[Anonymous]

Hi Faerdan,

You should come to the shindigs we have every so often, you’ll be able to meet lots of developers there. I think we’ll be having another shindig before Christmas. Maybe aphra can confirm? :)

As for TOG, I’ll be at the open social night on the 3rd of December and I can meet you there for a chat (I’m also part of the Nexus by the way).[/quote:586a665007]

Hey Thane,

Thanks for the reply.

I spend every weekend with my family in Galway, my partner and two boys are still in our home there, so I’m only available to meet up Monday to Thursday. That rules me out for the TOG open night. Are the GD events held on weekends?

I’ll be dropping into TOG’s programming night this week, Wednesday at 7pm, if anyone else in interested in going.

[Anonymous]

Love the concept Faerdan,

If you want any help on it gimme a shout :)

[Anonymous]

Love the concept Faerdan,

If you want any help on it gimme a shout :)[/quote:1909931135]

Thanks for the offer dameeda, but at least in this prototype stage I’m going to be doing it alone. Once the prototype is done I’ll decide whether to develop it into a full game.

[Aphra K]

we are going to coordinate the shindig before Christmas with the indie event that DIT are hosting…so put the 25t of Nov. in your diary and keep an eye on the posts re indie state of play…

Aphra.

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