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[Erick Doe]

Here's some notes from a brainstorm I've been having with myself. Don't get excited yet, but it is something I'd might be willing to explore further

-Bombcrater = sun. Proximity does damage due to radiation
-Water = supplies
-Credits = bottlecaps
-Town locations have town images from Fallout 1?
-Some locations can be *explored* and may have loot. Could be attacked by a nearby spawn that guards it
-Needs many locations to make interesting, station appearances might have to be X on the map? Rings can set theme for X with buildings, rocks, etc. around it.
-Armor = character appearance. Have to buy better ones? Expensive, but better base stats.
-Can recruit help NPCs. Named NPCs.
-Damage FX replaced with gore a la Fantasty Farer mod.
-No boarding = all enemies are *fighters*?
-Fuel = Do we want hyperspace? Everything in one system and slowed down thanks to slow burn speed?
-Cars a la Mad Max?
-Characters are top down. Can buy and use several weapons and *mount* on characters.
-Hullmods are (funny!) traits
-Skills are... skills. Allows to unlock new traits.
-Some traits only available to certain characters - can be done by linking with specific hull ID
-Missions in the campaign? Need help with that!
-Ally with one caravan group makes other hostile
-Many different encounters: trade caravans, mutants, ghouls, animals, raiders.
-Trading? Need help with that!
-Weapons: Ballistic revolvers, rifles etc. Energy = laser and plasma. Missile is grenades and rocketlaunchers. Melee as secondary weapon? Secondary hand = universal slot? Character can wield maximum two weapons at a time?
-Stations are towns and locations of interest. Orbits set to 0. No movement. Same goes for *planet rings* which will be farms, ruins, sandbags, etc.
-Encounter dialog extended? Town options extended?

[xenoargh]

I built part of something like this a while ago; it's probably more practical now.  Main issues:

1.  To make it look like top-down, we need proper parallax- no drifting "dust", can't have background that looks like distant stars, etc. 

Couldn't get that done back then; I think that problem can be solved now, but it really depends on how Alex implemented the background stuff and whether he'd be willing to talk about it.  Basically, it should be possible to draw a bunch of textured quads and build a background and put it in a low-enough layer that it covers the current background, but not the "ships".

2.  I think doing it with people would be pretty ugly and pretty difficult to make nice, unless you're going to go all out and animate them, which would get pretty complicated.  I was going to do it with cars at first (since I already have the physics for that done). 

At the very least, this would require a pretty complex AI to pull off, just for humans.

3.  There isn't anything remotely like a general-purpose "obstacle" object that could be used to make things more interesting and realistic.  Can this be done at all?  Yes, I think it can.  Easy?  No.  Amongst other issues, the AI would have to do some pathfinding.

4.  For the strategic map, a lot of the same issues as the battle map, but I'm not sure that it can be fixed and actually look good.

5.  I think that writing proper random encounters would be far superior than trying to deal with Vanilla logic and fleet system, personally.  Once again, the issues here are the things in the engine that would be hard to work around, if you wanted it to be polished.

6.  Combat logic would have to be totally different; to really capture the RPG-esque feel of Fallout Tactics (let alone being able to target shots and all that), it'd need to handle things like shots missing the targets, etc., which would lead to a lot of UI issues (for misses to work, damage would probably have to be zero, with real damage dealt handled when the shot hits, or characters would have to be basically invulnerable and take damage only via fiat).  Then there are all the details, like making characters react to damage visually, etc.


Anyhow, those are my thoughts on this; tbh, while I think it could be done, I think that doing it well is a whole nother proposition, since it's basically a new game merely using SS as the engine in a lot of ways.  So I was going to do a Car Wars / Mad Max thing with cars if I could ever get the issues with parallax solved well enough (well, that, and make enough cars), but I'm still working on Vacuum so I can't get back to this.

[Erick Doe]

1.  To make it look like top-down, we need proper parallax- no drifting "dust", can't have background that looks like distant stars, etc.

I can remove the stars. The background will be static however, and looks odd when it has a texture or details. In Fantasy Farer I just used a green background. Not very pretty, but it got the job done. Nebulaa were forests.
Thankfully the wasteland is mostly desert, so a bland background won't be too distracting

2.  I think doing it with people would be pretty ugly and pretty difficult to make nice, unless you're going to go all out and animate them, which would get pretty complicated.  I was going to do it with cars at first (since I already have the physics for that done). 

Well, since they're going to be top-down they won't need a lot of animation. I'll put most animation into the weapon's firing, probably.

3.  There isn't anything remotely like a general-purpose "obstacle" object that could be used to make things more interesting and realistic.  Can this be done at all?  Yes, I think it can.  Easy?  No.  Amongst other issues, the AI would have to do some pathfinding.

Maybe asteroids. Can be turned into anything really. Even sandbags. It is possible to make them static in missions, I believe. Not sure if I can pull that off for the campaign. Otherwise I'll have to turn it into tumbleweed or roaming Brahmin or something. The AI will of course just run into things...

6.  Combat logic would have to be totally different; to really capture the RPG-esque feel of Fallout Tactics (let alone being able to target shots and all that), it'd need to handle things like shots missing the targets, etc., which would lead to a lot of UI issues (for misses to work, damage would probably have to be zero, with real damage dealt handled when the shot hits, or characters would have to be basically invulnerable and take damage only via fiat).  Then there are all the details, like making characters react to damage visually, etc.

Obviously some things will be impossible or very hard to accomplish. Characters will not react to damage, for instance. There will be gore though, instead of ship parts flying off.


Thanks for joining in on the brainstorm.

[xenoargh]

Well, hope it helped outline some of the obstacles.  Good luck