New Star Trek starship combat game

[Pete]

I've been lurking around these boards for a few years. I haven't contributed anything for a long while. Until now!

I thought that I would share something that I've been working on with the community here. I've been working on a computer game mod (based on an open source game engine) that simulates Star Trek starship combat. We've just made our second release, with a bunch of good ships, and some fun missions. It's a 30 megabyte download for Windows, and there are some screenshots at the website.

http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/vegatrek/

The ultimate goal is to create something as close to a computer role playing game with starships as possible. Where you choose your occupation (Starfleet, Klingon, independent merchant), and do dynamically generated missions that impact the universe, or engage in an interstellar economy, and a ton of other stuff. Essentially a modern day Privateer or Freelancer for Star Trek, but cooler.

It may sound like a crazy goal that will never be met, but the game that this Star Trek mod is based on already has these features implemented. We just need to get around to doing the artwork, and writing the large number of text files needed to make it work.

I thought there'd be some people interested around here. Give it a whirl!

Cheers,
Pete

[ImperialOne]

Looks quite intriguing. As a gamer of Star Trek Bridge Commander and StarFleet Command III, I always welcome a good starship sim. The open source nature should prove interesting and should improve the game as it attracts followers. I'll let you know.

BTW, it may be useful for those on this board to know what spec requirements are needed for this game (Direct X, memory, etc).

[Pete]

Eck, my bad. For system specs, I'd recommend at least a Pentium III 600, which is the lowest system I've run it on. I'm sure a somewhat lesser system would do well too, but I haven't tested it on anything lower.

If you're a Mac OSX user, anything that is running 10.2 should be fine.

The only thing you need software wise is an up-to-date set of drivers for your video card. You don't need DirectX installed to play, since this is OpenGL based (yay for open source).

I too, am a fan of Bridge Commander and the StarFleet Command series. Their takes on starship combat have been pretty influential so far.

Though I really do want to incorporate some of the feel of the RPG's starship combat. Like with the way power and photon torpedos are handled.

[ImperialOne]

Hmnnn... I wonder if my Radeon 9700 AIW card supports OpenGL?

[Pete]

Oh, easily.

OpenGL is like DirectX, just not as evil. Lots of commercial games are written for both DirectX and OpenGL to make porting to Mac or Linux easier.

Your video card's drivers ought to take care of all this business for you, so you don't have to worry about it.

[General Chang]

God, I cannot wait until I get myself another good high end machine. I also enjoy Star Trek Bridge Commander. Never tried the SFC series, but I LOVE BC.

Imp, Pete, if I ever get another good puter online again, we must do battle. Or join forces and battle others.

Respectfully,
General Chang