https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTBiM5zJi8A
They've made some big progress, and looking at it I can't help wondering how much we can steal from them? (GPL 2.0, Creative commons licence, and I saw some flicker of MIT license in there as well). So from that video, I started thinking about stuff we might want to peek at:
- Hyperjump animation?
- "Bleep" sounds when changing screens? (Actually we could use some kind of "UIHooks*" for playing sounds or showing tutorial screens, when windows are opened/closed).
- (gas) planet textures?
- Clouds?
- white noise (06:38) for when we have a damage system and the sensors/camera are hit?
- Asteroids?
- linedraw graphics of planets for orbital map (I'm such a sucker for that 80s linedraw graphics!)?
- Artificial speak? (granted, we have nothing to apply it to at the moment)
- Be inspired by their comms. A dedicated screen / window, with filter-buttons, time stamps, ("transmit" button? maybe some standard buttons like "mayday" "greetings!")
Also, I looked at some other of their/his videos, and they're good sources for game-play inspiration:
- warp gate: buy ticket at space station (also, this video shows the different game screens at 02:25 for those who are unfamiliar)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qq7ID2zn75I
Crazy idea, I'm throwing it out there: sure warp gates could be for faster in-system travel, but maybe it would make more sense for them to be for interstellar travel. Maybe each faction is mainly/only tied together through a system of "warp gates". Standard jump drives are used when travelling outside the "warp gate web". Maybe each connected system is in turn connected to N additional systems (0 < N < ~4). A capital world is highly connected, "spider in the web" with gates to many systems.
(Science time! normally in nature network connectivity follows a power law distribution, i.e. a few systems/"nodes" are highly connected, and act as hubs, but most system only have one or "a few" connections).
I know, it's not an original idea (and very "non-frontier"), but it leads to interesting game play, and I think that's why we see it in games like Space Empires, Master of Orion, Wing Commander / Privateer, etc. But I'm not arguing for it, just planting seeds.
- Mining system (for asteroids): scan astroids, send bot, (communicate with bot), dock with bot, transfer ore from bot:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wAKVxg9TCs
- His simple nebula effect, might be inspirational for flying through clouds?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jab82mKhLdk
(Also, I created this sub-forum, "other space games", hope it will grow with time).