I've been talking about it for a while. Asking questions about how to do this or that. But without any real progress.

Scroll down for a question I have about ship/terrain assets.

Well as of the past week or so, that has changed. I sat down, turned off my Minecraft (with great internal suffering) and got to work. Over the past week, I succeeded in creating the shields, the major non-combat systems, damage reception, power control, and more.

At this point in time, there is no networking implemented and the file is quite large (~15kb). Much of this is due to graphics and AI calculations which, when networking is implemented will no longer be present. The intent is also to hold graphics server-side and send the relevant sprites to the calc during runtime, which will be saved in a temporary assets file. Also, as Kerm told me that CALCnet will likely not be a thing for the CE due to differences in network protocol, I'll probably use the existing USB protocol on the CE with a computer side program to send data to the hub, which would have the ability to interact with connected CE's and CALCnet, allowing the color and monochromes to play on one server. I'll also open source this when done to allow it to be ported to the CSE.

But more on that later. I have very little left to do before I can release a demo. Basically just AI ship control, player ship control, rendering the viewscreen, and firing. In the scope of what I've done already, that shouldn't take too long.

Now, feast your eyes on some screenshots:









The Question:

This game is played in a virtual 3D world. The map objects and ships are technically 3D. My question is, would it be better, both in terms of rendering speed and data size, to create several versions of each sprite, to view the object from different angles, or to create full 3D models for the ships and the spherical map objects (the irregular objects will be rendered differently). For full 3D, I could make 16x16x16 models for each item, leading to an overhead of 4096 bytes per object, which if it's in an external assets file on the CE isn't a major issue. When this game eventually gets backwards-ported to the monochrome calcs, we'd be talking about 512 bytes per object.

If the common consensus is the latter (3d models), is there someone here who has experience making them?

UPDATE -- 0.53 alpha-ish

Ok, update time!!
This game took a bit of a hiatus, as many of my projects do from time to time because of real life, skill building, and other stuff.
However, I did some code reorganization at the start of the summer, then set out on an endeavor to have a working demo of basic combat (single player) by the end of the summer.

Attached is the current pre-demo release. This version is functional but has no AI or rendering engine yet. That is what I'm working on now... 3d rendering, weapons and targeting, then wrapping everything up, optimizing, and releasing. That being said, I'll talk about some of the cool features already implemented:

1. Ship Status Icon
At the lower, left side of the screen there is an icon that shows your ship and your shields. As your ship takes damage, you'll notice the shields first. They start off electric blue, then degrade to yellow, then to red. Additionally, within the ship itself, which is normally grey, sections of the ship will turn red as systems are damaged. Hull integrity causes a small filled red circle when it reaches <50% in the saucer that gets larger when hull integrity fails. In addition to that, the nacelles turn red when the warp drive is below 50%, the aft of the ship turns red when impulse, life support, or the warp core fall below 50%. As of now, this icon is locked to an Enterprise-ish shape, as are the indicators. If/when I allow icons to be customized, I'll have to modify this to match.

2. Warp Core Failure
When the warp core system is damaged to less than 25% health, the program begins attempting to trigger a warp core breach. The odds of a core breach are 1 / system health * 10. So, for a warp core at 24% health, the odds of a breach occurring are 1/240. If the warp core is at 10% health, the odds become 1/100. Once a breach is successfully trigged, a timer begins. You get 1000 game cycles to avert the breach or your ship is destroyed. I have yet to clock how long that actually is. You can avert the breach by (1) Repairing the warp core to above 50% health (see Repair), or (2) Pressing the [Del] key to eject the warp core. The ejection occurs and spawns a critical warp core behind your ship, on a slow trajectory moving backwards (relative to you). Doing so immediately stops all power flow to your ship, meaning if you have no auxiliary power module installed or no warp core to refill the slot with, you'll lose power fast! The counter continues from whatever it was at when you ejected it, and then explodes in a MASSIVE detonation that can significantly damage your ship if you're too close.

3. Power, Inventory, Core Breach, Life Support Alerts
When any one of these four things need attention, there is an alert dedicated to them. The power icon appears when any module is unable to fulfill its power requirements, meaning that your power generation is no longer effective enough to keep your ship powered. This means that it is time to (1) Bring unessential systems offline, (2) Repair your warp core (the health of your core determines your ship's power output), or (3) Switch to an auxiliary power module (if installed).
The Inventory status alert appears when an active torpedo module has exhausted it's supply of selected torpedoes (unimplemented).
The core breach alert appears when a warp core breach has been triggered, and will disappear if the core is repaired or ejected.
The life support alert appears when the life support system hits 0% health or is turned offline. If life support is not repaired and brought back online within 2000 game cycles, your crew dies and you lose.

4. Repairing Your Ship
Any module may be repaired, including shields and hull integrity. Repairing a module stops it from being supplied power, stops it from functioning, and expends a lot of power to repair it. Every 5 game cycles, the module draws its current power default and gives itself 1 unit of health. For a starting ship, this means that it takes a module 250 game cycles to fully repair to 50 health, and costs 250 power to do so.
* A repairing module is treated as OFFLINE. This means that if you are repairing your shields, they will not function. If you're repairing your hull integrity, it will not give you extra damage protection. If you are repairing your warp core, it will stop generating power. The only modules that will function while being repaired are your engines (warp drive/impulse) and your weapon systems.*

5. Damage Calculation
Damage in game occurs as two factors: shield damage and hull damage. Phasers or other energy weapons deal more damage to your shields than to your hull, while torpedoes will deal more damage to your hull than your shields. Notable exceptions will be the Narada torpedoes that will deal staggering damage regardless and disruptor phasers, which will be somewhat balanced against both.
First, the current health and current power configuration of your shields are calculated and multiplied by the shield's damage resistance value. This is the amount of damage that your shield is capable of repelling at 100% health and 100% power. To start, this number is 5. Most weapons you'll encounter at first will deal 1-3 damage. If your shields are at, for example, 60% health, they will be capable of blocking only 3 damage. If you were to then set your shields to use 200% power, they would become able to block 6 damage. In this way, you can boost your systems to help you out in combat, but at a cost (see Boosting).
The shield damage value of the weapon is subtracted from the shield's health, resulting in shield damage. The calculated damage resistance value is subtracted from the weapon's hull damage. If this value becomes 0 or less at any time, we stop calculating damage.
We then read out the damage resistance value of your hull integrity module. If hull integrity is 50% or higher, that number is subtracted from the weapon damage. If hull integrity is <50% but above 0%, the damage resistance becomes 0. If hull integrity is 0%, the module's damage resistance is added to the incoming damage. This emulates a damaged hull becoming less effective at protecting the interior from damage. Any remaining damage is applied to a system currently chosen at random, but eventually to be chosen based on the direction of the incoming weapon compared to the direction of your ship, allowing you to target specific areas.

6. Boosting Systems
Any system, except the warp core, may be boosted to allow it to perform more effectively. Here's a list of what boosting a generic system will do:
Shields: Increase damage resistance
Hull integrity: increase damage resistance
Life Support: unable to be altered
Warp Core: unable to be altered
Warp Drive: Increases maximum attainable warp speed (to a max of +5 speed)
Impulse Drive: Increases maximum attainable impulse speed (to a max of +2 speed)
Sensors: Increases maximum sensor range/targeting range
Phasers: Increases phaser damage
Torpedoes: Increases torpedo speed
Transporters: Increases transporter range
* A boosted system will use power at a faster rate than it is being recharged, and eventually run out of power and stop working. Use boosting sparingly. *

7. Warp/Impulse Speeds
The ship has 4 average impulse speeds:
1 field / cycle = 1/4 impulse
2 fields / cycle = half impulse
3 fields / cycle = 3/4 impulse
4 fields / cycle = full impulse
certain ship types and a boosted impulse module will allow additional speeds < 10.
A damaged impulse module reduces the maximum impulse speed.
The ship has warp factors 1-9, with speeds in between the major warp factors. Each warp factor increases the speed by it's factor.
Warp 1 = 10 fields / cycle
Warp 2 = 12 fields / cycle
Warp 3 = 15 fields / cycle
Warp 4 = 19 fields / cycle
Warp 5 = 24 fields / cycle
Warp 6 = 30 fields / cycle
Warp 7 = 37 fields / cycle
Warp 8 = 45 fields / cycle
Warp 9 = 54 fields / cycle
boosted warp core max = 59 fields / cycle
Intermediary warp factors supported, for example, 16 fields / cycle equals Warp 3.5.
A damaged Warp Drive module decreases the maximum speed to a minimum of 10 (warp 1) unless the module is completely destroyed.

This is sounding quite cool!

This looks really nice! I especially like, how you use graphics, to make what's essentially a simplistic interface look fancy. These screenshots remind me of some Amiga games. BTW, do you plan on doing a 68k port?

A few teasers from the upcoming 0.0.94 release.

1) Custom graphics packs supported. To indicate that the graphics pack is custom made (so the client doesn't do a normal version check), you use the following settings in convimg, in addition to the normal ones.
lut-entries: true
header-string: "\xff\xff"
Special thanks goes to MateoC for implementing the `lut-entries` option in convimg... it simply moves the offsets LUT into the appvar itself, rather than leaving it defined in the program. This allows the program to load any array of sprites as assets. You will still have to keep the same sprite order, however. Refer to the link I posted previously for details.

2) The splash screen has been completely reworked.

The menu interface is cleaner, and the networking status is indicated by icon now, instead of by text. A green USB icon indicates that the serial device is ready, a red icon indicates some error. If we implement nanotube, or internetce support, an icon will indicate if the program is preferring that connection.

3) The program now alerts you on the splash screen if your graphics version is incompatible.

The incompatible graphics is triggered in one of two ways:
 a) You are using a default sprite pack and the version header does not match the one set within the program's `reqd_version` array.
 b) You are using a custom sprite pack (version string 0xff, 0xff), and the number of sprites in the LUT does not match the number of sprites in the program build.
Either of these being the case causes the above alert to show up, and the "Play Game" menu option to just return you to the main menu.

All splash screen and error/alert icons are built directly into the program to ensure they are available... the asset pack only supplies stuff used for the game.

Looking good

Thanks guys!

Update - v0.0.95
Planned to make this the full combat beta, but some security enhancements to the server and the whole setup make it necessary to release a client and bridge update before then.


NEW FEATURE - Client-Side Server List
As of right now, the server to connect to (through the bridge) is no longer controlled by the bridge's config file... it's controlled by the calculator itself.

Slot 1 is set by default and cannot be edited. Slots 2-10 are blank and can be edited (so that the game can connect to other hosted instances of the server).

The client adds 2 new packets, CONNECT and DISCONNECT.
Connect: Instructs the bridge to open a tcp socket to the server or host name following the control code in the serial packet.
Disconnect: Instructs the bridge to close the current socket.
* So long as the calculator does not unplug or disconnect from the bridge, you can connect/disconnect/reconnect without needing to restart the bridge. *
* Special thanks to commandblockguy for implementing this change. *

NEW FEATURE - On-Calc Mini-Log
The calculator has a 4-line mini-log, with each log-line buffered to 50 characters. This log can display errors, info, debug messages, and server broadcasts. The widget has variable height based on how many of the 4 lines it needs to display, and also remains on the screen for a configurable time. Default is 100 ticks. Any time a new message is written to the log, the clock resets.

And here is the new Settings interface to change the log timeout:

That's pretty cool Security is important, I'm glad you're thinking it through now.

NEW FEATURE - Server Supports SSL
This may have been posted in this thread earlier, but the server is written with an optional SSL context. This can be enabled in the server config. The actual handling of certificates and renewal is not something the server does, so anyone hosting an SSL instance will need to handle ensuring their SSL config is up to date. The SSL path is also configurable, it just needs to be readable by whatever user is running this service.
*As of right now, the bridge does not support SSL, so any SSL servers will be unable to be connected to.*

Will there be a way to reload the certificate without restarting the service?

NEW FEATURE - Verification-Based Authentication
As an attempt to dissuade connections to this service that are not from the calculator, such as random port probes or script kiddies, the server now implements a code-based verification system. When a user registers an account, an 8-digit code is generated and written to the user's account file, as well as sent to the calculator for display. You will be required to log into the web deck and input your verification code before you will be able to log in to the game server. This will allow us to filter unsolicited connections, as well as remove any anomalous user accounts created.

I'm assuming there is a way to recover this as well in the back-end if the user forgets it?

Updates! Updates! Updates!

Version 0.0.99pre is still under development, but here is a few highlights for development so far.

1. Packets for MODULE_STATE_CHANGE, ENGINE_MAXIMUMS, and SETSPEED are now implemented at least in part. They don't check for certain statuses that might prevent the actions yet, but they do update, relay their responses to their calc, and have the effects propagate to your on-calc GUI.

2. The engine/speed configuration interface is now implemented. Accessed by pressing [Log]. You can scroll between your available engines, move sliders around to change your speed, then press [Sto] to engage your new speed.

3. With Debug Mode enabled in the client settings, the calculator now prints the Control Code and size of every packet it receives to the log widget.

4. Server-side, TrekFilter is now formally implemented into the service. TrekFilter is a custom firewall I made for the service, programmed to understand its protocol better than a system firewall could, and able to interact with your system firewall through the use of custom fail2ban jails.

Here a screenshot showing new (and some old) progress.