One of my longest ongoing hobbies has been computer games. A more profound interest, however, has been Star Trek. I've often tried to combine the two, but a combat game like Netrek was the best I've ever really gotten out of it.

A slightly newer hobby (something that I hope to make a profession) is writing. Luckily, that combined with Star Trek much more effectively then video games did. I've spent hours writing posts for a PBEM (play by e-mail) Star Trek game called Tango Fleet. If you enjoy writing and roleplaying, I urge you to look around for a good PBEM roleplaying game. They can be alot of fun.

What I wish to write of now, free of tangents, is my own Star Trek video game. I've been developing it off and on for a few years (although there are probably only a few solid days of unrelenting programming in it), although much of the time has been spent rewriting the game as I become more proficient at DM.

The idea is that the game would be more of a platform to roleplay in the Star Trek universe then anything. My primary goal has been to create a ship system that would allow for easily creatable starships each with its own systems. Up until recently this had proved a fairly difficult task for me, but I'm starting to get used to the DM language.

Each ship would be manned by a number of players. There would be no exterior ship control, either. My eventual goal is to create a totally 'abstract' 3-d grid system in which players input headings from the ship's CONN console. I would, of course, include a large number of mathematical aids so that there would be no knowledge of trig or geometry required to play (although a high school education on the subject would probably help out, if only to understand the theory). The key problem with this that I'm facing lies in the fact that I've never really done anything like it with DM before. I don't really know where to start. Currently I'm not really working on the project much at all, but I'll probably get a chance to get some work done on it over the summer, and I hope to get a foot-hold in my abstract grid system; I'll probably start with a fully functional 2d system.

Anyway, here are some screens of what I have so far:



All of the consoles on the bridge are set up with a basic popup browser system. Although I'm currently using the stat panel for rank, and the verb panels for the convenience of several basic systems (a say verb, for instance - which actually provides access to a ship's computer interface), I'll eventually snub everything, and come up with something more creative with which to display rank.



One thing I found kind of irritating to program was my transporter system. At first I was too lazy to make it dynamic, and set it up so that you could only transport from an arbitrary ship to the only planet I had. Now, however, you can transport to any ship in orbit, or from any ship to the planet that you're orbiting.

There is a little more to the game, but not that much. There's a little bit of glitz added, and I've got a semi-functional capture the flag game set up, but that was only to do some rigorous testing of all systems included in the game.