Theironx wrote:

What I'd like in a game that MANY lack is a FULL crew system. One person would be controlling the ship while the others are inside socializing or doing what needs to be done. From taking care of a sick crew member to rushing for the escape pods due to an attack is what I'd love. Screw the vast universe, I want a dynamic crew system.

Fun idea.

You could prolly do something that is module (level) based where a team of 4 people need to make a sort of gauntlet run through various challenges in space.

Start with some basic maneuvers, battle sims, and eventually get into some real battles (modules) where a simple story takes place with a number of sub adventures.

What kind of stations could you have?
Captain. - Issues basic orders through their interface and the others need to follow them. The captain could request higher performing tasks which challenge the crew.

Pilot. - Seems like this could be done best in a first person 3d shooter but maybe a 2d game could work.

Gunner. - The challenges are selecting the right weapon for the job as well as conserving ammo and perhaps some missions where hitting near by targets result in failure.
Engineer. - Busy pushing buttons to constantly revert power, cooling, front shields, back shields, and etc.
Coms.- Finding weak spots in enemy ships, establishing communications, finding key locations on planets through some kind of game interface.

Each station would essentially have a star trek like panel as their primary interface and everyone has the pilots visual to see what's going on although, it could be fun to not see everyone elses views.

What challenges could you give the team though? Seems like you want to challenge the teams ability to cooperate and sacrifice.

ahhh.... just add medals for doing extra ordinary things during battle which causes risk for the team but rewards upon success. As an example, the captain asks the crew to charge into battle within 10 seconds of seeing the enemy. That earns the captain a medal but nobody else (if they come out alive).

I sort of visualize one design where each player is essentially playing their own puzzle game which contributes to the overall success of the mission.

Anyway.. neat concept idea.

You know... I might be interested in offering up some graphics work if your interested.

I can't promise anything and I'm only an artist when I get inspired.

If you have an easy enough way to offer up a chunk of work, let me know.

I seek no monetary gain or anything else for that matter. Seeing stuff come together is exciting enough.

Let me know...
ts

You know... more power to ya if you ever earn a dime from a BYOND written game.

I honestly don't know the best way to get started. My first suggestion is to have you show me a screen shot and say, make it better.

Balls in your court.
ts

I've been sort of waffling between keeping my old "top-down" perspective on the action versus a more (dare I say it) immersed perspective of seeing the characters standing upright on a top-down map.

Heck, maybe I'll even go isometric if I want to be really fancy. In which case I'm throwing out all my old assets. Eep!

Right now, I've got indoors tiles with a (kindy ugly) actor and outdoor tiles and even some space tiles, but what I don't have is specific devices or equipment or additional tile types that this project might end up needing.

That's going to be a later date thing, alright, especially if I'm so masochistic to decide I want to go isometric.

The stars in the space tiles seem like they could use a little more variation in size and brightness for a more 3D effect. You might be interested in Garthor's Star Mapper. I've been pleased with the randomized results.

I generally change it a bit though. For instance, I insert all of the states into the same icon and save the result. I also added more color variation for Wrangle, Warp And Weep. More recently, I increased the size of the tiles for StarScurrier.