Wouldn’t you agree that GSB would look much better if there is depth perspective, so when you stack ships on top of each other it is very clear(size changes accordingly), perhaps even casting a shadow on the ship below?
And the size of the ships would determine what goes top or bottom…for that matter I hope we will have a full 360 space to rotate like in Sins of the Solar Empire. I find the space battles in GSB much more enjoyable anyway…
Actually, I like the 2d charms of GSB as it is now, so I’ll disagree on that with you here.
Though shadows could probably be implemented, creating a 3d-engine is a whole different ballgame.
Besides, stacking ships is an exploit imo.
I spent a whole weekend working solidly on shadows once. With 3D polygonal models, shadows are trivial, if not trivial for performance, but in 2D, they are a total nightmare. It involved new render targets and other compelxities, and even then it was not 100% correct, because of the way turrets and certain other features are currently drawn.
It turned out to be a huge number of very involved and likely unsolvable hoops to jump through, and I reverted the code back.
If you don’t mind me asking, why didn’t you do the game in any of many free 3D engines out there? Surely that would’ve extended your options greatly…
That would have extended the amount of work required too, and for a one-man company that just isn’t feasible.
Partly that, but mostly that the ships in this game are about 50,000 polys each. That means the average battle has about 5 million polys in just for the ships, and would run at 1 FPS on the latest PCs. Doing it in 2D allows you to effectviely do ‘image based rendering’ and have insanely detailed ships.
Compare the detail of the GSB ships up close to those in Sins of A Solar Empire or Homeworld.
Texture-mapped 3d ships would also have taken longer to do, and therefore cost much more.
Hm, that must be one of the reasons I find GSB battles much more enjoyable than Sins of A Solar Empire or Homeworld, if only the ships would level up and there is a galactic conquest campaign(10th post)…
GSB is a different sort of game.
Also, as awesome as it would be for Cliffski to make a new Homeworld type game (it would seriously be beyond epic :D), doing so is probably out of reach unfortunately. Remember, he doesn’t have a $10 million art budget to burn through.
There’s also that charm of 2D games. 2D turn based strategy games have that nostalgia factor.
I wish GSB and flottila would be mixed into one game of awesome.
for those not having heard of it: blendogames.com/flotilla/
is it possible to just s***w shadows all together and just assign ships a random depth every battle that determines its size and depth?
also I think it will be far more preferable to just have ships going over/under each other instead of bumping into eachother and go into an awkward slug in trying to get away
don’t know how many are with me on that one though…
That would create problems with the relative size of ships and weapons having to fire up or down, and fighter docking and dogfighting would be next to impossible.
right, forgot
Wow, what an ugly looking game, they didn’t bother with the visuals in the slightest.
It has veterancy of the ships and other neat RPG aspects but nothing else, it completely fails compare to GSB, GSB just needs to copy those RPG aspects…
huh, I’ve played a WWII game just like Flotilla, except in 2D. GSB is better than both, obviously.
yes the visuals are simple, but it has firing arcs, 3d , ships can go upside down sideways backwards and collide into junk,
the humor is slightly more absurd than the GSB humor
but why I want them to mix? , GSB visuals and battles in a 3d enviroment with firing arcs ? hell yesssss ,
it is simultanious turn based so you give orders and the ships act them out in a turn wich is around 30 seconds long, so that would be an interesting alternate gameplay mode where you can change orders midd battle,