Space Nerds In Space

Re: Space Nerds In Space

Postby smcameron » 22 Sep 2013, 22:27

So a new guy named Jack Younger rolled into TX/RX Labs a few weeks ago and ended up pointing a camera at me and asking me some questions about Space Nerds In Space for a bit, so, this happened:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATWvxgZerb0
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Re: Space Nerds In Space

Postby qubodup » 23 Sep 2013, 02:10

I raise all two of my thumbs!
Re-posted on freegamer blog.
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Re: Space Nerds In Space

Postby charlie » 23 Sep 2013, 09:57

I think it's a great social game. I'm very impressed.
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Re: Space Nerds In Space

Postby farcodev » 27 Sep 2013, 16:19

Great video and project.
The guys had fun :D

Keep up the good work
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Re: Space Nerds In Space

Postby Imerion » 09 Oct 2013, 15:26

So happy to see this project is still moving on and getting more and more awesome each update! :)
Among the most interesting games I'm following right now this one, so thanks for doing all this great work!
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Re: Space Nerds In Space

Postby dusted » 10 Oct 2013, 14:02

Good interview! :)

SNIS is a really interesting project, I reckon it's only a matter of time before someone hacks up a real starship bridge for this ^_^
The "gamemaster" idea is great reminds me of good old tabletop rpgs. If it could be scripted in the future, people could share their "missions" or scenaries.
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Re: Space Nerds In Space

Postby smcameron » 10 Oct 2013, 16:05

dusted {l Wrote}:Good interview! :)

SNIS is a really interesting project, I reckon it's only a matter of time before someone hacks up a real starship bridge for this ^_^
The "gamemaster" idea is great reminds me of good old tabletop rpgs. If it could be scripted in the future, people could share their "missions" or scenaries.


There is already some support for scripting missions with lua. It's still a work in progress and I haven't filled in all the events and callbacks and things or figured out what the best set of features for a scripting system are -- taking it kind of slow in an attempt not to bloat the scripting API with crap before I figure out what's really needed, though not having done something like this before, It will probably end up with its share of warts anyway.

You can see what the current (still subject to change) api is like here: https://github.com/smcameron/space-nerd ... ua-api.txt

and some example scripts (that don't do a whole lot) here:
https://github.com/smcameron/space-nerd ... luascripts

Currently you run the scripts by going to the "demon" screen and typing eg. "lua training-mission-1.lua" into the command box.

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Re: Space Nerds In Space

Postby dusted » 11 Oct 2013, 08:33

Oh, that lua api looks neat, and the missions there shows it off well! :)

I'm wondering if openscad is strictly required for building the game, does it compile the model-files into a machine-specific format?
It'd be great if the content-creation tools were only required for content creators (most projects won't require photoshop or gimp to render .psd or .xcf files into pngs during the build).

That being said, after changing includepaths for lua, stuff compiles and looks great! Definitely going to give scripting a go :)
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Re: Space Nerds In Space

Postby smcameron » 11 Oct 2013, 13:54

dusted {l Wrote}:I'm wondering if openscad is strictly required for building the game, does it compile the model-files into a machine-specific format?


Well, openscad is needed only to build the stl files from the scad files (to state the obvious). I guess I don't make such a distinction in my mind between "content-creation", and coding, esp. since "content-creation" with openscad *is* coding. :)

Originally I had dropped the stl files into github directly, but... they're relatively huge and they screwed up my graph, man... :)
https://github.com/smcameron/space-nerd ... -frequency

See that giant spike around Dec 2012/Jan 2013? That's stl files. Then the giant negative spike in June 2013 is me getting rid of the stl files.

Obviously if the game is built and packaged up into RPMs or .deb or whatever, the stl files will be in there pre-built (presuming I don't move to something more complicated allowing texturing, etc. at some point) but for what goes into github as "source", I think having the scad files and not having the stl files is the right decision.

BTW, if you make any cool mission scripts, send me a patch/pull request. And, if there's something you find yourself needing from the lua api that's not there right now (quite likely) let me know and we can hash out what should be done.

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Re: Space Nerds In Space

Postby dusted » 11 Oct 2013, 14:19

smcameron {l Wrote}:Originally I had dropped the stl files into github directly, but... they're relatively huge and they screwed up my graph, man... :)

That's fair enough, i wondered if maybe it was something like size.. :)

I don't know if you're interested, but I've setup a build-server for SNIS for doing automated builds against github-commits, I've sent a mail with details, you can then decide if you want this or if I should back off :)
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Re: Space Nerds In Space

Postby smcameron » 11 Oct 2013, 14:47

dusted, that's awesome, thanks!

It's probably getting to be time to add a "dist" target to the makefile that does more or less what your build script does.

I have been thinking (not very much, but some) about what form this game might best be distributed for people that just want to play it, rather than hack on it, and I think this game is a little different than most. Since it's (at the moment) a linux-only game, and since it requires several people to be in the same location with a bunch of linux computers in order to play -- well, that is a very tall order, and most people probably won't be able to meet it. To help them meet it, we could build a bootable linux distro on a USB flash drive image with the game on it. Then, all they do is download the image, blast it onto a bunch of USB flash drives, boot up all their various computers from the flash drive, et voila!

Of course, to get into the business of distributing an entire linux distro, while still compiying with the GPL to distribute source upon request, etc.... maybe there are complications with that. And in the unlikely event the thing got popular, that could eat a lot of bandwidth. So, i dunno.
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Re: Space Nerds In Space

Postby dusted » 11 Oct 2013, 14:52

Building the dist needn't be much trouble, as a single link to the upstream dist would suffice as "source" I think.
Building a "going to work without too much hassle" usb dist is likely more difficult, maybe based on knoppix or another of the live-dists

I'm glad it may be useful, I'll follow the project and update the buildscript accordingly to the makefile changes. :)
I'm using ccache to speed up compilation, so the CC parameter is useful.
The server is on a 100 mbit upload, so it can handle a bit of traffic, and you're free to deeplink to the files, I've configured it to keep latest 10 builds, so using the "lastSuccess" link is propably useful.
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Re: Space Nerds In Space

Postby dusted » 12 Oct 2013, 00:38

Sorry for spamming, wanted to say that fresh 32 and 64 bit binaries can be downloaded here, these may not be correctly packaged, please correct me if I've made any mistakes.
I also implemented a simple caching system for the stl files from the scad files, so those will only be generated if they change.
These builds are not officially supported and I've made them on my own initiative, so if you have trouble with them, complain to me first.

http://contigrator.wizznic.org/jobs/spa ... istory.htm
http://contigrator.wizznic.org/jobs/spa ... ss/output/
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Re: Space Nerds In Space

Postby smcameron » 10 Nov 2013, 06:16

It's been a little while since I posted an update, and if you've only been casually watching the github page, you might have thought not much was going on, but if you dug a little deeper, you'll have seen that there's plenty going on, just not on the "master" branch.

It's been just a little over a year since I began this thread with the bare beginnings of a network game. In the original conception, the game was primarily a 2-dimensional game that happened to have a 3-d "out the window" view. Since then, and esp. in the last month, a lot of progress has been made in turning this primarily 2-dimensional game into a real 3-dimensional game. It's been a heavy battle, and many matrices have been manipulated and quaternions grokked.

So, here's a little update video showing some of the new stuff. It's still not really ready for prime time, but in case you want to play with the new toys anyway, the code is on the "more-coord-fixing" branch on github.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ha8NxGSjx1A
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Re: Space Nerds In Space

Postby xahodo » 23 Nov 2013, 00:34

A quick suggestion, but I don't know whether you already implemented something like that already.

Why not add (simulated) non-bridge crew? They can get wounded or even die when their post gets hit. Each crew member could have its own qualities, making it suited for a certain posting.

If crew starts getting wounded or (god forbid) start dieing, the system(s) they are posted start running less smoothly or stop getting repaired. This makes sure the bridge crew is more careful with the ship.

When the ship is running smoothly, the non-bridge crew can spend time optimizing the various systems of the ship. Causing the various ship systems to slowly improve in effectiveness.

Crew could be shuffled around, to affect things like repair or (re)charge time.
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Re: Space Nerds In Space

Postby smcameron » 23 Nov 2013, 07:17

xahodo {l Wrote}:A quick suggestion, but I don't know whether you already implemented something like that already.

Why not add (simulated) non-bridge crew[....].


Thanks for the idea, I will consider it. I am afraid though that there are many higher priority things which will need to be done before I can get to that. If I make a list of all the things that need to be done before I can have something which is a complete and playable game, there are many sort of "basic functionality" things that remain to be done, and at least to some extent, I try to choose what I work on with the goal of getting to a complete game in mind.

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Re: SNIS boot disk build and ...

Postby dagrichards » 29 Nov 2013, 22:56

mintconstructor is not in any repo I can apt-get from, after a bit of rooting around I found some version here:
http://download.polytechnic.edu.na/pub3 ... nstructor/

I am building a small fleet of iso's for a New Years Eve Party of Space Nerds In Space
Will get back with some addl feedback on the provisioning process.

FYI performance is actually pretty good running i2 VM's in VirtualBox on an older MacPro single socket 2.8 Xeon with GB Ram. Kudos to you.
I have noodled through the station UI's a bit and watched most if not all the vids you have up. I find some of the controls erm elusive?

Do you have any hidden docs or other guides? If I gen up some specific questions and ask in bulk are there answers to be had?
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Re: Space Nerds In Space

Postby smcameron » 02 Dec 2013, 00:52

Sure, you can ask questions, and I'll try to answer. F1 is help, which I've tried to make help screens, but, yeah, the controls (esp. on the DEMON screen) are elusive, as you say.

All the coolant stuff recently added to the engineering screen is pretty experimental (but it's on master, so, experimental or not, it's what you get.)

But sure, fire away with the questions. Maybe I'll start a FAQ or improve the in-game docs, or ... somehow make it better. Feedback is good (even if I don't agree with it or do anything about it.)

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Re: Space Nerds In Space

Postby smcameron » 05 Dec 2013, 07:18

December development update:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wre3DkN8TE
Image

The video ends a bit abruptly due to camera battery failure, but there's enough there to get the idea.

Forgot to mention in the video the significant code contributions to the rendering engine by Jeremy Van Grinsven, without which things would not look as good nor be as fast as is the case.

Summary of latest updates:
* Drastic change to weapons system to a 3D turret inspired more by the star wars millenium falcon vs. tie fighter battle more than by any star trek stuff.
* Coolant system added to engineering, and now systems can overheat and damage themselves.
* Enemy AI is radically altered, and now there is some notions of fleets of ships which act in coordination.
* 3D renderer is moving towards a more proper opengl implementation (still lots of work to do, and the pure software renderer still exists and works in snis_limited_client.)

Lots of progress, lots of fun, no major, insurmountable problems -- all in all, things are going well.
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Re: Space Nerds In Space

Postby Natasha_Gita » 13 Dec 2013, 09:56

This looks fantastic! It's amazing to browse this topic and see how far you've progressed. I noticed some of your videos had classical music playing in the background, but are you planning to add any other music at some point?
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Re: Space Nerds In Space

Postby smcameron » 13 Dec 2013, 13:32

Hi, and thanks for the kind words. There is a more cool stuff coming soon.

As for music, I'm not sure. In the very early days of home computers, just making any sound at all was a novelty, and if your game could play music, or -- oh miracle! -- even *talk*, this was quite a neat thing. Nowadays, that sort of novelty is gone, as computers can easily reproduce any sound, or video, or what have you. So, in one way of thinking about it, it doesn't make sense any more to have some particular music to go with the game, any more than your automobile should have a theme song to go with it that starts up every time you drive it (well, even that might be cool for a little while, but only because your car would be the *only* car with such an absurd thing, but it would still wear thin.)

Now I am quite aware that music is a powerful thing for setting a mood, and ideally, we'd all have John Williams in our game room conducting an orchestra performing an extemporaneous composition which varies seamlessly on the fly to suit whatever is happening in the game, like a real time film score. But that's not happening, of course. Next best, we might have some music composed that is broken into little component pieces that can be mixed and matched on the fly to make a kind of robotic simulation of John Williams piecing together something to suit the game play. This is really hard, although there have been some attempts (iMuse springs to mind: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMUSE ) Doing something like that is likely beyong my abilities, and even if it weren't, it probably wouldn't be that good. Next best, we can just strap some canned music into the game (e.g.: Brahms Tragic Overture seems like a reasonable fit, and there is a fairly decent free recording around: https://musopen.org/music/1567/johannes ... ure-op-81/ ) However, this gets old on repeated exposure, and is not really much superior to just letting the player cue up whatever he likes on his media player of choice in the background.

So now I'm down to maybe I just provide a "suggested listening" list to accompany the game? You could do worse than to just crank up Pandora and type in "john williams" and let 'er rip.

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Re: Space Nerds In Space

Postby andrewj » 14 Dec 2013, 11:53

I reckon this is the kind of game where having no music during gameplay is actually a good thing.

Music for the pre-game title screen / menus would be nice, of course.
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Re: Space Nerds In Space

Postby jcantero » 14 Dec 2013, 17:08

Some sci-fi theme tracks http://www.jamendo.com/es/list/a65062/sci-fi-music under CC-BY-SA license. The 6th (good morning) is the type of track for a relaxing not-combat situation. The same author has other albums of space ambient music.
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Re: Space Nerds In Space

Postby smcameron » 02 Jan 2014, 00:48

Some New Year's day fireworks for you guys in this development update:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gv40ukIwWk
Image

Thanks to the foundational work of Jeremy Van Grinsven to enable modern OpenGL shaders and such within the Space Nerds In Space codebase, we now how alpha-blending texture-mapping shaders to render lasers, torpedoes and sparks and such, and I'm sure more exciting and beautiful things will be coming soon.

Other changes: The damage control robot can actually repair stuff now too. A lot of improvement to the client side object movement interpolation code was done as well, so things move a lot more smoothly than they previously did. Lots of other small miscellaneous changes too numerous to mention, consult the history if you need more (too much) detail.

On another topic: I know a few people are trying to run this thing on Raspberry Pis. It was never really a design goal that it should run on Raspberry Pis, though I was happy to see people try it, esp. back before any OpenGL code was added. Now that the OpenGL barn door is opened though, it appears to be leaking into many of the screens besides just the "Main Screen" (Nav, Weapons, and Science, for example.) I do not see this trend abating as development continues, the sexy graphics are just too alluring. Much as I like the idea of SNIS on Rasp. Pi, the little machine may simply not be sufficiently powerful for it.

-- steve
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Re: Space Nerds In Space

Postby smcameron » 05 Jan 2014, 06:05

Maybe nobody else would be excited about this, but I am.... texture mapped planets!

Image

(if you only see a mostly black starfield, the forum is clipping the crap out of the image. Use ctrl-minus repeatedly to shrink the image down to the point the forum won't clip it -- the image isn't huge, the forum is just an aggressive clipper.)
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