A star control 1 remake that may actually get finished

[Dragon]

I think Utwig ought to regenerate between combats naturally.

Here are my ideas for capabilities. Just throwing them around...

Kohr-Ah: can destroy colonies regardless of the presence of fortresses or defending ships OR 33% chance to destroy fortifications upon besieging, and successful besiege does not cost a move.
(
compare that to
Kzer-Za: 33% chance to destroy fortifications upon besieging; atuomatically destroy forts at end of turn.
So, both average 1 fortified system per turn, but Kohr-Ah's progress costs more moves, and it has the potential to rush ahead or stall
)
Chmmr: groups attacked by Chmmr engage in an order selected by attacking player; AND/OR groups attacking this arrive in random order
Druuge: can create a mine for 1 move if that's all it does this turn
Supox: can create a colony for 1 move if that's all it does this turn
Utwig: can create a fort for 1 move if that's all it does this turn
Melnorme: you can transfer precursor artifacts from a Melnorme trader
Slylandro: Can build Slylandro at the location of a Slylandro as if it were a Starbase; gain 1 RU for each kill of a ship, fortification, mine, or colony that it makes.
Thraddash: sustained afterburner: free move from friendly mines as if they were colonies
Pkunk: refill crew automatically if any of your colonies or other ships is destroyed
Zoq-Fot-Pik: can see planets from 1 hop away, including presence of but not type of precursor artifacts
Orz: capture mines rather than destroying

And since this is rather high density of features, I'd consider adding the following (optionally by scenario so you can have your 'pure' SC1 if you want)...

Shofixti: ground invasion: capture colonies rather than destroying
Earthling: Nuke launch: can attack unguarded map features (colonies, mines, starbases, forts) from 1 hop away as if it was there. Can't launch from inside enemy fortifications.
Mmrnmhrm: Cruising transformation: 2 Mmrnmhrm at the same location can move together, for 1 move point, into space not occupied by enemy ships or fortifications.
Yehat: can make extra fortifications on top of regular fortifications.
Chenjesu: DOGI  synergy with forts: If defending a fortification, the battle group has the option to wait behind the fortification rather than engage immediately

Umgah: free move after the first map feature it destroys on a turn, HAR HAR HAR
Ilwrath: Not visible on starmap until adjacent (now that it's not hotseat, we can do this!)
VUX: capture fortifications rather than destroying; only works on regular fortifications, not Yehat extra fortifications (I figure this is accomplished by limpeting them, coming alongside, boarding, and reprogramming)
Androsynth: extended blazer: if you move an Androsynth 3 hops in one turn, get 1 movement point (but Androsynth is still exhausted)
Spathi: if attacked, can make a move (spent against next turn's movement) to avoid combat


Also, I'd consider having energy stations which increase the total moves per turn of a side (each ship's max move is still 3). These would, like colonies, cost no move to leave. As a possible twist, they'd be totally automated, and so any ship can capture one for free rather than destroy it.

I like these ideas, I've put them here because I use this thread as my source of truths; or something.

[spinsane]

I think a cool thing for the Chenjesu would be long range detection, what with their natural affinity for detecting hyperwaves/hyperspace movement. If the entire map had fog of war, and a ship could only detect 1-2 stars away (ilwrath being undetectable at 0-1) then the Chenjesu could see 3-4 moves away. That's IF you want to do Fog of War.

[Zeracles]

Seeing spinsanes post I was just thinking that a general import routine might be perfect for Death999.  I already import Zeracles starmaps

When I have time I'll improve the points generating code with some extra touches and post it (it's pretty simple and shouldn't be difficult to do a C conversion), also I'll generate a whole pile of starmaps with varying properties.

adding the connections between them and the types of stars/planets would not be difficult.

Was the distribution of star/planet types structured in any way in the original? Another thing to try might be correlating this with local densities, to vary the risk or reward for entering dense clusters; could be a game mechanic.

I've always enjoyed generating surfaces for whatever strange and in-explicable reason.

Smoothing and surface generation is really interesting and I wish I had more time to play games with them

[Death 999]

As far as I know, the only settable parameter concerning the distribution of planet types was by 'closer to hierarchy' / 'closer to alliance'; and, as there wasn't much in the way of real density, I'm not sure what other criteria could be used.

[Dragon]

Seeing as SCDB has been boring of late I figured I'd add a boring update.   

I'm still progressing slowly, which is to say I'm still working on the UI.  It's tedious time-consuming and not challenging in any way.  In other words: pretty standard grunt work.  Did I mention that it's tedious?  And boring?  I did?  Well it is.

Um, yeah, that's it.  Once I'm done with the UI things get more exciting and I can actually start on the starmap.  Yay!

[Angelfish]

Hehe, that's why I usually leave UI design and coding for the last.. or the others

[Lukipela]

Seeing as SCDB has been boring of late I figured I'd add a boring update.   

Your updates are never boring.

Um, yeah, that's it.  Once I'm done with the UI things get more exciting and I can actually start on the starmap.  Yay!

This makes me excited for not just this project, but others

[Dragon]

Hi guys I'd like to ask a favour.  Could you please test this file and let me know if it runs or not.

Hopefully you should find yourself in a small multi-coloured box.  That's the best outcome.  The worst outcome is that it runs but all you see is a pale blue window.

If it crashes and burns.  ie: a window *briefly* pops up and then goes away again you may need to install either the VC2005 runtime or the DirectX 2009 (March) runtime.  If you know you've installed both of these and it still does nothing then can you please post the contents of the log.txt file here. 

The reason I'm asking is that I thought I'd ironed out most graphics card related bugs (remember the early Star Control tech demo) but it looks like I was mistaken.  I'm developing on an NVidia 7600 which runs fine but I tried running on an ATI 4890 which does the pale blue screen of death thing.  Not cool.

I'd like to know if anyone else running ATI cards has the same issue.  I sort of suspect that the card itself is broken rather than being an ATI driver bug but if it is a driver issue I suppose I'll have to fix it.  I'm utterly stumped as to what it could be though...

If it does run you can push 'c' to swap to a controllable camera.  Slightly more interesting stuff in the readme.txt file.

This makes me excited for not just this project, but others

Aye, that's one of the main reasons why I want to get the UI stuff done right first time.  I think it should be very reusable in 'other projects'.   

[Angelfish]

Runs fine for me , I see that multi-colored box and can play around with it.
Edit: Made it crash by pressing F4 and continuing the playing

[Lukipela]

I downloaded it and tried to start it. I get a alert box saying (translayed so the terms may be a bit off):

Viewer.exe - Part not found

The Application could not be started,because d3dx9_41.dll was not found. Reinstallignthe application may fix the problem.

The box doesn't blink or disappear, it remains until I click OK. I have an ATI card called "Radeon X1300 series"

[Sage]

You might want to make sure the current version of your OS's latest DirectX is installed on your machine. Barring that, if you have this done already, you might be able to get it to run by putting the specified file into the same directory as the executable.

[Lukipela]

You might want to make sure the current version of your OS's latest DirectX is installed on your machine. Barring that, if you have this done already, you might be able to get it to run by putting the specified file into the same directory as the executable.

I'll have a look, but I just reinstalled the entire machine and it did download the latest drivers (I think). I think this happened with Dragons last tech demo as well, he had to send me a DLL to make it work...

EDIT: Woot, 4 people in one thread! this place is busy city all of a sudden!

[Angelfish]

You might want to make sure the current version of your OS's latest DirectX is installed on your machine. Barring that, if you have this done already, you might be able to get it to run by putting the specified file into the same directory as the executable.

I'll have a look, but I just reinstalled the entire machine and it did download the latest drivers (I think). I think this happened with Dragons last tech demo as well, he had to send me a DLL to make it work...

EDIT: Woot, 4 people in one thread! this place is busy city all of a sudden!

Just download the latest DirectX package then, just to be sure .
edit: This link: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=2da43d38-db71-4c1b-bc6a-9b6652cd92a3&DisplayLang=en

[mminasi]

Running from an Nvidea FX 570M, it ran as expected... but I DID have to reinstall DirectX.  (Ran on a 64 bit Vista box.)  Hope this helps.

[Dragon]

Thanks everyone!  It's good to know nobody else is getting this wierd bug.  I suspect that it was a combination of ATI's flaky drivers and a system that hadn't been reinstalled in years (with who knows how many old drivers on it).

Anyway I put a clean install of windows on and everything works again - including a bunch of other games also.  So, uh, there you have it... if you can't get Star Control to run just reinstall windows or buy an NVidia card.  Simple really....  <- frowny face.

It needs the latest version of DirectX because in desperation I upgraded from the August 2007 SDK to the March 2009 one.  I quite liked the old 2007 version because just about everyone (except apparently Lukipela ) has it's runtime installed already.

Out of interest the viewer crashes on 'F4' because it switches into editor mode when pressed.  Editor mode uses a bunch of GUI code which I'm rewriting at the moment and is far from working again.

And again, Ta, much appreciated.  It really is surprising that any games work at all given all the different types of hardware and drivers that are out there.  Trying to get programs to work on *other* machines is probably one of the least fun parts of programming...