Star Control: Behind Enemy Lines is a forum game that until recently was played on the UQMF. It's basically an adaptation of Hero Quest, featuring a four alien team of special operatives tasked with carrying out daring missions behind Hierarchy lines. The first mission, which could also be seen as quite a beta mission, was carried out over on UQMF during this spring. In case you are interested, the thread for that is
here.
As you may note the graphics are quite basic, as I was just learning how to do this stuff.
Dabir was kind enough to provide me with some sprites, but the actual map was done in Excel and looks atrocious. I also found lots of holes and problems in the rules during the beta game, all of which I've been working on correcting these last few months. While I'm a bit behind schedule as I didn't anticipate a lot of weird stuff that has happened, I am making progress. My main focus has been to create a better and easier graphic interface, as well as streamlining the game mechanics. So far, I've mostly worked on the graphical interface. My next step will be to set up a Excel spread sheet that will make calculating battles a lot easier than it was before. After that I just need to get all the sprites for level 2 from Dabir, and I'll be set to run another game.
I'm opening a project thread here because I know there are a lot of thinkers and artists, and I'm hoping for some good feedback. On the art side I'm also hoping for some more contributors, as there is a lot of graphics to be done and Dabir is only one person. In particular, there is a lot of object art that I'm hoping someone could step in and help with as well as tile art for levels further ahead. Once the next level is complete, it will be played here or at UQMF. I'm currently leaning towards UQMF since I already have a
unit/item thread in place there. Oh, and since I know most regulars here would be unwilling to dedicate themselves to a game that demands such a large amount of dedication to be any fun. This is a one post a day game, and many of you rarely post once a week
Anyhow, while SC:BEL started out as a one man project, it has grown a bit.
Draxas is helping me with game balancing, units and rules. He is great at what he does and I appreciate all the help he has given me so far. Dabir does the art as mentioned earlier, and it is fine art that is coming my way. I especially love the Shofixti icon and am eagerly waiting for the others. There is a third shadowy member of our team working on as yet unspecified things, but I'll introduce him with a bang when the time is right.
So, here's the basic interface as it is looking now. It's based on a image fluffy_banana cooked up for me, before he became otherwise engaged. As you can see, there are two distinctly different wall and floor types here, showing how the graphics have evolved during the process. Dabir has had to modify things quite a few times to make me happy, but I think the end result is quite nice. I might add black outlines around the floor tiles yet, but we'll see. I'm trying to go for a retro feeling and make it look like an actual game, so I stuck some menu buttons up in the left corner. There's going to be a minimap later on (if I can get it working) I might enlarge the tiles as well to show off the graphics better.
It may be worth mentioing that at some future point in time, when the forum game has been played out, all tiles, rules, data sheets and so on will be uploaded on the PNF. Comments, thoughts, ideas?
