IrTrek - not really a project but may turn into one

[Midnight]

down right sickening.

all that and you couldn't mention the copyright stance?

I thought photon torpedos weren't actually objects but plasma or rather photons.. is there supposed to be a model??

this simple little project appears to becomming a game quickly.

[rayban]

hmmmz.. copyright.. well.. i would have to say that this is a fan based
simulator with no intentions of being commercial or profit oriented in any way
and that the simulation is based on the star trek universe. the ship models
are based on the star trek ones, but are obviously not exact replica's as i
have taken some liberty's in the design myself.

in a nutshell its a submarine based simulator in a space setting, but if in the
end i receive an official email of some kind asking me to cease and desist,
then the simulation will remain the same, except that new model's of a
different sort will be used.

there wont be any mention in the simulator about official names of ships or
official classes of them either.

there have been over the years ( as far back as i can remember ) fan made
games based on the trek universe ( i remember the text based one and
another that used a pc as a base and terminals that hooked off of it ) and
they were non profit also. but i'll play it by ear for now, things could
always change in a heart beat... hmnmmz.. IrrBaseAlpha....


i have no plans to add a no win situation, but there will be situations where
that can obviously happen.. you have to pick your battles, so if you
decided to take on 3 or more enemy then there's your no-win situation..
but unlike kirk.. i would have turned tail and ran...


and on the torpedo models, if you type in photon torpedo in google and
search images, you can see what they look like... they get used for a few
things in the trek universe, from torpedo's, to probes and also to house
dead vulcans and shoot their carcasses at unstable planets.

[jam]

The phasers of the Enterprise-A are made more powerful by using energy from the warp drive (That's a real geeky one)

ya ya, it does this by channeling energy directly from the warp nacelles at point beyond the dilithium/magnatomic-initiator stage, everybody knows this



@Rayban

neat project your working on looking forward to your next update.

[rogerborg]

I named my daughter after the Miranda class starship.

(3D chess) check and mate.

[Midnight]

and you're proud of that?

anyways i suppose you could wait until trouble finds you.

it just seems more wise to "use google" and visit their site (might want to try and use the favorites link you have... obviously)

and actually read the copyright. they pertain to more then just commercial acts but include public and private use as well.

I just thought I would inform everyone incase you haven't taken the course.

I seem to remember godzilla sueing robzilla.com or something like that.
If I remember correctly they lost. but I think he had to remove the site.

[Anteater]

Have you ever heard of Star Trek: New Voyages? It's a fan made internet TV SHOW (well... not really a TV show, but it's sort of like one.) and Paramount knows about it, but has already stated they allow it. If they allow that, they should allow a fan game.

[rayban]

new ship just finished, tried it out in the simulator.. looks good, however
i may have to go the uv route if i want more detail on the models, and i
would like to have normal maps eventually..



I did email startrek.com about the terms of copyright and usage, but i
guess i emailed the wrong place, as what i can understand from their
reply... so i can dig deeper as to whom to contact, but it's also at their
discretion as to what they will allow and not.

if in the end im told to discontinue, i may just make it a personal project for
sole personal use ( i mean, it is a personal project , meant to increase my
skills at modelling, c++ programming and so on. )

but i will cross that bridge when i come to it.

[sudi]

Hey these models look damm good!
Any need in a programmer? Or do u not have any idea of what u want to make?

[rayban]

Thanks Sudi.
currently im doing ok with the programming, although very very slow.. since
im learning better ways to do things that ive done and have to redo them.

as for the concept of what im trying to make, i do have a general idea of
what it should play like, one thing that bothered me about games like this
was that you generally had to point the ship directly at what you were firing
at like the ship was a huge gun, which is what im not going to do here...

all the phaser ports will fire on turrets so to speak so you just target and
fire, and it will fire as long as it doesnt hit the blind spots on the ship, so you
can do a fly-by attack and still hit the target.

im currently doing the in-game hud art needed, since im at a point where i do
need some general control of things, the naviagtion menu is almost ready to
place in the game, it looks similar to this one, which is the crew micro
management menu ( or just the commander menu, since the commander
is in charge of crew placement ), since its based on submarine gameplay
the various crew shifts will get tired and efficiency will drop in their
departments.


but it wont be as intense as it looks, since the computer will switch shifts
automaticly most of the time, just some aspects of it the player will need
to control.

but its coming along nicely so far... it wont be ready anytime soon.. but
eventually i hope to have something i can show.

EDIT: replaced the image for a better concept

[rogerborg]

Beautiful! Lovely modelling, although you'll have to bite the bullet and texture them at some point, and you'll want lower polygon versions for LOD switching.

Copyright and Paramount? Heh. OK.

I used to work for a company that was invited to tender for some FMV on a Star Trek game. The "invitation" was word of mouth only. The publishers refused to put or to discuss anything in writing, because they had no authority from Paramount to ask third parties (other than the future winning bidder) to produce Star Trek content, even though that's exactly what they needed to do. We could tender, but we couldn't use the content in our portfolio, nor tell anyone (including our own shareholders!) that we were doing it, so (as we didn't win the bid) we effectively had to cook the books and defraud our shareholders.

The publishers apologised, but were clear that Paramount's lawyers are pretty serious about these issues; the poor dears don't have anything else to do.

Chances are you'll never hear from their lawyers, particularly as at this point you're basically modelling TOS era (the real era) ships, but if you ever start competing with their licensed products, keep a weather eye out. Using the real names is largely irrelevant, except for keeping your Google rank low; you're duplicating their distinctive likenesses, which is more than enough for a nastygram.

[rayban]

thanks for the comments rogerborg, and the info.. i obviously dont want
to take any profits from paramount, nor do i intend to make any. i cant see
my simulator as having the high polish of a pro game.. but i do want it to
look good. but i will play it by ear for now... although i have started to model
my own designs not based on startreks, new ships.. large like them. I do
want to make the space simulator and if in the end i have to switch to an
original design base, i will hopefully have the models to do it.

i only intend to have maybe 5 or 6 ship models on the screen at once, and
i just did a test with 20 of the klingon ones and got 242fps with all of them
in my view.. but of course theres no textures on them, so im saving a few
passes there. and as for texturing them later on.. i did want a monotone
simulator look, so thats why i put some effort into adding detail in the meshes
which i could have left out and did with textures.

although.. i did get this idea that if i did uv them, i could make a texture of
just damage.. say and underlying meshwork of metal and then texture
over that and by use of some kind of external image for an alpha map..

so that a laser would 'paint' that image and it would reveal damage on
the ship models. but thats probably far out of my scope in doing.

as im still learning on how to program in c++ im currently looking up
what the best way to add new enemys into a scene.. currently i use an
array, but im researching my options.. i still have a long way to go in
my c++ skills.

[Anteater]

I'm not sure if this will help (I'm a VERY sloppy programmer) but to add enemies to a scene, I do something like this:

Code: Select all

//Adds an enemy of the Matrix type.
void addEnemyMatrix(vector3df pos)
{
    	
	IAnimatedMesh* enemymesh;

	
	
	enemymesh = smgr->getMesh("data/npc/mt.md2");
	

	IAnimatedMeshMD2* dataMesh = static_cast<IAnimatedMeshMD2*>(enemymesh);

	dataMesh->getFrameLoop("attack", bf1, ef1, ff1);
	dataMesh->getFrameLoop("move", bf2, ef2, ff2);

	IAnimatedMeshSceneNode* enemy = smgr->addAnimatedMeshSceneNode(enemymesh, NULL, enid, pos, vector3df(0,0,0));
      
       enemy->setMaterialTexture(0, driver->getTexture("data/npc/mt.jpg"));
             
	   enemy->setRotation(vector3df(0,rand()%360,0));
	   enemy->setMaterialFlag(EMF_NORMALIZE_NORMALS, true);
	   enemy->setMD2Animation("stand");
       enemy->setAnimationSpeed(30);
	   enemy->setScale(vector3df(10,10,10));

	   enemy->addAnimator(smgr->createCollisionResponseAnimator(tris, enemy, vector3df(30,95,30),vector3df(0,-10,0),vector3df(0,0,0)));
	   
	   enid = enid + 1;

}

Notice the enid variable? This is declared at the beginning of the program. Then, to update enemies, I use a for loop like:

Code: Select all

void updateEnemyMatrix ()
{
     
     for(nowid = 256; nowid < enid; nowid++)
     {
            
            ISceneNode* nowNodeBeta = smgr->getSceneNodeFromId(nowid);
            IAnimatedMeshSceneNode* nowNode = static_cast<IAnimatedMeshSceneNode*>(nowNodeBeta);
//Do enemy stuff like moving and attacking
//...
//...
//...
//Then close the for loop
     }
}
			

Using the ID of the enemy, I then static_cast it to an animated mesh so I can do things like set the MD2 animation or whatever. For different enemy types, just change the starting/ending ids in the for loop.

[Anteater]

Oh, by the way, y'all may find this interesting/funny:
http://www.mikefullerton.com/blog/2006/ ... ammer.aspx

[rayban]

intresting... so far i have been allowing memory for 20 ships but intend
on using the <array> pushback for missiles, here is what ive been doing
for the ships, addship and removeship functions,

Code: Select all

//------------------- in header --------------------------

typedef vector3df vec3;	// we use vec3 cause its shorter

struct MyObjects
{
	int ID;			// not needed...
	int TYPE; // enum
	bool EMPTY; // true if empty slot
	IAnimatedMeshSceneNode* node;
	vec3 Pos;
	vec3 Rot;
	float Speed;
};

	MyObjects ship[20];

//-------------------- in cpp -----------------------------



////////////////////////////////////////
// AddShip() adds a ship to an empty slot if any are available and returns the id number of the slot
int GameEngine::AddShip(int TYPE, vec3 Position, vec3 Rotation)
{
	for (int x = 0; x<20; x++)
	{
		if (ship[x].EMPTY)	// if this slot is empty
		{
			ship[x].EMPTY = false;	// set it to full and add a ship
			ship[x].Pos = Position;
			ship[x].Rot = Rotation;
			ship[x].TYPE = TYPE;

			if (TYPE == FED_REFIT)
				ship[x].node = smgr->addAnimatedMeshSceneNode(smgr->getMesh("../../media/ships/nstr1.ms3d"));
			else
			if (TYPE == KLI_D7)
				ship[x].node = smgr->addAnimatedMeshSceneNode(smgr->getMesh("../../media/ships/k2.ms3d"));
			if (ship[x].node)
			{
				ship[x].node->setPosition(ship[x].Pos);
				ship[x].node->setRotation(ship[x].Rot);
				ship[x].node->setMaterialFlag(EMF_LIGHTING, true);
			}
			//cout << "Added Ship to ID slot:" << x << "        class:";
			//if (TYPE == FED_REFIT) cout << "Federation REFIT" << endl;
			//if (TYPE == KLI_D7) cout << "Klingon D7" << endl;
			return x;
		}
	}
	cout << "ERROR: AddShip() in GameEngine.cpp - No Available slots" << endl;
	return -1;	// no slots open
}



////////////////////////////////////////
// RemoveShip() as it says, just pass the ID and it will remove it.
void GameEngine::RemoveShip(int ID)
{
	if (ID>=0 && ID < 20)
	{
		ship[ID].node->removeAll();
		ship[ID].EMPTY = true;
		return;
	}
	cout << "ERROR: RemoveShip() in GameEngine.cpp - ID is not in specified range ( ID = " << ID << " )" << endl;
}


// then when needed i just

int ID = AddShip(FED_REFIT, vec3(100,100,100) , vec3(0,0,0));

this way every ship has its own struct that i can access by the id number
returned for which ever slot was available.
i still use a for-loop to cycle through them.

[rogerborg]

Out of interest, how's the project coming along? I'm currently bolting Irrlicht on top of the venerable Netrek, so I'm starting with a game and adding graphics, while you're building a game round your models. Maybe we'll meet in the middle sometime.