OpenTrek tactical ship shooter

Hi, Thought I'd post a link to a fun little project I've been knocking around. Basically, I wanted a tactical shooter similar to Taldrens starfleet command, but that operated more in line with my head cannon (and less SFB). Source material is old TOS, TOS movies and some TNG. Don't know much trek after that, honestly. Trying to lean into the sensors and signals aspect to capture a sub-battle feel.

Let's see.. esc will get you to a manual of sorts, shift-1 to dis/engage warp (2-6 to select warp or use the ui). Warp is a multiplier on the impulse drive, so it's possible to be at max warp and not move. spacebar to fire selected weapons. tab to cycle targets. Systems all have some base power, use the energy allocation panel to channel warp power (or aux power) to them. Shields leak unless reinforced with extra power. If the reinforcement shield layer is destroyed, don't bother putting power to it until it repairs itself (slow). Phasers can be toggled in and out of point defense mode (point defense will auto target drones, gravitic mines and torps). Torps can be toggled between regular and proximity mode (for hunting cloaked ships). Other stuff... some planets/stars will have mag fields that scramble sensors (shift-b to display), nebula will do what you'd expect, asteroid and debris fields are good for hiding (no collisions though).

I'm not a pro by any stretch... a pretty lousy programmer TBH. But, this was fun to piece together. Graphics are pretty basic, but the systems under the hood are fairly complex.

Here is a windows version... I dev this on a Mac, so it might be a bit buggier than the version I play. I basically built this for myself and some friends, so it's very rough around the edges and absolutely not in any way a commercial product. If there's interest, I can post a Mac version. There is no cert, so your computer will warn you that it might be unsafe. It's safe to run. Posting to see if anyone has suggestions that I haven't thought of.

A warning to anyone coming here: we don't know this developer and this is their first post at the board. Installing software can pose a risk to your machine. If you use this software ensure you know what you're doing and take adequate precautions. If you're unsure, don't do it.

Sure that's fair. I can post some screenshots, if that helps.

AntonyF said:

A warning to anyone coming here: we don't know this developer and this is their first post at the board. Installing software can pose a risk to your machine. If you use this software ensure you know what you're doing and take adequate precautions. If you're unsure, don't do it.

Click to expand...

Are you going to try it?

If an admin wants to shoot me an email, I'll provide them with my identity that they can easily confirm. I'm sure they'd be satisfied that I'm reasonably trustworthy. I don't see how to upload screenshots or videos. Maybe because my login is too new?

Unless you have a premium membership, you need to use an outside image hosting service (imgur, postimg, etc.).

I see, ok how does this look...

Imgur is blocked in my country.

To clarify it's not that I don't trust you, I'm just saying to the wider audience use caution when investigating such things. It's just a standard disclaimer, and I felt better than the post being taken down.

No, it's good advice. It's why I posted the game as an exe, and also as a zipped exe.


Hoping to get a bit of feedback on what doesn't work so well. I'm a pretty lousy programmer (more of a hardware guy). It's a fairly straightforward pygame, but has grown to about 255K lines of code. I'm thinking about a refactor to something like panda3d.

I'm just realizing that the LLM communications officer is broken. I recently refactored the LLM ai director, and it looks like I broke the comms. I'll fix it this weekend, but it's not necessary for the game. Basically, if you enable LLM, you can hail enemy and ally ships and chat with the captains (or demand surrender). They do a pretty good job of remaining in character.

Interesting. I haven't tried the game itself yet (no Windows machine available, just Linux), but from the screenshots it reminds me a bit of Xtrek/Netrek or the various iterations of the original mainframe Trek game.

Begin was an inspiration of sorts (uh huh, I'm old), so yes those are the roots. I wrote it on a Mac... linux version should be easy enough via docker (probably work better than the win version). I think pygame and numpy have platform specific native code that can't be cross compiled. Can probably knock up a linux version.

Is there a manual or tutorial for the game? No idea what to do on the home page.

Thanks for downloading... sorry, it's difficult for me to know what isn't obvious. There is a manual of sorts that can be opened via the 'manual' button near the top right of the home page. It's a bit out of date though, and probably not that helpful (haven't got around to adding pics or screenshots). In-game you can also 'esc' to get a mini-menu with a button to the manual.

Basically, on the home screen, select your ship from the dropdown on the left. There should be a "+" button to add allies. On the right, add in your enemies. Along the top you can select 'empty space' or 'star system'... to select environment ('sector' is just a collection of procedurally generated star systems). Then along the bottom, click 'start battle'. One the game launches, the mouse wheel will zoom in/out. click to rotate, spacebar to fire selected weapons. Most of the UI's have a 'details' ui for more control, and all ui should be dragable (including the hull health and impulse slider).

The enemy will scan the area, and warp to your location. The star system maps are quite large, and require a lot of scrolling with the mouse wheel to see it all. It's all very TOS.

Thanks
FWIW, I checked using Malwarebytes and AVG to check for malware/viruses. It found none.