Howdy folks,
Rare i get to actually share something but i figured I’ve done enough work on it, so why not. heh.
I've had a dream for nearly two decades now of a modern remake of BOTF taking advantage of better tech, the expanded eras (Enterprise, now the Kurtzman 25th century), new 4x/tbs style gameplay styles that came out of games like civ and stellaris. So i've finally had a bit of time to sit down and bang out some prototype elements of what _might_ be my attempted to finally make a proper spiritual successor to botf.
Most of this is just prototypes of concepts i've been banging out in html/javascript using three.js in my spare time. Ideally i'd like to try to use unity for it ifi ever finish all the concepts, although it's been suggested that leaving it in browser would be a lot more playable if it got to the point that others would want ot play it.
the goal has been to make it moddable like other games, so units, races, techs can be dropped in as XML or JSON files and just loaded straight into the game right away, same with race tech. to that end, i converted the original BOTF shiplist (and it's models too that i pulled out of hte game) and brought them into the new structure.
first up, the strategic map:
fully tunable world generator with about 8 different galaxy shapes right now, also scaling from the original BOTF sizes up to what you can see there, "galactic", nebula s(the amorphous blobs) are now multi tile regions drawing directly from how civilization does it's territory/terrain handling.. the dotted lines are wormholes, with all the existing BOTF terrain already included and plans for more, again all moddable. The galaxy generator also has a "system builder" mode that lets you custom create and import star systems into the game, or edit home systems. all the star system structure is also moddable so new planets, stars celestial objects of any nature can be created with custom details and then be aded into systems for gameplay. At this stage because i'm using JS, it's somewhat limited to "you have to load these when you start the galaxy editor" due to CORS (technical people will understand what that is). but in principle this is how mods would be handled in proper json/xml when the time comes.
I wanted to make a tech tree and eras system similar to Civ, so i'm working on the specifics of that, but i directly converted the old BOTF tree across to get a rough idea of what it may look like, obviously not going to be those gigantic blocks where everything is filled in with no dependencies, that'll come later once i get further along and define more suitable techs. The Eras i broke up using propulsion tech because it felt the most right for trek and felt better than picking centuries, Warp 5 era (Enterprise), Warp 7 era (TOS), Warp 8 era (TMP), Transwarp Era (after the Excelsior experiment forced starfleet to redefine the warp scale) and then post voyager is the Slipstream era since that's the new propulsion tech from that time. Makes sense to me, not going to argue the terminology, if you dont like it, make your own game instead
And because everyone always does the strategic stuff and forgets the ship combat, i wanted to marry all teh best parts of Armada with the old BOTF style gameplay along with other elements from turn based games like BSG: Deadlock and Star Wars Empire at War, so i present my initial attempts as the turn based battle system and various features. The combat is quick, i realized quite early on that i'd been too aggressive with my timings but i feel these vids are still a good demo of the gameplay anyway.
https://files.catbox.moe/cx8isz.mp4
(Sorry, couldn't embed the MP4s as playable for some reason)
I am currently using the existing BOTF assets as placeholders, the battles are literally using the BOTF combat stats for the ships as i yanked out of the original files, so those excessive weapons and stuff is how the original game armed those ships, it's something i'm tossing up changing because it does feel a little silly, but there is that nostalgia element, bare minimum i can at least make the Defiant and Kbops fire actual pulse weapons instead of beams. if this ever got anywhere beyond a few wild prototypes, I’ll produce my own assets instead, especially the sprites, I’d like 3d planetary objects in this game. And if i ever got a C&D, I’ll just be removing the trek stuff and adding non trek ones.
comments welcome. Can catch me here on the bbs or on the scifi-meshes and armada fleet command's BOTF discord otherwise.
Rare i get to actually share something but i figured I’ve done enough work on it, so why not. heh.
I've had a dream for nearly two decades now of a modern remake of BOTF taking advantage of better tech, the expanded eras (Enterprise, now the Kurtzman 25th century), new 4x/tbs style gameplay styles that came out of games like civ and stellaris. So i've finally had a bit of time to sit down and bang out some prototype elements of what _might_ be my attempted to finally make a proper spiritual successor to botf.
Most of this is just prototypes of concepts i've been banging out in html/javascript using three.js in my spare time. Ideally i'd like to try to use unity for it ifi ever finish all the concepts, although it's been suggested that leaving it in browser would be a lot more playable if it got to the point that others would want ot play it.
the goal has been to make it moddable like other games, so units, races, techs can be dropped in as XML or JSON files and just loaded straight into the game right away, same with race tech. to that end, i converted the original BOTF shiplist (and it's models too that i pulled out of hte game) and brought them into the new structure.
first up, the strategic map:
fully tunable world generator with about 8 different galaxy shapes right now, also scaling from the original BOTF sizes up to what you can see there, "galactic", nebula s(the amorphous blobs) are now multi tile regions drawing directly from how civilization does it's territory/terrain handling.. the dotted lines are wormholes, with all the existing BOTF terrain already included and plans for more, again all moddable. The galaxy generator also has a "system builder" mode that lets you custom create and import star systems into the game, or edit home systems. all the star system structure is also moddable so new planets, stars celestial objects of any nature can be created with custom details and then be aded into systems for gameplay. At this stage because i'm using JS, it's somewhat limited to "you have to load these when you start the galaxy editor" due to CORS (technical people will understand what that is). but in principle this is how mods would be handled in proper json/xml when the time comes.
I wanted to make a tech tree and eras system similar to Civ, so i'm working on the specifics of that, but i directly converted the old BOTF tree across to get a rough idea of what it may look like, obviously not going to be those gigantic blocks where everything is filled in with no dependencies, that'll come later once i get further along and define more suitable techs. The Eras i broke up using propulsion tech because it felt the most right for trek and felt better than picking centuries, Warp 5 era (Enterprise), Warp 7 era (TOS), Warp 8 era (TMP), Transwarp Era (after the Excelsior experiment forced starfleet to redefine the warp scale) and then post voyager is the Slipstream era since that's the new propulsion tech from that time. Makes sense to me, not going to argue the terminology, if you dont like it, make your own game instead
And because everyone always does the strategic stuff and forgets the ship combat, i wanted to marry all teh best parts of Armada with the old BOTF style gameplay along with other elements from turn based games like BSG: Deadlock and Star Wars Empire at War, so i present my initial attempts as the turn based battle system and various features. The combat is quick, i realized quite early on that i'd been too aggressive with my timings but i feel these vids are still a good demo of the gameplay anyway.
https://files.catbox.moe/cx8isz.mp4
(Sorry, couldn't embed the MP4s as playable for some reason)
I am currently using the existing BOTF assets as placeholders, the battles are literally using the BOTF combat stats for the ships as i yanked out of the original files, so those excessive weapons and stuff is how the original game armed those ships, it's something i'm tossing up changing because it does feel a little silly, but there is that nostalgia element, bare minimum i can at least make the Defiant and Kbops fire actual pulse weapons instead of beams
. if this ever got anywhere beyond a few wild prototypes, I’ll produce my own assets instead, especially the sprites, I’d like 3d planetary objects in this game. And if i ever got a C&D, I’ll just be removing the trek stuff and adding non trek ones.comments welcome. Can catch me here on the bbs or on the scifi-meshes and armada fleet command's BOTF discord otherwise.
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