Star Trek 25th Anniversary Game (+25 years!)

[toonloon]

Hi guys.

I've been reading a lot of old posts about the fondness for Interplay's old Trek games and I thought I'd mention a little project I started 4 years ago and floundered. Some of you may remember me for being the team leader on Star Trek Elite Force: TOS The Argas Effect, creating many, many skins for holomatch and being co-creator of the TOS Weapons Mod along with some crazy talented guys.

4 years back I thought it would be a good idea to re-vamp the 25th Anniversary Game in time for the 50th and keep the same story, the same cast recordings and update the graphics, music and add cut scenes like close ups for character's talking... and do the whole thing in the style of TAS.

Kail Tescar and I created a huge amount of work, including all the icons, animation frames, etc... for a test of the first bit of Demon World and things were looking really good... until the guy who knew how to operate the point and click adventure game creator ran out on us leaving us holding a lot of good work. I managed to drop 'the big three' into the game and have Kirk walk to wherever you point him to and damnit it looked just like a TAS episode that you control(!)

Sadly, with no programmer, all the sounds, music, animations, graphics, scripts, etc have lain dormant for 4 years and I wondered if anyone out there has any experience creating point and click games and would be interested in helping. I can supply all the elements, it's just a programmer who can use the freeware software that is needed.

Thanks for taking the time to read this.

Toonloon

 

[GambitRealm]

Sounds really cool, I always liked that game...

We actually used it as inspiration to make our own 50th Anniversary game - it's made in Torque 3D so it's basically a first-person shooter engine, but it can play in 3rd person as well and also has Oculus Rift support.

I created 15 basic training missions for it, and also have 5 interactive original series episodes in there - you get to watch some clips from the episode on the viewscreen, and at other times you are participating and controlling the character.

What engine are you needing help with to finish off your project? I've never used any of those point-and-click adventure game creators, but I'm sure it can't be that hard.... I have lots of script programming experience and maybe I can help...

More info on our project is in its own thread in this same forum - feel free to check it out when you get a minute.

Cheers

 

[Schneider21]

I adore ST25. Do you have any shots of your progress to show?

 

[toonloon]

I'll get some stuff together and show you soon. And I'll address the other mod mentioned here (sounds awesome!)

 

[GambitRealm]

We actually snuck in a sound or two from the ST25 game into our project I still had the original CD audio files lying around.

 

[toonloon]

Here's some shots I found. Remember that all of this actually worked. It doesn't look that great in isolation but when you see Kirk walking around and with Spock & McCoy following him, the effect was pretty good. Sorry, I couldn't get the picture tool to work properly here but at least you can download the images in your browser.

https://mega.nz/#!xwkXATQK!N2HmiW_CbTfvIMpg8DvUDjyjTDI8KGIvExjqD5tI5LE
https://mega.nz/#!5x0DXYoT!kR-AZqQGLsDTi606KpZ3Fbj0Bkz3oguF_-YGEm28hx8
https://mega.nz/#!1ldRzRqb!I_JKsH3GdLoIEiu780HaM-sptlROBuL4Nq7pyiucV2A
https://mega.nz/#!0sl3BKiT!DPsDbvTyu9VaDeU-rzUmIF3Vab6Vtk84v4b7fo370Ws
https://mega.nz/#!Vx0DwZDT!SkJQucoJryZKCtJL6bbQdp-C_5IWGDLZ6pGzWrJuzxI

 

[Schneider21]

Ew to mega- site image sharing... but it was worth the effort. Those look wonderful and the TAS styling is spot on!

What game engine are you using? I'm a decently skilled amateur Unity developer, and I suspect porting this to Unity would be fairly easy. It has a great 2D suite of tools, and it's very well-documented with great community support. I'm very busy with work, family, and my own game project, but I'd be happy to provide assistance and support on occasion if you went that route.

 

[GambitRealm]

Love the look!

This is great stuff

 

[toonloon]

Wow. Thanks for the great comments. Those pics really don't do justice to seeing it moving. I'll put the video up we did as well when I get a moment. Sorry about the mega links but I don't know how else to share the pics.

Regarding the engine, it was a shareware adventure maker and I can't remember what the guy was using. It doesn't look like much when shown in a couple of shots like that but there were a LOT of animation frames to make for each character. Our goal was to create everything up to meeting the monk from beam down. We even had the characters beam down within the engine effects.

Thanks Schneider21 for the extremely generous offer of help but I really have no knowledge of coding and considering that I took care of everything else, I can't learn the Coding side from scratch on top of that so I need someone who can do that side of things. I created a script with all the possible outcomes for actions.

I really wanted to create the first "screen" and then try to get people excited so they might offer to help.

 

[Schneider21]

For image hosting, gentlemen prefer imgur. Which you really should do so that lazy people can see the images hosted here instead of having to download them first, because these need to be seen!

I totally understand with the engine thing. My suspicion is that the way asset handling is being done in this shareware adventure maker is a giant PITA and would be a nightmare to scale to the level of the full game.

If you don't mind sharing the assets you have, I'd be happy to take a look at them and see how feasible it would be to port things to Unity. Maybe I could get you started with setting the project up and help find other code-savvy people that may have more time to dedicate towards the project long-term?

 

[toonloon]

How can i get in touch with you? Is there a way to PM on this board? I have a compiled code file on mega for you.

 

[Schneider21]

I don't see any sign of a PM system. My email address is pasted all over the Internet anyway, so you can just use that. webdev(at)justinschneider(dot)com

 

[Myko]

The PM function is "Start a conversation", if you click the poster's name next to his post.

 

[Schneider21]

Thanks @Myko. Forgot I'm still a Newbie with restricted board functions, so that would explain why I don't see it.

 

[daedalus5]

Good idea! Its a shame someone like Stream can't take all these old games, update them and then host them all on their servers, so we wouldn't have any compatibility issues for the old DOS games, and those that use the various Quick Time formats to run them.

 

[dahj]

Its a shame someone like Stream can't take all these old games, update them and then host them all on their servers, so we wouldn't have any compatibility issues for the old DOS games.

That's what GOG is for.
Star Trek 25th Anniversary is available there:
http://www.gog.com/game/star_trek_25th_anniversary

 

[Schneider21]

That's what GOG is for.
Star Trek 25th Anniversary is available there:
http://www.gog.com/game/star_trek_25th_anniversary

It's actually on Steam, too.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/359650/

 

[toonloon]

Hi guys. Just to let you know that Schneider21 has generously agreed to take a look at some of my stuff. If there's anything to report, you will be the first to know.

 

[Schneider21]

I'm happy to be able to help and proud to be a part of this!

I do have a crazy busy schedule that gets peppered with work on my own Trek-inspired game, so I should apologize in advance for inconsistencies with my availability. But this is definitely a sweet project that should be a lot of fun, and getting it moving again is a worthy cause.

 

[Rekkert]

Wow, this is amazing, and looks very promising indeed. I loved both 25th and Judgement Rites, I still have the CDs of JR around here somewhere.

Last year I finished my studies as a Game Developer and I'm itching for some field work, I also worked in Unity so, if the project does moves forward, I humbly offer my services for any secondary programming I could do (though I must admit I'm not a particularly good programmer, I'm more of a designer, I specialized in Game Design).

Also, I do a lot of vector graphics work (again, consider myself more a designer than a programmer), so if there's any part of that in which I could also help, perhaps vectorize the TAS characters for higher resolution, or create new ones, or the UI) I'd be more than happy to help.

Anyway, like I said before I really like this idea of modernizing 25th for a new generation to enjoy, and the work you did so far is great.