I heard the trailer originally, and even contacted the developer. unfortunately, he was designing the game as part of an Msc in computing, this meant he only had to submit a concept demo, and so never got anything vaguely playable which was a shame, as the game seemed to be a true 3D flight sim, and feature missions from what I remember of the trailor.

I did contact the dev (sinse he actually occupies the same country as I do), but he said due to a job, a Mariage, and a newborn son he wouldn't be able to take the developement of the game any further.

I suggest however ducktail, that if your looking at concepts for a new spaceship game, you'd be better off with a brain storming session here than checking out old trailers, sinse you best know what you can code and people's own opinions might be a better cumpus for the sort of thing that might be well recieved.

What sort of game were you thinking of? Arcade style, or something more complex?

Hmmm, have some fun with a good old spacefighter?

Sound intreaguing. i'd personally love to see a 3D spaceship game, --- perhaps with missions such as destroying particular enemy craft, getting to particular areas (3D coordinates possibly being used for this), or escorting or protecting other ships.

Different environments might also be fun, sinse with control of a small single person fighter you've got lots of options not just deep space batle, ---- everything from asteroid fields to planetary battles or even flying inside a space station (remember the deathstar?).

Just some thoughts.

I understand it'll take a good while to get anything finished, but it'll be nice to have another game to look forward to later on.

Hmmm, haven't seen that particular audio drama myself, when I think of scifi audio drama with space fighters and big war, I always think of The falcon banner especially sinse I've now read all the novels which it was based on.

Personally, sinse most people have a sterrio system, and good quality headphones are stil imho the most immersive and efficient option for an audio game, a high quality sterrio would be better imho.

My only concern with the 100000 grid size is that that would make checking your coordinates a rather complex and long winded process unless some quicker method were used, ---- such as relative position to targit.

For payment plans etc, I'd suggest talking to thomas ward of Usa games, sinse he's recently been grapling with the subject, ---- pluss he might be a good contact on matters such as hosting.

See The usa games site for details.

Hopefully this should contribute to your shiny happiness, ------ though i'd rather avoid the hand holding terror!

Admitedly, representing up and down is a pest, but imho it would be quite a nice thing to have in a flight game just to add extra realism.

Pitch indicators or various sensor types with accompanying sounds could be used for this purpose, ---- particularly given a space setting.

If I remember rightly, the Fc demo was only supposed to be the training missions, which might explain the lack of difficulty, ----- but unfortunately I never quite got around to trying the thing sinse it seemed to get taken off line just before I ran into audio games.

I deffinately think that whatever size of grid is actually used, to make the player's life easier the practically announced squares shouldn't be more than 100x100, ---- or (assuming full 3d), 100x 100 x 100,sinse otherwise things could get way too numerically confusing.

There are a couple of things that I would like the game to feature, although it's rather experimental:
- The game will be stereo-sounded.
- The game play will however be fully 3D (the player can move up and down).
- The internal system will use rather large coordinates, to ensure smooth moving.
- The user will get a simplified version of these (e.g. the coordinates devided by ten, or something similar).
- The screenwidth and the actual width of the game grid are not the same. This means that only part of the game grid can be visible at a given time, enabling hiding (and hide-and-seek, yay).
- There will be no targeting solutions that are found in other games, such as a constant beep to indicate a centered object.
- The goal is to give the player a "real" spacefighter, and so the common instruments of such a machine will be available. You don't have to do everything without cues and confirmation from the computer, but something that cannot be found in a spacefighter will not be implemented (hence the lack of extra audio feedback for targeting). You might think of this as roleplaying.
This having been said, I face to main problems:
- The game will need an awful lot of balancing to make sure that hitting a target is possible for a skilled player, even without a bunch of extra audio information.
- The big question is what would be the best way of showing that another ship (like an enemy) is locate up, down, or vertically centered. I expect to use audio cues for this.
I hope to have described my ideas clearly. As soon as there is an actual, playable "thing", I will post on these forums again.

The game will, for now, offer fighter-versus-fighter combat. This means that motherships are not to be seen anywhere for the time being.
The problem with pitch is that it is hard to tell when an object is exactly centered, at least for some people. But a workaround is being thought of as we speak. Or, that is, as I speak.
There are loads of other things to figure out though, such as the amount of degrees you turn with every thruster blow. Also, the amount and types of engines that are available are not yet determined. Currently, the plan is to have two wing-engines and a general rear-engine. But this may change as I find more suitable descriptions of spacefighters on the web or in audio dramas.

The game is being programmed using DirectX, and uses XAudio2 for its sound system. Although this may create compatibility issues with some older computers, it provides far better tools to manipulate sound. I'm sure a virtual 3D-environment can be squeezed out of it, but to keep things simple I'll start by implementing the stereo-approach.
For the engines I may use rotateable wing-thrusters to stear the spacefighter. By pointing them down and firing them, you would effectively raise your altitude. Another option would be to have seperate nose- and tail-thrusters to change your altitude. However, this last method would require yet another couple of game controls (keys on the keyboard to press).
And finally, I'm struggling to get my hands on high-quality space sounds, mainly engines and laser impacts.

I personally do rather like the b5 fighters, pluss that sort of tech system gives you a lot of environmental options, ---- up to and including fighting inside jump gates (the fighters of course can't create gates themselves, but can be deploid from mother ships inside them to attack enemy fighters).

Even on a twin wengined aircraft, it's not necessary to control each engine individually or have too many maneuvering controls, ---- though I do admit if multiple engines were introduced, you could do some interesting things with damage, ---- such as having hits from enemies in specific positions affect specific engines of your ship.

Oh, I'd also very much recommend The falcon banner series (see the topic in the offtopic room), sinse there are some major descriptions of both realistic space fighters and fighter combat, ---- plus various fighter types.

I've heard the audio dramas that have been created based on The falcon banner. They do indeed introduce some interesting concepts.
As for damage, I am considering no repair facilities, as this would make a battle long and boring. Or perhaps just a few components should be repairable (suggestions are more than welcome).
And yet another thing that I thought of, is a ranks-system. You would start out with a particular spacefighter design, and as you get more skilled, you could upgrade to another machine. That machine could, for example, have a whole different engine layout or different weaponry. But this whole idea is something for a version 2.0 or even 3.0, not for the current release, which is not much more than a partially working menu.

I belive that since this is a start for the game, you could use stock sounds (sounds that may be from other games etc).  Then, as you move further into the game's details, you could adapt these to suit your own needs/ideas.  If you want a tester or a story writer for the campaign mode, I'd love to take that post.  Email me on forum:

Hope this helps,
The Doctor.

The project was abandoned long ago. It was abandoned long before the original post in this topic.

Sadly a lot of audio games are never released, the person making them simply stops for whatever reason.