Perhaps leave it up to the player to decide. You could have a realism configuration screen where you would choose things like whether or not to have boundaries or a maximum speed. With maximum realism, it doesn't really make sense to have boundaries unless they are genuine boundaries within the game.

A space combat fighter would be covered in thrusters. Otherwise they'd have no maneuverability. So you'd definately have front-facing thrusters. Not likely that powerful, though.

Distant stars are not very bright. Starlight glinting off a ship isn't going to make a ship especially visible. Plus, ships would be designed not to reflect radiation so they'd be more difficult to see. More sensible would be for the scanner to draw an icon upon the screen for anything interesting that you can't see. Obviously that includes objects that are too far away to be visible, but could also include ships that are black and blend into the darkness of space (although it might draw a silhouette rather than an icon in that case).

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Original post by Nathan Baum A space combat fighter would be covered in thrusters. Otherwise they'd have no maneuverability. So you'd definately have front-facing thrusters. Not likely that powerful, though.

Or you could just turn the ship to face the direction you want to fire thrusters in... K.I.S.S.

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Original post by mumpo Quote: Original post by Nathan Baum A space combat fighter would be covered in thrusters. Otherwise they'd have no maneuverability. So you'd definately have front-facing thrusters. Not likely that powerful, though. Or you could just turn the ship to face the direction you want to fire thrusters in... K.I.S.S.

1. If I'm in battle, I sure as hell want to be able to point the weapons in one direction and thrust in another direction.

2. How do you intend to turn the ship around without maneuvering thrusters?

It seems like you'd want a bunch of little thrusters on different axes for "spin," and one big one for "thrust." "Thrusters in all directions" is more maneuverable, but less interesting. That seems like a general trade-off for space combat -- do you go with what would really work, or what seems more cool? For example, unless these ships are designed for atmospheric re-entry -- and I have a hard time imagining why space fighters would be -- anything resembling "wings" are cosmetic, right? Spheres covered in thrusters and guns are probably the optimal design... but who wants to pilot a sphere?

As for boundaries, I think you should set it in a finite-but-unbounded parallel universe... a small one. ;)

Okay... Looks like Gamedev forgot about my session.

Here's the unbroken ship diagram:

   /------\ A >|      |< B   |      |C >|      |< D   +------+     ^^^^

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Original post by johnnyBravo Hey whats the exobattle game? Do you know where I can get some screenshots? I've checked on google, but all the links are dead.

Yeah, it's ancient. Matt Burch (the man who, along with Andrew Welch, is most directly associated with Escape Velocity) made a little open-source spacefighting game to show how easy it was to make fun games for the Macintosh using OpenGL. It was buggy and the crosshairs wandered the longer you played the game, but it had features like missile locks, a rotating space station you could dock with, and a planet with gravity and an atmosphere.

Think of Descent, set in an asteroid field with drone versions of you to fight against. It had network code, but I could never make it happen. Fun, though.

If there are more than 2 players, I'd be a bit concerned about getting separated from the pack in a game with no boundaries. For example, say I chase down another player who is very good at evading me, and we both get some distance from the rest before I destroy him. Even with an interface and AI designed to help me find the other players, I'm going to be at a serious disadvantage for the rest of the game, simply due to the time it will take to get back to the pack and deccelerate enough to be able to fight them. Maybe that's OK in the context of the game you are planning, but if it's meant to be a fast action deathmatch type of game, then having no boundaries could really slow it down and unfairly penalize some players.

One other way that would work quite well (though it may not make sense in the space context) is to wrap the level, so that if you go too far to one side, you come out the other. Makes sense on a world, not so much in space... blame it on wormholes?