Project description

Cross platform, open source space flight simulator, with an emphasis on portability, speed and playability, with a light weight graphics requirement. Currently under very active development. Plans to release the first playable demo by October 31st. Development snapshots will be released in the meantime to show features as they are added. More information about the project can be found at its sourceforge portal.

Details

The game is written in C++, using OpenGL for the 3D graphics, and SDL for the windowing and input. The plan right now is to get a basic game up and running as soon as possibLe, with the emphasis on playability, not graphics, sound, or othe bells and whistles. The source code is released under the GNU GPL license. The game is currently being developed under Debian Linux, with plans to be portable to Microsoft Windows, and other UNIX/Linux based operating systems.

SpaceFlight3D version 1.0 is scheduled to be released by the end of October, 2005. The game will be several AI enemy spacecraft against a single player. The enemy spacecraft will have weapons and will try to hunt the player down, and it will be the players job to kill them all. At runtime, the player will decide how many enemies to play and what type of vessels they will fly.

Research into other projects

Anyone looking on sf.net realizes there are a ton of other 3D space games out there, most of them inactive. I did some research to see what many of these failed projects had in common, and as well, see what sucessful projects were out there, and learn from them. View some details about this research here.

The main conclusion, is that I think many of the projects are too ambitious, and have descriptions of: realistic physics, multiplayer, amazing graphics, mmorpg, etc, etc. I think they set their sights too high, and don't get anywhere. As well, I point out some sucessful 3D projects and discuss them. After looking around, I don't think any games fit the bill of an original, light-weight, portable, fun 3D space flight sim, so I don't think that SpaceFlight3D is a redundant project. Also, I hope that by researching into projects that have failed, insight will be made to ensure that SpaceFlight3D gets off the ground and becomes a useful and fun game.