Lightspeed Frontier! A space RPG about ship building and blowing up pirates

arkisvir · May 19, 2016, 2:42pm

Lightspeed Frontier is a space-based open world sandbox game where you build spaceships from modules in realtime, explore the galaxy, conduct diplomacy or fight your way out of problems. Some of the planned features include quests, mining asteroids, interaction with space stations and planetary colonies.

After the invention of the first warp drive only the most powerful nations and wealthiest individuals could afford them for a long time. That is, until Wexler Research Inc. made a breakthrough in spacetime manipulation that allowed for compact and affordable warp systems.

Now, 200 years after their merger with Watson Space Industries, they’ve made the furthest reaches of the galaxy open to daring adventurers looking to make a name for themselves.

You have spent your savings on an old command pod which you will be able to extend using any standardised spaceship modules you might come across, but beware of scavangers and other mercenaries who might not take lightly to competition.

The Sol Government has no influence over these newly explored parts of space so everything is in the hands of corporations and their outposts.

Welcome to the Frontier.

#END TRANSMISSION#

VaTTeRGeR · May 19, 2016, 4:30pm

Kepler Cola ;D

arkisvir · May 19, 2016, 4:36pm

there are a ton more billboards too, but I’ll keep them under wraps

Aaah crap one leaked out! ;D

arkisvir · May 20, 2016, 4:45pm

https://i.imgur.com/KGLXmpZ.gif(image larger than 102400KB)

Full speed ahead! Entering and exiting warp speed

J01 · May 28, 2016, 1:22pm

Hi!
I’m wondering, what kind of physics engine are you using / planning to use?
Is it going to be realistic — for example, continuous motion in space until a counter force is applied — or simplified — automatic stabilization of spaceship such as to leave it motionless relative to nearby planets? Are your planets / stars / etc going to follow physics as well, orbiting other bodies, or will they be motionless?
J0

Edit: Also, on that gif you posted, are the other bodies (i.e. the pulsar, planets, clouds) close or really far from the ship?

Hydroque · May 29, 2016, 1:22am

Aww crap. I was hoping it would do some allahu ackbar.

Ecumene · May 31, 2016, 1:46am

This looks a lot like starmade (also in java)! It’s hella fun, and has very similar mechanics…

MoffKalast · June 20, 2016, 7:23pm

We’re using the JBullet physics engine. Motion is mostly physics based - you can accelerate and the ship will continue to travel with the end velocity and you can accelerate towards lightspeed according to the lorentz factor. Steering, however, affects the movement vector and makes the movement a bit more arcade. So in the end it’s a mixture of realism and design decisions that make for more interesting gameplay.

The planets are motionless as of now and resonably small, but that should change in the following updates (the size, not the motion). The pulsar is about 15-25 seconds away if you’d travel at the warp speed in the gif. I’d take a while longer to get there just on sublight engines though.

J01 · June 20, 2016, 7:36pm

[quote=“MoffKalast,post:8,topic:57040”]
Holy shit so this really is fast :persecutioncomplex:

arkisvir · June 23, 2016, 2:17pm

The game tries to balance space travel with 3 different speeds currently. You have your typical engine drives, which you use when you’re flying at a slower pace, battling other people, or otherwise need tight control.

You also have warp drives which have a limited amount of energy but allow you to accelerate to light speed extremely quick.

Last you have wormholes, where you can pull up an integrated 3D map and select which wormhole you want to go through. This is particularly cool because every place you travel has completely new planets, scenery, space stations, enemies, etc.

As Moff said, there is a lot of realism, but also a mix of features that keep with the sandbox feel. Of course… there’s just something fun about travelling through wormholes too

arkisvir · June 30, 2016, 1:13pm

Got a new stats and progress screen going, with some other work-in-progress features:

As you progress through the game, you’re constantly collecting rare materials to build new, more powerful, modules with, and those modules are obviously used to make your ship more powerful. But as you build a bigger ship, your ship class also changes which opens up more avenues for missions. So the progress bar at the top shows you how many modules it will take for you to hit a certain class. You’ll need to choose which modules you equip carefully though, because if you head into an area filled with other dreadnaughts, you’ll get wrecked if your modules aren’t very powerful.

A lot of the other stats are pretty self explanatory, but all of those will come into play later too. Optimizing your stats for your ship size, and also depending on what missions your trying to accomplish, is key.