I specifically let the guys on the reddit.com/r/rotp subreddit know about it a few days early so they could get first shot at it and find any egregrious bugs that may have slipped into the code.
Mostly it was pretty clean! I’m pretty happy about it and working some tester-reported cosmetic issues today.
In order to deal with some bandwidth problems, I’ve setup up an itch.io page for the game and moved all of the downloads to there:
For those who want to see how things will get blown up during ground combat, here’s an example of the upcoming animations for that:
I’ve made a video on the steps involved in creating a foreign-language translation of the game. Anyone interested in doing something like this, let me know:
It has been a while since there hasn’t been any news, and bumping the MOO topic made me think of Remnants of the Precursors.
I hope everything is fine with Mr. Fowler.
Wow, been almost a year. I’ll email him to see how he’s doing.
Well, merry freaking Xmas, alpha 5 is out, and it seems pretty huge!
hey guys, I had forgotten about this thread or I would have bumped it a few weeks ago when the Alpha was announced.
Long story short… I have been away from the project for about a year and a half mostly to let the artist catch up. This has always been the long pole in the tent and we are about in synch now. Anyone who has played the game knows that Petar is a great artist and his work is everywhere in the game.
All 10 races are complete. The game is literally 99% functionally complete. There are only 4 UIs left for the graphic redesign and I have the mockups for the complicated one done (Races UI). The writer is going full-bore now with the race-specific dialogue. All 3 of these people are very talented at what they do and I think it shows in the game. I am working with a sound designer now to get that part of the game polished.
If you play ROTP now, it is basically a modernized MOO1 with the following features missing: the Space Ameoba and Space Crystal event, Orion and the guardian ship, and two “3rd-party” diplomatic options (Ask to Break Treaty, Ask to Declare War). Everything else remaining is either artwork, custom race text or those UI redesigns.
The game is free. It will always be free. All development costs have come straight out of my pocket. There are no micro-transactions. No adware. No data collecting. No connecting over the internet… Just an old-fashioned game.
Once beta starts, the source code will be opened up as we continue to finish up on artwork, sound and the AI. Once that and the foreign translations are done, I’ll call it a day and figure out where to go from there.
My biggest job now is just figuring out how to get the word out about the game. Rob at the eXplorminate site has become a champion for the game, of sorts, but I’m guessing I will need to sponsor some YT’ers to play it when the beta is ready.
Edit: Useful links:
Game download: https://rayfowler.itch.io/remnants-of-the-precursors
ROTP subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/rotp/
Recent podcast interview with Rob: https://explorminate.co/remnants-of-the-precursors-interview-with-ray-fowler/
Rob’s Let’s Play series with the pre-release Alpha: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8cNlze3fGQjIF3tgWOUGmI8T3LnLtljg
I just downloaded this and tried it out. So far it is fantastic. Thank you, @Ray_Fowler!! The art is great and it seems like a very nice job of modernizing MOO1. Of course I picked the Psilons for my first game. Actually, I was going to pick humans but the portrait for humans is just to fug-ugly for me to stare at all game. Reminds me way too much of Kim Jong-un, I guess. The rest of the portraits are great.
I concur. I am really enjoying it. It really is Master of Orion! Thanks for developing this. I also agree with Coldsteel about the humans portrait.
I already ran into the Darloks. They worry me but they asked to trade with me so I said yes.
Is it safe to say that a MOO FAQ would be pretty acurate for this game? It’s been a long time since I’ve played MOO.
GetDaved is a big fan of Master of Orion; I expect he’ll do it for free? He’s played the original and the sequel multiple times, as well as the recent reboot. He doesn’t have the subscriber count of some of the bigger names (23K), but he’ll be interested, I think: https://www.youtube.com/GetDaved
I’m hoping they add an alternate portrait at some future time to choose instead. If not, I believe the game is to be open source so I hope swapping out that portrait for another one can be done by players fairly easily. I’m pretty tolerant of race portraits in games like this but I really do hate that one. Hoping for more choices as in games like Sword of the Stars:
I like the human portrait. It’s got such a wonderful Babylon 5 vibe to it. Treacherous humans. Well actually all the portraits are brilliant to me.
Someone post the portrait already jeez
Ck2 moo crossover?
The issue with the human portrait is that firstly I wanted to avoid the handsome/beautiful egalitarians that have inundated sci-fi since the days of Star Trek. Also, the super-diplomatic we-respect-everybody tripe.
Humans are selfish, devious, conniving backstabbers ALONG WITH all of those good things. So while they get all of the diplomatic bonuses from the game, they earn them because they are so deceptive and able to manipulate other races into thinking they are nice.
That’s where the idea of the portrait came in. What less intimidating than a friendly grandma? We could have drawn her with a plate of chocolate chip cookies in her hands without changing the effect. But she is just the harmless diplomatic face of the empire. She’s the diplomat, not the emperor so it’s not like you have to personally identify with the imagery. The Galactic Council image is a better idea of what the humans in charge look like.