This is the Starflight: Total Brawl Online (SFTBO) Master Design Document.
The goal of this design document is to provide detailed information on the development of "Starflight: Total Brawl Online", a computerized version of "Starflight: Total Brawl", which itself is a companion game to "The Starflight Role-Playing Game" (also known as SFRPG). The game's purpose is to help develop programming techniques needed to assist the ongoing "Starflight III: Mysteries of the Universe" project, planned as a sequel and continuation of the original games "Starflight" and "Starflight II: Secrets of the Cloud Nebula" released by Binary Systems through Electronic Arts in the late 1980s.
The design outline will attempt to follow the features that will be presented in the actual game, using as many diagrams and mockups included in the game as possible. The new game will have some of the same look of the original games, but the design goal is that it will generally have a darker overall look & feel; naturally, it will also be updated to a more "modernized look". Some screenshots from Starflight 1 (SF1) and Starflight 2 (SF2) are included in this design document to help describe relevant aspects of game play and to show why we are doing things a certain way in this game.
This document assumes that the reader already has a fairly thorough understanding of the Starflight franchise, so not a lot of time will be spent discussing it. Newcomers are welcome to examine the original games themselves (as available for download from the Starflight III Project) or to reference
The Starflight Role-Playing Game.
Credit and Recognition¶
This game was made possible by the generosity of the copyright owner, Rod McConnell, founder of Binary Systems, which retains the copyright when Electronic Arts originally published the games in 1986 and 1989. While no sequel was ever developed, Starflight has been ported to many systems, the last of which was Sega Genesis in 1991. It was ported to Commodore 64, Atari ST and Amiga. Rod McConnell still owns the copyright. A condition of granting the Starflight III Project permission to make this game is that it continues the franchise without monetary gain. It must be released as freeware, though not necessarily as public domain. We may do whatever we want with the game under that restriction, but may not sell it for profit. We may also not transfer ownership of the game to anyone. Any and all publishing issues will be strictly ignored.
Part of the intent of SFTBO is to try to raise funds to further develop SF3, it will become necessary at some point in its development to communicate this intent to Rod McConnell. Should he refuse to allow it, development of most aspects of the game should not be significantly affected. All efforts will be made to keep the monetary aspect of the game as separate from the rest of the game as possible, easily removable if requested, and non-critical to the game's normal operation.
Background History
SFTBO's early history dates to about 2002, and a strategic simulation game written by Stephen Rogers called "Anacostia: Operation Tessarosa (OT)". This game incorporated an engine in it originally designed to enable a player to play miniatures games (in particular, "Battlefleet Gothic"™ by Games Workshop) without actually having to buy miniatures. This engine was used to form what would ultimately form the core of the Anacostia Role-Playing Game, which later formed the basis of what became SFRPG.
Around 2005, a couple of fans of Starflight III, Steven Wirsz and Jason Horner, began taking a look at the hex code of the original games for the purpose of pulling specific information out of the games (communications messages for the most part). During their efforts, they were able to extract data on the starships from the original games. This information was adapted into a modified version of Anacostia RPG's combat engine. Later, when Jason Horner proposed the d% system ultimately incorporated into SFRPG, the engine was modified to incorporate that change. With the ship data in hand, Stephen Rogers wanted to run a test to see if the modifications to the battle engine were adequate for SFRPG, so the decision was made to create a subset of the game exclusively for the purposes of ship-to-ship combat, using most of the same overall format of Anacostia: OT but with Starflight ships in its place. As the testing continued, the rules of this game were refined; ultimately, Mr. Rogers decided to make the system he'd been testing into a full-on game in its own right (owing some thanks to Brandon Thetford and his development of the online game, "Almagest"). This was the birth of Starflight: Total Brawl, which was released to the SF3 community on December 8, 2006 as a Christmas season offering for that year.
As SFRPG continued to develop, SFTB was further developed in parallel for most of 2007. SF3 community member Stainless first proposed to develop an online version of the game in September, 2007 as part of an effort to continue learning the XNA library, which was the development route being used by the Starflight III project at the time. Work on an online version continued for most of the rest of the year and even got to the point of some screenshots. However, Mr. Rogers wanted to focus more on the development of SFRPG, and in January of 2008 decided to table the project until that project was complete.
By April 2010, when the print version of SFRPG was finally released to the public, the operating climate of the SF3 project had changed, largely for the negative. Owing to the usual restraints on coder's time, most of the existing project members of the SF3 community had left along with a good number of the community's followers. Mr. Rogers decided in July 2010 to revisit the idea of an online version of SFTB (mainly as a potential way of raising capital for the SF3 project; he had by this time been influenced by other MMORPGs such as "Mafia Wars"™), beginning with the composition of this formal design document, developed in tandem with a design document for SF3 (which had never been officially done in the long history of the project.)
As of this writing, SFTBO is a labor of love; all members volunteer their free time to do what they can when they can. Should permission for the monetary aspect finally be granted, though, it's hoped the members of the project will be credited for the time and effort they put in on this project appropriately.
Game Features List
The following is a list of features that are desired for the finished product, outlining the intentions of the design team and their vision for the project. The list is as follows:
- A fully interactive MMORPG based on the print versions of Starflight: Total Brawl.
- Graphics and sound effects updated from the original games.
- Music (largely missing from most versions of the original games).
- A full catalog of ships to choose from, each with their own strengths and weaknesses.
- A full catalog of equipment to choose from, to enable players to overcome the weaknesses of their ships.
- New settings for player interaction.
- "Campaigns" and special events to be added at regular intervals.
At this time, the intended target platforms are PC, Macintosh and Linux. The game will be written using the Python programming language, with art done in Blender and additional programming with the Blender Game Engine. The game will be designed such that any PC user with a box built in the last ten years should still be able to adequately enjoy the game experience (target minimum specifications will be for a 2 GHz machine with 512 MB of onboard memory, with an nVidia GeForce FX 5200 equivalent video card or later.)
A Word on Editing this Design Document and Document Organization¶
In the interest of watching our ideas unfold and develop over time, editors are advised not to delete any portion of the text contained herein. Rather, any text that no longer applies should be struck through. This is done by placing double hyphens in the wiki markup code surrounding the offending text
like this. Material should only be expunged from a page with the consensus of the entire design group. The navigational links leading to subsequent pages should be left alone, except under the extremely unusual case that a page either needs to be added to or removed from the document. Finally, editors are encouraged to keep extraneous information and other "fluff" to a minimum in the context of the design document.
The main design document page contains the table of contents for the project. Any portion of the document should be able to be reached at any time from that page. Pages can also be navigated to and from other portions of the document using the links at the bottom of each page. When navigating from page to page, links will only go to the "previous" and "next" page as they are listed on the main page. It's hoped that the data is presented in a coherent, logical order for ease of use by the SFTBO design team.
Rules Set
SFTBO will utilize the most current version of the rules available to the general public. As of this writing, the most current set of rules available is:
Version 0.9.1 (Beta One - July xx, 2010 revision)
If newer versions of the game are made available during the development of SFTBO, the code of the game will be changed appropriately. This may necessitate some changes to the design doc; any such changes should be relatively minor. Once the game is complete, there will be no further changes made to SFTBO, excepting a major change in SFTB's rules.
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