(Star Trek) Broken Mirror 3: Rise of The Empire

Hey all! I'm here to expose a project that's being made by me and a few friends. It's a sci-fi simulation/strategy game based on the Star Trek Mirror Universe that's the backbone of the Flash Trek: Broken Mirror universe. Having already 2 games made in Flash (2D), for the third instance we decided to use the Unity 3D game engine.

Here’s a small description:

“Having the Earth Empire (the federations counter-part in this mirror universe) and the remaining Alpha Quadrant been subdued under the Dominion, small pockets of resistance begun the fight to recover the quadrant. An alliance between the Klingons, Humans and Romulans remaining’s, begun the war to retake their previous empires. After twenty years of war, they finally succeeded in sending the Dominion back to the Gamma Quadrant, however at great cost. In Broken Mirror III, you’ll take the place of a Starfleet Captain, a KDF Officer, an RSE Captain, among others, in order to rebuild your civilization.

In your quest to unite the Alpha Quadrant and rebuild society as you know it, you’ll have the opportunity to explore star systems, execute missions and fight your enemies!”

And now a few screenshots too:
(The GUI design is still a concept and it's not implemented yet)





And a few movies:
http://youtu.be/4NTslUsh_98
http://youtu.be/AsHj7iVimEU

We've now a handfull more of feature implemented, but we're still looking forward to implement:

• a combat system capable of handling several factions in the same system;
• a economic and production system based on imperial management;
• several trade and combat mission;
• a ranking system to unlock features and certain technologies;
• others

So based on what I showed you guys here, do you have any recomendation that could help us improve our project?

EDIT: Forgot to add this is gonna be a full freeware game...

 

Well, someone needs to ask the obvious question, so you have the rights to Star Trek?
And if not, what are you planing to do with the game?

 

Of course we don't... That's why it will be a fan based game, with no monetary objctive at all... Pretty much a 100% free-to-play game...

 

I'd at least send an email to them and tell them your plans. Nobodys wants to see you get sued for $10 million! If they have a problem with it, you can always just have a different space-type game similar to your original concept. It looks pretty good!

 

Paramount allows non-commercial entities to use Star Trek. HOWEVER that does mean 100% noncommercial - that means no selling the game, no ads on the game website, no donation button, nothing.

 

And those conditions are met...

Thanks... The concept itself it's already old, since the first Broken Mirror, almost 8 years ago... However, in Broken Mirror II it was improved, and now, we're repeating the feat, by adding new stuff, like combat missions, gradual fleet building (if you wanna build, you have to wait x days, instead of an instantaneous purchase (still available if you buy ships to foreign powers though)), and some other stuff...

And yes, we wouldn't want that! Fortunatelly CBS and Paramount use to ignore those cases where there's no profit involved at all...

 

It's really not that silly of a question. There are LOTS of games made with Unity that use approved ip's. I would just make it and let the pieces fall. Most IP wranglers have enough common sense to recognize free publicity when they see it. So long as you don't turn a buck that is. The only people who stomp on projects are Fox, Sony and Tolkien's benificiaries.

EDIT: used to be Disney too, but they tried to sue a children's shelter and learned thier lesson.

 

No, it isn't a silly question at all! And yeah, indeed, CBS and Paramount have been benevolent towards non-profitable fan works... Lets hope they keep it that way

 

More news: here's a new concept GUI for the "hail station" dialog:



On the left side, you have the station name, the faction logo, and four buttons that allow you to toggle the buttons between ships, stations, weapons and technologies. On the right side, you can pick a Ship from a list and several options that allow you to trade your current ship with a new one (with a small price reduction, something like 40% of your ship initial cost), buy that ship for the fleet (with no cost reduction), or buy the blueprints so you can build the ship on your own stations (costing raw material instead of credits though)...

 

This looks fun. I only have one lament: no LCARS style GUI.

It's a shame Paramount holds LCARS by the throat, I always loved that GUI style...

 

Oh yeah, I also love that GUI style. However, this is a mirror verse (you know, the Terran Empire one), and we're trying to go for a darker design. Also, there is a lot of projects (for example Star Trek: Excalibur, a game based on the NanoFX Evolved Engine, that's currently in development) who use the LCARS, and we're trying to do a different thing here.

 

Looks really nice. Reminds me of Star Trek Online, which is pretty much my favorite game right now.

 

I have like 3 LCARS apps for my ipad/iphone. There's no way they are "holding it by the throat"

 

I guess it's mostly for paid apps... Still that proves the point that the LCARS is getting too much common out there, so, we're trying to do something different...

Thanks for the compliment!

EDIT: Also, one thing I forgot to add! Our facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/bm.rise

 

And here's the newest Development Log, starring Chris Cameron (my partner)! Hope you guys enjoy it!

 

And, after a few months, we've a new Development Log... This time starring me (João Borrego):

Here's the video description:

 

And here's the 5th Development Log, this time more oriented towards the design part of the project, starring Chris and Tristan Cameron:

[video=youtube_share;NZCXggVDwDk]http://youtu.be/NZCXggVDwDk

 

Greetings everyone! I'm Chris Cameron, the project director of BM3 (now known as STBM). You've already met my partner in crime and ace coder Joao Borrego (he's been doing incredible work, no seriously!).

It looks like it's been a while since anyone posted any updates on the project in this thread here and seeing as I've been spending the week on an exposure rampage, I've made my way here to update and clarify some things! Firstly, to re-address some of the copyright concerns of making something under the guise of Star Trek, CBS is, like Joao said, usually quite benevolent towards fan productions. The main reason being that at one point in time they tried to stop them, but it sort of spiralled out of control and just couldn't be stopped so I guess they took a "if you can't beat em, join em" stance. They do have some stipulations (such as not being able to make something from the JJverse) and of course not selling the product (which we are not). You can ask for donations, but only if it can be proven that the donations were solely for specific needs (in the case of fan films, electric bills for example) and that a receipt for such things could be furnished upon request. What's going on there is that you're not asking for donations to make money for Star Trek per se, but you're asking donations for things that you physically require. For example, we just purchased web hosting (which cost more than I'd hoped) and technically, we could ask for donations to pay for the web server (but I believe we'd have to cut the donations off if we reached what it cost for the server, meaning no profits.) As a whole though, we're pretty much staying away from asking for money because we don't want to really get into those technicalities and grey areas. There are certain things we're looking at that we'd love to have (the Space Construction Kit for example) so it's possible that we might ask for some donations down the road for that (cause it's 85 bucks per license and we'd need two of them!). We're also making STBM with Unity Free and of course that has already presented certain limitations. We keep working around them and re-adapting (which usually means scaling back the original vision) but that's what's going to have to happen because it's a lot more viable to scale back than to try and purchase two Unity Pro licenses for a game that we won't see a cent from. We can justify a 170 dollar expense in the Space Construction Kit, but not a 3000 dollar expense for Unity Pro!

Okeydokeys, and with all of that preamble out of the way, onto what we've accomplished since the last update here!

The last thing it looks like you folks had posted was Development Log #5. There have been three more devlogs in that time, but instead of posting each individual one, I'll just post the playlist. Our most recent devlogs focused on our Unity workflow, the GUI and creating shields for the starships.

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL98vE30ld3NbH81GH5GZXxywBstfcfyBn

We've also posted a couple quick clips of gameplay (mostly just combat and collision stuff) but still pretty neat to watch, especially if you don't get to see the game in action every day like Joao and I do!

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL98vE30ld3NYDj6BI6js0ILgV2hB0lqHm

We're still only really working on the mechanics side of things. So it's pretty much just fly around, shoot at the (stationary) enemy ship and burn up if you get too close to earth. We've not really been doing much to make it look good graphically yet, simply because things are in such flux that it's better to have the mechanics and code locked down. Fortunately, once the mechanics are in place, that will essentially be most of the groundwork for the game in general.

We plan to release the game as a smaller core version, that way the public can have something to play instead waiting endless years and losing interest. Once the core version is released, we'll continue to expand upon it and release the expansions until it is "complete."

This past week of spent a great deal of time trying to beef up and "rebrand" the game's audience some. I put a lot of focus into the social networking side of things and created a new website, blog and Twitter profile. We still have our Facebook page and Youtube channel too and we post to those quite regularly.

I almost forgot, pretty much the entire project's pre-production and whatnot can be found on Google Drive and some stuff is even open for the public to help edit if they should choose too.

And finally, to alleviate the big blocks of text, I shall end this post with some images!

 

Looks fun! Maybe add rift support as well just for giggles.

 

Looks a really good game at the moment. If it were out right now , I would download it!
After watching the first 2 dev posts, a couple quick thoughts:
* When you're targeting a enemy , will you get a GUI targeting right to tell you who you're targeting?(In the case of slightly larger battles).
*Any different camera views?(Cockpit , undercarriage).
*Enterprise health and ray cool-down time GUI?

But as I said , I would download this game if it were out now. Good progress , looking forward to future developments.

Hawx

 

Our process for developing the UI is to design the components on an as needed basis. That said, this image is the current form of the UI, though not everything in it is implemented into the game yet (almost). Things like shield and hull bars are currently implemented, but weapon recharge indicators are not.

 

So I just bought the Unity Space Scene Construction Kit and I've only tinkered with it for like half an hour, but I'm already incredibly impressed! So much so that I just have to show off some screen shots!

 

Ha, let me add in Jagex. They don't like people doing private servers. I know from experience lol

On topic,

This looks great. Good luck!

 

awesome work on all the ships. even on my fav which is the galaxy class. looks just like my ship in STO.

 

Quality of what you're doing looks excellent. Keep it up

 

Thanks everyone! I'm going to admit that we cut corners wherever possible. For example, the ships are free models on the internet. I could build them, don't get me wrong, but to build 60 or more ships would be incredibly time consuming and when it's only you and one other guy making a game like this, you take shortcuts whenever they're available!

Also, here's a quick video clip showing off a quickly done space scene with the constructor!

 

Impressive , can't wait to see what this turns out to be like

 

Well, work has been going on but we're getting ready to release our first stage of Closed Beta. Here's the teaser trailer!

Currently we're working on things like scene transfer, scene building, AI and many, many more things, and we hope to get it all up and running by the final days of this year!

Also, you can register here: http://www.brokenmirror3.com/index.php/regbeta

 

And here's a short gameplay clip, with some of the things we've setup since the last one:

[video=youtube_share;tgKqQxYEY8c]http://youtu.be/tgKqQxYEY8c

Hope you guys enjoy it (and please ignore the Development console xD)

 

Great work! World needs more sci-fi games. I am also making one right now.
Though personally as a player I would have liked a game with its own universe better. Fan fiction is good, but a separate world is still more interesting.

 

Well thanks!

Oh yeah, but we've this project going much further back than just two years, and we wanted to let it rest in a good way! And Unity is empowering us in that quest

We're considering eventually (after we finish BM) to make our own sci-fi/horror based game, maybe on the same style as FEAR... But lets see what the future reserves us!

 

JPB18

i know this is a hard game to develope.

but when the offical realise is out

cood you please make an account system so you can register on it so we can have Multiplayer ?

 

Well, our game has mostly the purpose of being single player only, with a campaign. However, if you'd want a multiplayer Star Trek game, we've been coopering with another team (they help us when we need, and vice versa), that's making a MMO Star-Trek game name Bridge Commander 2. Here's the link, and hope you enjoy it!

Bridge Commander 2

Just to add, if we happen to have the time, we might get to add a multiplayer duel like p2p function.

 

HELP! i tried using your latest beta 11 but when i try to launch it nothing happens! and when i try to delete it it ses it cant becouse its open i tried ending it from my task manager but it still ses its open in a nother file or program!!


EDIT: nvm i got it fixed

but i am still having an issue when i try to launch it nothing happens!

the previous 0.1 version worked tho

 

We've been recieving similar reports for that. Let me ask you, what OS are you using?

 

Windows 8

 

I have a question. since this is 3D what is the DYSON-SPHERE going to be like? is it going to be MASSIVEI!?

 

oh come on man is anyone going to answer ?

 

since you are clearly not going to answer when i have a question i am not coming back here

 

Well, we don't know if we'll be adding it or not yet, it depends on how feasable it is.

I apologize for being late though, this project, college and so on leave little time for unity forums.

But yeah, I'm here to share a Gameplay Teaser we've just made! Here it is!

 

Hey all, we've just released our first public beta for the game. Still a ton of work to be done, but at least everyone can give what we have a try now!

http://brokenmirror3.com/index.php/openbeta

 

If you want it to be anything like Star Trek, take out the combat entirely.

It is weird to see statements like "adding combat missions" in a Star Trek game.

That is your only hope to make any sort of star trek theme, but something you'll never do of course

 

It takes place in the mirror universe, that's why it's got a significant combat focus. Trust me, someday I'd love to make a prime universe trek game that focus on regular Star Trek values. This such as exploration and discovery. I'm working up a concept in my head, but it's years away from any sort of real development.

 

Yeah cause Star Trek never had any combat in it.

 

Yeah I'm sure the Borg and Federation had a tea party.

 

Klingons and Romulans weren't invited. Their knitting was just not good enough.

 

The point is that while Combat wasn't exactly a focus on Star Trek, I can't remember much episodes without it (either being ship-to-ship or body-to-body). However, if you well recall, every mention of the Mirror Universe showed humanity as an extremelly agressive race. From TOS to ENT. And this game happens in said Universe.

Plus, I bet that if we indeed made a game entirelly about exploring a procedural universe, you would end up sick of it soon enough!

 

I was having a joke, unless there is an episode where the Borg and Federation sit down for a nice cup of earl grey? If that episode exists you had best tell me because that's some viewing pleasure right there.

I'm surprised with the hothead James Tiberius it wasn't Scotty blow em up in the original series. Anyway , if this game turns out to be anything like BOTF I'll be very interested.

 

Oh okay, that makes sense. If the mirror universe is more aggressive, at least your lore is correct

I'd really like to take a peak at any ideas you have for a game of exploration and discovery. Those are getting pretty popular on kickstarter. Perhaps in the future we will get yours!

I wont derail any further after this post, but if you two think combat has anything to do with Star Trek, you obviously have never watched Star Trek... This isn't up for debate. That would be like arguing over global warming being man made. Sure you could try to argue, but everyone who has seen the evidence will just facepalm you.

Mirror Universe being more aggressive, sure. Still aint Star Trek. Despite your failing memory, most episodes of Star Trek do not consist of combat. Neither are most episodes about the mirror universe. Explosions do not equate to combat, which is probably what you're remembering if you watched TNG. Either that, or you didn't actually watch very many episodes.

It's akin to making a Game of Thrones game about friendship kittens and rainbows. Sure, it would still be *technically* Game of Thrones. However, it would certainly not be Game of Thrones.

Star Trek is to Combat as Game of Thrones is to friendship. Both have it, but that's not why people watch it. Really, Star Trek is to Combat as Game of Thrones is to Dragon fire breathing. There aren't many episodes with them, but they do happen. However, they have little to do with the overall theme.




I wouldn't complain if there weren't already a bajillion Star Trek or Star Trek inspired games (many on Kickstarter as we speak, hahaha) that were all claiming to "finally make a star trek game" but end up being about combat combat and more combat.

Obviously, I'm a big Star Trek fan. Combat based star trek games are not Star Trek.
I'm sure it can still be a very good and fun game.
Sure, it will look like Star Trek. Maybe smell like Star Trek. May even be a great game. Still won't be anything like Star Trek.

Haha

You probably will hate my game then, and I will end up in ruin

Oh, and you know that old game "Starflight"? That was totally beloved by many because of the awesome combat. It had nothing to do with the exploration.

Combat is a cop-out for a lack of innovation on part of the developer. Even in combat-centric games, combat is nearly always to the needless death of all who get in the way of the protagonist. Rarely are there ways around combat, even in times when the user clearly perceives there to be.

Many new games being released are hailed for their creativity and innovation in areas of exploration and discovery. Many kickstarter projects greatly exceed their goal because they promise people space exploration. It's not the combat that opens their wallets.

Anyway, I digress. ONWARD TO TALK ABOUT THE GAME!

 

Oh no, I understand what you're saying, while combat wasn't indeed the main focus of Star Trek (except DS9, but that was due to it being in a time of war), it was a pretty important component to "aid" the main story (Gene Rodenberry wanted it to be more about analysing the human condition, and used several plots to do that, including conditions where battle would be at hand).

Still, back in the game, while Combat would be a important measure, it isn't mandatory. "Combat Missions" are pretty much contracts the player can do in order to gain latinum, like a mercenary. However, the same player can avoid them and do instead "Trade Missions" (those are the two we've implemented at this moment).

In order to win the "conquest mode" we where considering three choices: Political hegemony, where the player conquers the entire galaxy, Economic hegemony, where the player's economy corresponds to 90% of the galactic economy (Including independent traders). And Diplomatic hegemony, where everyone in the galaxy "loves" the player.

We're also planing to do a "Campaign mode", and in that campaign, we'll try to vary as much as we can in the mission nature, and also give the player the choice to decide its course... At least that's our plan.