Star Wars - Space Combat Prototype

Hi all,

Recently, the studio I was working for closed down and I was out of a job. The good news is that I can share this with you now... In the early days of the studio we prototyped several game ideas, one of them was a modern rendition of the old Star Wars space combat sims. The only goals of the project were that it had to be true to the old XWing and Tie Fighter games, and feature much improved graphics!!

Needless to say, this was one of the funnest projects I have ever worked on.

Here are the screens from are Death Star tile engine, with which we could render a to scale Death Star 2. We actually ended up reducing the size to one tenth, as flying around a Death Star that's accurately sized, isn't fun...

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Here is a video from the combat prototype, this space battle is between 20 tie's and 20 xwing's (including the player) and bear in mind that this is only a prototype and there is still lots of room to add more

I hope you enjoy this as much as we did making it, Star Wars hold a special place in our hearts. Maybe if there's enough interest then something can happen with this one day, rather than it just gathering dust, as it's currently doing...

 

Yeah, working on this project was like the best programming experience. Especially coming up with ideas how to procedurally generate the surface of the Death Star. I remember myself having to go through so many materials trying to research all the dimensions and everything. I have learned so much about start wars tech that I could answer very specific questions.

It's a real shame it's collecting dust now.

 

How could there not be interest in this? Fans have been begging for a more current generation version of the old Star Wars space shooters for years. I'd buy it.

The only problem is that now you'd have to get the license from Disney instead of Lucas Arts, which is likely much harder.

 

As far as I know the project has been shown to Lucas Arts (it's been a while back) but they shown no interest in development.

 

We never got a chance to present it to Lucas Arts. I guess it's just as well now to be honest with how things went...

 

Top notch stuff, looks really fantastic!

I am curious, are those materials within the cockpit using generic shaders or are they uniquely created for this project?

Would absolutely love to see this come to life someday!

 

I think that we could have used some custom shaders but the good looks were achieved mostly by fantastic lighting.

 

The cockpit is full of unique shading, the dash is gaussian specular, we used an anisotropic effect for some of the knobs and trimming and we used some shaders from the hard surface package also.

Me too!

 

Is it playable? How far from feature complete is the combat side (targeting, AI, etc) ? Do you own the rights (to the tech, not the star wars stuff)? Is it for sale?

- John A

 

Sorry to hear about the studio and your job. That project looked incredible. The X-wing and Tie Fighter series has been gone for far to long. I hope that this is a sign that these titles are not truly dead and that studios are actively perusing there revitalization instead of just more rehash COD or Battlefields.

 

Oh man, really sorry to hear about your studio.
That is really amazing work

Btw what is this Gaussian Specular i heard it a lot from UE4 and Disney Paper but i don't understand the difference with the standard specular? (or maybe i missed something).
Care to explain about this?

 

I happen to have some Star wars art if you are needing some..

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCgsOqrO5dHfgIL89iOMfn-pDI8yHMV5A

I also have a playable version of Holochess already in Unity.. Lucas Arts has their heads so far up their asses they paid me and never released it... Go figure.... If you have the license, ping me and maybe we can do some business...

 

We had 3 playable demos, a combat demo, death star demo and an online multiplayer demo.

We created all the tech and models in house so we own them. I don't think it's for sale sorry.

 

Gaussian specular is a more accurate approximation of a physically based specular model, it provides a better approximation of surface distribution of microfacets when compared to the unity built-in specular.

It comes at a cost though, but since the cockpit is so close to the camera it can be worth it to spend a little bit extra computation time on it.

 

Disappointed that Dry Ice closed down, had an interview with James back when they were looking for Talent Pool staff in Dundee, on a very interesting and good looking project. Alas not to be. Be interested to know what happened to both project and team, but i guess it's all hush hush....

This looks very good, i hope all those who worked on it are proud and move on to good jobs!

 

I am a big fan of Star wars. I hope you will continue with this project...

 

This is terrible news

 

The original IP we were working on had the funding pulled, and the publisher kept all the work, this effectively shut the studio down. They didn't know we were working on this Star Wars game alongside but without any major source of income the studio had no choice but to close.

We have all moved on and found new jobs now however, there's word that there might be something new starting up.

 

Hey its been a long time since the last post.

What about the project? Is there any showcase or tech demo about the game, im very interested in your project, and ye the shaders are very awesome.

Also I try to create my own version of the SW Space fights

I don't have any rights for Star Wars. I'm using this project for education purposes.

 

Hi Xian55,

I've seen that you used simplified models, there are nice .X models bundled with Lurker's Mod for Battle of Yavin/Endor.

I've modified and improved them a bit, with relative shaders paths (they were absolute) and some detail here and there, but no special effects yet, because I'm still learning.

If you're interested, I'm sending send you a PM with links to enhanced mod installers

Pomate

 

You wouldn't happen to still have the surface model for the death star would you? Or even the x-wings? I'm building a prototype and would love to use them!

 

Senses copyright infringement , Not sure if thinks lawsuits are fun or not?Or if has rights , or does not and wants to be homeless?