Vega Strike - Home About Project Bug tracker Screenshot Downloads Forums Manual Wiki DevBlog News Get Vega Strike Latest Stable: 0.5.0 Latest Subversion Mods/Total Conversions Privateer Gemini Gold Privateer Remake Vega Trek Pi Armada Privateer Parallel Universe Screenshots Donate Welcome to Vega Strike Vega Strike is an Open Source 3D Action-Space-Sim that lets you trade, fight, and explore in a vast universe. Vega Strike is built on top of OpenGL and runs on Win/Lin/Mac platforms. Vega Strike (the game) is currently in a playable state, but both game engine and dataset are under continued development. For more details, see About VS or visit the forums and dev blog. Most Recent Updates to Subversion Repository Rev. 12550 -- (ace123) March 31, 2009 00:18 : www2: fix a few bugs in the masterserver ... Rev. 12549 -- (ace123) March 29, 2009 01:11 : Compatibility fix for sprite filenames. Fixes forum t=11869 ... Rev. 12548 -- (ace123) March 29, 2009 00:47 : Backwards compatibility fix for backgrounds (allow .bmp or .image) ... - More updates - Most Recent Developer Blog Entries Vessels and Installations -- (pyramid) October 29th, 2008 2:43 am August, or things like it -- (jackS) July 29th, 2008 7:21 pm Extensions Renaming -- (pyramid) June 12th, 2008 7:27 am - More updates - News   Vega Strike 0.5.0 Release: Enjoy it now! Monday, April 28, 2008, 05:44:16  Hey folks: I just wanted to let people know that the release is out and we've just updated the linux installer, and replaced the Intel-only mac disk image with one that is universal and will work on Power PC Macintoshes as well. The windows binary is also ready for both XP and Vista users as long as you install OpenGL drivers from the manufacturer's website. Download here: http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/getfilesThis release includes shaders with normal maps, better physics and more ships, beautiful artistic contributions by our talented artists, faster loading speeds, more intelligent autopilot for fast navigation and preliminary deathmatch multiplayer support for LAN parties.For more details about this release and the future of Vega Strike check out my blog post: http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/devblog/?p=31 Posted by: hellcatv Comments (5) |   Get some release from your day-to-day existence Thursday, April 24, 2008, 17:13:44  Over the next few days, I'll be listening to music in the desert.Over the next few days, you'll be playing the new 0.5.0 release of Vega Strike.On behalf of the dev team, I'd like to express our profound thanks for the efforts, patience, and persistence of all involved.Enjoy.---- Posted by: jacks Comments (4) |   Vega Strike 0.5.0 Windows Beta Testing Wednesday, October 03, 2007, 05:57:24  If you will turn your gaze to the "Latest Releases" box, you will see that we've changed status from 'Pending' to "0.5.0 Beta (10/2/07)".We invite all Windows users interested in helping us to polish this beta up into something ready for a full-blown release to follow the link and walk through instructions on the downloads page for downloading and running the beta.As you play through the beta and encounter bugs or oddities in the data set, please use the Bug Tracker to file bug reports. The wider audience playing through this testing release represents an invaluable source of testing data, but it can only be efficiently put to use if bug reports are filed :)Additionally, there have been many changes to gameplay and assorted details since version 0.4.3. (as both an example and a heads-up, the communication keys and cockpit view keys have been swapped) These changes will need to be documented in the manual -- but everyone with a forum account can help us out here, because it's a wiki :)We know it's been a long time coming, and there's still a bit further to go, so we thank you for your patience, and, for those of you who haven't been following along in SVN, we hope you'll enjoy finally previewing what we've been working on.For those who may be new or may have missed some of the new goodies, here are some of the highlights of things new since 0.4.3:Shader Support*VS now supports normal maps*(@all artists: yet another chance to contribute ;-) -- most units still need normal maps)Integrated Multiplayer Support*Deathmatch*Missions, money, and upgradesReimplemented physics system*Support for simultaneous simulation at variable fidelity of all ships present in a system*Support for large numbers of active vessels per systemNew and revised content*New and restatted units, weapons, and upgrades*New music, models, and factional textures*Civilian trafficMiscellaneous improvements*Improved automation of in-system travel (simple autopilot mode)*Pre-compressed(DXT) texture support*Integrated Soundserver_ _ _ _ _ Posted by: jacks Comments (7) |   Site updates, engine milestones, etc. Monday, July 02, 2007, 02:50:49  As the astute observer may have noticed, we've updated the website (thanks go out to Zaydana for his work on the design). More importantly we've added a Development Blog, so that the day-to-day goings on about the project can be made visible without overwhelming the casual website visitor. This news section will be continued to be used for release notices and the like.For those interested in the bleeding edge, svn co https://vegastrike.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/vegastrike/trunk/vegastrike and compile away.Incidental bugs arising from cleanup aside, the engine proper is in pretty good shape for the moment. Scripts and data aren't quite up to par with the engine at the moment, but with a bit more gruntwork and bughunting, there'll be something sufficiently playable to let the community do the sort of thorough play-testing that our small development team doesn't have the man-hours to do on its own.One way or the other, we're planning on bundling up a release, be it particularly stable or otherwise, once a couple of our devs (including our lead dev, HellcatV) come back from summer jaunts to Europe. This process should (/me crosses fingers) be wrapped up by early August, and WILL be wrapped up by some time in August come hell or high-water. We can then presumably return to a more vaguely sane release schedule based on picking milestones commensurate with the actual size and time available to the dev team. (Common sense note /public service announcement for future generations of developers: if three major, non-orthogonal directions for development appear and you don't need to use a non-unary base to count on one hand the number of developers who are both highly active and highly available, choose to pursue one of them, and be sure you can stop part way. Do not choose to simultaneously pursue all three, each in its entirety.) Posted by: jacks Comments (9) |   ... but what have we done for you LATELY? Monday, October 02, 2006, 22:26:23  Firstly, a status update:-The Good-* The physics engine's scalability rewrite has been completed, tested, and data-side modifications are being made to take advantage of the new under-the-hood dynamics and capabilities. (Also removes the laughably painful "Hey, where did that Clydesdale come from? *whump*!" problem.)* Initial internet multi-player support has been implemented, and is in (pre-alpha) testing (functional, but buggy, and subject to frequent revision). Other mods are also participating in testing out multiplayer features (e.g. WCU: http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=7385)* An assortment of new art, revised art, and finally-put-in-game art (apologies to Strangelet re: the latter). Special thanks also to Oblivion for his recent prodigious output (factional skins, etcetera).* A bevy of bugs have been squashed.* We've moved to Subversion from CVS (and there was much rejoicing).* New Intel Macs now supported.-The Continuing-* Traffic management. The physics engine can now deal with thousands of simulated units in flight, but having this lead to enjoyable game play, rather than a simulation of a Los Angeles rush hour (only with slightly more gunfire) is still requiring some fine-tuning. * Progress has been made on re-working unit stats, but they're not yet in a satisfactory state - this has, as much as anything else, been a scheduling/communication issue between the persons assigned to this task.* It's the economy stupid - or, more precisely, our economy is stupid - but we're working on it. For the next release, we're just going to streamline a little, kick around a couple of variables and get something workable - actual better modeling is going to wait until the release-after-next.* Website facelift is almost done. Go here to take a look at where it's headed: http://zaydana.servebeer.com/vegastrike.sf.net/final/web/-The Unfortunate-* Progress on moving to the OGRE rendering engine has been slow. We only have one person working on this, and he has several other demands on his time. As such, there's good news and bad news - the bad news is that the OGRE move isn't going to happen for the next release, the good news is that this means that the next release date is not dependent upon OGRE working.* Re-specification of planet types, associated trade and economic modeling doesn't look like it's going to be done soon enough to warrant making said goals for the next release. Correspondingly, re-generating the universe map therefore probably isn't going to happen for the next release.--------Second, some Q&A:Q: Where can I see what you've done so far - do I have to keep waiting and waiting for the next release?A: There's no need to wait - http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/wiki/HowTo:Checkout_SVN provides a handy tutorial on how to get a copy of the latest development version. For the compiler-impaired in Windows-land, there's even a pre-compiled Windows binary.To stay abreast of what's going on in the VS community, head over to the VS forums http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/forums/ - we'll try to update the front page more often, but if one desires timely responses, the forums remain preferable to the news post commentaries, even though the latter are no longer choked with spam to the point of being unusable.Q: Why is it taking so long?A: There are currently 0 people for whom VS is their day job. Zero. This is not only a project run by volunteers, but a project worked on entirely in volunteered and borrowed time. For comparison, looking at the credits for commercial games tends to produce a sizeable list of employees from designers, programmers and artists to the administrative assistants and other necessary logistical support, and development cycles can still take tens of months to a few years (and no, we're not talking about DNF :-p). Moreover, there are some key organizational differences as well - our developers and contributors are scattered across the globe. We're divided by languages, time zones, countries, economic realities (we'd love to have all of the developers have access to a consistent set of development rigs, let alone have a good set of QA rigs, but when not everyone working on the project even has consistent internet access, one must be more pragmatic) and external commitments. That we all still manage to work on the VS project together is beautiful, empowering, and a pounding organizational migrane.Q: So - what the heck have you all been doing if not working on VS?A: Of the three active project admins for VS, two are CS graduate students, and one is finishing up secondary school. So, since the last release, that's six accepted conference papers that VS project leads appear as authors on, 3 internships at HP Labs, and a slew of college applications. The lead programmer currently beset with the unfortunately Sisyphean task of the OGRE port is working part time, going to univerity, and apparently enduring a two hour commute. From correspondence with various developers and contributors, many of them seem to be in colleges and universities, and one presumes them to have spent much of their time studying and socializing, with the exception of one Australian, whom I know to have spent time assisting a mining venture in blowing things up (lucky bugger), and various persons who've sent back pictures of where they vacationed. Q: Is that all?A: No, but it's all the news that's fit to print :). So, if no one minds, we'll end this news post here and wander back to working on VS. Posted by: jacks Comments (18) | Next >>> Copyright © 1998-2007 The Vega Strike Project. All Rights Reserved. Layout and Design by Numbat Software.