Space Travellers Guild

[Vincentz]

Hey guys.
I started making my own spacesim, and thought I'd let you know.
http://www.moddb.com/games/space-travelers-guild

Its not really a competitor to Oolite as to get to same stage it requires years of development (Im the only dev).

Also wanted to ask: if models are opensource in oolite, can I borrow some of them or are they only opensource to oolite?

Cheers
Vincentz

[another_commander]

It looks very nice, good job!

All Oolite's assets are under CCA-NC-SA v3.0, which in a few words means that (this is taken from Oolite's Readme file and is not a substitute of the full license, which is found here: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by ... /legalcode):

You are free:
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[Vincentz]

Well, more than a year has passed, and I havent really made any progress, except in the summer vacation (weather was pretty bad in Denmark this year).
So I changed platform to android, and did a bit of programming...

Anyway, just made a website for it, and uploaded the latest version (which isnt really a game yet, more of a "testing the possibilities" ), and thought I'd share it here with you spacesim-fanatics-guys

https://spacetravelersguild.yolasite.com/

[another_commander]

[Cody]

If I may...

Space Travellers Guild

You've got the English spelling here, but your site/game has the American variant - Travelers. Being English, this caught my eye. Just curious...

[Vincentz]

If I may...

Space Travellers Guild

You've got the English spelling here, but your site/game has the American variant - Travelers. Being English, this caught my eye. Just curious...

It came most natural to me to have it the english way (double L), so I started out by that, but working in online marketing I thought that the US-english might hit a broader target, so I changed it. Ideally I would have both, and then redirect one of them to the other. But since this is a hobby project, I havent even bought a domain, and Space Travelers Guild is more or less a "working title" and might change (though I kinda like it, and it does describe what the game is about, while giving tribute to what (imho) still stands as some of the best science fiction ever written (Spacing Guild in Dune by Frank Herbert)

[ffutures]

That spelling could actually be more important than you think.

In the nineties Games Designers Workshop (the American company that published the space RPG Traveller) tried to take legal action against Britain's Games Workshop (which among other things were GDW's British distributor and published some of their books under license) because they published a "Choose your own adventure" book called Starship Traveller. Their reasoning was that their game used the double-l spelling, not the American single l, so anything related to space which used that spelling must be trying to cash in on their work. In fact it was more of a Star Trek ripoff, but that's another story.

As I remember it, Games Workshop sent them the relevant page from the OED to prove that their spelling was the normal version for the UK, and GDW's lawyers decided it wasn't worth pursuing. But while GDW folded a few years ago, there is still a Traveller RPG and probably someone out there all ready to take action if they see anything that looks like it's cashing in on it. So going with the US spelling might be a good idea.

[Cody]

Wasn't it Games Workshop who trademarked (or tried to trademark) the term Space Marine?

[ffutures]

Wasn't it Games Workshop who trademarked (or tried to trademark) the term Space Marine?

Think so - that was after I stopped writing for them, so I only heard it at second hand but it sounds about right.

[Vincentz]

Hopefully no one tries to put a lawsuit on me for using "Space Traveler", or "Travelers Guild" or "Space Guild" or "Space". (NASA, I'm looking at you on the last one...)
I remember I tried to find something that wasnt really used by anyone, and still had a nice ring to it, and iirc I started out with "Space Travellers Club", and changed it a couple times. The loading screen in the app actually says "Star Travellers Guild", and I changed the name back to "Space Travelers Guild", because I saw something similar to "Star Travellers Guild" somewhere on the web, however when I look for it now, I dont see anything....

Btw, I recently played around with adding another sphere on top of the existing planet, but with an alpha cloud image (from actual earth), and it makes a huge difference in appearance. Maybe it can be used for Oolite too?

A couple of examples: (sorry for the large images. I even downscaled them twice so they fit the forums limits)

[Cody]

The clouds in the fourth pic - very nice!

[Diziet Sma]

In the nineties Games Designers Workshop (the American company that published the space RPG Traveller) tried to take legal action against Britain's Games Workshop (which among other things were GDW's British distributor and published some of their books under license) because they published a "Choose your own adventure" book called Starship Traveller. Their reasoning was that their game used the double-l spelling, not the American single l, so anything related to space which used that spelling must be trying to cash in on their work. In fact it was more of a Star Trek ripoff, but that's another story.

It always mildly surprised me that GDW never went after Bell & Braben for the Viper in Elite. It was clearly a blatant ripoff of a Suleiman Class Scout/Courier. B&B admitted that Traveller was a heavy influence on Elite.

[Diziet Sma]

Well, more than a year has passed, and I havent really made any progress, except in the summer vacation (weather was pretty bad in Denmark this year).
So I changed platform to android, and did a bit of programming...

Anyway, just made a website for it, and uploaded the latest version (which isnt really a game yet, more of a "testing the possibilities" ), and thought I'd share it here with you spacesim-fanatics-guys

https://spacetravelersguild.yolasite.com/

Looks very good so far.. even though my phone has one of the biggest screens around, everything's pretty small on it though.. so clearly it's a tablet-only game. Best of luck with it!

[Cody]

B&B admitted that Traveller was a heavy influence on Elite.

That ain't necessarily so, according to Wiki:

It was thought that much of the game's content was derived from the Traveller tabletop role-playing game, including the default commander name Jameson, but David Braben has denied this several times.

I guess you'd need Ian Bell's input to know for sure - history is mutable.

[Diziet Sma]

It was thought that much of the game's content was derived from the Traveller tabletop role-playing game, including the default commander name Jameson, but David Braben has denied this several times.

I guess you'd need Ian Bell's input to know for sure - history is mutable.

Interesting.. because in most accounts I've seen, it was Braben, not Bell, who was reported as playing Traveller with his friends. Maybe he was trying to fend off a potential lawsuit before it took hold.

On the other hand, as has also been pointed out elsewhere, nobody seems sure of when the Keiths drew the original Suleimann design.. although Traveller predates Elite, for a long time the game was text only, and it may well have been the Elite Viper which inspired the first artwork of the Suleimann Scout.