The entire project is community based. People who share the common motivation of taking Master of Orion, and the space strategy genre one step further are invited to contribute in any way they can. Some may contribute as programmers, others as designers, artists, reviewers or testers.

When I first introduced FreeOrion on SpaceSector the game was at version 0.3.13. I made a first-impressions by then. I also did an interview with the FreeOrion Programming Lead – Zach Laine – at the time. I think the interview came out really nice. If you’re a MOO fan you can’t miss it.

Now, a couple of days ago the FreeOrion project has released its 0.3.16 version. Changes since the last release (0.3.15 – from 5 August 2010) can be found in this post.

According to the FreeOrion roadmap one is led to believe that the project is still far from completion. Although a lot has been done already, apparently there is also a long journey ahead. For instance space combat, ship design and the tech tree are still being designed and coded, and diplomacy is still on its preliminary stage of design (the space combat prototype that can be glimpsed in the video preview is awesome by the way). Ground combat, space monsters and espionage, just to name a few things, are still to be done.

I loved the project the day I read about it and I think FreeOrion people have done a fantastic job so far. The problem, if we can call it that, is that the project is taking a long time to come by. The project kicked-off by 2003. Version 0.3.13 (by the time I heard about FreeOrion) dates back to 2009. Current version is 0.3.16 (released 1 year after 0.3.15).

These guys deserve all our appreciation for the hard work they’re doing. I’m sure their large majority simple do it for fun, but I know it’s not always easy to combine family life, a day job and a personal project at the side all at the same time. I’m sure they would be happy if you can lend them a hand. Check out in the FreeOrion forums the best way you can contribute. You can also donate to the project here.

I hope development can speed-up significantly, so that we can all enjoy playing one of the best space strategy game experiences being developed out there as soon as possible.

Check here for FreeOrion screenshots and here for a preview video. Download the latest version of FreeOrion (0.3.16) for PC and Mac from here.

BotE, as for StarTrek Supremary, intend to be the spiritual successor to Star Trek Birth of the Federation (BotF). BotE is a 4X space turn-based strategy open source game.

Malvoisin made a post about BotE Alpha version in SpaceSector.com forum. He describes BotE as being a free standalone game in the likes of Master of Orion 2 or Star Trek: Birth of the Federation. Malvoisin clarifies that BotE is not a mod but a full game of its own.

BotE is in version 0.8 (Alpha 6) by now, Malvoisin states that the game is pretty far developed in terms of gameplay.

You can have a look in Malvoisin’s post for more details. He says that in BotE you can play as one of 5 races, both in multiplayer of singleplayer against the AI.

Checkout the the Birth of the Empires Alpha 6 release announcement which contains all the details about BotE Alpha 6 release.l

You can download the BotE Alpha version from here.

You can discuss the game in the Star Trek Games Forum.

Screenshots (click to enlarge)

In preparation for this Star Trek event, Mike will release a game update in August 2010 that will improve the multiplayer experience and game performance. The update will also include improvements to Diplomacy and the Intelligence features.

Official STAR TREK Convention 2010 Las Vegas, Nevada

To find out more about Supremacy check the SpaceSector.com articles “Star Trek Supremacy – Open Source Free Game in Development” and “Interview with Mike Strobel | Star Trek Supremacy Lead Developer”.

Since then I’ve been in contact with Mike. I asked him for an interview for SpaceSector.com which he kindly accepted. Here is the interview we did. If you’re interested in getting involved in this project helping Mike with your ideas or contributions there are details in the interview of how you can do this. Hope you enjoy the interview as much as I.

I understand that you started the Supremacy project as a hobby and that you intend to release it for free upon completion. How long have you been developing Star Trek Supremacy, and what are your plans to have it ready for release?

Back around 2004, I started thinking about developing a turn-based strategy game.  During the next year and a half, I played several 4X games and filled entire notebooks with notes and ideas.  In fall of 2005, I decided to bite the bullet and make it happen.  I decided to take a video game design course the next semester as a sort of “trial run”.  I’d never developed a game before, and a semester-long project seemed like good practice to prepare me for a much larger game project.  In November and December I gave myself a head start by getting some of the core code written, and in January two of my fraternity brothers and I enrolled in Georgia Tech’s CS4455 “Video Game Design” class.  We developed a 4X game entitled Galactic Supremacy—the predecessor to Star Trek: Supremacy. I began working on Star Trek: Supremacy in June of 2006, after I shared my work on Galactic Supremacy with the community over at the Birth of the Federation 2 (BotF2) project forums.  The BotF2 project had been going on for some time, but had fallen into a state of limbo when its developer vanished along with all of his work.  Over the next few months, Supremacy was eventually endorsed by the BotF2 project leaders as the “official” BotF2, and the community rallied behind me.  Several members of my creative team had been associated with the BotF2 project since 2004 or earlier, and they have volunteered countless hours of their time to help make Supremacy into a game that is truly something to behold.

The release date is and always has been “when it’s done”—it’s strictly a side project, and it’s hard to predict how much time I’ll have to work on it.  Ideally, I’d like to get to alpha status a year from now, spend another year at alpha, and then wrap the project up with a six-month beta and “release candidate” cycle to filter out the remaining bugs.  Then we’ll throw a big party when version 1.0 finally “ships”.  I have continually made “pre-release” versions of the game available for public consumption, and I will continue to do so through its release.  The game is free and open source, so it will always be free to enjoy, and anyone can take the source code and either modify the game or create an entirely new game based off the Supremacy framework.  The most recent pre-release download is rather outdated at the moment, due to some highly experimental work I’ve been doing, but it can be found at the Star Trek: Supremacy website.  The source code and bug tracker are located on CodePlex.

After version 1.0 is released, I plan to work on a couple “total conversion” mods for the game—one set in the Stargate universe, and another set in the Babylon 5 universe.  Supremacy was designed from the beginning to be easily modifiable—nothing is hard-coded, and all of the content can be replaced fairly easily.  A comprehensive editor will ship with the game.  I am also preemptively adding support for some features which may not actually be utilized in Star Trek: Supremacy, but which might be useful for future mods.  Such features include support for various forms of “point-to-point transport tunnels”, which could be used to implement “supergates” in a Stargate mod or “jump gates” in a Babylon 5 mod.  Actually, that particular feature might be used to implement wormholes in Star Trek: Supremacy.

So I see that the idea is for Supremacy to follow on the footsteps of one of the most successful 4X space strategy games of all time: Star Trek: Birth of the Federation. I believe that Supremacy is also known as the BotF2 project. In which aspects will Supremacy evolve and innovate from its predecessor’s legacy?

Indeed, the goal of the Supremacy/BotF2 project has been to create a “worthy” spiritual successor to Birth of the Federation.  Players will find the basic gameplay mechanics to be quite familiar, but with far more depth and breadth.  In terms of breadth, Supremacy spans a longer timeline, has much larger galaxies, more playable races, and over a hundred minor races (with more evolved tech trees).  Supremacy will also offer a more “immersive” gameplay experience.

My overall design philosophy with Supremacy has been focused around a notion that I call “progressive involvement”.  It’s no secret that individual 4X gamers have vastly different preferences when it comes to game mechanics.  There are players who want to micromanage every detail of their empire, right down to the city layouts of their colonies.  Others prefer to “macro-manage” and focus their attention on the high-level concerns of their empire—guiding the war and peace efforts, deciding where to expand, and so on.  I believe that it’s possible to create a game that appeals to players on both ends of that spectrum, as well as everywhere in between.  We can do this by designing the game mechanics in such a way that players can either “opt-in” or “opt-out”.

For instance, we plan to give players the opportunity to advance their empire’s research by building special science ships, which can be sent out to perform research missions.  These missions must be commenced by the player, and may involve tasks like scanning certain stellar phenomena.  Such a feature gives the player a greater sense of involvement in the game.  However, for players who want to focus on higher level concerns, this feature can be completely ignored.  Further, it can be ignored without putting the player at a disadvantage, because the feature will be designed such that the research gained by these missions is roughly equivalent to the research that would have been gained by simply dumping more funds into automated research rather than building the (rather expensive) science vessels required to perform research missions.  Players will also be able to delegate various managerial tasks to an AI.  For instance, players will have the option of setting their colonies on “cruise control” by allowing a “governor AI” to take over and decide what to build.

Does Supremacy have a main plot or background story? In which time frame of the Star Trek universe does the game take place?

There is no fixed plot for Supremacy.  Like Birth of the Federation, the player assumes the role of leader of a spacefaring empire from the Star Trek universe (the Federation, Klingons, Romulans, Cardassians, or the Dominion).  What happens from that point forward is dynamic—no two games will play out quite the same way.  Unlike Birth of the Federation, which spanned only the Star Trek: The Next Generation timeline, Supremacy spans the timelines of every Trek series from Enterprise through Voyager.

Supremacy offers a very nice 2D gridded galaxy map with all different kinds of stars with different colors.  Do the star colors have any meaning in terms of exploration sense?  For instance in games like MOO2 or Armada 2526 the color of the star gives some advance info to the player of how likely it is for it to hold ideal, sub-optimal, dead or barren planets if they contain planets at all.

Yes, there is a complete set of data tables in Supremacy which determine the likelihood of various planet type/size combinations.  These probabilities are affected by various factors including the type of star and a planet’s distance from the star.  Further, each race in Supremacy has different planet environment preferences based on the type of homeworld on which that race originated.  For instance, humans prefer Earth-like planets, whereas Cardassians prefer hot and dry desert-like planets.  Thus, while a planet may be highly desirable to one race (giving it a high max. population level and growth rate), it may be very hostile to another race (giving it a much lower max. population and growth rate).  It is possible to encounter systems without any planets at all, though they will be rare.  Other rarities include nebulae with “rogue” planets within.

In terms of settlements expansion does Supremacy allow the player to colonize every system he finds or does it requires the player to unlock special research to allow the colonization of some systems?

Any system with habitable planets (planets other than Gas Giants) may be colonized, but certain systems may be very undesirable based on the environmental preferences of the player’s race.  At high tech levels, players will be able to unlock special terraforming projects.  These terraforming projects will allow the player to transform a planet into a more desirable environment over the course of several turns.  Terraforming will work very much like it did in Master of Orion 2.

Supremacy presents the following resources: Dilithium, Deuterium, Raw Materials, and Officers.  Can you explain a bit what each is for and how can these be mined or gathered?  Additionally, will all resources be possible to collect only in star systems with planets or also in some special places of the galaxy map?

Dilithium is required for building the warp core during ship construction—each ship requires x units of Dilithium to be built.  Dilithium may be found in any system with habitable planets (planets other than Gas Giants) or asteroids.  If a system with habitable planets contains Dilithium, the player may colonize that system and build a permanent Dilithium refinery to produce Dilithium consistently each turn.  We may also allow players to use mining ships to mine Dilithium from unclaimed systems containing Dilithium deposits on either planets or asteroids.

Deuterium is required to fuel your ships.  One unit of Deuterium is consumed for each sector traversed by a ship, and each ship has an onboard Deuterium reserve.  When a ship is within its “refueling range” (a certain number of sectors from the nearest allied shipyard or space station), a ship’s Deuterium is automatically replenished from the empire-wide stockpile as it is consumed.  Thus, movement within refueling range keeps the onboard reserves fully stocked.  If a ship ventures beyond its refueling range, its onboard reserves will not be replenished, and a ship will become stranded if it depletes its Deuterium reserves.  At that point, the ship will need to be towed back to friendly space.  Deuterium is always produced in minimal quantities at any colony, but production is higher for each Gas Giant present in the system.  Ships beyond their refueling range may also replenish their Deuterium reserves by stopping to gather Deuterium from systems with Gas Giants or Nebulae.

Raw Materials are required to construct the hulls of your spacecraft, and thus each ship or station requires some quantity of Raw Materials in order to be built.  Raw Materials, like Deuterium, are always produced in some minimal quantity at any colony, but production is greatly increased in systems which are marked as being rich in Raw Materials.

The concept of “Officers” as a resource is being scrapped and replaced by a revised personnel system.  I won’t say any more than that for now, but the idea is to create a personnel system that feels like its based more on people and less on raw numbers.

Regarding on how to win, what are Supremacy victory conditions?  Time?  Special achievement?  Alliance domination, Full conquest?  Are there specific victory conditions for each race?

Victory conditions have not yet been finalized, but you can expect to see—at minimum—victory through conquest (controlling a certain percentage of the galaxy), with the option for allied empires to win together.  Time-based victories will likely be implemented to facilitate shorter games when desired.

The current pre-alpha version of the game does not provide space combat yet.  But judging from the YouTube videos these will be fought in 3D.  Will the player be in control of every single spaceship?  In other words will space combat be highly tactical, only allowing the player to set formations and make small adjustments during combat, or will it be completely cinematic?

The YouTube videos you refer to do not actually reflect the combat system that is planned for Supremacy.  They are demo videos of a standalone game being developed by a member of the BotF2 community called cdrwolfe.  Those same videos are erroneously presented on the Supremacy website, and I need to have them taken down.

3D tactical combat in Supremacy will be turn-based.  Since players in online games may be staring at a blank screen while others engage in combat, we want to keep combat time reasonable, and I believe turn-based combat with limits on planning time is the best way to do that.  During each combat turn, players will be able to give orders to individual ships or to several ships at a time, but orders will be limited to a target and a maneuver.  In addition to curbing combat time, this approach will also enable us to utilize all three dimensions in space combat.  Since the player chooses from a list of predefined maneuvers, he or she is not required to plot the actual movement.  It is very difficult to plot courses in three dimensions when you are stuck with a two-dimensional screen and input device, which is why most space combat games are based on 2D or “2.5D” planes.  We can lift this restriction since actual ship courses are projected by the computer instead of the player.

What about ground combat and systems invasions?  What will be the mechanics?  Will special transports with troops be required for the invasions?  Is Supremacy going to offer tactical ground combat, cinematic or just a report is presented in the end?

Ground combat has not been finalized yet, but it will likely be similar to how system assaults were implemented in Master of Orion 3.  Special troop transports will be required for an invasion, and we will probably present the invader with a screen showing his or her forces, as well as those of the enemy.  The player will then choose whether to attack or retreat.  After this selection, the screen will update to reflect casualties and destroyed buildings.  The player may continue this process for a few rounds, at which point the ground combat will be won, lost, or inconclusive.  If combat is inconclusive, this process will be repeated during the next turn.  If victory is achieved, the system will fall under control of the invading player.

Player curiosity and surprises are important factors that a game must satisfy to keep the player focused and engaged.  In your opinion, which features will Supremacy offer to satisfy this?  Will the game provide random events like space monster attacks or mega events (e.g. plagues, disasters, revolts) that can surprise the player to take action?

Yes, a rather flexible random event system will be implemented, and there are already somewhere around 120 proposed random events.  Due to time constraints, only a couple dozen of these are likely to make it into version 1.0 of the game, but many more may be added later on.  As for the type of random events, pretty much everything you mentioned is fair game, as well as appearances by the Borg.

I’d also like to add that I’ve been spending a lot of time recently thinking about how the player’s focus shifts throughout the game.  To me, most strategy games become weakest during the late game, when the map has been completely explored and the tech tree has been exhausted.  I’ve been thinking of ways to keep gameplay interesting by “unlocking” new objectives late in the game.  I’m not ready to reveal any of those ideas yet, but it’s important to me that Supremacy stays interesting up until the end of the game.

I believe that you are not developing the game alone.  Are you in need of help for development?  What kind of support do you need and where should people go to start helping on Supremacy development?

Since the beginning, I have been the only “permanent” programmer on the project.  A couple others have come and gone over the years, but none have stuck around.  Fortunately, there have been many members of the community who have contributed in other ways, like producing graphics, music, dialogue, and other creative content.  This has freed up more of my time to focus on programming, which is what I would rather be doing anyway :).

We are doing pretty well at the moment, but we’re always looking for people with a talent for graphics or music composition.  The BotF2 Forums are a place to go for offering to contribute.

The current Star Trek: Supremacy version available for download is a pre-Alpha build from last year.  When do you plan to release a new version, and what new stuff will that include?  Will it already include space combat for example?

The delay between releases has been largely due to a lack of time to work on the game, and the highly experimental nature of my more recent work.  I’m hoping to get another update out around March or April of this year.  We are also working very hard to get the game ready for basic multiplayer gameplay in time for us to demo the game in a booth at the Star Trek Convention in Las Vegas (August 5-8).

3D Tactical Combat will not be implemented any time soon—the plan has always been to get as much of the game in place as possible before beginning on 3D combat.  This will enable me to shift my focus almost exclusively to combat development, as the rest of the game will be more or less complete.

For which platforms are you planning to release for?  Only Windows, or are there any plans for a Linux and/or Mac version?

We will be supporting the Windows platform exclusively.  However, by the time the game is released, I suspect it will be possible to compile most of the game framework against the Mono platform, which is available for Linux and Mac.  Unfortunately, it is unlikely that the graphical client will compile on Mono.  Thus, in order to play the game on anything other than Windows, a cross-platform client would need to be developed.  I would be willing to assist in the development of such a client as a “consultant”, but I have no plans to develop such a client myself.

I understand that you’re developing Supremacy as an open source project and that it is non-commercial, in other words you plan to release it for free.  Have you ever considered in the past, or currently, the possibility of approaching the Star Trek franchise for a possible game licensing or do you promise the fans that you intend to release the game for free in the end?

This question has come up many times, and many people have encouraged me to find a publisher to take care of the licensing.  However, I am firmly committed to releasing Supremacy as a free and open source game.  Supremacy is a game created by the fans, for the fans.  The recognition of my fellow Trek gamers is compensation enough for me.

Thank you very much for your time Mike.

You’re welcome Adam.

Supremacy picks up from the classic Microprose title Star Trek Birth of the Federation, a.k.a. Star Trek: BOTF. Supremacy’s intention is to be a BOTF’s rightful successor. Sometimes Supremacy is also known in the community as Star Trek Birth of Federation 2 (BOTF2).

Star Trek Supremacy is in Alpha stage and a playable release can be downloaded here.

Alpha Pre-release Impressions

You can play with the Humans, Cardassians, Klingon, Romulans and Dominian.

Star Trek Supremacy: Game Setup

In this pre-release you are allowed to manipulate some variables to customize your map like Size, Star Density, Tech Level, Minor Races abundance, Planet density and galaxy shape.  After the choice of race and map variables are set the game is launched.

Galaxy Map and System Management

The Galaxy Map is very similar in style to the original BOTF, gridded and showing the star systems with “fog of war”. You control systems and not individual planets, some which may have special bonuses like more energy output, more suitable for farming, etc.

Star Trek Supremacy: Galaxy Map and System Details

You allocate production, research, intelligence and farming from a labor pool. Each set of 10 population represent one labor unit that can be allocated into production. There are many aspects that you need to control like the energy output, food consumption, industry output, research and intelligence being generated in the system. One interesting aspect is that you need not only to allocate labor but you also need to guarantee that your structures keep powered in order for them to keep working.

Star Trek Supremacy: System Management

In addition to production you also need to control the amount of resources being mined in the system. These resources are: Dilithium, Deuterium, Raw materials and Personal. All this resources will be essential to operate, build and crew your vessels later on.

Spaceships and Combat

Federation Cruiser, Surveyor and Scout (from left to right)

There is no Ship design in Star Trek Supremacy. The vessels are the ones of the Star Trek Universe: Federation Cruisers, Scout ships, Heavy Destroyers, Klingon Battle Cruisers, Federation Heavy Cruisers, etc.. Combat is not yet implemented in this release but you can have a look into the video bellow to have a feeling of how spaceship combat will be like (although these may be old, so may be already substantially improved by now).

Research

You can allocate the research points produced by your universities between 6 different areas or fields: Biotech, Energy, Computers, Propulsion, Construction and Weapons.

Star Trek Supremacy: Research

You manipulate how much research points you would like to spend over these 6 fields. As far as I could tell all races share the same tech tree.

Diplomacy

The Diplomacy screens of Supreme are very clean and stick to the point. There is an overview screen that gives a nice glimpse of communications between all your partners in a who-is-connected-with-who kind of feel. You can make denounces, commend, make threats, make proposals and declare war.

Star Trek Supremacy: Diplomacy

In your proposals (at least when playing with the Federation) you can state demands (for tribute for instance), treaties like free trade, affiliation (free ship passage) and membership (ask the race if they want to join the Federation).

Wrap-up

The Alpha release I had access to (0.4.3427.36588) is very stable for the 65 turns or such that I played at least. There are lots of missing information, content and many UI enhancements yet to be implemented for sure but albeit all of that I enjoyed playing.

Star Trek Supremacy is a very interesting project where many things are already in a very good shape and feel quite right. I want to congratulate Mike and all his team for the extraordinary work they made so far. The music for instance is very good. The User Interface although based on the Star Trek theme and on the original BOTF, is very streamlined, easy to navigate and clean.

After constructing my first Dilithium mine and built my first Scout vessel I did some exploration in the vacinity where I found two Minor Races. One of which accepted to become part of the Federation. During this time I really felt like I was wandering around in the Star Trek Universe.

You can find more information about Star Trek Supremacy in the BOTF2 forums.

The game is still in alpha stage (version 0.3 on a roadmap to 1.0) with many of its features still in development, so in order to have some more information I contacted freeorion and arranged for an interview with freeorion’s Programming Lead: Zach Laine, which kindly and promptly agreed to share with us some of his thoughts for the game.

Enjoy the interview…

1. When did the FreeOrion project kicked-off?

2003. I was looking around on the official Master of Orion 3 forums trying to find some way of fixing a bug I was running into in the game, and came across a thread started by some guy named Tyreth who said, in essence, “This game sucks, let’s make our own game”. There were lots of other posts in agreement with Tyreth, and some guy had already put up a forum on his own web hosting. In about 24 hours, we started making plans and dividing up the work. Tyreth was official lead of the project for a long time — until about 2 or 3 years ago, when he moved on to other things.

2. According to the freeorion roadmap you are in version/stage 0.3 with many of the game features still in planning and design phase. What are your temporal estimates for the project to reach final product (v1.0)?

I wish I had some. We get things done whenever we get them done, which is occasionally really fast, but usually really slow. The problem is that we have two programmers that do almost everything, myself and Geoff Topping. We both have day jobs, and I now have a kid, so slow is the way things go these days. To answer your question, though… years, probably. :(

3. Some time ago when discussing what should 4x space strategy head next I got the following comment from a fan (zigzag member of sins of solar empire forum): “Really, I just want MOO2 with better AI, graphics and LAN support”. This goes in line with a poll I’m running in spacesector.com that clearly shows that MOO2 is still the reference in 4x space strategy gaming. In your opinion will freeorion live up to these expectations? In this sense will freeorion be an “orion” remake or more an innovative sequel?

In short, no. We’re not just reimplementing MOO2. In fact, our influences are really broad, as you might expect from a community effort over several years. Some of those influences are: MOO1, MOO2, SMAC (Alpha Centauri), HOI (Hearts of Iron) 1&2. There are others too, I’m sure, but I think those are the biggest. The idea became, very early on, to make a new and fun 4X game in the same vein as the MOO series, since there is little indication of the industry’s desire to make one. (There have been a few to come out since we adopted that approach, but I admit I haven’t played many of them. From what I gather, most are arguably not very MOO-like.) Some of the major design guidelines we’ve adopted have been:

1) We don’t care about realism. At all.
2) Micromanagement is not fun.
3) KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) — Ideally, you should be able to explain the rules to an intelligent child. You shouldn’t need a degree in Mathematics, Computer Science, or Accounting to understand the game mechanics of FreeOrion. I’m looking at you, MOO3.
4) Making tough choices is fun.
5) Turning some part of gameplay over to an AI is not fun.
6) This is a strategic game, not a tactical game.

Other people from the project may add other guidelines to this list, but I think these are the universally accepted ones. For example, we have a global production queue (rather than per-planet or per-system ones) because of 2. We have buildings that are more like Wonders from the Civ games than buildings from MOO2 or the Civ games, also because of 2.

4. Now regarding some design concepts of freeorion. Space Combat. Tell us a bit about the freeorion space combat model. Will it be highly tactical like in MOO2 or completely abstract (user intervention completely removed) like in GalCiv2?

Neither — it will be somewhere in the middle. It will definitely be interactive, but you won’t be bogged down with ship-level details like ship facings. The level of interactivity will be largely up to you. Each unit has some things that it’s good at and some things that it isn’t, so each unit will have prescribed actions that it will do in the absence of any user action. For example, if you don’t give your interceptor fighters any orders at all, or they finish their current mission, they’ll start looking for other fighters to destroy, and they’ll attack bomber fighters first. You can queue up orders for each unit, and the unit will do them, in order, to the best of its abilities. When it runs out of things to do in its queue, it reverts to something sensible for that unit type. Also, the combat pace is what we like to call phased-realtime. All combat occurs in turns, but if you want, you can allow the turns to fly by, without pausing at the end of each one. This makes it feel more like an RTS. Or, if you choose pause-after-each-turn, you get more of a MOO2 feel to the pace. We’re modeling this after KOTOR’s turn-based system. It didn’t feel turn based unless you wanted it to. Multiplayer will probably require the no-pause setup, or perhaps a time-limited-turn setup.

5. Concerning the Ship Design Model. Could you advance some of the features? Will freeorion follow the MOO1 model of building stacks of ships, provide tiny ships (like fighters or bombers) as modules for bigger ships classes or will all ships, irrespective of the class, be produced as independent ships like in GalCiv2?

This is one of the ways we diverge the most from the MOOs. Instead of a whatever-fits model, we have a slot model. For a given hull, you get so many interior slots, so many exterior slots, and that’s it. Hulls must be researched. You have a variety of modules, of three types: interior-placeable, exterior-placeable, and placeable in either slot type. Things like shields and armor may take interior slots, whereas things like fighter bays and weapons may take exterior slots.

Currently, we’re shooting for all individual ships, all the time. If the runtime burden proves to be too much, we may start combining ships to cut down on poly counts. We want big battles to have an epic feel to them, and 100 ships represented by a single frigate doesn’t do that very well. ;)

6. Regarding research, technologies and techtrees. What will be the concept behind research? Will it follow the MOO1 model that unlocks random techs as some fields are continuously researched; will it follow MOO2 creative/uncreative traits approach, where after a field breakthrough the player gets all techs if creative, 1 random tech if uncreative or 1 tech pick if not creative nor uncreative? Or will freeorion innovate and create a MOO1/MOO2 tech concept mix or even another approach?

It’s largely based on the Theory-Application-Refinement model from HOI. You research theories, which make other Theories possible, and also may open up one or more Applications of that Theory. Each Application allows you to make an actual piece of tech, like a new hull or a laser cannon, or whatever. Refinements take Applications and make them better in some way, like making them 5% cheaper, or 5% more damaging, or whatever. Or goal with this system is that you can refine something to the point where it is so useful that a heavily-refined early tech can actually compete with an unrefined tech much later in the tree. So, do you choose to spend research points on improving what you have, or finding new techs? If we design the tech tree right, there should be no one right answer to that question.

7. Now how can the community help and contribute to the freeorion project?

That’s easy. They can just go to freeorion.org, and check out our forums. The best way to contribute to this or any other open-source project is to find something that you can do, and that you also want to do (that’s actually a lot more important to getting something done than you may at first think), and then do it. Considering the importance of that second part, figuring out what you’d like to help with is a better way to get involved than asking for an “assignment”. I can’t tell you what you’re good at, or what you like to do! :)

8. In which areas are you lacking more resources on? Do you want to provide some contact links here to where people can apply to contribute?

Progress is almost always limited by our low number of programmers. If you’re a competent C++ programmer, please consider getting involved! Also, we have Geoff, one of our whopping 2 programmers, doing most of the grunt work on all the design stuff. For instance, everyone agreed on the tech model, but Geoff has made the tech tree by himself. As such, it’s barely populated — it’s almost all Theories right now. So if you’ve always wanted to design a kick-ass tech tree, now’s your chance. We could use lots of cool sound effects for the UI effects (we have some now, but meh), we could use some more music, and we could use lots of models for ships.

There’s a “How to Help” page on our Wiki. Programmers, graphic artists, sound artists, and designers can all
find the relevant links there to get started. Note that there is also a subforum for each of those areas of interest.

9. When do you plan to have v0.4 available for download?

I wish I knew. There’s a lot that needs to be done. 0.4 is taking so long because it is by far the biggest single piece of the effort. A realtime 3D space combat system with multiplayer support is just plain hard. I hope to have it finished by the end of next summer, but who knows really? With more programmers, or more free time on my part, it could be sooner… or later. Whenever it is done though, we’ll finally have a version of FreeOrion that is at least playable in some sense. What we have right now is more of a tech demo than a game.

Thank you very much for your time Zach.

It was my pleasure.

FreeOrion is an open-source project which goal is to build a turn based 4x space strategy game. The entire project is community-centered were people who share the common motivation are invited to contribute to build the game in many ways, some as programmers, others as conceptual designers, others as opinion makers.

As stated in the project vision the game is inspired in the Master of Orion series and it will be a turn-based strategy game built-in the classic 4X model style.

Edit:  For an interview I did with the FreeOrion Programming Lead please refer to: Interview with FreeOrion’s Programming Lead: Zach Laine. / Edit

Current status

As far as I could tell from the official page forums and wiki the project seems to have started somewhere around 5 to 6 years ago and the word is that the game is currently in the alpha stage and that it will be still a while till it is finished. You can see the project roadmap here. The most recent version available to download is currently (version 0.3.13) which means that according to the roadmap there is still a long way to go.

First impressions

After checking out the forums of the project and reading some people announcements, ideas and warnings of premature and unstable material my expectations became rather low. I downloaded the most recent build available for Windows (version 0.3.13) from the project sourceforge that you can find in this link (there are also builds for Linux and Mac). I installed the game (clean), launched it (sounds good), there is already a more than presentable main menu, good ambient sound music and voila the galaxy is presented to you in all of its splendor.

Immediately you identify familiar things about the game that makes you remember of Master of Orion like for example the ship movement mechanics (select a ship with a left mouse click and choose destination planet with right-click with spaceship immediately moving towards the planet). After some time clicking on the menus, mostly in the planets and in the spaceships I have to say that it seemed that I was really playing a Orion game. And I don’t think more of a compliment to the design & development team I can give than this. In spite the version still being alpha with all the expected unpolished graphics, many unfinished functionalities, others still not present at all and clunky User Interface I really have to say that I got hooked immediately to the game atmosphere and I really wanted to play more. Oh and by the way, no software crashes :) still …

Some screenshots

As you can see the galaxy map already shows a good presentation. The production screen still looks unfinished, a lot of polish to be done, more solid graphics and definitely better UI still required. The research screen shows potential but, as normal, is still rough around the edges (rather messy and confusing dependencies with all that curvy lines around). All things considered I think that all of this is already great work! The project seems to be in the good path.

You can see more screen shots here.

Conclusion

FreeOrion is definitely a project to take seriously and to watch closely in the near future. The game seems really to embrace the spirit of the Master of Orion series. I personally became quite interested in knowing more about the project and to contribute myself to the cause with all the means I can. For now I’m spreading the word, in the near future I plan to make updates at least when the major project milestones are announced.

Godspeed FreeOrion, and watch out for the Guardian! :)