Space Sim First Look: Squadron: Mercenaries (March 23, 2024)

[ChrisReid]

Goge stopped by to share a very cool space sim tech demo that he's been working on lately. It's called Squadron: Mercenaries and he's got some very lofty goals in mind! The core portion starts as a traditional Wing Commander style sim, but there are larger secondary element planned as well. One really cool thing that jumped out at me is that it just runs in a browser window. You can visit the website here and be playing in a few seconds without installation. More info is on the page to get oriented. We hope to see some of his ambitious plans come together!

Squadron: Mercenaries

Squadron Mercenaries is a thrilling spacefaring epic that blends the adrenaline-pumping space flight combat simulation of Wing Commander with the intricate personnel and material management aspects of 'Mechwarrior Mercenaries.' In this immersive game, players will not only engage in intense dogfights and grand-scale space battles, but they'll also assume the role of a resourceful commander, managing a crew of diverse characters, upgrading and customizing their spacecraft, and navigating a dynamic galaxy filled with contracts, alliances, and political intrigue. With its seamless integration of strategic management and action-packed combat, this game offers a uniquely captivating experience that caters to both die-hard simulation enthusiasts and fans of deep, story-generating gameplay.

I've been working on this on my free time for a few months. I'm gonna take a break and go build something else for a game jam next week. Then I should be back to this with weekly updates

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Original update published on March 23, 2024

 

[Lin Kuei Ominae]

The WIP video has a kind of old school charme that reminds me more on movies like "The last Starfighter" or old vector based games like "Stellar 7" than the Wing Commander series.

Though with the engine seeming to be rather solid already, I think it only needs some good looking 3d models and some nicer sound effects to move it more towards the WC style.
IIRC wcnews has all the Wing Commander 3d models somewhere to download. Might be worth to implement a few of them.

How powerful is the 3d engine? Can it support high poly models?
Do you have to do the different LOD (level of detail) models manually, or can it do them automatically? I always found it very annoying work to simplify a finished 3d model so the low LOD version can be used for far distances with smaller render sizes.

Does the engine support particle systems (engine smoke, laser sparks)?

Are third party engines used or is the game entirely written from scratch? (e.g. Unreal Engine)

All in all it looks like a very promising start. Looking forward to see where this is going.
Also thanks a lot for making the source code public. This alone makes already sure the project isn't some day discontinued and dead.