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[DEVELOPMENT DIARY]
[TECHNOLOGY]
[SCREENSHOTS]
[CREW]
[FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS]
Frequently Asked Questions
Gameplay questions
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Q: What genre does SF:C represent?
A: The game will be a combination of several genres. There will be elements of action, adventure, space exploration and even strategy. StarFight: Comrades could be described as an epic space simulation with a cinematic plot and a bunch of craft at your command. I will attempt to create the game I've always wanted to play myself.
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Q: Why is there quite a bit of technical information available on the game, and very little information on the gameplay?
A: The development of StarFight: Comrades is two-phased, and the first area of focus is naturally the technology. While technology does not dictate our gameplay decisions, it does play a significant role on what sort of set of gameplay features we're able to implement out of the planned ones. More information on gameplay and game world will be posted at an appropriate time.
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Q: Where will the game take place?
A: Game takes place in an open universe. Just like in StarFight VI, you'll be able to freely travel from planet to planet and jump from star system to another. The main location of game's events is not disclosed at this point.
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Q: Will I be able to land on planets?
A: Not likely. If I was to make landscape rendering, it would have to be possible to fly all the way from orbit to the surface seamlessly. The LOD system required to acomplish this is propably beyond my capabilities.However, I do have plans to include upper atmosphere environment into SF:C. Planets won't be simple background images in this game. Also, you will be able to explore the surroundings in a very small spacecraft (mechanical spacesuit). Roaming largest of asteroids from this perspective will almost seem like walking on a planet surface.
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Q: Will there be separate adventure sections like in SF6?
A: No. Adventure will be tightly integrated into the main game engine. Experience will be more seamless. Worry not, adventure elements won't be limited to simple click-through discussions, problem solving will be there.
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Q: Will there be a multiplayer mode?
A: No. SF:C is being developed as solely single-player experience.
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Technical questions
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Q: What will be the minimum requirements of SF:C?
A: At this point it is impossible to determine them precisely, but this is what I'm aiming at:- 1000MHz or higher Athlon/Pentium III processor
- 256 megabytes of RAM (512MB or more recommended)
- Windows 95/98/ME/2K/XP with DirectX8 or later
- DirectX8 complicant display adapter with 32 megabytes of RAM, 32bit color and texture compression support (ATI Radeon, nVidia GeForce/MX or higher). A fully DX8-capable accelerator recommended (GeForce3, Radeon 8500).
16bit colors/Z buffer won't be supported in StarFight: Comrades. Textures will be very large, so texture compression support is highly recommended, and proper graphical output will not occur on older hardware such as 3dfx Voodoo3 line of cards. Game will propably run on less memory than 256 megabytes, but not well.
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Q: I have a (description of a computer system), will SF:C run on it? If not, can you give any hardware upgrade tips?
A: You should not worry about it, SF:C is not coming out any time soon. If your system specs are less than that of the projected recommendation, you've probably upgraded by the time the game is out anyway.Processors are now cheaper than ever, and so is system memory. Unless money is really tight, there is no reason not to upgrade these components right now. On the video card front, upcoming months are going to be very interesting indeed. I would hold on to the old video card right now, since vastly superior ones are right around the corner ;)
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Q: What technical highlights will this title have?
A: Graphics engine of SF:C incorporates the same high-performance rendering core as Frozenbyte's SnowStorm 3D graphics engine; heavily modified of course. The game will have:- Very high polygon counts
- Super high resolution textures with detail and material texturing
- Up to 7 texture layers per surface
- Unique volumetric and per-pixel special effects
- Unified lighting model across all surfaces
- Vast rendered distances
- Dense particle effects, used for much, much more than usual sparks and explosions
- Unseen scale between smallest and largest in-game vessels
- ...and more to follow :)
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Generic StarFight: Comrades related questions
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Q: When will SF:C be released?
A: The game is still a long, long way off. This is why all release date inqueries will be responded with "When it's done".
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Q: What is the current progress of the game? Or is SF:C simply vaporware?!
A: SF:C has just entered implementational phase. Technologies for rendering vast scenes are currently under research and development.SF:C is not vaporware. All previous StarFight titles which have gotten to this point of planning and implementation have been finished, even though sometimes significantly behind schedule. This one will finish and come out as well.
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Q: Will there be an open beta test of SF:C? If so, when?
A: Yes. A public technology test version will be released once rendering technologies are complete. Since this project is a hobby, not a full time job, I'll stick to "When it's Done" policy regarding the second question.
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Q: Is SF:C placed in the same StarFight universe as SF6?
A: Yes. This page will be updated with further details of the SF universe happenings at an appropriate time.
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Q: What's with all the shades of red? And the subtitle "Comrades"? Are you a communist?
A: Let's just say that in the StarFight universe, mankind has made many mistakes. SF:C will claim that fanatic communism was not one of them ;)
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Q: Is there a demo/beta or even a technology demonstration of SFC available for me to try out?
A: The current development version is far too unfinished to be released even as a technology test. A public technology compatibility test is planned, stay tuned.
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