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[RayFowler]

Hello all. I am always on the hunt for fans of the original Master of Orion game from 1993 and discovered this vibrant and active game forum. I have been working on a free remake of MOO1 for the past two years and have made good progress.

Wargaming.net has asked that I not use the name "Master of Orion" in this remake, so I have given it a different name, "Remnants of the Precursors". However, they have been very cool about the project and are allowing me to use all of the races from the original game. The feature set of this game will be identical to MOO1 with very narrow exceptions for fixing mechanics exploits and improving the AI.

The 3rd alpha is now available and free for download at: https://remnantsoftheprecursors.com/2017/04/09/alpha-3-is-now-available/

Most of the features are done except for Ship Combat (next alpha), 3 of the races, and random events. I am also in the midst of a UI revamp after bringing a graphic designer onto the team, so you'll see distinct differences between new and old UIs. However, the artwork is amazing so prepare to be blown away by it!

There's no personal gain in this project for me other than modernizing a game that I loved and bringing it to the other MOO1 fans who would like a faithful remake of this game. All expenses for making this game are coming out of my own pocket.

For an example of the artwork, here's a shot of the Sakkra from the Race Introduction screen at startup:

[George_Chickens]

Wow, I'm impressed! I'll be delving into it when I get some free time, probably in a few weeks. In the meantime, I'm definitely sending this to my friends, who are fans of the original game.

Is there a forum to give feedback and report bugs, or should I do it here?

[RayFowler]

Wow, I'm impressed! I'll be delving into it when I get some free time, probably in a few weeks. In the meantime, I'm definitely sending this to my friends, who are fans of the original game.

Is there a forum to give feedback and report bugs, or should I do it here?

Yes, I have set up a subreddit at www.reddit.com/r/rotp to handle feedback and bug reports. If the game crashes, it will generally tell you want to do to report the bug.

[Retropunch]

This looks great!!

Will you be looking on expanding on the game after the base game is recreated? I love MOO, but would really like to see it expanded on - not in terms of extra races (as I feel they're pretty much perfect) but in terms of added and improved features. Stuff like improved combat and espionage would be great for instance.

[Krevsin]

Oooh, I'll definitely be checking this out, MoO 1 is my favourite in the series.

[RayFowler]

This looks great!!

Will you be looking on expanding on the game after the base game is recreated?

Yes, I will. However, I am very keen about the constant disappointment caused by games that claim to recreate MOO2 and end up changing so much stuff that MOO fans are alienated by the project.

The first iteration of this game will be a faithful remake of MOO1, as mentioned earlier. However, there will be later iterations where features like leaders, Antarans, etc are added. Nevertheless, the original MOO1 feature set will always be available to play.

[Retropunch]

This looks great!!

Will you be looking on expanding on the game after the base game is recreated?

Yes, I will. However, I am very keen about the constant disappointment caused by games that claim to recreate MOO2 and end up changing so much stuff that MOO fans are alienated by the project.

The first iteration of this game will be a faithful remake of MOO1, as mentioned earlier. However, there will be later iterations where features like leaders, Antarans, etc are added. Nevertheless, the original MOO1 feature set will always be available to play.

Yeah, it often happens. I'd suggest just having a sort of 'version 1.0' which is just MOO with no extras and leave that always available.

Then have MOO+ which adds more. I'd suggest that the main thing people get annoyed with in recreation is extra content rather than extra features - so many games just add more 'stuff' ( more races, buildings, ship types etc.) which tends to be either unbalanced, not keep the tone or just not be needed. I'd instead concentrate on just improving on the features that are there, plus adding a few more of the things we've come to expect or are generally liked across 4x games (like leaders, auto-functions etc.)

[Parsely]

PTW

[Robsoie]

Delighted to finally be able to test this, i remember following this when it was still Java Moo and you had to change stuff to avoid the IP problems.

Couldn't make the Remnants.jar launch, fortunately, one of the solution from the reddit page had it working for me

Code: [Select]

java -jar -Xmx1g Remnants.jar aaa
(i just put -Xmx1g as i have read the game apparently only requires 512mb , but i guess if you experience crashes, you may want to go with -Xmx2g or -Xmx4g to allow more memory to the java stuff)

in a batch file and i was just already amazed by the animated races after starting a new game.
Incredible artwork, though some of the races does not look much like their MoO1 original appearance, they are still fitting, especially the Darloks that look a lot more like mini-Darth Vader now and get in the stealthy backstabbers atmosphere even better, and i was smiling when i saw their "Nazin" homeworld, oh the memories

Fantastic work, can't believe how amazing it is visually (though it's odd to see the ships sprites being still MoO1 ones placed around other superb visuals ) and i was overjoyed when i saw the sliders like in good old MoO1 , that fantastic and easy gameplay concepts they had

I hope you have Humans planned too, i liked to play as them in MoO1 for the increased diplomacy bonus.

Thank you so much for sharing this wonder, i just love that game

edit : wow, the Bulrathis are up to something, we made contact some turns ago and that's already the 2nd sabotage attempt my superior secret services are defeating after capturing their spies, while the Alkari are remaining silent after our trade agreement (while i build up my spies to steal their techs of course , ah the Darlock ways )

edit 2 : ran into a crash unfortunately while i was waiting for more planetary missiles bases to be completed.
Sent a mail with the screenshot and the rotp file.

edit 3 : oops , just noticed you had released a newer version
https://remnantsoftheprecursors.com/2017/04/11/alpha-3-04-is-available/
that apparently is fixing the crash i sent the report for if i understand the error message.

[Mephansteras]

Oh, nice! I'll definitely be watching this.

[RayFowler]

Delighted to finally be able to test this, i remember following this when it was still Java Moo and you had to change stuff to avoid the IP problems.

Yeah, it was overly optimistic to expect that to stay the same. Nevertheless that name resonated for some reason and people still describe it as "Java MOO" even though that name hasn't be used in over a year.

Couldn't make the Remnants.jar launch, fortunately, one of the solution from the reddit page had it working for me

Code: [Select]

java -jar -Xmx1g Remnants.jar aaa
(i just put -Xmx1g as i have read the game apparently only requires 512mb , but i guess if you experience crashes, you may want to go with -Xmx2g or -Xmx4g to allow more memory to the java stuff)

I think what's happening here is some Windows users don't have Java associated with jar files so when you click on them, they are opened up like a zip file.

Anyway, it's Java so it's pretty easy to start from the command line if your operating system has a weird configuration for jars.

Incredible artwork, though some of the races does not look much like their MoO1 original appearance, they are still fitting, especially the Darloks that look a lot more like mini-Darth Vader now and get in the stealthy backstabbers atmosphere even better, and i was smiling when i saw their "Nazin" homeworld, oh the memories

The Darloks in the game are more true to their MOO1 counterparts, where they were presented more as shadowy creatures. In fact, the original inspiration for the Darloks were the Nazgul from Lord of the Rings. It wasn't until MOO2 when they were recast as biological creatures with shapeshifting abilities.

We decided to go back to the original intention of the race and created an extra-dimensional backstory to explain their shadowy forms.

Fantastic work, can't believe how amazing it is visually (though it's odd to see the ships sprites being still MoO1 ones placed around other superb visuals ) and i was overjoyed when i saw the sliders like in good old MoO1 , that fantastic and easy gameplay concepts they had

The ship sprites will be getting completely updated in the next alpha when we add in tactical ship combat. It's a huge effort, creating 24 ship graphics per race.

I hope you have Humans planned too, i liked to play as them in MoO1 for the increased diplomacy bonus.

The Mrrshan are in work now and will be in next alpha. The Klackons and Humans will come later.

edit 3 : oops , just noticed you had released a newer version
https://remnantsoftheprecursors.com/2017/04/11/alpha-3-04-is-available/
that apparently is fixing the crash i sent the report for if i understand the error message.

Yes, generally after an alpha release I devote the following week or two to nothing but addressing bugs as soon as they are reported. Once I feel it's stable, I'll start work on the next alpha. Until then, keep an eye out for regular patch updates.

[Robsoie]

Great to know more about the development plan. And the whole Darlock design makes it really better for what they are supposed to be, the technology stealing picture is stunning, the shadowy Darlock spy clouded in dark smoke is really good.

The game in this state is already impressing me highly, not just the visuals that are really amazing, but the recreation of the old MoO1 sliders management and the easy mouse gives an incredible touch of polishing to the interface, very faithfull to MoO1 and very intuitive, i was already "at home" on my first play after all those hours of good old MoO1 .

Was happy to see that i could continue my game despite the new version of the Remnants.jar and finally backstabbed the Bulrathis as a true Darlock despite our current peace (though there was no non aggression treaty yet , so i guess that's the Bulrathis fault for not proposing it )

http://i.imgur.com/642bBte.jpg

[RayFowler]

Great to know more about the development plan. And the whole Darlock design makes it really better for what they are supposed to be, the technology stealing picture is stunning, the shadowy Darlock spy butted in dark smoke is really good.

I know! I love that animation!

The game in this state is already impressing me highly, not just the visuals that are really amazing, but the recreation of the old MoO1 sliders management and the easy mouse gives an incredible touch of polishing to the interface, very faithfull to MoO1 and very intuitive, i was already "at home" on my first play after all those hours of good old MoO1 .

A lot of effort has been expended to being faithful to the original UIs while updating both the look and the useability to modern standards. The mousewheel is your friend...

Was happy to see that i could continue my game despite the new version of the Remnants.jar and finally backstabbed the Bulrathis as a true Darlock despite our current peace (though there was no non aggression treaty yet , so i guess that's the Bulrathis fault for not proposing it )

in fairness, the diplomatic AI still needs a lot of tuning.

[feelotraveller]

Excellent work!    Loving it already after having a quick play...

...on Linux using OpenJDK. But the sound was not working, no error message just defaulting to off, music and effects, and not toggleable.  It took me some time, a lot more than it probably should have , to figure out that I needed to install OpenJFX to get the .mp3's to play.  Think that this (as in JavaFx) is bundled with Java 8 otherwise.  Just thought I'd leave this here.

I'll try to find some time to do a more thorough playthrough, and give better feedback, but it could be a while.

Anyway, hope that you can keep us updated as new versions are released. 

[RayFowler]

Excellent work!    Loving it already after having a quick play...

...on Linux using OpenJDK. But the sound was not working, no error message just defaulting to off, music and effects, and not toggleable.  It took me some time, a lot more than it probably should have , to figure out that I needed to install OpenJFX to get the .mp3's to play.  Think that this (as in JavaFx) is bundled with Java 8 otherwise.  Just thought I'd leave this here.

Thank you so much for this detective work! The first bug reported was crashing on Raspberry Pis and I tracked it down to the JavaFX classes (used for playing mp3) not being part of the Java installation. I immediately sent out a quick patch to catch this condition and disable the sounds if the JavaFX classes were not present, since this was better than crashing! It looks like you hit the same problem.

I would like to publish something like this as a solution for Pi users.... "if you have installed OpenJDK, please install OpenJFX to allow sound in the game"

I have the Oracle JDK installed on my Pi. I wonder if the OpenJFX files will work with it?