SpaceZero

SpaceZero is a 2D space combat, multiplayer (two players by now) net game.

The objective is to conquest the space, defeating all enemies.

At starting point you have only one ship and one planet, but you have money to buy more ships to conquest more planets.

All the ships can be controlled by the computer (automatic mode) or by the player (manual mode). You can easily change among your ships controlling all of them independly.

Home Page http://spacezero.sourceforge.net/index.html




Manual:

At the starting point the player own a ship landed in a planet.

Ships:

There are three types of ships: Explorer, Fighter and Defense Tower.
Explorer ship

Explorer

Useful to explore the space. It has a low gas cost and poor arms. It has a large radar.
Figther ship

Fighter

Better arms and faster than the explorer.
Defense Tower

Defense Tower

Only can stay on planets. It has two objectives: the defense of the planet and the extraction of minerals.

Orders menu:

It is possible to give orders to ships: pressing the "o" key a bar menu is showed in the bottom of the main window. Several options are available:

GOTO You can send your ships to different targets in many ways:
  • Giving the target id. The target id can be a planet or another ship. Several ships can fly together if all of them have the same target id. Example: GOTO 23. Will go the object labeled with the number 23. It can be a planet or another ship.
  • Giving the sector coordinates. Blank or coma separated. Example: GOTO 23,12
  • Goto the nearest planet with n. Example: GOTO n. Will go to the nearest ally or free known planet.
EXPLORE Your ship will take off and will explore the space. Be aware if your ship run out of fuel or it is very far from home.
SELECT You can select a ship or a planet introducing its id.
STOP Your ship will stop.
TAKE OFF To take off. (not so useful)
BUY You can buy any available ship, if you have enough gold.
WRITE Write a message to the other players.
SELL To sell a ship. You'll get the half of its original value. The ship must be landed.

Manual and automatic mode:

You can change between both modes, for all your ships, pressing the "a" key for manual mode and pressing the "i" key to back to the automatic mode.

Selecting a ship:

There three ways of selecting a ship:

  1. Pressing the "Tab" key you can change among all your ships. "Ctrl-Tab" inverts the order.
  2. Using the order command SELECT and introducing the ship ID.
  3. There are four rapid access key to select ships: F1, F2, F3 and F4. If you press Ctrl-F1 the actual selected ship is assigned to the key F1, etc...

Weapons:

The ships have three types of weapons.

ShotsAll the ships.
MissileOnly fighters.
LaserOnly fighters.

Depending of the level of the ship some weapons are available or not. At level 0 only the shots are available. The fighter have two more weapons: missile at level 1 and laser at level 2. All the ships increase their weapons strength and their shields when pass to the next level.
In manual mode you can change among the weapons pressing 1, 2 or 3 keys.(If the weapon is available or it has ammunition)

Map:

Pressing the "m" key you enter in the map view. All your ships and all known planets are shown.
Its possible to zoom in and out with "z" and "Z".
The cursor keys allows you to move along the map.

Ships and planets info:

Pressing the "f5" key a sort information of all your ships and planets is showed.

Pressing the "f6" key a sort game statistics are shown.

Navigate information:

Navigation information In normal navigation mode, in the left of the main window you can see the next information:
  • Four status bar: acceleration, energy, state and experience of the current selected ship.
  • Information about the current selected ship as the type of ship F (fighter) T (tower) E (Explorer). Its ID. Its mode: Automatic (A) or Manual (M) and its level. In witch sector it is, velocity, number of enemies killed, etc...
  • Global information about the player: number of ships, number of planets, gold, number of ships lost, number of enemies defeat, etc...
  • Information about the planet in which the ship it is. Planet ID, gold remaining and mass.

Size of the Universe:

Its possible to choose the size of the Universe, the number of galaxies and the total number of planets. Use the command line options: -l, -g and -n.

The units of the universe size are pixels.

Net gamming:

For two players net game: one must be configured as the server and the other one as the client. Use the command line options:
$ space -s -ip ipnumber
for the server, and
$ space -c -ip ipnumber
for the client.
SpaceZero use the port 8000 by default. You can use another port adding -port portnumber in the command line. SpaceZero use also the next port, by default 8001.

Tips:

-Don't buy more than two or three towers by planet unless you need to defend the planet.

-Watch out your explorers, don't let them go too far.

-You can form groups of ships ordering to some of them GOTO another ship. All of them will go where this last one go.

-Save some money. It would be useful if you are under attack.

Bugs:

Not tested in net between 32 and 64 machines. Maybe doesnt work properly.

Not tested in an internet connection. Maybe doesnt work properly.

Please send bugs and suggestions to mrevenga@users.sourceforge.net.


Keyboard controls:

up arrow accelerate.
left,right arrows turn left, right.
space fire.
tab change to next ship.
Ctrl-tab change to previous ship.
1 2 3 choose weapon.
Ctrl-[f1f2f3f4] mark a ship.
f1 f2 f3 f4 select a previous marked ship.
f5 show a ship list.
f6 show game statistics.
o enter in order menu.
Esc exit from order menu.
m show-hide space map.
a i automatic-manual mode.
p pause game
Ctrl-q quit game.

In map view:

z Z zoom in out.
arrow keys move map.
space center map in the actual ship.
mouse pointer show coordinates.
l show-hide labels.

Command line options:

-h. Brief help.
-n n. Where n is the number of planets.(default 20)
-p n. Where n is the number of players.(default 2)
-g n. Where n is the number of galaxies.(default 1)
-l n. Where n is the size of the Universe.(default 100000)
-k. Planets are known by all the players.
-nosound. Sound disabled.
-nomusic. Music disabled.
-s, -c. Server,client mode.
-ip IP. Where IP is the ip of the server.
-port n. Where n is the port used for communication.
-name playername. Where playername is the name of the player.
-f font. Change the default font by font.
-geom widthxheigth. Define the size of the main window.


Notes:

Net gaming

By now, only it is possible two players in a net game. For more players look for next versions.
SpaceZero works fine in a local network. Its not tested over internet. It needs a latency lower than 100 ms.

Number of players

Is possible to play 8 players simultaneously. One human player against seven computer ones.

Future Ships: (not implemented yet)

Defense Satellite
Unmanned ship. Useful for space exploration and planet defense.
Cargo
Ship than can carry arms and fighters.
Hyper-space ship
Big ship than can carry fighters and arms. Can reach light velocity.