Orbitside - A Total Conversion Map for Warcraft 3

In the far reaches of the galaxy, a ferocious war is raging between battered but proud Coalition and a vicious, unknown alien race of marauders. Entire planets have been laid waste, and through the depths of space float the remains of massive fleets. But the aliens are still coming....


That is the basic storyline behind Orbitside.
Choose from one of 6 alien races, buy a ship, and explore the cosmos. If you want, you can join the Coalition to fight the invaders and police free space, or you can work as a freelancer. If you want, you can haul ore for money, or work as a bounty hunter. The choice is yours.


Orbitside will feature a new UI, a new cursor, new models, new skins, and completely new icons. A style of gameplay somewhat similiar to RPGs, but much less linear and binding rules your play. But ultimately, the players actions will control how the story goes.

Features

• Six unique alien races, each with different bonus and skills
• Ten different player ships to choose from
• Ships are highly customizable, allowing for many different variations over time
• Dynamic plot system means that any actions the players take, no matter how small, could affect the overall story
• Engage in space battles between the Marauders and the Coalition
• Capture alien technology to boost your power
• A third-person camera will be available, allowing players to get even deeper into the action
• Choose any path, doing what you want
• Twelve human players can play in any one map
• Save-code system, allowing you to save your character and ship for later battles
• All new models featuring brand-new skins
• Completely new tileset
• Custom user interface to maximize your Orbitside experience
• Custom cursor

And much more.

Questions/comments are welcome. I gladly take suggestions.

Sounds interesting. Just a few basic questions that might not entirely point full, but it might show how much thought you have put into the project.

The obvious question is what makes this different for most other open rps out there, I know you mentioned alot that makes it different but are you sure it will be enough?

What type of regions are players going to be in, is it going to be wide open space, is it going to be lots of planets?

How long do you expect this map to take to make? It sounds like alot of work for the customizable storyline and all. Do you think that your a little ambitious or will you cut down the depth if it is taking too long?

The story has 2 sides, can you change what side you are fighting for? Start out fighting for one side but then you you change sides and start doing steal plans from and spy on your former Allys that think you are allied with them type of situation.

Since you are having save codes, and a story that manipulates its self depending on actions, is the story going to change to the players previous story once they load or will it be reset?

How much detail will these models and other imported items have?

How long till we can get some screen shots of this new terrain\models\ui?

are there going to piolots? are you able to land on planets? you did mentoin planets have been ravanged. I like the idea too, though it is just another Open RPG this time the person throwing the idea is not a n00b and gave us a more organized presentation.

I didn't think of landing on planets. Right now you can land on them to repair your ship and trade, but all it does is hide your ship. Right now you can't move around. But this is only one map right now, so explorable planets seem unlikely.

This is an open RPG, but if I can do it right, I think that I can safely say this it will be a hell of a lot better than most.

I think that this won't be another standard RPG. The dynamic story and the converted aspect play a part in that. Also, I've played a lot of open RPGs, and I'm going to try and weed out what people don't like about them in my map.

The map is 256 x 256. I plan to have regions of open space, solar systems, asteroid fields, and anomilies. It won't be planet packed, maybe 5 solar systems at most, but I think it ought to be enough.

I probably am being over-ambitious, but with all the new stuff that came with 1.13, alot of work will be made easier. I hope I'll be able to do it all, but I might not.

Right now you can only join the Coalition, not the Marauders. But I might add it later.

The story will have to reset. But it is a very open story, so it shouldn't make much difference to gameplay.

Not very much. The map is going to be huge, and I want it to be playable over Battle.Net, so the models will be low poly.

I've started work on the models, the UI is still to come, but the terrain is mostly done. I'll give you all some screenies in a short amount of time.

Thanks for the questions. Like I said, keep them coming, and suggestions are required.