News
UpdateJune 29th, 2015
Half year passed since last update. New version is uploaded and ready to go. Since lack of assets is still ongoing problem, there isn't much content, and it is still more like proof of concept. There is a tutorial mission that tries to introduce you to game basics, battle mission that should show that hurling everything you have at enemy without thinking isn't that effective as chosing targets and surrounding your enemy.
As always, I'm still looking for all kind of artists to help out.
Game server and new hostingJanuary 21st, 2015
In an attempt to get hosting for game server, I've been informed that my forums are screwed up, and mails with authentication keys aren't being sent. And since I didn't get any emails complaining about the situation, I believed that everything worked (it also turns out that some email could get lost, so maybe that was the reason?). So it appears that free hosting I had really sucked...
Fortunately, guys at www.specialattack.net provided me with completely free hosting (save for a domain name) that currently runs both website and game server! How awesome is that? Very much, that's how! So big thanks to them! That means that forums should now be functional, and you can connect to game server from game if you copy this little file into "soil/settings/" directory. Chances that you will meet anybody there are minimal, but you know, we can always organize some games on forums ;)
I apologize for any inconvenience caused by my previous derpy hosting and my inability to see it :|
Third attempt... now with Star Destroyer!January 9th, 2015
Hey, happy new year! You know, to both of you who read this! ;)
This update (over in downloads section), while not particularly large, is at least marked by much optimism. First of: while not exactly a person doing the dirty work for me, certain guy knows as Nomada_Firefox was kind enough to supply me with a lot of Star Wars models, so BIG THANKS to him and all those who created those models. You can now download this Star Wars dataset and have some fun with totally imbalanced and unfinished dataset. And if your definition of fun means balancing and creating damage models, we will both be happy.
Another big thanks goes to certain guy known as teknomancer2008 who participated in a "compatibility testing program", resulting from a fact that he could not run this game at all... Thank to his patient testing of many of my derpy attempts to fix some bug, Soil now runs on Intel HD 4400, and with luck will run on other Intel GPUs that can support OpenGL 3.2! I still have no idea what exactly fixed it, and attempts to break it again failed, so it will be classified as a miracle until proven otherwise.
While this update brings no new features (or I can't think of any), there is plenty of bugfixes including one crash fix in editor and a huge desync is now fixed (you know, that's useful for multi-player). While I don't know if it is new in this release, but if game still desyncs, if will automatically resync, so you can continue playing... or you know, sometime in the future.
With nothing more to say I again call for help of content creators, testers, clowns, balancers, just some feedback or
spreading word to anyone who might be interested! And if you cannot get it started, please contact me and I will gladly try to help you.
Reporting errors and bugs benefits me more than you, so why wouldn't I help?
And hey, here is some really bad video, because I'm too lazy to edit it :P
Second attempt... now with single-player!November 21st, 2014
Two months since last update? No kidding! So let's see what has changed. For starters, I added single-player mode, which should have been obvious choice from the start. Because you know, how should you get interested if you cannot get a proper introduction... Coming bundled with that, support for scripting has been added. You can now add your own functionality to your maps by writing some AngelScript. If you know some programming language, that should be easy... if not, well, it may be bit harder. You can always take a look at script of tutorial mission and find out for yourself!
Coming up next: shields for capital ships were added. I didn't wanted to have shields in game, but hey, some of you may want, so there they are. They don't really look that good, but maybe some nice animated texture can fix that? You try! I suck at that. Minor improvement is possibility to play .ogg music. No big deal. Though it isn't properly done, so there may be a wee lag when changing music. There were also few changes in file formats but since there is only one forum member, inactive too, there is no point going into details. Good news is that further changes to file formats should not render older files incompatible. There is also starfield generator, so you don't have to have huge background images to have nice looking stars. You can also look at script reference to see what you can access. That list will increase, just say what you want there!
So there's that. There is a "Tutorial" single player mission, so please hit download
and give it a try. There is no real challenge involved with current AI
(well, it may not be intelligence, but it's sure artificial), but you can at least
see what the game has to offer without digging through editor.
Spoiler: you cannot win
So yeah, have fun, contact me if you cannot get the damn thing started, and maybe you know someone who would be interested in creating some content? No need for original content, anything that would be remotely playable would be great!
Some sort of releaseSeptember 24th, 2014
Today marks public release of this freeware not-yet-finished game Soil. It is space real-time-strategy game, much like Homeworld packed with more features. So what it does? It could pretty much be played, if only there was some content. So consider this call for help from all interested artists (3D models, textures, sounds, ...) and modders (balancing, putting together something meaningful) and various testers (hardware compatibility, bugs, gameplay) or anyone else with constructive feedback.
Right now, download package contains editor where you can create and edit ships, fighters, turrets, etc. Editor runs on top of game engine, so you immediately (to limited extent) see changes in visuals and behaviour. You can even use editor to spawn and command ships for testing/balancing purposes. No need to close and start another application. Also included is game itself, currently consisting of multiplayer. In order to play multiplayer, someone has to host dedicated server, also included. This little server only resends data between players without running game itself (low CPU cost). So far, there is no server with public static IP running, so multiplayer is limited to LAN or manual setup with port forwarding. If you choose standard download, you also get proof-of-concept grade dataset, suitable to just play around before starting modding or to be used as some sort of reference.
If you wish to help, head over to contribute section to find out how, or/and join forum for any feedback.
Priority for now is creating content to form something playable and get some server. If there is any way you can help, please do support this until now
one man project! Even spreading word counts ;)
Thanks!
Oh, and one more thing... this is 100% free game, so to prevent unnecessary costs, this page is running on free webhosting, so be patient if any "Error 500" or such pops up... It tends to fix itself within few minutes.
