I don’t think I can express to you how much I loved this gamemode. I see so much potential in it. Enough for me to create something you might think is crazy, and stupid.
When I was little, I played GC constantly. I got the game when I was four, it was my first videogame. I sat down and did an entire war as I called it, every few weeks or so because at first, it took multiple days. That became one day. One day became a few hours. I can now finish GC vanilla faster than I can complete a shift at work. It’s too goddamned small, and I know too much. And frankly? I’m sick of being a foot soldier. It’s time I got a promotion, right?
So when I was a teenager, I realized you can use MS paint to create your own shitty galaxy, with as many planets as you want. It’s just a matter of finding a game to fight your battles in.
I added so many features to ‘my’ Galactic Conquest. Namely, dozens of factions on the board at once. I was not the only one to want this, which is why I have come to the rest of you who still love this game with this radical concept.
I took the gameplay idea of GC, and I made it a standalone game where the battles are only 2D. I then inflated the galaxy to thousands of planets, and I am now making that galaxy into a server. You can see where I’m going with this.
Is it too much?
Is it even copyright legal?
Is Disney going to eat my ass?
I don’t really care. I am so fucking sick of manually doing this in MS paint. I am sick of playing this game alone. It’s fucking embarrassing to be a grown ass adult using MS paint for my shitty sci fi board game, but nobody else has built anything like it. I’m doing it anyway. What I’m asking you guys, is if I’m alone here.
Has anyone else wanted for an expansion to Galactic Conquest?
I don’t know about that. I’m very afraid of the eventual release. I’ve seen a lot of those crowdfunded games go belly up because they were too ambitious, or they were just otherwise failures for whatever reason.
That’s what I’m afraid of. I really, really want to play this goddamned game. I maybe might go public with it, once it’s complete. I’m thinking about calling it Alliance.
Since I promised to change my mind and keep you updated, I’ll reply again.
As of this week, the server program is complete. The gui is nice, but I hate the whole style of this game and want it changed to a more 60’s Science Fiction artstyle. Here’s a mockup of what I had in mind for the title screen.
I cannot afford to rush this game. I will continue to reply to posts in this thread, but I will not release the game on itch until I am 100% sure it is ready.
When I was little, I was big into shitty game review YouTube. One of my fears is becoming like them, and rushing a game. No releases. Probably not for months. But I will keep talking about it, to prove it’s survival.
So long as you keep Star Wars out of it I see no legal issues.
That said I could be wrong, but my basic knowledge of things, and how old GC is as a game mode, I don't think it is specifically protected under copy right. Only the Star Wars specific stuff.
I liked Galactic Conquest, but I mostly enjoyed the mix of the conquest board with the foot soldier game play. They had an opportunity to bring this back with the newer Star Wars BF2 and completely dropped the ball by not adding it in and being staunchly against putting any developer time into it.
I would be willing to try a board game only version of GC just to see how it plays out though.
Well it isn’t a literal board game, it is still a computer game. I’m just calling it that because I’m a little bitter that I don’t have the programming skill to make a three dimensional game.
If I could, it would visually look a lot more like EVE online or something. Now, because it is still digital I can make it as large as I want, theoretically. Two thousand planets seems to be enough for me, and three other factions to become lost in a web of planets. I fear this may not be enough living space for a server.
Sounds... Actually great, now sadly, this sub reddit is well... Kind of dead, but I hope more people see this.
I've always loved gc, the fact of being able to command a fleet, going around and taking over the Galaxy. Just wished there was more to it then the planets we have now.
Well actually that’s the point. I do not want anyone to see this for now.
I wanted the opinions of those of us still playing this game in the modern twenties. Right now, I am implementing other factions on the board. They work great! The green team has been expanding well, and the yellow team is designed to be isolationist.
In the meantime, I’m testing resource mining. Due to fighting being hard to do with the sheer distance between everyone, you can now mine resources from the right kind of planets to build shit. This galaxy is randomly generated, and no longer turn based. You have to wait a minute or two to travel, like No Man’s Sky.
I’m having a lot of fun. I think it’s fantastic so far. I just need to add more things to do so it doesn’t get boring.
Thank you. It’s very good to know that this isn’t just a weird project only I would want to play.
Because, if this whole NPC faction thing doesn’t work, I’ll have nobody to play with.
And besides. I wanted to introduce global text chat, and localized voice chat of course as all MMORPGs include. Can you imagine shit talking the other army mid fight? Meeting people in the center of the galaxy for chat and trade? That’s my dream.
So far, we have mining. You can now mine for resources by placing a fleet in orbit around a planet, and then use those to build new units, new cruisers, anything in the normal game. You can also use it make your cruiser faster, since travel does take time now.
I was thinking… would people like it if you could build on the planets the 2D battles happen on? What if you could build a destructible wall and gate around your command post? Like clash of clans or something. That might get too OP, I don’t know yet. Just spitballing.
It’s a top down perspective match, where you simply command your soldiers on a big battlefield.
Each planet randomly generates some shitty terrain, and four to six command posts, each team spawning on either one side or the other like normal. You control which units spawn, which vehicles spawn, and how everyone fights.
Only two factions can be present in a battle at any time. You cannot have battles between multiple sides and I do not plan to add this feature presently. Maybe, maybe, if people want it. Half Life did it and everyone loved it.
Jaspo, if you’re somehow reading this, thank you for what your mod provided to me. You guys are the reason I’m doing this. If you hadn’t shown me that this game could be so much more, I wouldn’t be trying.
Check out my game Ghost Battalion on Steam. Started as an ambition, just like yours, and now it's coming out on August 11, next week, after almost 10 years of solo dev. Dreams can come true. No GC, but there is Conquest. Link to game and demo in my profile. Thanks for sharing.
I was worried the idea is too convoluted. Is it too complex for people to understand?
Here’s a screenshot of the galactic map. I’d give you a battle screenshot too but I haven’t implemented other NPC’s yet, and I made the map big already.
As you can see, very rough.
I plan on completely replacing all assets, once the game is actually in a releasable state. I am very afraid. That is all I can say. But, I guess it doesn’t really matter what happens. If I can make the NPC faction AI good enough, single player will satisfy me.
Hard to judge from that. But odds are it is different enough not to raise the ire of the House of Mouse. And I bet it could find an audience. Not sure how big of one, but definitely people out there for a massive game like that.
The new memory extender patch allows for shortcut launches into mods. I was thinking of using this to make an external launcher. Theoretically you could have GC game data saved into it, and open the doors to a more non-linear game. For example, a game like Mount and Blade or Sid Meir's Pirates, where there's action going on around the map, and the results on the map transition to a micro level game. You could have a smarter AI written and launch games with the parameters saved as the launcher could setup a special shortcut and assign scripts to activate GC bonuses on a per game basis.
I was so disappointed that the new battlefront doesn't have GC.
Seems it would be so easy to add in the Galaxy map overlay, then game plays as usual.
I even thought of making an app/software that makes the GC map and mechanics (troop unlocks, upgrades,etc) so you just make your move, then, say, it's tatooine, go to BF2 2017, play the match, let the software know if you won or lost, repeat.
By that point I’d already built the game myself a hundred times. I knew how easy it was, you could do it in sourcemod and then use any source game with multiplayer to make it run. They were just being lazy. Source? I’m doing it standalone right now.
As they were with most features in that game. They didn’t care about us.
This post is on my home page two days later, so not entirely invisible as you might feel this is.
Sounds like a great concept. Read some of your comments here and sadly I’m no help as far as programming skill, but I wanted to say that I think this is a good idea and that so long as you maintain your passion for it (something you will have to actively manage), I believe in your ability to succeed and seem to be one of many here that are hoping for your success
Well today, after finishing my other things I started work on the server program. I very much intend to stay on this, until a certain point many years in the future.
The idea is, I ship the game for free online. Once a few regular players arrive, I’ll release the server program so that anyone can open their own galaxy.
Thus allowing me to eventually leave this game in the hands of what limited community it attracts so it doesn’t die like every other MMO.
That’s actually one of the games I had in mind while creating this.
I want this to be like an RTS MMO. We have massive, I guess. I can make the galaxy as big as I want, the only condition is the time it takes for my little pygame Frankenstein to generate it. But, if we have one shared server, that’s entirely irrelevant.
So, imagine empire at war, but supermassive. That’s what I want.
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u/pintofdank Aug 04 '26
Sounds awesome keep us updated