EV:Darkstar

Originally, Darkstar:Nightsong was going to be (and still may end up being) a 3D space simulator game on an incredible huge scale. I and a friend have been working on Darkstar for roughly eight months, and have gotten a considerable amount of work done, but our resources are too limited at the moment, and we are both huge fans of the Escape Velocity engine, therefore, we have decided to transfer the entire project to an EVN TC; EV:Darkstar.

I will post the overview of the game when I get the time, but for now I will simply post a portion of the primary map of "the Vidhayen", the area which humanity inhabits in space, unmeasurably far away from the Milky Way and Earth. Anyway, for now, here it is:

These were some questions asked of me about Galelica, one of the primary governments in Darkstar, I will try to post an overview somewhat soon, but this is the most detailed document I will post except to those working on the team.

If anyone is interested in working on this project please contact me at crusader2014@gmail.com, just tell me what you are capable of doing that would be of use to this project, thanks. I am also posting this topic on the developers corner section, though I thought this may be interesting to some of you here as well.

The Galelicans.
How do they deal with power?
The Prime Watchers of Galelica have the most power of any three individuals in the society, however, in comparison to the power held by primary leaders by most governments their power is certainly very little. Instead of most "rule" being given to people, it is given to the Galelican Code. The founders of Galelica did this because they knew that even if the people elected their leaders, the people themselves could be mislead. Power can change over time; leaders themselves can change over time, and therefore the most power would have to be given to the Galelican Code, something that was set in stone (literally), and that would not change. Nearly all Galelicans know most if not all of the Code, it is written, but parents hand the Code down to their children and so on and so forth. The members of the Galelican government are present for several reasons: to keep the Galelican Code and the laws of Galelica intact and to defend them and what they stood for, to make sure that all of the laws of Galelica are fair and just, etc, and, most commonly, to make decisions of military importance that are in line with the Galelican Code and Laws. Every member of the Galelican government is taught to obey but to question reasoning if they believe that the decision that is being made is wrong or unintelligent.
What happens when power and honor come into conflict?
It is extremely rare that this is the case given the fact that honor itself is given so much power. The Galelican Code is based off of honor, what is honorable to the Galelican people. If the power of the Code comes into conflict with the power of a leader, in other words, if a decision made by a Galelican leader is dishonorable, than honor will most likely be the victor.
What are the differences between Men and Women?
First of all, Galelican society and tradition is neither matrilineal or patrilineal, it is tradition to say, for example:
"I am Merran, son of Utagh and Carzen through the lines of Firstfoot and and Watertreader", Firstfoot being the patrilineal line of the father and Watertreader being the matrilineal line of the mother, Utagh being the father and Carzen being the mother. In this case the father is mentioned before the mother, that is because Merran is presumable male, if the person speaking was female, they would place the mothers name first. Therefore if there was a sister to Merran, she would speak: "I am Zulien, daughter of Carzen and Utagh through the lines of Watertreader and Firstfoot."
Also, men and women are almost completely evened out through Galelica as far as jobs and athletics are concerned. Within the military there are more men in positions where there is physical work to be done-- Piloting, Search and Rescue, Combat, while there are more women in positions of thinking and decision making-- Intelligence, Command, etc. In each of these fields the advantage in numbers for both men and women is about a 2/3 percentage, which means that overall the Galelican Military is split up about half and half through the genders.
How do they raise their children?
Within Galelica children are raised by many people from the time of their birth. It is basically a communal form of parenting throughout a group of friends, etc, at least until they are six years old, at that point, they will usually go into an apprenticeship and be raised mostly by their teacher and their birth parents. If and when they can learn no more from their current teacher, which only happens rarely and usually around the ages of fourteen to sixteen, they are given the option to go to a teacher who will better be able to get them to their potential. Of course, it is the common thought that through apprenticeships a person will not be very well educated in the rest of life, however, there is certainly time in which an apprentice can gain knowledge on anything else if they wish, perhaps be almost a second apprentice to someone else as well as their primary teacher, and those that do often become the more powerful and successful Galelican citizens.
What types of material lifestyle do they have?
As far as this question goes I cannot answer very well, but basically try to picture a medieval kind of society, where people do the work that they chose, in addition to household chores and that sort of thing, and make profit by selling their product or by giving their services to those who need someone in their profession, however, place a good deal of quite advanced technology into the picture. Very rarely is there such a thing as "hired help" or the kind of jobs that adolescents in our culture often undertake. It is the job of the apprentice/apprentices to do the simple work, in exchange for the knowledge of the teacher. One can also make a daily income by working in the Galelican military or government, any of the government-run corporations, or by helping in a larger business of someone in the same profession. To give an example, a person could be a ship builder, build a certain ship from designs already made by a company, and sell it in the companies name, keeping a certain percentage of the profit. This is why one could find almost the same item on one planet much cheaper or more expensive than on another, both being brand new and never bought and re-sold. Almost no items are manufactured either because they are too complicated or large to be built except by slow process or because the market is already owned by the citizens of Galelica.

Crusader

This post has been edited by Crusader Alpha : 19 December 2005 - 12:32 AM

This sounds rather promising.

Might I ask what stage you are in completion of mission string text, graphics, and description text? What, aside from plot detail, has been completed on the project so far?

Complete or with a considerable deal of work completed (concept wise- since we only just decided to put this into the EV engine, we have almost nothing actually in the format that it will be for the TC):
-governments
-galaxy (major systems)
-basic plotline(s)
-preambles
-preambles 2 (the larger portion of the history of the game is discovered during the storylines instead of actually put into preambles)
-languages (what is needed of the new languages to set the feel of the game)
-there is more, but I can't think of specifics at the moment.

And since I said I was going to:

This is a simple description of Darkstar, not detailed so that as few of the secrets of the game are given away as possible.

The Vidhayen is a massive expance of space in which humanity resides. In all Galactic directions space quickly becomes either sparse in terms of the number of stars or completely unliveable, making passage out of the Vidhayen both a useless prospect and close to impossible. Much of the Vidhayen is filled with sovereign worlds scattered withing a web of pirates, bounty hunters, and small independent governments balancing on the close edge of peace. Withn the galactic western portions of this area the star systems are extremely rich in mineral and chemical resources, and are mostly under the control of powerful mining corporations.

Farther to the galactic north lie Galelica and the Kos Republic, the two greatest powers within the known Vidhayen, which have been either at war or recovering from it for as long as they have existed, conflicts rising from governments that existed prior to them (Galelica is the older of the two). Within the Kos Republic life for the citizens is somewhat similar to life within our own time, excepting the incredible lower influence of media (perhaps comparable to life within the republic in Star Wars, though the Kos Republic is in no way related to or based upon this republic)

The galactic east is home to the massive Vartinan Nebula, it is relatively unexplored, and is presumably devoid of resources or livable systems. It is somewhat of a mystery, however, because the entire nebula is not navigable and is filled with pockets of high radioactivity, and the very few ships or probes that have entered very far into it were unable to return. No missions into the Vartinan Nebula are planned by either Galelica or the Kos Republic, which lies at it's western edge.

Crusader