3D Ship Navigation

HSpace provides full 3D navigation by allowing player to specify the heading of the vessel using a "heading and mark" system, like we find in Star Trek. For example, you specify a heading of 0 mark 45, and you're traveling in 3D! Objects in HSpace can be located at any point in 3-Space, from -99,999,999 to 999,999,999 units in the X, Y, and Z directions.

As players fly through space, status and sensor reports display headings and object bearings at obvious locations so that players can easily navigate to their targets. Additionally, HSpace provides the XYANG() and ZANG() functions to calculate the XY and Z angles needed to navigate from any set of source coordinates to any destination.

Ship to Ship Combat

What more essential a component could a space package provide than ship to ship combat? .. or is it object to object combat?

The HSpace software package provides more support than ever for combat by introducing a flexible weapons system and the ability to lock onto any object in space. If your weapon supports it, you can attack it! Fire at other ships with your lasers, launch missiles at your ugly enemies, or lock onto inbound missiles to destroy them! As work continues on HSpace, more types of weapons will be implemented such as ion cannons, planetary bombardment weapons, space mines, and more!

The HSpace software supports both absorption and deflector shields, and both can be located on the same ship. Up to four simultaneous shield arcs (or as few as 0) can be maintained at a single time during combat. Ships can have from one to many consoles that represent navigation, gunnery, and engineering. Each console can control a weapons array of its own, giving your gunners the ultimate ability to defend the ship from bandits!

Game-Wide Communications

HSpace allows your ships to communicate with each other through a multi-band communications systems. Each console on a ship can be a communications console, or you can limit communications on your ship to just one console. It's entirely your choice! Each communications-capable console can transmit and receive on an unlimited number of frequencies. This is all made possible through the single [hs_comm_msg()] function, which allows any object with the HSPACE_COMM flag to send a message into space.

What's more is that you can easily create handheld commlinks through this same function. Your players can walk around and talk to other players with commlinks and ships in space at the same time.

Multiple Universe Support

Multiple universe support allows you to implement more than just one universe in your game. What is this good for? Some games have used it to effectively partition their universes into multiple sectors that ships move between. Other games use the multiple universes to simulate just that .. multiple universes! Each universe can contain many space objects, separate from the other universes. This can allow the ability to setup multiple simulator universes to prevent simulators from attacking your real-space ships and to prevent simulators from one faction from attacking simulators from another faction. It's up to you, but the support is there!

Generic Object Support

While HSpace supports many types of objects from ships to missiles to wormholes, it conveniently supports the Generic Object. You can quickly throw any generic object into space, which can represent a jump buoy, a meteor, or perhaps an evil space creature that stares at you with his ugly eyes. Each space object in HSpace is represented by a MUSH object, which allows you to put attributes on the object and use them when a generic object is on the ship's sensors. Many games already use this generic object support to create jump buoys that transport ships around the game. And yet others use them to create asteroids that players can extract precious metals from. In combination with the [hs_srep()] function, which provides a list of contacts on sensors, you can very easily retrieve information from the MUSH object representing an object in space!

Multiple Ship Console Support

HSpace allows you to setup multiple consoles on your ship to enhance the role-playing of the operations on board. Whether you allow ships to be controlled from a single console, or whether you separate the management of a ship into multiple consoles, how you organize your ships is up to you! Create communications consoles that communicate with other vessels in nearby space. Create gunnery turrets that defend the ship. And create engineering consoles that are responsible for the management of the ship's systems. Or .. just throw it all on one console and let the pilot do it all. HSpace can handle it.

Territorial Ownership

We are proud to present the addition of territorial support! You can now model cubic and spherical (radial) territories in space quickly and easily. You setup the territory, you set the messages, and when ships cross the borders of the territories, they see those messages. But wait! You can specify code to be triggered when ships cross the borders of territories, allowing you to setup border warnings, traffic logs, and more.

Multiple Combat Weapons Support

HSpace's flexible code provides the ability to support many types of weapons. We've already mentioned that it supports lasers and missiles, and in the near future we hope to provide many new and exciting types of weapons, from cloaking space mines to ion cannons that disable ship systems. The number and types of weapons that HSpace can support is unlimited. As new versions of HSpace are released, new types of weapons will be supported for you to use. Already you can easily add weapons and modify their attributes through the @space/newweapon command. It's never been easier.

Afterburners and Hyperdrives

No longer a sublight and hyperspace-based system, HSpace also includes support for afterburners! Through the HSpace configuration file, you tell HSpace how afterburners should work. You tell ships if they can use afterburners, and you add hyperdrives to ships you want to have them! The hspace configuration file gives you the tools to configure the sublight, afterburning, and FTL behaviors of ships in your game.

Features