StarEagle

StarEagle: Defenders of the Galaxy
Expo'd at the 2019 and 2021 BitBridge Halloween Showcase!

Planned features of the game:

• 3D polygon models

  • Original

  • Hand-drawn

  • Low-poly

  • Flat shaded
    

• UI graphics

  • 16-Bit MS-DOS -like

  • White-on-Blue text and some ASCII art
    

• Audio

  • Sega Genesis chiptune music and sfx

  • Soundblaster chiptune music and sfx
    

• SteamWorks support

  • Steam support/achievements

  • Steam highscore leaderboards
    

• StarFox 64-styled cutscene dialog system for teammates and enemies

• StarFox 64-styled gameplay (including 3 helper teammates)
  

• Gameplay

  • Player StarWing actions

    • Fly up/down (Pitch)

      • Unrestricted pitch in Space mode

    • Turn left/right (Yaw)

      • Unrestricted Yaw is only available in Free Range/Space modes

    • Rotate cw/ccw (Roll)

      • Only available in Space mode

    • Hard Roll cw/ccw

      • Only available in Rails/Free Range modes

      • Allows for tighter turns

    • Eagle Divecaw

      • Aileron roll (like "Barrel Roll" in StarFox 64)

      • Deflects enemy bullets/projectiles
        

    • Throttle

      • Normal speed

      • Speed shift

        • Acceleration

        • Brake

        • Only can be done for a short period of time, due to a cooldown timer
          

    • U-Turn

      • Change direction of travel by 180 degrees on the Yaw (y-up) axis

      • Only available in Free Range and Space modes

    • Cockpit View

      • Toggles between 3rd-person view and 1st-person cockpit view

      • Hold Shoot button, press U-Turn for toggle

    • Shoot

      • Shoot bullet(s)

      • Can shoot 1, dual, or quad-bullets at a time, based on the amount of laser powerups picked up

      • Homing Laser attack

        • Like in StarFox 64

        • Hold shoot button to charge up a laser

        • Release and press shoot button again quickly to launch laser

        • Laser explodes after some time/impact, damages enemies in explosion radius

        • Enemies can be locked onto when charged for a homing laser attack
          

    • Bomb attack

      • Launches a bomb

        • Player can have upto 4 bombs carried at once

      • Bomb explodes

        • On impact

        • After some time has past

        • Or remotely detonated by pressing bomb attack button again

      • Bombs can be locked onto enemies when the homing laser attack is charged up
        

  • 3 gameplay modes

    • Current mode changes at different scripted points in levels

    • On-the-rails mode

      • Players follow the path of a rail

      • Players can move relative to the rail with movement restricted within a 2D square slice
        

    • 3D Free Range mode

      • Similar to "All-Range" mode in StarFox 64

      • Players' yaw movement is unrestricted

      • Players can fly within a cube-sized arena

      • Going out-of-bounds will force the player to do a U-Turn back into the arena
        

    • Space Mode

      • Full 6DoF Space Flight

      • No restriction on yaw axis

      • Additional degree of freedom by rolls (rotations on the z-forward axis)
        
        

  • Powerups

    • Rings

      • Checkpoint

        • Saves level progress, restore progress and return to this point on player death

        • Restores 25 HP

      • Small Silver Rings

        • Restores 15 HP

      • Big Silver Rings

        • Restores 30 HP

      • Gold Rings

        • • Collect 3 to extend HP bar by XX HP

          • Collect 6 to earn a 1up
            

    • Bombs

      • Adds 1 bomb to cache
        

    • Laser powerups

      • Collect 1 to earn double blue bullet firing style

      • Collect 2 to earn quad green bullet firing style (faster, more powerful)

      • If any wings have been destroyed

        • Firing style downgrades back to default, single blue bullet firing style

        • Gravity is applied to player flight (lack of aircraft lift)

        • Pickup another laser powerup to restore wings, disable gravity

• Story Mode

  • Ability to save/load up to 3 game slots
    

  • Levels

    • 7 missions per story

    • Branching story paths

    • 2 different endings (good/bad)

    • 18 levels available

    • Medals earned for beating devteam's highscores
      

  • Map system

    • Each planet has up to 2 available paths

    • Map system rotatable on X, Y, and Z axises

    • Map Menu

      • Ability to change which path to take on certain planets

      • Retry the previous mission (sacrifice a life)

      • Go back to main menu

• Training Mode

  • Teaches the player how to play the game
    

• Video Settings menu

  • Allows tweaking of various retro video settings

  • Can preview current settings

    • Console palette colorspace in use

    • Sample paletted image with the colorspace

    • Rendered scene displaying settings
      

  • Palette rendering

    • Camera post-processing shader that renders game to various retro consoles'/computers' palette colorspace

    • TrueColor palette

      • No color quantization

      • Colors as-is in-game

    • Retro consoles

      • Sega Master System

      • Sega Genesis

      • Sega Game Gear

        • 1-4 different palettes

      • Nintendo Gameboy

        • Original

        • Pocket

      • Nintendo Entertainment System (NES)
        

    • Retro computers

      • PC

        • Teletext

        • CGA

        • EGA

        • VGA Mode $13 256-colors

      • Commodore 64

      • MSX

      • MSX2

        • Screen Mode 8 256-colors
          

  • Dither texture settings

    • Certain texture materials in the game apply a dithering pattern; these options tweak them

    • Use Dither?

      • Toggle dithering for these texture.

      • If true, apply the dithering

      • Else if false, apply an alternate non-dithered material

    • Dither Texture

      • Change the dither pattern used from a list on these textures

    • Dither Strength (0%-100%)

      • Alpha Transparency strength of the dithering pattern

      • Set percentage of effect based on original material's alpha transparency value

    • Dither Size (0%-100%)

      • Sets scale of the dithering pattern

        • Set percentage of effect based on original material's dither scale value
          

  • PSX Shader/Fog settings

    • Various settings to tweak PSX Shader settings for affected materials in-game

    • Shaders to emulate wobbly flat-shaded/textured polygons and polygon cutoff distance as used by fixed-point software-rendered retro games

      • Sega 32x

      • Sega Saturn

      • PSX

      • Etc

    • Use Fog?

      • Toggle usage of fog/PSX retro shader settings

      • True = use fog/PSX shader settings

      • False = don't use

    • Fog Color (RGBA)

      • Sets the Color32 for the fog

      • Alpha value affects cutoff distance in a particular way for the PSX Shaders

    • Polygon cutoff distance (min/max)

      • Sets the minimum/maximum distance in which polygons using the PSX Shaders can been seen

      • Float (0f-1024f)

    • Texture distortion

      • Sets the amount of wobbly texture distortion for the PSX Shader

      • Byte ($00-$FF)

Video Settings menu
(previewing using Sega Genesis palette colorspace)

• VectorVision™

  • Branch of Linux MPV co-utility that can vectorize the game's graphics and output vector graphics to

    • A retro, CRT-based monochrome oscilloscope in XY Mode
      OR

    • Raster-based CRT monitor converted to a fancy color vector monitor using Fred K's kit

  • Uses a custom VGA circuit

  • VectorVision options

    • Display Type

      • Raster CRT

        • No VectorVision feature

      • Monochrome Oscilloscope

      • Color Atari

        • Fred K's CRT color vector conversion Kit
          

    • VectorVision Mode

      • Rendering mode for VectorVision output

      • Vector

        • Uses the Linux MPV branch

        • Scans the current display framebuffer for edges

        • Vectorizes edges for display

      • Fake Raster

        • Uses the Linux MPV branch

        • Scans the current display framebuffer

        • Outputs fake raster scanlines to display
          

    • Edge Filter

      • Changes the type of Edge Filter to use for vectorization

      • Lavfi

        • FFMPEG

      • Canny filter

        • OpenCV
          

    • Scale (width, height)

      • Change the scale width/height of the output signal to the display
        

    • FPS

      • Update refresh rate for the display

      • 15 Hz

      • 29.97 Hz

      • 50 Hz (PAL)

      • 59.97 Hz (exact NTSC)

      • 60 Hz (approx. NTSC)

      • 120 Hz (Double approx. NTSC)

      • 240 Hz (Triple approx. NTSC)
        

    • T1 & T2 params

      • Input parameters for the Lavfi Edge Filter

• Peripheral support

  • Unity3D Rewired library

  • Option to invert y-axis pitch

  • Remapping of buttons (flightstick/gamepads) and of keys (keyboard)
    

  • Supported peripherals

    • XBox 360/One controller support (XInput)

    • Generic dual-analog stick

    • Generic HOTAS flightstick support

    • Saitek ST290 Pro flightstick support

    • "Unknown" controller support

      • Everything else that Rewired library doesn't natively detect

      • "Unknown controller" type will work as long as it supports the
        minimum amount of axises/buttons the game uses for remapping everything

• • • Logitech G19 keyboard support

      • Also generic keyboards obviously supported

      • Certain key sections light up based on in-game actions

      • Color QVGA screen displays

        • In-game stats

        • Level map

        • Comlink transmissions between enemies and teammates

        • FMV videos

• Various game options

  • Music volume (0%-100%)

  • Sound volume (0%-100%)

  • Difficulty

    • Easy

    • Medium

    • Hard

  • Language localization

    • English

    • Spanish

    • French

    • Chinese

    • Russian

  • Invert x-axis pitch

Story:

The story takes place in a a galaxy known as the Feather Galaxy, ruled by King Flight, a Bald Eagle, and co-led by his son, Prince Igor, a power-hungry adolescent Screech Owl. A fleet of scurvy Space Rats attacks a few of the Galaxy's fringe planets, the royal city, and the Flight Palace's royal throne itself located on Planet Wing. Although a fleet of royal air fighters was dispatched to counteract the attack, they could not prevent the attack on the Flight Palace, and worse, the leader of that fleet, a Bald Eagle named "Uncle" Sammy, was abducted by the Space Rat fleet and was taken as a prisoner of war. In response to the bloody assault, Prince Igor suggests and gets approved by the royal parliament the Courage Act, a controversial and Orwellian law that would heighten galactic security and the operations on the Fight Against Piratcy by allowing a controversial branch of the royal government called the GEL (Galactic Espionage League) to monitor all electronic communications, both private and citizens' civil communications. This law was passed despite dire warnings of the GEL receiving too much power and erosion of civil liberties by privacy watchowls and civil advocates. The current leader of the GEL, Antonius "Dreadly" Caesar, appoints Prince Igor to head the GEL as co-leader in this current state of emergency, despite King Flight's objections. He could not annul this appointment due to his power. He fears this newfound power will corrupt Prince Igor, who has been rebellious lately...

To avenge those lost in the massacre and to rescue "Uncle" Sammy, King Flight sends out a special ops team known as "StarEagle Team", led by Sammy Jr. (Bald Eagle son of "Uncle" Sammy), Gregorio the Barn Owl, Thomas the Prairie Dog, and Slippery the Snowhare, to combat the invading Space Rats!

Sammy Jr, it is up to you to avenge the Space Rats' attack, save the Galaxy, and rescue your father!

Game functionality, story, and details pending, as game is currently in early development stages.
Stay tuned for more development on the blog

Downloads:

StarEagle 0.2a (10/31/19)
(BitBridge Halloween Showcase 2019 Tech Demo build)

Subpages:

Models

Videos