ORBIT -- A Freeware Space Combat Simulator
by Steve Belczyk (orbit@genesis.nred.ma.us)
Overview | System Requirements | Documentation | Contact Me | Credits
by Steve Belczyk (orbit@genesis.nred.ma.us)
- Multiplayer network support: Compete with other players over the Internet.
- Direct support for AC3D models: Easily add third-party object models to the game.
- Planetary orbits.
- Lots of other changes: Here's the complete list.
You know the story: You're the hottest space fighter pilot this side of Andromeda. An evil alien race threatens mankind's freedom to live, love, and play Quake 3. You've got a sleek ship with loads of weapons, but this time you're needed to defend our very own solar system. Go get 'em Sparky!
- Cheap: ORBIT is completely free!
- Portable: Available for Windows 95/98, Linux, and any UNIX system with an OpenGL library.
- Multiplayer action and single player, mission-oriented play.
- Pretty realistic: Newtonian physics and NASA images.
- Extensible: Easily design and add your own missions, campaigns, and object models. Create your own planets, moons and solar systems.
- Pretty fast: 30 fps on a Pentium 133/Voodoo 1. 90 fps on a Pentium 2/450/Voodoo 2.
- Open source: All source code is included in the distribution.
(This is people who have helped in the past, fitting to still keep them here.)
System Requirements:
Contact me:
Feel free to pop around into #orbit2.0 @ irc.freenode.com (IRC) we are normally
in there just ask away.
Credits:
Hats off to Steve Belczyk (orbit@genesis.nred.ma.us) for getting orbit this far
sadly we can't seem to contact him.
Many people contributed to orbit by providing bug fixes, contributing
code, offering suggestions for improvement, or play testing the program.
These generous people include Ian Belczyk, James Lockwood, Joey Hess,
Rudy (rdmnsgtn), Daniel Beer, Andrew Roals, Russ Clarke, B. Douglas
Hilton, Philipp Hahn, and Robert Morse. Sorry if I left anyone out!
I'm sure theres more to come. xD
Learn more about the OpenGL API (Application Programming Interface)
at http://www.opengl.org.
ORBIT uses Mark J. Kilgard's excellent OpenGL Utility Toolkit (GLUT)
library as a front-end to many platform-specific functions. Find GLUT at
http://reality.sgi.com/mjk/glut3/glut3.html.
Most of the development work on ORBIT was done using Brian Paul's
Mesa 3-D graphics library, a highly portable OpenGL work-alike available
from http://www.mesa3d.org.
The 3dfx driver for Mesa was written by David Bucciarelli and is
available at (broken)
http://www-hmw.caribel.pisa.it/fxmesa/.
The spaceship models in ORBIT were designed using Andy Colebourne's
AC3D modelling program, available at
(broken)
http://www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/computing/users/andy/ac3d.html.
We are using blender now.
The AC3D file loader is based on a program by Steve Baker
(sjbaker1@airmail.net).
The TIE fighter model used in one of the screen shots was created by
Harry H. Chang (doctor_harry@hotmail.com). It is available, along with
many other great models, from the Avalon Public 3D Archive at
(broken) http://avalon.viewpoint.com.
The data for the background stars is based on data from Raul Alonso's
ssystem program: (broken)
http://www1.las.es/~amil/ssystem.
Most of the images used for the realistic planetary textures came from
these sites:
The data used to generate the textures for the planetary rings came from
images found on NASA's Planetary Rings Node:
(broken) http://ringside.arc.nasa.gov
orbit@genesis.nred.ma.us
(steve belczyk)