Short for Object-Oriented Graphics Rendering Engine, Ogre includes a wide variety of tools and support documentation-almost everything a small team needs to get their game up and running. While at Runic Games, Travis had downloaded Ogre, an open-source engine that anyone can use to build games. They headed down the second, much more convenient path: licensing a pre-existing engine. Travis and Erich were a two-man team, and Travis was the sole programmer. But finishing a proprietary engine would have tacked months, even years, onto development. Travis had written a game engine built on DirectX 9 tech, and had fashioned the game’s prototypes on that foundation. One path, that of proprietary technology, was only half paved.

Near the start of their journey, Travis came to a fork in the road. Unlike a straight shot up through earth’s atmosphere and into the galaxy beyond, Rebel Galaxy’s development did not proceed in linear fashion. “Our game is the opposite: you’ll run into stuff.”

And compared to the universe, even galaxies are small, like grains of sand in a jar.Įrich couldn’t help smiling. According to physicist, scientific writer, and bowler-hat wearer Matthew Francis, even the largest object is tiny relative to the enormous scale of galaxies. After all, the universe is infinite, so an object moving on a set path would almost have to run into something eventually, right? Not so. Essentially, it’s easy to believe that a spacecraft traveling in a straight line would eventually run into an obstruction. The science behind the scenario intrigued Erich. The chances of you hitting anything are infinitesimal.”

You’ll never run into any planet, or asteroid, or anything. “I was just reading something that had nothing to do with our game, and somebody was saying that if you flew from earth in a straight line, the chances of you ever hitting everything are, like, zero. Erich Schaefer learned just how barren space really is when he came across an article published on The Atlantic in late 2014. Even factoring in planets, stars, asteroids, and gas particles, space is largely empty. What space is not full of is, surprisingly, stuff. Space is vast, beautiful, and full of wonder.

Erich and Travis pull back the curtain to reveal the tricks of the trade they used to make Rebel Galaxy’s solar systems appear larger than they really are, and discuss their reasoning for developing a traditional product in an industry dominated by microtransactions and free-to-play games.

Rogue galaxy 7 star swords