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Orion's Belt (game)
Encyclopedia
Orion's Belt is a free browser game
, originally a Bachelor's degree
project of two Portuguese
students. In this game the player has to manage several planets and grow his empire battling other players.
project, supported by SourceForge.net
, and was is influenced by Master of Orion
and Heroes of Might and Magic
.
Despite technical limitations and hosting difficulties, the game started to grow in popularity, and was reviewed in June 2005 by the Portuguese TV channel RTP2 in the Quiosque magazine. Several Portuguese game related magazine and sites published interviews with the Orion's Belt developers, increasing the game's popularity.
On January 2008, a new beta version of the game was launched.
In an Orion's Belt round the player starts from his Home Planet and has to expand. The game has two very different aspects: the combat mode and the planet management mode. There are several buildings, research, and combat units: the objective is to make the planet's production as high as possible, to be able to manufacture many combat units.
There are no automatic battle resolutions. Every battle is performed in a rather complex board game
style, with units on a square grid. The rounds usually last for 6 months. When a round ends, the game is restarted.
. There are several tournament types with different victory conditions:
The tournaments are divided in two phases:
Browser game
A browser game is a computer game that is played over the Internet using a web browser. Browser games can be created and run using standard web technologies or browser plug-ins. Browser games include all video game genres and can be single-player or multiplayer...
, originally a Bachelor's degree
Bachelor's degree
A bachelor's degree is usually an academic degree awarded for an undergraduate course or major that generally lasts for three or four years, but can range anywhere from two to six years depending on the region of the world...
project of two Portuguese
Portugal
Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...
students. In this game the player has to manage several planets and grow his empire battling other players.
History
The game was released in a very beta state in October 2003 for a few Portuguese players, mainly from a Portuguese gamedev web community. The game was launched as an open sourceOpen source
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...
project, supported by SourceForge.net
SourceForge.net
SourceForge is a web-based source code repository. It acts as a centralized location for software developers to control and manage open source software development. The website runs a version of SourceForge Enterprise Edition, forked from the last open-source version available...
, and was is influenced by Master of Orion
Master of Orion
Master of Orion is a turn-based, 4X science fiction computer strategy game released in 1993 by MicroProse on the MS-DOS and Mac OS operating systems. The purpose of the game is to lead one of ten races to dominate the galaxy through a combination of diplomacy and conquest while developing...
and Heroes of Might and Magic
Heroes of Might and Magic
Heroes of Might and Magic is a series of video games originally created and developed by Jon Van Caneghem through New World Computing. As part of the Might and Magic franchise, the series changed ownership when NWC was acquired by 3DO and again when 3DO closed down and sold the rights to Ubisoft...
.
Despite technical limitations and hosting difficulties, the game started to grow in popularity, and was reviewed in June 2005 by the Portuguese TV channel RTP2 in the Quiosque magazine. Several Portuguese game related magazine and sites published interviews with the Orion's Belt developers, increasing the game's popularity.
On January 2008, a new beta version of the game was launched.
The Round
There are no automatic battle resolutions. Every battle is performed in a rather complex board game
Board game
A board game is a game which involves counters or pieces being moved on a pre-marked surface or "board", according to a set of rules. Games may be based on pure strategy, chance or a mixture of the two, and usually have a goal which a player aims to achieve...
style, with units on a square grid. The rounds usually last for 6 months. When a round ends, the game is restarted.
The Tournaments
In the tournaments players are given a fleet with a predefined set of units and have to battle through the available competitions. The tournament battles count for the Orion's Belt Elo rating systemElo rating system
The Elo rating system is a method for calculating the relative skill levels of players in two-player games such as chess. It is named after its creator Arpad Elo, a Hungarian-born American physics professor....
. There are several tournament types with different victory conditions:
- Total Annihilation - the objective is to eliminate all enemy units
- Regicide - the objective is to eliminate a special flag unit (similar to the checkmateCheckmateCheckmate is a situation in chess in which one player's king is threatened with capture and there is no way to meet that threat. Or, simply put, the king is under direct attack and cannot avoid being captured...
mechanic of ChessChessChess is a two-player board game played on a chessboard, a square-checkered board with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. It is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide at home, in clubs, online, by correspondence, and in tournaments.Each player...
). - Domination - the objective is to control board places to earn points; after a set number of turns, the player with the most points wins
The tournaments are divided in two phases:
- Groups - all the players are divided in groups, with the maximum of 10 players
- Playoffs - the 3 best players from each group are then matched in playoffs