One of the interest things in the design of Space Fortress is the tile system. As you can dig into and deform the terrain the challenge is going to be how to show this accurately and realistically without take away any of the fun. The current idea for how to do this well is with a 3d tile based system. Each tile is roughly 2 metres cubed, allowing for any of the races in the game to walk through one comfortably and pass each other without worry. The tricky part though is how to handly parts of tiles. It’s possible in the design to dig into only part of the tile, or have it only half filled up with water. Being able to do this efficiently is going to be a hard problem to overcome in the design, but well worth it. Right now I’m contemplating cutting the tile up into 125 smaller “cubes”, which don’t impact on the surrounds but in turn act as a sort of guide to what the tile is filled with.

Even harder is what tile contents there can be. Examples are solids that don’t move like rock or dirt, gasses that flow freely and expand in all directions, like air/oxygen and more toxic gasses, and lastly flowing substances subject to gravity like water, toxic goo and sand. The physics for the engine will have to be self contained, efficient and fun.

As for the rest of the tile based system, it’s not just the interior of the tiles. Between each tile it will also be possible to build walls, which are, in theory, paper thin. This design kind of cheats a little, but allows tunnels, domes, airlocks, floors and walls to be included without fighting too much with a good physics engine.

This two part design of interior tile and outer face will be the core of the game, just to see if it stands up to the rigors of the design.

One of the core ideas of Space Fortress is being able to pick a location, either a planet or an asteroid and land a ship there to build. This leads to lots of interesting ideas as everyone who knows a ltitle about space knows that there are few Earthlike planets out there. It also allows for some really interesting random generation in terms of the galaxy. I envision that the player will be able to pick a star out of hundreds or thousands in the galaxy, then when the system expands, pick one of the planets or asteroid belts to land on. Asteroids will have varying types of minerals, and it’s definately where you will find the more interesting mining and production chains, but on the planets you can choose to deal with animals, toxic gasses, water sand and worse. The planet style game will probably lean towards the colonist heavy gameplay as it’s easier to produce food and there’s the space for building, where as on an asteroid the rich minerals and lack of air and water will lead to lots of refining and production with less colonists.

Some of the ideas for planets also involve toxic and acidic air, meaning suffocation or painful death for those that are unprotected, weather problems like electrical storms and massive typhoons, and roaming animals that will be either friendly and a source of food, or agressive and have a tendency to want to eat your colonist, or even your fortress. The ground will be more terran but with themes on planets. Some planets will feature mainly sandy or loamy soil, some with lots of water from oceans or rivers, some which are very mountainous and rocky and even some that have lots of molten magma and lava or covered in layers of ice and snow. This gameplay will be very much the fortress vs the environment, and being able to pick where you start will determine how hard it will be.

Asteroids on the other hand are floating lumps of rocks in space. The size and mineral make up of the asteroid will most likely be the focus of interest for the player, but some asteroids will have more problems such as solar radiation, meteor strikes or just being too damn cold. The largest asteroid fortresses will cover all 4 sides of the asteroid and even dig into the centre of it. This will lead to some interesting problems as the gravity will have to be artificial and if/when the gravity direction changes, the colonists will have to be able to deal with this.

As for the galaxy itself, it isn’t peaceful either. The race you play as will be humans for now, but the rest of the galaxy will have areas of space controlled by hostile and friendly aliens. The friendly aliens trade with you and visit from time to time. You might also build a resort type fortress where aliens come to stay on holiday. Hostile aliens however will try and launch raids, either violently to kill your colonists and drive you off, or steal anything they can, all depending on their attitude towards you and their temperament. To combat this weapons will be available, both as weapons platforms to shoot down enemy ships and hand held ones that your colonists can use to defend themselves. Each region of the galaxy will have a varying number of races living nearby, some regions will have none, and some regions up to 5 or 6. Eventually I may model interactions between races, and allow you to play a particular race, but it won’t be the focus for a long while.

This is my long term plan for the environment the game will take place in, but won’t be the focus for a while. Right now it’s full steam ahead for the actual gameplay mechanics. Stay tuned for more soon.