After losing focus on The Sporeal Invasion, I decided to go back to an old design and remake it. I wasn’t inspired by the Sporeal project at all actually, the first game I’ve worked on where I didn’t have any drive to finish it, unlike all the others.

Instead, I’m going to try something completely different. The crunch of having only two weeks to work on a game really helped, although two was too long and made me burnt out quick. For the next project I’m going to give myself one week to finish the next game I’m working on and present it. Because I’m fairly booked up tomorrow, I’m starting Sunday, so expect a release next Saturday.

The game I’m working on is Beyond Earth, an idea I’ve had for a while. It’s a space strategy game, vary similar to Master of Orion, but lots of modern upgrades and interesting gameplay tweaks. I’m not looking at making the game more complicated, but it’s becoming complicated as I add more to the concept. Oh well. The main focus though is macromanagement instead of micromanagement, without using automated tools. The player controls every aspect of the game, as they should, but the game itself should be straight forward and simple. Just the right amount of information and tools at the right time is the main focus.

I expect a playable version after Monday with a more complete game closer to the end of the week.

I’ve been working hard on the game but have reached a bit of a roadblock, and that is time. I’ve got two days left to finish it off, and that’s only about 8 hours of free time at most. I’m going to do my best, but it’s cutting it fine.

The main parts left are the world map system which includes missions and bases, along with research, engineering and exploration. On top of that I have to invent more level generation algorithms and bind that into a win/lose structure. Lastly, I need some good art. Either way, however this game pans out I’ve learnt a lot. The main two would be: it’s easy to get burnt out and distracted while coding a lot if you lose sight of why you are doing it all in the first place, and that my skills are good, but they need to be way better to go indy, but all that takes is practice.

I’m looking at a few different things over the next 5 years, different goal setups so to speak, and I’ll spend this sunday doing a planning session. Expect a long post from me then. After that I’m working on a demake of sim city, which I’m retitling to Town Planner Tycoon. It’s not a hard challenge, but it will be fun. That’s due at the end of August. Then after that it’s back to work on the RPG.

Yeah, it’s a weird name, but it suits the game.

So what is it? It’s a Procedural generated content action platformer, similar to Super Metroid, but with a lot more. The platformer parts are the standard running, jumping and shooting affair, but they will be entirely generated. There’s different environments to fight through, different objectives to meet and various sorts of enemies to encounter.

The overall story of the game takes place as you are one of the few survivors of on the planet due to the invasion of a giant plant type alien creature, named “The Sporeal”, which has arrived and is taking all the nutrients from the planet. It’s up to you to fight back against the plant by burning/blasting and freezing away portions of the plant, finding supplies and rescuing people to help you research new weapons and devices and to assist you on the world map. The missions the player chooses to take also determines how the game plays out, there could even be multiple endings, I haven’t gone that far on the design yet.

The other part of the game is the world map, which allows you to deploy bases, direct research and engineering and decide which mission to take next. The player may or may not spend much time here, as the biggest impact happens on the missions, although managing your world resources will be important to winning as well.

The main reason for this project though is the two week deadline. I know that on Saturday the 16th of August it will have to be mostly complete as it goes in for entry at the contest. I’m putting all my focus into it, and if/when it pans out I’ll have the drive and motivation to work on my other projects. Just finishing one will be a huge step forward and an inspiration.

I’ll post a version of it when it’s partially complete and mostly playable.

I’ve had the idea for a while to do a proper real time, real world empire building game. The easiest way to describe it would be Real Time Civilisation. I had a few ideas about it, the resolution of the map was going to be way higher and cities would take up multiple squares as they got larger. Then I had a brainwave.

A gridless real time civilisation which is to scale on a real sized world.

I’m not sure if this has been done before, I’ve seen a few tech demos involving worlds in a similar fashion, but nothing involving the kind of flexibility of scale that I want to attempt. Cites are at best around 100 kilometres wide on a world 40 thousand kilometres in circumfrence. When you think about that kind of scale in a computer game it’s crazy. The player would have to zoom in a long way to even be able to see cities at all, and even furthur in to be able to see people. But I think it’s possible.

It’s an idea that will take a lot of work and discovering technologies to store, display and work with data on that scale. I’d have to go with a gridless terrain map that covers a sphere. I have a few ideas in mind, but I’ll share them later.

My main focus is still the RPG, progress it at about 10%. Engine is working great, but now there’s the game code and models to work on. Stay tuned.