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.

Like I promised, here is some more information on Space Fortress.

The game is going to be generally futuristic of course, as it involves space colonisation. The main focus of the game is going to be landing a ship in a remote area then building up a colony from there. Some locations will be planets which will have water, natural vegetation and even wild animals, and asteroids which will have no air, lots of minerals, and a reduced area of building. I don’t want either of these locations to be easier or harder than the other, just different in terms of tasks and gameplay. I think it will be down to balancing the various elements each area will start with.

How you you start with will be determined by Galactic Credits, the currency of the game. The ship can take 1 crew member for free, but extras will cost increasing amounts of GC in order to upgrade the ship to take more crew members. Equipment for the colonists will depends on how much space it takes up and how hard it is to obtain. Small tools will be cheap, a mining laser will be a little costly, and droids will be very expensive due to their size. The starting ship will come with single cube quarters for crew, a little storage space, and basic needs for the fledgling colony.

The part that interests me is the world. It’s going to be a cube based 3d world that can be deformed, dug out and built into as you progress. In fact to use the minerals you find, you will need to dig into the ground. Plants will grow and spread, water floods, and the vaccuum of space will suck the air out of any open passageways. Players will need to build walls and domes to protect the colonists from toxic gases, natural hazards and invading aliens.

The list of features in the game now covers 4 full pages. Even if I only manage to put in half of them, it will be a very indepth game. I plan to try and keep the user interface simple with context sensitive menus which make sense. The more complex colony management items will be in menus that popup at the bottom of the screen. Simplicity, efficiency and elegance are the goals of the UI.

The AI is going to be the hard part. Aside from assigning jobs and prioritising them, the colonists will go about their business unguided. They will do as they best see fit, sleeping, eating, relaxing and working based on needs and their list of jobs. Like in Dwarf Fortress, I want it to be fascinating to see them all go about their activities, a little bit challenging to get them to do what you want, and a little bit frustrating as they don’t do exactly what you tell them to do. When you can’t control the colonists, it should take the focus from micromanagement and onto macromanagement, where the design and efficiency of the colony is most important.

That’s all for now about where the game is going. I’m working on it all this weekend and I hope to have something to show for it on Monday. Until then, play well and have fun.

Yet another game idea.

A while ago I spoke about a game called Dwarf Fortress. It’s a very good game that I would recommend everyone should try, just for the depth of gameplay possible and everything you can do in it. The only downside is the graphics, which are ASCII, and the user interface, which is cumbersome. I think many more people would play it if the learning curve for the start of the game were far smaller. Which is why I wanted to do a 3d version with an easy to learn interface. Then I was thinking, Dwarves in Space, and so Space Fortress was born.

This also coincides with ressurecting my C# 3d game engine project. As Space Fortress will be in 3d, this will be a really good platform for creating the engine then going from there. Right now I’m working on the design of the engine and the way the game runs.

I’m excited about this project as much as, or perhaps more than, any others that I have worked on. Anyone that has ever done a creative work will know how fast the ideas flow when you are in the creative groove. I’ll be creating a project page for the game and finishing the website off to be a more user friendly site, especially the Projects section.

For now the game will play like a cross between Dwarf Fortress and Sim City. I think building games and sim games have been thin recently and mainly dominated by the Maxis powerhouse of ingenuity. Making an interesting game that’s different to most out there is going to be great.

Before I start with this post I need to cite inspiration. http://www.squidi.net/three/entry.php?id=56

So anyways, after reading Sean’s gameplay mechanics I wanted to play some of them and even make a couple, but it wasn’t until he recently posted the White Noise gameplay mechanic was I compelled to make one using them, and thus Static is born.

This whole game, aside from the intro, is going to be in white noise, also known as TV static. It’s a game that won’t get high acclaim for it’s graphics of course, but the limitation is going to make it interesting, as all of the enemies, backgrounds and platforms have to fit in to being made of static. Even more, I can’t use borders or edges to show shape. The only place I’ve lightened this is with projectiles, the protaganist’s projectiles are white and the enemies are black, just for identification purposes. As for gameplay, I’m just going for the straight forward platform shooter, ala megaman. It’s fast paced gameplay and single unit protagonist should work well with the white noise graphics.

Add this onto Wizards, Anonius and Fireworks Factory, I have enough projects to last me until christmas.

As you probably know, two of the biggest things on the web right now are Multiplayer Games and Social Networking Sites. As you might not know, Facebook released F8, their developer library for the Facebook Platform as they call it. This allows anyone with knowledge in how to make a dynamic website using php or similar to create an application on their site which interfaces with Facebook. Of course as soon as I heard out about it, I knew I had to make a game for it, and not just any game, but the viral game to end all games. Well not really.

Anyone who has been on Facebook will probably have noticed the number of viral games going around that are rather lame, even the best of them is rather shallow in terms of what you can do, it’s all about clicking to increase numbers, or worse yet, annoying friends to earn numbers. I have another idea, which I’ve had for a while but which Facebook gives me the opportunity to create without having to worry about getting people to play it, I’m hoping the viral aspect of Facebook will do it for me.

The idea is this: A deep, easy to play, passive, cooperative, social RPG.

What a mouthful. The actually design however is very different. Creating a character just like many other games, race and class. The difference is the 3 tier design.

First tier is your Class. The player of course can pick from a number of classes and you can change your class at any time outside of a dungeon/quest chain. Base classes anyone can go at any time, but the higher classes, which I don’t have a name for yet, have particular prerequisites. Even rarer are Hero Classes which have some obscure prerequisites, but also unique abilities. Classes can’t be leveled up, which is where the next two tiers come into it.

Second tier is Abilities. Abilities are raised by gaining Ability Points (AP) from adventuring. Each class has two abilities, one major and one minor, and each ability has a lesser ability associated with it, except for base abilities. Eg: Fire magic will branch from Elemental magic which will branch from Attack magic, or similar. There will be many base abilities, I hope to create about 8-10, which will lead on to 20-30 second level abilities which in turn will have 100 or more third level and hero abilities associated with them. What makes the system unique, and perhaps a little tricky, is that you never level up a class, you only level up it’s associated abilities. The Hero Classes will have Hero Abilities, but this will come much later. Someone will have to be playing for at least 50 days before they see one of these. Probably longer.

Teir 3 is Skills. Skills come from classes and have ability prerequisites. Skills are raised using Skill Points(SP) gained from adventuring. The skills you can choose to learn come directly from the class you currently are. The mundane skills will have straightforward prerequisites, but some of the more obscure skills come from even stranger prerequisites and from non-class abilities. Skills are the primary way to increase power. You choose a number of skills to go adventuring with, and this is what is calculated to work out your power. The skills you equip directly determine your current power level for adventuring, which also determines the size of the challenge you can face and how much reward you get from such challenges.

How skills factor into playing the game I don’t know yet. I do know that a variety of skills will be needed to overcome the greater challenges, and they directly play a specific part in any of the adventures that occur. Adventures should be applicable to the characters current skills, and the types of skills along with their power determine their reward. As all of the challenges occur automatically, activated skills aren’t an option.

The hardest parts for me right now are working out all the maths behind the entire game, and figuring out how to stop really powerful players from getting even more powerful faster. They should be rewarded for playing so long, but not become untouchable.

As the game progresses it will be open for playing on Facebook, and until then I’ll be posting game idea and game design tips on here. Also, if anyone has a name for the game, I’d be grateful. Right now it’s using my psuedo RPG name: Anonius. Which it will probably be when it’s released.