Parthon Software

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.

After spending months working, and fighting, with XNA and C# I’ve decided to throw it in and go back to C++. Why?

It’s an interesting platform that’s for sure. The model loading is quite smooth all the way through to the rendering and even all the assets are handled for you, but only if you follow the design methodology that XNA uses. This consists of a few god classes, with all game objects floating around in a cloud. Game objects render themselves, which really consists of a giant loop through all the existing objects and calling custom draw functions on each one. For C# being very Object Oriented, XNA is very much not. It encourages programmers to break the rules and use some very nasty anti-patterns. I progressed well on a viable engine, sticking to a good design as much as I could, but in the end it was fighting a losing battle. Even if I managed to win, there’s such a low install base for .NET and XNA that my audience would have been reduced dramatically.

Given this, I’ve switched back to C++, am spending time learning how to use Ogre3d, and hopefully will have a game prototype to show very soon. I’ve put Space Fortress on hold, because that’s a massive project and I wouldn’t want to relearn C++ while at the same time trying to wrestle that huge design. Instead I’m starting work on the RPG I’ve been thinking about for a while.

It’s a 3d real time action roguelike, which isn’t very roguelikey at all. It’s taking some of the main characteristics: Resistances, leveling up, random dungeons and monsters and combining it with the sort of fighting from Phantasy Star Online or one of the 3d Legend of Zeldas, and then topping it off with an experimental skill system. I think it will be good, there’s been a great lack of a GOOD dungeon crawler for a while that I think it’s time to take on the challenge.

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.