from time to time, we start a project, we dedicated time, we are having fun with that but.. we don't end it. There are many reasons causing it. It can be the sudden lack of time, or we lost interest when the fun part of designing a game and features is done, or maybe we realize that we can do what we want, because we want it to be perfect.
Well, the last time I had one of these "failure" projects was a "I really like it to finish" one. It was a game based on Sid Meier's Pirates! but on a space theme. There was ship battles, duels, trade, exploring a new world, wars between factions.. and you already know why is not finish. It's a big project. And because it's big, where I dedicated a lot of time, I wanted it right, but more on that later.
Space Captain (provisional name)
This game was at more or less 50% finish, talking about code here, it has a random generated system of planets, moons and stations, where the different type of stations trade with each other. You started as a ship captain of one of the faction, with your crew, and like in Pirates! you have a main mission to follow, you could plunder and capture another ships, stations, search for treasures, vanquish other pirates.
It has the following features:
Random system generator
Every time you started a new game, a new solar system was generated. This means that, unlike the Caribbean, every game was different.
Example of an in game planet system
SHIP AI - Station trade system
Well of course! we need ships wandering around, attacking each other and trading away! It was my first AI (I like to say that is an AI but it's just a point system of what to do and when, but, you know, AI).
The AI ships trade with the stations, moving wares from one to another, there was a basic supply/demand system in place, and some stations were richer that others. Trading and pirates could change this though.
Debug mode showing current pathfinding of AI ships. They move on circles near the sun to gain a gravity boost!
Navigation map that a gossiper told us with the probably route of a ship whit tons of future gold (whatever that means)
Entering on friendly stations the player could repair and upgrade their ships, go to get information, talk to the administrator or trade.
Place holder menu of stations
The stations and ship in the game were named with real pirate names and ships (for pirates), early game programmers (for non faction stations), you can see on the last image that the station is called Enrique Cervera, creator of the 1985 Spanish game Phantomas (one of my favourites when I was a child), scientific and science-fiction authors (Galileo, Asimov..) and admirals, ships and horses for the rest of the ships (Blas de Lezo, Rocinante..).
Ships Battles
When you attacked another ship (or you were attacked!) the game entered on a battle mode. The ships had, usually, more than one weapon (lases, kinectings, homing missiles), shields, better or worse engines and power generators. Usually, you never had power to activate all system at the same time, and if your ships was damaged, the available power was lower.
So the battles was fast paced action where you need to balance the power of your systems, activate or deactivated the shields and capture (or destroy!) the enemy ships before they did the same to you. The AI of the game could manage the system, and it would attack you if it had advantage, or try to run away if now.. if possible.
Debug feedback of how the AI was managing the power
Ship battle between two pirate ships (all assets were temporary)
The ships
The ships have engines, power, shields, weapon slots and FTL travel, and depending of the ship's hull can have better or worse ones. A trade ship can't have lots of weapons, and a pirate ships usually are faster, better armed but with less hull hit points.
Early player's ship menu
Other minor features
There was already in place a missions systems with a vanquish pirate mission and treasure hunt, were you collected pieces of information and you look for it on the orbit of moons using a scanner.
Also a hail system, where you can "talk" with other ships to gather information or to respond to distress calls.
So, why it's not going to be finish?
Yes, a good game, at least for me. It's not going to be finish because I wanted to be perfect, and I needed additional funding (and not only weekends work) to do it. A 3D designer and a 2D artist aren't cheap (also, a sound designer and a music composer would be nice), and even with them there are many things that the game can not deliver (for example, is not something new, space games, pirates games of this kind are not exactly new) and there are more complex games like this and for free (note to self, I was making this game for fun and to play a space game that was simple and fun to play, these complex games are too tedious for me).
And to be fair, you will never get a perfect title, you need to stop at one point. You can always polish, add features, change this, that.. probably the perfect title is when the development was stopped at the perfect time with the maximum of fun features possibles.
And to be fair, you will never get a perfect title, you need to stop at one point. You can always polish, add features, change this, that.. probably the perfect title is when the development was stopped at the perfect time with the maximum of fun features possibles.
Retake the project on the future?
I can't see it. There is a major flaw with programmers. If you left a code for months, the next time you revisit it will be a shock. "What a horrible code", "Spaghetti code everywhere", "Oh my god, change this and that to be nearly good can take months, better START OVER AGAIN".
This happen, always!
In any case, hope you enjoyed reading about that little game.
Regards!
No comments:
Post a Comment