Q: Sub! Why'd you make this topic??
I'm sure I'll regret this later, but I've started work on what I'm going to lovingly refer to as a 2d space game. I've been learning to program for a while now, and I enjoy it enough that I'm going to eventually transition into being a professional web developer; the reason I first started was actually with the goal of making this game, though, so that's what's going to happen.
[HR][/HR]
Q: You're out of your mind. What's the game going to be like, though?
So it's a real time 2D sandbox game where you're in control of a starship in a randomly generated universe. Inspiration is taken from Sid Meier's Pirates, Mount and Blade, Terraria, and Minecraft, in that order. I should mention up front that the inspiration from Minecraft and Terraria is in the form of everything in the world being constructed out of blocks. Planets, spaceships, asteroids, the whole shebang is made out of blocks, and these blocks can be mined and crafted to form things useful to the player.
So the player travels around in a spaceship that he's built out of things found in the world, and exactly what he does is up to him. He'll probably want to make money, and there are a few ways he can do so. He can be a pirate of sorts and fight with other ships for cargo/loot; conduct trade between worlds; bounty hunt; compete in spaceship races; smuggle illegal goods; etc. The thing I'm trying to get at is that you travel around the universe and try to survive and make a living. This is where the inspiration from Sid Meier's Pirates and Mount and Blade comes in.
At the moment I don't picture a separation between combat and the overview map like in those games, but the concept is pretty similar other than that. Instead of the overview map, your spaceship has two types of engine classes -- engines suitable for close quarters, and engines suitable for long distance travel. When you want to travel between locations, you engage the long distance travel engines and you travel extremely fast in a straight line from point a to point b. All ships in the game travel this way.
In terms of battles, this is also where inspiration from Sid Meier's Pirates comes into play. The game is going to use a system similar to the ship-to-ship battles in that game (I think it's safe to say that I'm not including the swordfighting component of that, though). The ship physics are going to be Newtonian in nature, and your ships have a mass and feel determined by how you've crafted your ship. If you have a huge monolith of a ship, your ship will move slowly and you'll need more engines and power to compensate. I want the player to be able to choose between building something monolithic like the Battlestar Galactica, and something more like a fighter-jet in nature. I'd like both styles of play to be fun and valid.
In terms of ship management, you're going to have a crew, which functions similar to your crew in Mount and Blade. The crew needs to be fed, and they have a size limit determined by the makeup of your ship. You can also recruit something akin to the heroes in Mount and Blade. They'll fill various roles on your ship, such as a Medical Officer who would help prevent crew death. There are various factions around the map that you can interact with, and given the nature of the setting, I'm planning on having their appearance and names be procedurally generated.
In terms of what the factions do, I'm also yet again taking inspiration from Mount and Blade. You can do missions for prominent members of that faction, and work your way up to ruling planets in the name of that faction. Eventually I'd like to have the option to become the emperor of a faction, similar to how you could become King in Mount and Blade.
I'm going to stop now, I've already promised too much.
[HR][/HR]
Q: tl;dr:
It's a 2D game where you're in control of a spaceship that you've built from blocks that you've mined from the world. The way you've built your ship affects how it controls. Anyway, you travel around a huge randomly generated universe and try to make money and not get blown up.
[HR][/HR]
Q: Oh. All right, then.
These aren't even questions.
[HR][/HR]
Q: Screenshots?
Screenshot
What I want it to eventually look like (disclaimer: I stole the background + explosion from somewhere on the internet, I don't even know where at this point).
[HR][/HR]
Q: What's it being made with?
At the moment it's being made with
The goal is to have everything I use be cross platform. Eventually I'm going to add a noise generation library to help with generating the universe / solar systems, and I have a decent random number generator that I'm using right now but I'd like to look into a good third party library that does it better, maybe boost.
[HR][/HR]
How long do you expect this to take you?
At least a year to get into a semi-playable state.
[HR][/HR]
What are you working on right now?
I'm working on getting the physics system up and running. Basically, where you place engines, how strong those engines are, how much your ship weighs and where that weight is concentrated all needs to be taken into account when determining the movement of your ship.
I'm sure I'll regret this later, but I've started work on what I'm going to lovingly refer to as a 2d space game. I've been learning to program for a while now, and I enjoy it enough that I'm going to eventually transition into being a professional web developer; the reason I first started was actually with the goal of making this game, though, so that's what's going to happen.
[HR][/HR]
Q: You're out of your mind. What's the game going to be like, though?
So it's a real time 2D sandbox game where you're in control of a starship in a randomly generated universe. Inspiration is taken from Sid Meier's Pirates, Mount and Blade, Terraria, and Minecraft, in that order. I should mention up front that the inspiration from Minecraft and Terraria is in the form of everything in the world being constructed out of blocks. Planets, spaceships, asteroids, the whole shebang is made out of blocks, and these blocks can be mined and crafted to form things useful to the player.
So the player travels around in a spaceship that he's built out of things found in the world, and exactly what he does is up to him. He'll probably want to make money, and there are a few ways he can do so. He can be a pirate of sorts and fight with other ships for cargo/loot; conduct trade between worlds; bounty hunt; compete in spaceship races; smuggle illegal goods; etc. The thing I'm trying to get at is that you travel around the universe and try to survive and make a living. This is where the inspiration from Sid Meier's Pirates and Mount and Blade comes in.
At the moment I don't picture a separation between combat and the overview map like in those games, but the concept is pretty similar other than that. Instead of the overview map, your spaceship has two types of engine classes -- engines suitable for close quarters, and engines suitable for long distance travel. When you want to travel between locations, you engage the long distance travel engines and you travel extremely fast in a straight line from point a to point b. All ships in the game travel this way.
In terms of battles, this is also where inspiration from Sid Meier's Pirates comes into play. The game is going to use a system similar to the ship-to-ship battles in that game (I think it's safe to say that I'm not including the swordfighting component of that, though). The ship physics are going to be Newtonian in nature, and your ships have a mass and feel determined by how you've crafted your ship. If you have a huge monolith of a ship, your ship will move slowly and you'll need more engines and power to compensate. I want the player to be able to choose between building something monolithic like the Battlestar Galactica, and something more like a fighter-jet in nature. I'd like both styles of play to be fun and valid.
In terms of ship management, you're going to have a crew, which functions similar to your crew in Mount and Blade. The crew needs to be fed, and they have a size limit determined by the makeup of your ship. You can also recruit something akin to the heroes in Mount and Blade. They'll fill various roles on your ship, such as a Medical Officer who would help prevent crew death. There are various factions around the map that you can interact with, and given the nature of the setting, I'm planning on having their appearance and names be procedurally generated.
In terms of what the factions do, I'm also yet again taking inspiration from Mount and Blade. You can do missions for prominent members of that faction, and work your way up to ruling planets in the name of that faction. Eventually I'd like to have the option to become the emperor of a faction, similar to how you could become King in Mount and Blade.
I'm going to stop now, I've already promised too much.
[HR][/HR]
Q: tl;dr:
It's a 2D game where you're in control of a spaceship that you've built from blocks that you've mined from the world. The way you've built your ship affects how it controls. Anyway, you travel around a huge randomly generated universe and try to make money and not get blown up.
[HR][/HR]
Q: Oh. All right, then.
These aren't even questions.
[HR][/HR]
Q: Screenshots?
Screenshot
What I want it to eventually look like (disclaimer: I stole the background + explosion from somewhere on the internet, I don't even know where at this point).
[HR][/HR]
Q: What's it being made with?
At the moment it's being made with
- C++
- SFML for
- easy portability between Windows, Linux, and Mac
- Window creation and management
- Reading Input
- Nice 2D graphic wrapper around OpenGL
- Playing Audio
- A lot of other fun things
- Box2D for physics
- simpleini for reading / writing .ini files.
The goal is to have everything I use be cross platform. Eventually I'm going to add a noise generation library to help with generating the universe / solar systems, and I have a decent random number generator that I'm using right now but I'd like to look into a good third party library that does it better, maybe boost.
[HR][/HR]
How long do you expect this to take you?
At least a year to get into a semi-playable state.
[HR][/HR]
What are you working on right now?
I'm working on getting the physics system up and running. Basically, where you place engines, how strong those engines are, how much your ship weighs and where that weight is concentrated all needs to be taken into account when determining the movement of your ship.
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