The Gameplay

There is not much explaining what the actual gameplay will be like, its been a sort of a vague "build space ships and blow up the enemies" sort of thing. I drew up some plans outlining what the gameplay would be like:

You play as an Artificial Intelligence, recently reawakened in a derelict craft on an abandoned asteroid. The asteroid is one among many orbiting an extremely dense planet and contains rich metals that have attracted other artificial intelligence's. These other AI's are fighting over the resources, and have split into several factions. They are technologically advanced and have established strong footholds. You also have some advanced technology, specifically: a micro factory, capable of manufacturing extremely fast. This is your greatest asset, as it allows you to turn resources into firepower faster then any of the other factions, you will need it too, as you start out the weakest of all the factions. Each faction each has their own unique technology, though none as advantageous as the micro factory. 

Note: Image is not to scale

When you destroy an enemy ship, it breaks up into parts; which you can recycle, or attach onto your own ship. It is possible to learn the blueprint of the captured parts; which you can use to replicate captured technology. The enemy can do the same, this forces you to protect any ships which have your micro factory attached, creating a reward vrs risk scenario. Reward, because you can expand your fleet faster, risk, because if the enemy were to capture your micro factory while already ahead technologically, you would be hard pressed to survive.

some asteroids and fragments

Some things to note: The placement of the asteroids will most likely be procedural, to keep things fresh. Also, everything will be simulated at once; while you are mining metal somewhere on one side of the planet, an AI could be building a warship on the other side.

Since the game currently has multiplayer support, it should also be possible to have co-op games, or free for all games.

That about sums up the plan, comments can be posted here or on the forums: Forums thread

What this project is about.

After reading through all my previous blog posts, I realized I still had yet to explain in depth what this project is!

There are two core goals for this project:
-To create an environment that can be used to create and test complex dynamic AI's.
-To create a game environment that gives the user the most freedom in terms of control over their own abilities in the game.

In order for the first of these goals to be met, there needs to be a well developed core infrastructure to the game. In other words, the environment has to be tried and true before development of an AI can begin.

The second goal, is a bit more ambiguous. To explain it a little bit clearer: what I want to do, is allow the user to create and experience what it is like building and designing assemblies for use in space. My goal is to have it to such a level, that you could design your own missile, carry it with your ship, and fire it. My goal is to allow the user to create a ship that can do things it was never meant to do, like disassembling mid flight to avoid an anti matter missile, or split your ship into two and control both ships as if they were one. My goal is to allow the user to create their own AI ship if they so desire. These are the things I want to allow the user to do, and in a (somewhat) realistic fashion. Your ship wont fly because it just does; it will fly because you installed antimatter reactors directly next to thrust vectored engines. It will shoot because you attached some huge capacitors next to your customized high power feed laser. I would like it even possible to have multiple people controlling the same ship, star treck style.

These goals are a bit ambitious, you may say: "okay that's cool, but how are you going to do all that?" and I say: "one step at a time".

The first steps involved concept art (mostly in my graph paper notebook) and background planning; ie how to allow the user to do these things.

I came up with idea of using "modules" to build the ship out of. Modules are great because they are stand alone, can be used in complex configurations, and they can allow complex behaviors. As of now they all connect with triangular sides, but the code is in place for any kind of polygon to be used as a connection side; as long as it connects to a side of the same type.

The different kinds of modules that could be used:
-Engines
-Power Generators
-Laser Weapons
-Shield Generators
-Shield Emitters
And anything else that ends up being cool

I also plan on each module to have customization options, like the ability to balance how much power goes into the wavelength of the laser, and how much into the amount of photons fired. The goal is to have as much customization as possible while still keeping things balanced. Also, i would like to make it possible to place things on top of the modules, that are not actually modules. More like accessories. This would let you coat everything with armor, or attach antenna and other sensors in various places on the ship.

So that's the goal of this project. Now, anyone have an idea for a name? I originally called it polyhedra wars because many of the modules I had in place resembled polyhedra (ie octahedrons, tetrahedrons etc). But modules are not all going to look that way, many are going to have their "insides" shown. Anyway, let me know what you think in the comments.

Concept ship design, its hard to draw polyhedra by hand!