Concept Demo Begins!

And just like that, we're in our comcept demo phase. It's about time we got an Itch.IO page up. It's been slow 4 months of getting things (mostly, the team) ready to begin the development full steam! By full steam, I mean, we still have our day lives and whatnot. But for how long?

Let me begin from the beginning.  I am a dev at Space Hotel, an Internet - based game development studio. We do not live in the same location, not even in the same time zone. Does it complicate things? Not really. At least, we can always say "we are working on the game around the clock".

This particular game though started as an idea in 2016. It was supposed to be called MESS (Make Everything Side Scroller), and was supposed to be very sandboxy. Just sandboxy - that's it. But well-done, of course. No wonder, over the course of years the idea morphed into something a little more defined.

Understanding that I know nothing about making games (judging by Acroplanes - my previous JavaScript game), I had to learn Unity, so I dove head-first into the platform. In summer 2018, I went to my home coutry to marry my wife and meet some artists to start a dev team. I met our designer at my wedding, actually. This was very lucky. With my wife taking up the role of the BA, I started getting all the help. It is now us - not me. This is how Space Hotel was born. Space Hotel, by the way, is a reference to Space Oddyssey, vol 4 and its Hotel Granymede. BTW, listen to the Space Oddysey on audiobook, but only the introduction. It's about 20 minutes long including the story of the book and the movie. If you were not hooked, leave it. At least, you gave it a shot. If you're have never tried audiobooks before, this one is the one to start with - trust me.

Anyways, let's talk about the game! The name Star Falls had occured today. In my heart, this day will aways be the game's birthday. Perhaps, I'll even get a cake. You can never go without a cake. The concept of the game was created a long time ago. A start system, 5-8 planets inhabiting various forms of life, 3 factions based on their corporations, and numerous things to do. First of all, you can land on planets and explore their flora and fauna - both functional. That was the initial idea. Now, according to the mechanics, you will be able to catch the predatos of one planet to transport them and deploy into the fauna of another planet to exterminate certain species. And I just now, finally have the answer to the question I was asked on today's team meeting when I brought this idea about.

The question was "In what way will this functionality be meaningful to the tasks and goals in the game?" - a fair question. So, here is the answer: If you'd like to teraform some planet's atmosphere by daploying an oxygen-producing plant, you may discover that some herbivores that live on the surface of the planet will prefer to eat that plant into extinction. So, now you have to exterminate those herbivores. That's the need for the carnivore mechanics!

Also, the nature on the planets have always had the requirement for a dynamic food chain. That is, the population of one species must affect the other, roughly speaking. So here is how to do it: put the population of species on wheels of a graph function. We can use a set of equations of virtually any size making up for every spacimen of the fauna. Then we can link the equations by code and set it to change the population of species over time. Rabbit's population affects wolf's population, and so on. But most importantly, the player affects all populations and observes the ripple effect in the nature of the planet.

In conclusion, the important stuff: so far we have a proof of concept demo that lets us check what 2D game looks like on a 3D surface of the planet. We will have to tailor so much for this design choice to make it look great but this is exactly what we need for the environment. The physics of using vehicles and items are also developed. I can't wait to make the inventory system! I'll write about it in one of these posts for sure!

Anyways, stay tuned for more news from the suite 2195!

Zoidez @ Space Hotel