The boys and I have been working since early summer on a space settlement simulation game called High Frontier. We’ve been following the incremental release model, now on our tenth release, but there is still a long way to go before I would call it “finished” (thus the posting here in WIP instead of Showcase).
The Big Idea
In High Frontier, you first design a space colony, snapping parts together and adjusting their properties. (We use a lot of procedural mesh generation so you have a lot of flexibility in how you do that.) Info panels calculate things like the level of artificial gravity, radiation, temperature, etc. from the parts and parameters you set.
Then, you select an orbit and build your colony. This leads to an external Management view like the screen shot above. We use a custom physics engine because the PhysX engine does not correctly implement rotational dynamics for objects like this. We also calculate steady-state temperature, and have a simple population simulation based on how big and comfy your space colony is. The “Squawker” feed gives you more insight into what your residents are happy (or not) about.
What’s Next
All that is done so far, but the next big piece of the game is going inside your colony, and managing it with a hands-on city sim. We’ve been prototyping various parts of this for weeks, but haven’t yet put it all together or commissioned proper artwork.
We’ve just launched a KickStarter campaign to help fund this phase of the project. You can watch a video about it on the project page.
We’re super excited about this game… of all the projects I’ve ever done, this one seems both the most fun and the most important. I really hope it resonates with people!
If you want to follow our progress, I’ll post updates to this thread as the game develops, as well as to the High Frontier blog.