CONCEPT
This is designed to be a very simple space combat game designed around the player being a freelance pilot and taking on missions around the game universe. The explicit goal of the player is to gain access to more powerful ships and weaponry through taking on missions and getting paid for them.
The target platform initially is just mobile (Android and iOS). The game will likely be released as a premium product at a price point of $2.00 although (despite my initial post) I haven’t ruled out releasing it free to begin with if it feels like the right thing to do.
Graphically, the game will be quite simple with a slightly stylized, colorful and clean aesthetic which will hopefully go down well on mobile.
Instead of making a story-driven game with a high production overhead for cutscenes, characters and mission/level design, as well as scalability issues, I decided to go for a more open-ended design that could be expanded indefinitely and have story modes added later. The open-ended, ‘procedural’ mission design also brings a high replayability factor. This means that the concept can be made relatively quickly and released, and iterated upon and expanded over time.
STORY
The original game won’t be story-driven in any way (although story-driven campaigns might be added on top of the core gameplay at some point) so the background story is quite simple right now.
After developing the ability to generate wormholes, humans have colonised their first habitable non-earth planet in a different galaxy. It was none too soon, for Earth, early in the 21st century, suffered severely from the effects of a population explosion driven by a collapse of organised civil society.
The new solar system, simply named New Sol, contains a single habitable planet called New Earth as well as several resource-rich planets which are used by the colonists to resupply Earth.
New Earth is a water-world which, although containing relatively little landmass, is perfectly suited to human settlement and rich in biological life. No intelligent life has been found there, and some have theorised that this is due to relatively frequent mass-extinction events driven by severe tropical storms and tsunamis…
Ambrosia is a small, watery gas planet rich in carbon and other nutritious materials which, using new techniques, is mined for materials which are turned into food in orbiting factories, for transportation to Earth.
Chrysos is a giant planet which, due to its gravitational effects, has pulled in a lot of mineral-rich asteroids which are mined for resources both for the new colony and for Earth.
Unfortunately, out here in this new colony, piracy has sprung up as a major source of income from colonists seeking to improve their own lot at the expense of others. Instead of a full-time police force, the colony relies on trustworthy freelance pilots to defend them.
GAMEPLAY MECHANICS
Overview
The player takes on the role of a freelance pilot operating a small, fast combat ship, taking on courier, escort and mercenary combat missions. This ship has the capability to make short, local hyperspace jumps inside the New Earth system, which the player can use to visit the three planetary locations. At each location, there will be a number of stations or outposts which the player can dock at to take on missions.
Space travel/combat
This game primarily involves operating a ship. The core code/mechanics for this are:
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Camera view: To begin with, and to reduce the art overhead of making cockpits, the perspective will be a third-person chase camera position behind and slightly above the ship.
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Engines/Control: Since it is a mobile game, the 3 rotation axes (pitch, yaw and roll) will be converted to 2 by linking the yaw and roll (similar to Starlancer). This way the ship can easily be controlled with one finger on a virtual joystick, or with the accelerometer, while the other finger can control the throttle or the weapons.
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Weapons: The weapons will fire directly forward and the reticule will be fixed in the centre of the screen. However, to make the aiming mechanics easier to handle (especially from third person) there will be a snap feature where the weapon projectile spawn points snap toward the target when the player->target axis is within a certain angle from the player forward axis.
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Shields: To begin with, and to make both the gameplay and the HUD simpler, there will be no ‘hull damage’ feature. When the shield reaches zero, the ship will explode.
Missions/Progression
Currently, three mission types will be available at a variety of stations in each location.
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Courier: This is a simple, low-pay job to take a package from one location to another. Although it’s not as dangerous as the other missions, pirates may get wind of you…
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Escort: This involves protecting a cargo or passenger ship taking a route through a dangerous region of space. This carries a medium risk as attacks are usually planned and attackers are operating in groups. Pay is medium.
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Assassinate/destroy: This involves either trying to assassinate a pirate or to destroy pirate assets, and carries a very high risk. Pay is high.
The ability to pilot cargo ships and trade is not initially planned although it might be added later.
These missions are regenerated periodically, and at the moment will simply consist of 1 or 2 lines of description in a non-unique format.
LEVEL DESIGN
Each planet location (New Earth, Ambrosia and Chrysos) will be a separate scene, and the player and certain elements such as UI will be transferred between the scenes using DontDestroyOnLoad() when the player makes a hyperspace jump.
Each of these scenes will be a spherical environment of 5000 meter radius and the player will be simply clamped inside it.
The basic features that are common to the levels are:
- A scene/skybox;
- A planet;
- A hyperspace location that the player can activate from other locations;
- A series of locations where the player can find jobs;
- A number of ships that the player can interact with through combat.
There will be some location specific assets to give identity to the locations such as asteroids at Chrysos and gas clouds at Ambrosia, as well as an inter-galactic hyperspace gate at New Earth (for travelling back to Earth) which the player cannot go through without being destroyed.
CONTROLS
The ship controls layout is as follows:
· Directional control: Optional between accelerometer, touch joystick or a D-pad.
· Throttle: swipe slider.
· Targeting: Button.
· Pause Menu: Button.
· Fire Guns: Button;
· Fire Missile: Button
· Hyperspace Jump: Tap on UI widget.
ASSETS
Models
The initial estimate for model asset requirements are:
Player assets:
· 3 player ships,
· 3 guns;
· 3 missiles;
Environment Assets
· 1 planet mesh with 3 textures;
· 1 or 2 asteroid meshes with LODs;
· 3 modular kits for stations (1 per location);
· 1 inter-galactic gate for New Earth;
AI ship assets:
· 1 freighter ship;
· 1 passenger ship;
· 1 mining ship;
· 2 pirate ships;
Visual Effects
The visual effects will be made mainly using TimelineFX and exporting either individual textures or animation sheets for use with particle systems in Unity.
The estimate of the vfx needed initially for the game are:
· Explosion (1 or 2);
· Missile trail;
· Projectile effect (2-3);
· Laser beam effect;
· Engine trail;
· Gas clouds for Ambrosia;
· 3 skyboxes (using Spacescape);
Sound Effects
Either bought from the asset store, made in Audacity, or using a simple sfx generator I made in Unity for weapon sounds.
· 1 explosion sound;
· 3 gun sounds;
· 1 missile sound;
· Engine sound
· Hyperjump sound;
· Collision sound;
· Getting hit sound;
· Locking, locked and ‘enemy detected’ radar sounds;
· 2-3 simple menu navigation sounds such as text scrolling and clicking;
PROJECT MANAGEMENT
It will be attempted to create the whole core game in 2 weeks in greybox (simple placeholder models and no textures) and the art assets in 1 week after that, leveraging:
Approaches to save time are:
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Keeping a simple, clean aesthetic for the art that focuses mainly on form for the models, and color/luminosity for the textures;
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Creating material libraries (1 per location) for stations and environment
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Creating modular kits (1 per location) for creating stations;
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Using Substance Designer to create a master material for creating the textures automatically from the highpoly and lowpoly meshes (will be using high-low bake workflow).
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Keeping the UI minimalist, clean and simple;
MARKETING
I don’t have a plan yet for marketing, except that I’m going to do anything I can think of, including:
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Having a landing page for the game on my website (vsxgames.com);
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Having a facebook and twitter presence for the game;
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Contacting review sites;
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Contacting youtubers;
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Getting press from Unity;
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Going for a nude run through my city with a sign strapped to my back advertising the game (just kidding!)
Will watch your progress.
