1000 YEARS LATER
Sometimes when working on a long term project the size of STASIS, you get a bee in your bonnet, and need to do something else.
After reading all the literature on WASTELAND 2, and with games like The Last Of Us, and I Am Alive coming out, I decided to take a small break from the bleak corridors and medical labs of The Groomlake, and try my hand at something a bit more…post apocalyptic!
I’ve always liked the idea of a more sandbox style approach to Adventure Gaming. So I sat down with a pen, and quickly sketched out a very brief story and outline for a more open ended Adventure Game-something that gave the same feel of the original Fallouts.
What started out as just a little design exercise eventually spiraled into a sort of mini-design document, with quick a few really cool ideas! So I decided to take 2 weeks, and build a small tech demo.
The demo as it stands has a large map, and builds the world parametrically. So as you explore the world, you can zoom down to any part of the map, and walk around. If you revisit that spot, the same tileset will be loaded up.
There are of course towns that you can visit (the abandoned Railway Station being an example of a fixed location), as well as a system for random, and special encounters.
I also implemented a change of terrain tile set, so you can specify if an area is desert, grassland, mountainous, etc, although I only finished the Desert tile set.
I did write a story for the world aswell, whereby you play as a bounty hunter named George Washington, who is part of a specialist unit called The Dead Presidents. The story involves you hunting down an ex-dead-president member called Truman, who has stolen a vile of the disease that caused the death of the planet.
The world is inspired very much by the Wild West. Small frontier towns, homesteads, and settlements dot the landscape, with 3 larger settlements controlling the politics of the land.
The game would feature a day/night cycle, where certain parts of towns would only be accessible dependent on the time of day you visit.
<-Here is a link to a Youtube video showing it all in action!
As I said, this was really just a small distraction from STASIS. I may revisit the ideas at a later date, but until then, I’m going to delve back into the gooey festered corpse thats been beckoning me to come back…
-Chris
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