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[Kisguri]

Tiny Trek

Hello Tigsourcers,

I finally feel like Tiny Trek is at a point where I can share it, So I am going to attempt to keep a Devlog here. Tiny Trek for me has been a labor of love for over a year but in all honesty started in the mid 80's when I finally saved up enough shillings to buy my first game, Starflight. Coolest thing I bought from Radioshack. It came on two floppies and had some crude code wheel for DRM. But it was AMAZING. travel to 100's of worlds, talk to alien races. trade, combat etc. It stuck with me all that time and I was always thought about one day trying my hand at it.

    A year ago I was in a holding pattern with three game titles I was working on waiting for art. So I decided to experiment with procedural generation. And during the experimentation something snapped in place and lead me down the road of what is now Tiny Trek.




About the Game

   The idea behind Tiny Trek is to provide players a never ending persistent universe for player to explore. During gameplay randomly generated episodes are created for players to go through. These bit sized 5-8 minute missions can be thought of the hour long weekly Sci-fi TV shows most of us have enjoyed in the past. Your actions during these missions and regular exploration effect the races you encounter and that will effect future encounters. 

   For instance, you may locate a plasma trail during interstellar travel. The bridge crew would then ask you if you would like to investigate. If you choose yes, then the game may take you to a ship in distress in an asteroid field, or one that is under attack or has crashed on a planet. From there, your choices affect the rest of the episode. Attacking the damaged vessel will mark you an enemy of that race whereas tractoring them out makes them a friend.

   The game is finally at a point where I want to share it with the Internets and I have started a Kickstarter for it as well. If you guys don't mind and are interested I would like to post updates during the remainder of the development period. I plan on the game being complete by end of May 2014. I look forward to any and all comments you guys can share with me, This project as mentioned is truly a labor of love and I want to make it the best I can, and I have valued the opinions here in the past. Thanks for reading.

IndieDB Link: http://www.indiedb.com/games/tiny-trek
Kickstarter Page: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2064021040/tiny-trek



Features

-Galaxy is big: And when I say big I mean really big like a never ending Galaxy with stars, planets, nebula and other space phenomenon.

-Do you have that ship in a different color? Yes we can do that with our procedural generation algorithms.  Everything from the planets and stars to ships and races is created on the fly. And then to take it step further we provide you tools to edit your Ship and your race.

- Lets fire blue particle cannons full... Engage in battles of one on up to three enemy vessels. Cool thing is with the Mission Matrix, a ship might jump out of battle and you may get the option to chase them, once you catch up you may finish them off or two of his friends might be waiting for you.

-You think they have apples on an alien planet? I don't know if apples will be there, but the idea is that you can explore endless alien worlds and conduct various away missions. Planets will contain unique items that your science officer can scan, and your engineer can collect to bring back to the ship for trade.

-Making Friends will be important: Talk, trade and assisting other spacefarers will benefit you as each race you encounter will store an enemy, neutral or friend status. That will effect how your next encounter with them will be.

-Episodes for everyone! In Tiny Trek we have worked on creating a generator that creates randomized missions or as we call it, episodes. Each episode last around 3-8 minutes on average and include everything from search and rescue, transport, battles and more. Imagine receiving a distress signal, then approaching a ship to discover it's a trap. After defeating them and searching the ship discover that the stranded crew is on a nearby planet. The unique Mission Matrix generates over a 100 different "episode" types and puts them together.

-Stuff is cool... Player will be able to collect and store unique plants, materials and relics you discover on your journey. And trade them for other resources or information.

[happymonster]

Ohh! I really like the art style.

[Kisguri]

I appreciate the comment Happymonster, thanks!

[eobet]

Absolutely amazing, pulling on all nostalgia strings.

My Kickstarter quota is unfortunately full right now, but I will be watching the reviews when its out!

One question arises, though: Why does the bridge crew look so different from the away team, both in style and pixel density? It's the one thing which seems very out of place.

Oh, and I think there's a scale issue on the ships. They are supposed to be Enterprise sized, I'm guessing? Well, they currently look and feel more Defiant sized or even smaller. There's certainly a problem on representing scale that I think you have to deal with...

[NoobsArePeople2]

Oh man! This idea is soooooo cool!

How do things work with the crew? Do you pick them out and level them up RPG-style? Can they die?

[Kisguri]

@eobet, So in the bridge scene the guys at the consoles heads are being rendered based on the avatar you create in the beginning of the game. One thing that is missing in those screenies is that when in the away mission frames, the heads will have pixel color swapping to match the primary color of your race. As the game is primary built out of large squares I intentionally attempted to keep the heads with limited detail during away missions. I will look it over again and see if I can make a change.

@NoobsArePeople2, Your comment kind feeds into Eobet's. I have received a ton of comments on how detailed away mission members will get. Originally it was intended not to have specific crew member but select anonymous crew types. And the combination of what crew types you send will effect the success of a away mission, IE a mission to retrieve a fugitive won't work well with 2 science officers and engineer. However all these comments have me reevaluating that perspective.

Thanks to both of you for the input!

[kleiba]

Oh man, this is awesome, Kiguri! I've been having the exact same idea for a game on my mind forever, too, just like you!

I'm so glad you beat me to it because I'm a lame ass and would never have gotten anywhere anyway. (Thinking about it, though, the latter part probably means that it wasn't really very hard to beat me to it...)

Anyway, I wish you good luck and O'm really curious how this is going to turn out! 

[Kisguri]

A Backer convinced me of adding space stations to the mix, here are some procedurally generated Space Stations, Do you guys think they look all right?

[mike_w]

I like the space stations but maybe they could be more varied in their shape? They are all four 'wings' coming from a central point, even if they are shaped slightly different.

Also this game looks neat and the tier to design a race and stuff is pretty affordable! Totally sold on that.

[i-kari]

Read about this yesterday on pockettactics.com. Looks and sounds interesting, good luck!

[Vaxx]

Glad to see another Multimedia Fusion game in the making, keep it up!

[NoobsArePeople2]

@eobet, So in the bridge scene the guys at the consoles heads are being rendered based on the avatar you create in the beginning of the game. One thing that is missing in those screenies is that when in the away mission frames, the heads will have pixel color swapping to match the primary color of your race. As the game is primary built out of large squares I intentionally attempted to keep the heads with limited detail during away missions. I will look it over again and see if I can make a change.

@NoobsArePeople2, Your comment kind feeds into Eobet's. I have received a ton of comments on how detailed away mission members will get. Originally it was intended not to have specific crew member but select anonymous crew types. And the combination of what crew types you send will effect the success of a away mission, IE a mission to retrieve a fugitive won't work well with 2 science officers and engineer. However all these comments have me reevaluating that perspective.

Thanks to both of you for the input!

Just make sure you include Red Shirts

[Kisguri]

Red shirts are a must!

[NoobsArePeople2]

Then beam me up!

[rudson]

The concept, and it's visual simplicity really capture my imagination. I love it!

[Konidias]

It's nice seeing fellow MMF games in the works! (it's a great tool guys, really)

Looks like you're going to easily hit your kickstarter goal and then some.

The game looks great, but my concern (as with all procedurally generated games) is that the content generated from it will not be anywhere near the quality of hand made content. Like just saying a game has an infinite universe isn't really selling me, because it could just be an infinite universe of procedural gibberish that doesn't amount to solid content. So I'm REALLY hoping you can change my mind about that!

I think the selling point for me is the "episodes". Will there be an ending to this game, or at least some long term goals to hit? I'd want to feel like I'm making some sort of progress towards a goal instead of "just randomly explore random planets of randomness, and then collect random things to trade for other random things, which lets you buy some other random things... randomly".

If you catch my drift.

[Kisguri]

I'm smelling what your cooking.

I am hoping you will get the sense of accomplishment from finishing the episodes. But It would be difficult to advertise the game as a expansive never ending universe if in fact the game had a final win. My thinking was the end comes when your ship or crew is lost. either by death, destruction, our out of supplies. I approached the whole thing from a separate stand alone "episodes" that are playable pulling pieces of the universe into it to fill the props, places and characters. Perhaps I can find a way to extend that and have overall story arcs some how..

Thanks for the input, and positive MMF2 comments!

[Konidias]

Yeah I don't necessarily require that the game has a definitive ending... but just some long term goals would be awesome. Since the episodes play out as little short term goals.

Keep up the good work! 

[eobet]

Long term goal? A

, of course. And just like in Sid Meier's original Pirates!, with the option to retire or embark again (with modifiers) at the end.

Regarding the procedural generated stuff, I hope you will vary the algorithms. Right now, everything is pretty "bug like", and that's cool for one race. Hopefully you will have an algorithm that produces perhaps more "cube like" things a la Borg, more tentacle things like in the new Star Trek movie, and so on...

And I reiterate that you have a problem with conveying a sense of scale, because the space stations just look like large ships, and the ships themselves still look very small.

[Kisguri]

The five year mission, That was suggested to me today as well by another. I am thinking of making it a play option, So you can choose to do the five year mission or endless

Endless: Play till you die, if I hit the server stretch goal you will be able to sumbit you "travel Log" including your race, ship and distance traveled

Five Year: must explore, points earned for accomplishing things, but you have to return home before five years is up.

Sound Cool