Space Game Testing Grounds is a space game prototype / exploration project. It's inspired by games like Star Trek Online, Battlestar Galactica Online, Homeworld and a few other.
The current vision for the game is this:
You have a direct control over a Mothership (very much like you have now). You can build and re-build how your ship looks and what statistics it has, you can add modules and do some simple RPG leveling.
But your main force is your fleet - a combination of different classes of ships / drones. You build the ships/drones from blueprints you create or find - you use parts (for the hull and basic statistics) and then add active & passive modules.
But you also can (and should) give them their brains - build their AI (like: always attack the biggest ship first, if you are below 20% HP retreat and repair, and so on). Once a ship/drone is build you have no direct control over it, but it will remain close to you and follow it's AI you've put in to it.
To put it in other words:
Think Homeworld meets Diablo 2's Necromancer meets Gratuitous Space Battles meets Kerbal Space Program ship building (but no physics! so more like ship builder from Galactic Civilization).
The top 10 things to know about this project:
1. Focused on space
2. And on all the space things we love: space laser, space combat, space flying, space travel - I think you get the idea
3. Single player for now, but who knows what the future will bring
4. Also for now, models restricted to Unity cubes and some other build-in Unity primitives
5. Since this is a prototype / exploration project: there is no (concrete) plan
6. There are things I'd like to add or at least try and see how they could work, but no time-table, no GDD, no milestones - this is intentional
7. This also means lots of experimentation, lots of changes and lots of things being made and then thrown away - it can get ugly!
8. I intend to work on this at least a few minutes every day (Monday - Saturday), preferably at least 20-30 min. a day or as much as time allows - so that a daily progress is made. But it also meant this is a side project, worked on after hours
9. There is a WebGL build and it will be updated every time there are new things to see, hear or play with, even if they are small
10. And last but not least - I will share all my progress (and things that are blocking me) here - even if it's just small stuff
Current Work In Progress
How the game changed in 21 updates (21 days of work).
From this:
First day of development.
Second day of development.
To this:
Today.
Another angle.
I invite everyone to take this gamedev journey with me!
(Outdated, saved for historical reasons) The long, version and a bit of a backstory behind the project - for those who are interested:Few days ago while playing Star Trek Online and listening to some Game Developer Conference talk in the background I felt a strong urge to make a space combat thingy of sorts. But the funny thing is: a similar idea was my original impulse to learn Unity and it was my very first project I tried to make in Unity. It happen many years ago and ended up in a failure. That discouraged me quite a bit and I would use Unity only sparingly, focusing more on pure C# programming. I would seriously pick up Unity and game design only about a year ago.
Going back to the present day - while playing Star Trek Online I noticed, with a surprise - "Hey, I actually NOW know how do this!" (or at least a single player version) - the whole last year of learning and creating seem to start paying off. A wonderful moment for me, to say the least.
So I decided to start this project. I'd also like to take a very different approach from my usual projects (or projects that I helped on) - gamedev or otherwise:
- For starters, I don't have an end goal in mind - sure, I know what I would like to try and add to it - but I don't know what sort of game it will end up as, even if it will be a game. It can very well end up as single player space playground of sorts, as well as some multiplayer thing!
- I've also decided to stop hiding away my projects and share all the progress, even the smallest one, as I go along. Starting with day 1.
- I think this is also a great opportunity to try and find people interested it this sort of thing - a community - if I may be so bold. To test it with me, see what's missing and what can be build upon, and to discus all the space things.
That's about it for my motivation behind it. Now it's time for some facts about the game:
- Combat and ship movement inspired by Star Trek Online and Battlestar Galactica Online and a few other games, including... Homeworld
- As mentioned before, I have absolutely no idea where I'm going with it, sure I know what I would like to include, but I have no end goal in mind - not yet anyway, and don't intend to force one
- Neither do I know how much will be added / how long will it be developed
- Which means a looooot of experimentation and a lot of pivoting during development
- I will work on it as time allows and consider it I-will-add-a-line-of-code-when-I-have-5-minutes type of project - in other word I would like to have a steady pace of development, but with small steps
- I will share a link to a new build every time there is something new to play with (gameplay or audiovisual-wise)
- As for the graphics (models), for now, I will exclusively stick to default Unity cubes (and perhaps spheres or other Unity primitives) and see how much can I do with them
Having, for a change, no goal to be reached and no time-table to stick to is surprisingly relaxing!