Thats was an incredible post Smithy. Incredible.
Soooo, last night, TEAM DINO nutted out this dirty design doc. What it is, is a space subsistence farming, resource management sim, occuring in your home solar system. This is somewhat ambitious, and theres alot of things on this list which wont make it. But you know, game designs do start out big and get watered down as time/money decreases. Consequently, there is little to no animation, where possible things run on basic simulations and graphically everything will be basic, yet pretty, sprites. The game enjoyment factor will basically rely on its core mechanics of movement being totally awesome. No pressure Rob.
We also have a fair few years of commercial game dev experience between us which may either help us or be blurring our glorious vision.
Basic Goals: Feed yourself
Power ship
Maintain ship
Create Crops
Maintain/harvest crops
Feed Wife
Breed Family
Feed Family
Navigate and Discover New Lands, Asteriods, Moons
Feed other Families on Strange Planets
Shoot Down Rogue Asteriods!!
Three farmables: * wood
* crops
* animal
Growth:dynamic automatic growth and breeding. sped up with fertilizer. Wood slowest, animals second, crops fastest.
Harvesting:fly to planet, walk to unit, press x, animated icon or something as unit automatically delivered to ship, (or manually carry to ship, might be boring, maybe a carrying limit of 5units. thats three loads if ship takes 15 units. MATHS)
Ship:Can store 15 units of your choice. (Animal, crops, wood, poo, fertilizer or mince.)
Storage:In order to store more units you may build (on spare moon or planet which you transport goods too)
* woodhouse
* granary or woeva
* compost heap (process poo for fertilizer)
* butchery (processing for mince)
Home Planet: Wife, breeding family, shop (seeds, baby animals, maybe exchange point?!)
Unit Usage Guide: Wood:
ship repairs (ship made of wood), fuel for ship (woodfired ship), building (fences, storehouses, family dwellings?)
Crops:
eating, feeding family, other planets? inefficent fuel for emergencies (x2 consumption rate or woeva)
Animal:
fertilizer (poo + compost heap), mince (animal + butchery)
Basic External Influences For Resource Consuming Events:* bad weather - destroy, kill, crops and animals largescale
* asteriodal impacts
* hunger - animal feed, home planet family feed, other planet feed?
* ship damage - requires wood repair
* ship fuel - woodfired ship
* crop care - requires ferilizer to increase growth.
* plus wotevar else
Feeding, Fertilizing and Building ActionsOccurs by travelling to planet with required resources on ship and selecting required action from menu or whatever, Item automagically appears on planet in wotevar location is free. Maybe if buildign you must exit ship. Anything thats quick and easy, doesnt require extra bits.
Extra We Don't Have Enough Time As It IS BUt WOuld Be Awesome Possibilites:* extra storage space to increase ship loads
* engine upgrades (using rare random metals picked up on iron asteriods?!)
* gun upgrades
* shoot down asteriodal impactoids
* some planets out of fuel range without ship upgrades
* fence a planet - requires wood (planet divided up into sections automatically with fences - consumes x units of wood) each section houses only one farmable
* stop off at home planet to breed with wife when ready
* building extra dwellings for new offspring
* truck deployable from ship which lets your ride aroudn planet and load it up with harvested goods before returning to ship with full load (EXTREEEME)
Soooo thats that. Here is a total art test mock up done in Maya. The ship is totally placeholder and the planet is cropless. Its actually a screenshot from a hardware render, which i might post later.
