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[Qwerku]

The embarrasingly very super early beginnings of Spacemind is now up for my fellow TIGSourcers!

Link to pre-alpha 2021 version: https://www.roblox.com/games/6828060450/Spacemind

Discord server link


Defunct 2019 version: https://qwerku.github.io/Spacemind [Play in Browser]
(Game is intended for computer+mobile but web is easier to start with)

Spacemind will be a sandbox space game and will be about your character fighting, traveling, exploring, cooking, dancing, falling in love, and generally living life on spaceships and on procedurally generated planets with NPCs and/or other players. I intend for it to feature:

• -DragonballZ-ish Action-RPG combat (Skill-based, classless)
• -Build/place/destroy/take objects on planets & spaceships (probably able to terra-form as well)
• -Hyperjump across space to explore an arbitrarily large number of different locations/encounters/planets (FTL-style)
• -Multiplayer capable (X number of players can visit a planet/location at a time)
• -NPC Interaction (Romance, companions, ranks)
• -Custom Player-made objects & animations
• -Wide variety of non-combat skills to gain power/money/ability/prominence in the universe without fighting
• -Single player story (eventually)

The scope of the game is extremely ambitious and will continue to scale up to a Star-Citizen level of feature creep and broken promises, I'm sure. The game will forever remain free-to-play, and there will eventually be an in-game store for purchasing animations/items. My intention is to let players decide how Spacemind monetizes itself once it matures/stabilizes and it's clear that I can continue to work on it full time.

Join the discord server to keep up with updates, as the game is changing daily now that prototyping and prelim testing are complete.

This release is v0.0.8a with a lot going on under the hood but not much to show for it.
You can follow my blog as I make progress at https://qwerku.blogspot.com/

Thanks for reading, and enjoy!

[Qwerku]

So after pouring over animation and multiplayer timing issues, I'm scrapping and re-architecting Spacemind. v0.0.8a was just too singleplayer focused.  I just made this menu concept to guide my thinking:



One step forward, three steps backward.  *Sigh*

[EberKain]

not exactly sure what I'm supposed to do in it atm.  I really like the audio track that is playing. 

[Qwerku]

Outside of going to the planet and wandering around, nothing else was included in v0.0.8a.  I was going to add more features, but I've gotten bogged down with recoding the game with multiplayer.

Once I've made it so that you can wander around with your friends by yourself or by connecting to the MMO server (which is what I'm doing now and is the hardest part by far), I'll add traveling to other planets, inventory, and combat.  There's also an animation system I plan to include early on that's mostly done where you can customize your avatar and its animations.

[jbarrios]

Hey Querku,

I played your game.  I recorded the video and my thoughts:

[Qwerku]

Thanks for playing with so much patience, jbarrios.  You figured out pretty quickly that the game is all left-click based.

You hit a lot of bugs on just your first playthrough. Really sorry about that! It made me wince and cringe every few seconds. I've already fixed the teleporter and movement bugs you encountered, but the biggest issue you saw is framerate.

The framerate was also pretty bad for me when I recorded and played. When not recording my sessions, WebGL seems to do between 15 and 30 fps, whereas my PC build with a low end PC was 110 fps.

I have a few tricks up my sleeve to get the framerate up, but the web version is definitely the black sheep out of the platforms I'm considering.

Hopefully by summer I'll have a bit more to show off, as development is still a lot of underware at the moment.

[Qwerku]

I'm stuck trying to figure out how/where new players should start when they join someone else's server.  Starting on a random planet doesn't seem right, and auto-joining someone else's ship seems like an invitation for griefing, especially on a public server.  Spaceships also will require significant resources to build, so I don't want to auto-spawn ships for people to appear on either.

This is a tough nut to crack. I'm afraid I won't have any updates on the multiplayer end of Spacemind until I figure this out.

[Qwerku]

UPDATE: The release isn't going to happen just yet. There clearly needs to be quite a few more fixes and stress-testing before a general release.  I'll post back here once some more playtesters have had a crack at it.

I plan to release a new version of Spacemind today. I was about to release it, but the space station isn't communicating properly with spaceships, which aren't communicating properly with planets.

Once I get everything ironed out, I'll post it here.

The code and platform for this version of Spacemind are brand-new, but the concepts and overall goals for the game are relatively unchanged from a year ago, except that I have made some technical accomplishments to eventually pave the way for:

• Space combat and space travel  (player co-op crews)
• World Persistence  (MMO)
• Large (100+) number of Players/NPCs per ship/world

[Qwerku]

Pre-alpha launch is today. Since I'm still developing Spacemind by myself, I decided to switch the game to Roblox last year in order to save time.  The concepts/goals of the game haven't changed, and almost all of the ideas have been successfully tested separately in prototypes. Now the work of throwing all of the concepts together into one giant, workable ball begins. The game is now multiplayer but has a MOBA lobby/round style to it. Once the database work is ported over to this version of the game, more player & planet data can be saved at scale, and the game can transition into being a true persistent MMO where each planet is a permanent place.

Pre-Alpha Game link:
https://www.roblox.com/games/6828060450/Spacemind

Discord server for the game:
https://discord.gg/WRZxgMXApy


Game description:
Travel and defend the galaxy with others on a starship. Save the people of countless worlds from the evil Octavians and earn a place in the Aevan Starfleet. Let your deeds be forever recorded into the planets of Spacemind!

Pilot the ship, fire the ship's lasers, or teleport to the surface and protect the innocent from the Octavians with your trusty laser crystal!

Coming soon:
-Repairing ship systems and NPC controlled ships!
-Improved NPCs

Planned features:
-Permanent, procedurally generated universe with space travel
-Building on planets (house building unlocked on planets you've freed)
-Room decorations that give stat buffs
-Ship upgrades and VIP personal ships
-Resource gathering
-Space combat, planet combat, & space-to-planet combat
-Realistic avatars
-Space stations and shuttles
-Player joining Aevan or Octavian faction
-Galaxy-wide conflict updated in real-time with rewards for the season winner
-and much more!

Made by StarTroop Inc.  (single dev)

[Qwerku]

pre-alpha version 0.0.21 is now released to the public. The big changes here are:
1) Bad NPCs now control the bad spaceship
2) Changes to space travel (5 permanent planets to start with) Players can engage GravLeap on the spaceship to reach their desired destination.
3) Database saving. Player levels and their earned crystal from planet victories are saved (leveling up grants you extra skill points on subsequent planet battles).

The planets are no longer randomly generated instances but are permanent, dedicated places. Which buildings are good/bad is not yet saved but will be soon.

The next version will allow players to choose if they want to play on the good or bad faction, so once that's done, PvP should finally be possible across all 5 planets in space and ground simultaneously.