When I first started out on this project, I knew right away that I wanted to do something relatively simple. I knew from previous digital art classes that even a simple 3-4 level sidescroller would probably require more time that I felt comfotable with in the scope of a single term, especially with other classes or projects I would be doing at the same time. A simple menu-based simulation game was my initial idea, as I wanted to work more with the variable behind the scenes. An oregon-trail style management game made in flash seemed like a good way to get started on making a fully-playable from start to finish game.
Before the class begun, I already had a rough outline of what I wanted my game to be about in my head. The year would be 21XX, and the play would be in chanrge of a manned expedition to the moons of saturn with the intent to establish a colony there. In addition to the simple fuel and supply management, I also wanted to have rpg-style random battles and events (With classes determining your crew’s abilities, i.e. soldiers would have good attack power, medics could heal, etc.), an asteroids-style mining minigame, and possibly some rail-shooter sections as well.
I didn’t expect all of it to be finished by the end of the class. I knew right away that I would be better to focus entirely on just having the game playable from start to a definite end point. The other mechanics would be represented, but mostly as placeholder or window-dressing in reltion to the main game. Just letting the play pick their crew, buy supplies, and travel to saturn would be good enough. I also wanted to use my own drawings for the game, in order to show off my skills with illustrator and photoshop.
The first class or two went smoothly. I had already planned out some basic mechanics and drew up a title screen, the rest should go prefectly, right? Well, it was here that I hit a real snag. One of the first things I wanted to have the player do in the game was type in the names of their crewmembers and have the game save that information as a variable. The idea was that the player would simply click on the box with the desired crewman’s name, and type something in. Now, I’ve made some simple action games in flash before, in a high school class, but just being able to tell the game to put “clickable text box that the player can write something in that is then saved to this variable” on the screen at a specific location was a nightmare for me. So many arrays and scripting classes and telling the program to load this before than and so on was far more than I was capabe of handling, despite my past experience with scripting and making simple games with creator programs like Little big planet and Spore.
Thankfully Miles and I quickly found an alternative program called GameSalad, a freeware program used for making simple iphone-style games. Being able to work out programming and inputs through a simplified menu was a tremendous help. This way, I could make entire menus and gameplay sections in a single class period, when it otherwise could have takens weeks to make even a singe screen in flash. The program is so amazingly idiot proof that you could probably make an entire game entirely out of stolen Oblivion and HalfLife screenshots!
(I wouldn't recommend it though.)
The next thing I set off to do was work on the traveling and fuel consumption rates. I wanted to have different levels of speed available to the player, with higher speeds consuming more fuel.I also wanted to have the player be able to research different upgrades and gameplay bonuses using “materials”, though this was not fully implemented in the “final” version. A basic shop screen was also made at this time, with the player having the opportunity to buy extra fuel and supplies before they set off. Items such as ship defenses or shield generators could also be bought. I also came up with an alithogram for having semi-random events that took place while traveling, with the player having multiple choices on how to approach them. (For example, being attacked by raiders would have the choices of fighting them, trying to evade them, or simply bribing them off.)
Something that Miles suggested I have was some kind of visual indicatior of the ship’s traveling. While I had an overall progress map drawn out, it definitely could have been more animated. Given them simplistic nature of the project, I decided to use a graphic of scrolling LED lights. They would be laid across the map screen between each major desitination (Moon – Mars – Ceres – Europa – Titan), with only the “section” you were in lit up. I actually used a Nintendo 3DS “game” called Inchworm Animation to make the sprites. It felt so fun to be able to use an actual game device for making my own game! I did have to touch it up a bit on the computer first, but it worked how I needed it to.
All in all, there were still a lot of things I wanted to do before time started getting short. I ended up having to stop the game short at Mars, since that opening section was what I had been focusing on primarily. Even now, there’s still a lot I wished I could have implimented, such as the mining minigame, or a primitive RPG battle system, (No flashy supernova moves though, you’ll wreck the ship!), or even just specific rewards or penalties for the events. Working on this game right up to the final in-class demonstration, I definitly can understand why games like Duke Nukem Forever and Final Fantasy 13 (The sci-fi one with the overly-linear maps) turn out so mediocre. Still, I think I learned quite a bit about “actual” game development, and I want to continue work on the Hyperion Project after this class. Who knows, maybe we’ll see it on the apple store someday!
