Spaceship manager

Today we had another presentation, but this time only focusing on our chosen concept. I wanted to take the time to post some pictures that was created during the week. One of our first choices after settling on a concept, was to choose an art style. After a weekend of everyone in the group gathering art and pictures from everything and anything, we all sat down and agreed on Steam punk being our art style of choice.







The ship

Project concepts

Time for an update

The last week has been all about writing three project proposals that today where presented to the class for some feedback.

All three project proposals are games set in space, developed mainly for PC. We will be developing the game in XNA which may allow us to port it to XBox.

Concept one

The first concept is basically a regular space combat game seen from a first person perspective. Unlike previous games in this genre, where the NPCs are basically just tools, the focus would be on the other characters in your squad and the interaction between them. In the game you would take the role of a pirate or bounty hunter and fly on missions with the squad. To maximise the chance of success you would have to take command and give tactical orders. This could backfire though, because if the other characters in your squad don't trust and respect you they will refuse to follow your command. There wouldn't be any strict hierarchy in the squad but the characters would have different personalities. Some would be the leader type, some would be good team players and some would be lone wolves. In the beginning there would already be a leader type character in your group and you will have to increase your reputation before you can start giving orders yourself.

Concept two

Concept two is a trade and diplomacy game set in space. The player establishes trade stations on different planets and space stations. He can then establish trade routes between his different trade stations, as well as trade with other characters, all in real time. The player needs to develop his relationship with the other characters to be able to trade with them or establish trade stations, factories or similar on their planets. This is done through dialogue, gifts and other similar interactions. The non player characters will attempt the same thing the player is, namely to expand their trade empires by developing relationships with other races and factions. In other words, the game world will change if left alone. The game uses a tactical overview with iconic ships and similar, all done with symbolic distances.

Concept three

For the third concept our idea is a kind of the Sims in space, but without the furniture, no making babies, and no dressing up. What we wanted to do is show the inside of a space ship from a top down 3D view. The game would involve two phases, it would start with a phase where the player would, with a given budget, recruit a crew. This would be done with a list of proposed people looking for work, and showing the player a file on each. The files would contain all the information about the person, his experience, what ticks him of and what makes him happy. So a rookie would have few experiences, leaving his resume thin and not very informative, which would be reflected in the price to recruit him. That in contrast to the older experienced person, whom would cost a lot more, and a lot more would be known about him.

When a crew is recruited the player enters the second phase by going on a mission. The mission could be a mining run or trading goods in various parts of space. The control over the crew and ship is only through the captain, and done by giving orders to the crew. There is a big social aspect to this part of the game which is the crew members interacting with each other. One whistling might cause someone else to go mental, or one being happy might lift the mood of everyone around him. The trick will be for the player to think a lot when recruiting people, finding ones the fit together and cooperate well. If not the player will get problems quickly with crew members going insane. When the mission is done, and the player is rewarded, the player can again recruit more people for the crew and upgrade the ship.

Our choice

We have chosen to work with the third concept. A large draw is just being able to experiment with the behaviour of the crew, and how to make that interesting. Another focus will be on designing "crisis situations" that can start during a space voyage. These situations could be anything from an alien life form boarding the ship, being attacked by hostile ships, some mysterious anomaly in the space time continuum causing the crew to age in reverse, or anything else stupid we can think of. The situation would play out as a kind of game in the game, where the main goal is to give the player a lot more to do.

Ahead of us we have creating a project plan, and working out all the details and requirements for the game. Next week we are going to again present for the class, but this time only the one selected idea. Til then we hope to have some concept art and much more details on the game.

First!

Alright! This is the developer blog for Project Dao.

What, Dao? like the philosophy?

Not really. Project Dao is a student project being performed at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden. It is a project within Game Design and focuses on creating a game that involves character interaction on a non-trivial level. What this means is that the player should be able to interact with npc's in a way that is less scripted and more natural. The npc's should also be able to interact with each other in such a manner.

As this is being written we are in the process of actually deciding what we should do from three loosely defined concepts.

We intend to update this blog on a regular and frequent basis with our progress, problems and thoughts and hopefully the next entry will detail the chosen game concept.