Couldn't you just not make a gigantic universe? Whats wrong with an average size universe?

Its not the size that makes a game anyway. There are several games with small environments that are extremely popular. And there are some crappy, cliche MMOs with massive towns to explore.

"How does one turn that empty space into a fun place to virtually visit?"

This is all you need to worry about. Make your game as large as you can while keeping it fun and your game will succeed.

Don't add space to your game if its not going to be put to good use.

I'm in love with the same concepts and have been hording this to myself for years. It's too big for me to handle alone anyway.

Here is my idea for "Outpost Byond: The long night".

byond://76.121.170.119:8802

Take a look around. You should be logged in as admin so please don't do anything destructive. I assume that I can reasonable trust the few folks that appreciate your blog.

There are a lot of bugs... I may have to reset the world in order for you to experience the ground view after people have mucked with things.

My infinite universe concept:
http://www.byond.com/members/Tsfreaks/files/Outpost.PNG"

Not that each "space" view is something like 12x12 squares and each square navigates to a new view.

The lowest level zoom (right now) is "ground view" where you see a side scrolling view of the planets surface. This is where players build their bases and mine for resources. You literally will dig into the depths of dirt to both mine and find rare resources. The resources are random as well as the dangerous pitfalls of mining. The more techs you get the easier it becomes.

Zooming out from ground to space.
1. Ground View (dirt)
2. Planet Surface View
3. Solar System View (star field with a couple planets)
4. Galaxy View (star field)
5. Universe (star field)
repeat #5. the more a player zooms out. It goes on forever. The first player to zoom out (or in) (FTL jump) from any given view will create the new one.

Every view is dynamically generated and saved. Each view is just a map that we load, save, and unload as needed. The Universe is only ever as big as it needs to be yet it is infinitely large.

In order to go deeper into space, you would require FTL for local system, and then require jump gates for galaxy jumps.

There are a couple spins on the story for this game.

Humans discover FTL technology and corporations start exploring the local regions. While finding no new signs of life, they do discover a wealth of resources and so the greed race begins.

As a new player, you start out on Earth and are contracted to build up a mining colony ship. Upon success, you shove off into space where you must use various Jump Bases to reach the nearest Jump Gate. Before you leave, do know that you owe Corporation <blah> a ton of money for funding your operation. This debt (with interest) will need to be paid off.

You have the option at this point to jump to one of many starting locations.

You do, and the game helps you touch down on your starting planet in your starting solar system.

Starting locations are protected by corporate space stations which patrol the local region and keep pirates away.

Your safe to build up your initial mining colony and eventually build your self up. With enough research and resources, you can start building more space ships and conquer the local solar system.

After a while and many objectives completed, you will be able to move on to more dangerous missions outside of your safety zone.

The farther you go, the more the game becomes less about micro management. Players can choose a life of rare resource hunting, pirate hunting, war mongering, corporate expansion (political), and etc.

In deep space, life is dangerous and the corporations are constantly battling.

You can choose to join one of many existing corporations (guilds or AI driven) efforts and expand and conquer or you can skip out on your debt and join the pirates.

As a pirate. life can be tough because you don't have the corporate protection and anyone can legally attack you and be rewarded for it.

I'll end up writing a mile long design spec here so I'll shorten this up.

Alien AI that hates humans and is constantly attacking and pushing back which makes expansion more exciting.

A guild of pirates can attack the corporate guild space stations (monstrous HP and fire power) and essentially permanently destroy it and the corporation. If your corporation falls, it is disbanded and leaving you without protection.

Very rare artifacts (relics) can be dug up and have special meaning. They have end game potential when brought together so pirates will be all over this.

What else...

Perhaps clones which prevent you from losing everything.

I want to add the ability to become political so you can have corporate voting, espionage, spying, corruption, and power.

There are an infinite amount of directions you can go. The simplest is to just start with a simple space/resource game like space4k.

The one thing that separates my vision from other space games is the ability to really build up a base and to actually mine and search for resources.

A couple other wants. Total freedom to completely design and sell ships using common or rare technology.

Oh yeah, one last random idea. You can supply your custom designed ships to the war front (ongoing behind the scenes number crunching) and if your ships do well, you get rewarded by more orders. The war reports will reveal your designs as others see and learn about them. You may even get attacked by pirates (or other corporations) who intend to steal your blue prints or resources.

When you play with the "demo", get to a ground view and then try to build some stuff. If you can envision what it would be like to have complete design freedom and to also picture an attack that leaves various part of your building on fire, destroyed, but not all of it.

Anyway... its easy to dream isn't it. :)

ts

Geldonyetich wrote:

That sure is pretty darn close to my wavelength on the matter! I'll check that out right now.

Cool.

I just thought of an awesome new idea that never occurred to me before. You can build base components underground and thus protect and hide yourself from pirates and corporations. :)

Geldonyetich wrote:

Having taken a look at it just now, very cool interface, though I'm embarassed to admit I can't seem to get it to do anything. ;)

I'm talking a bit early here since I'm right now in mid-concept and might change my mind again in 10 minutes, but I'm thinking of revising Planetbreakers concept to be, instead of a Dwarf-Fortress like game where the players give orders from afar to their colonists, instead being a game where the players are individual colonists and they're all crew aboard the same ship.

In some ways, it's a bit less interesting than the cool concept of being an independent entity in the universe (space merc, corporate agent, pirate, whatever). In other words, it's a lot more interesting, as we've the potential for a real Star Trek-like vibe of serving aboard a ship exploring the universe.

Well... looks like its hanging...
Let me reset it.

Probably my bad. I think one of the first commands I tried was a "get info on all objects" or somesuch, and that might have caused it to go off on a loong tangent of generating info.

Yeah, avoid the admin commands and just try navigating through the interface. Not the best way to demo and I apologize for that.

Geldonyetich wrote:

Heh, I built a little building on a planet. It doesn't do much yet, but I have to say that was a cool experience.

Cool. Each building type would have some base requirements but then you could build them above and beyond that however you wanted. Each part would cost you a little something.

My aim is to make it so upgrading a building requires research, then resources, and then the manufacturing of the building part, AND THEN, you get to place that part (at cost), onto your existing structure. At which point, the building then reaches Level 2 status (as an example).

An example of one core component might be an atomic power cell. You can manufacture or purchase one from your corporation (or black market if your willing to take some chances). Some buildings might require multiple.

I think this makes building a real adventure that has potential for "feel-good" pay outs. There are a lot of "Objectives" which can come into play as you work toward building high-end buildings.

Consider the research facility you have been using to obtain new techs. Your one of the lucky few to score a rare relic and when attached to your research facility, it increases your chances of obtaining rare alien technology.

Now, imagine the pride you might feel in just your research facility knowing it is unique and exceptional.

ts

Oh, that's a cool idea, so basically you're customizing your own facilities by hand-building them out of components you build/find/research/ect.

As what I have is a somewhat RPG-like focus, a similar thought occurred to me today in that the planets essentially serve the purpose of being customized into factories, and these factories determine the quality of equipment the player characters get, and so each player has a vested interest in expanding their planetary holds as well as defending the ones they already have.

I have a largely top-down view and, at the moment, only a single planet. I'm trying to think of a way to bridge the players from planet to planet without losing that sense of space which can be important to an RPG, and this is where the idea of having a single ship that all the players on is coming from.

Basically, I'm thinking it might play out a bit like a universe-roving kind of tower-defense game, with random attacks from hostile alien fauna taking the place of the Creeps and the stakes being the holdings that the players put together.

But, again, this is an idea that is still so up in the air that it might change again in 10 minutes.

That's my thinking as well.

On the grandest level, I was thinking the map would be handled something like this:

1) Space level: Solar system and warp point mechanism. (Similar to the Space Empires series.) It's a relatively nice mechanism in that the gameplay centric aspects are well presented for a tile-based map similar to BYOND's. Player presence is represented via ships.

2) Planetary level: Somewhat planetary-map based, likely just a square map representing an accessible section of planet. Player presence is represented via vehicles.

3) Complex/Personal level: More or less the common level you'll see in a BYOND RPG, with the players controlling player characters and navigating a personal map.

However, the trouble with having all three levels is that I essentially need to code activities for each level of the map. You end up creating three games in one, and the game is as weak as the weakest game in the pile.

So, currently, I'm thinking I might just take the Space and Planetary levels out entirely, and have 100% of the game played on the complex/personal level. At most, I might have some interactive panels that briefly take the player to an alternate perspective. For example, you walk up to a panel in a ship that gives you a solar system view so that you can select the destination.

A full crew system certainly hasn't hurt Space Station 13, which has apparently made the entire game out of being the crew. (We'll overlook that it has become a greater draw to simply kill everybody off in a grisly and/or hilarious manner.)

I'm looking into introduce a bit more context than that. Not merely a craft floating in space hoping to survive a scenario, but rather a craft floating in space which has a whole persistent-state virtual world attached to it.