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[Nytician]

Overview AI.You

What is AI.You?

DISCLAIMER: Before you read please be aware that I’m learning C# as I go and while im picking bits of it up relatively quickly and not exactly working on a 3D game its still not a fast process and will take time, no deadline will be given however when I feel the game is in a playable state I’ll release an Alpha and start providing updates. – ALSO THE GAME IS NON-COMBAT! [Unless someone mods it in.] --- TEXT BASED, NOT ASCII!

AI.You is hard to define really so I’ll start with the genre, it’s aiming to be a Text Based [Think Old M.U.D Style but single player] Sandbox game, inspired from such games as Dwarf Fortress, Minecraft, The Sims, Runescape amongst others. The idea of the game is to unleash your imagination and allow you to construct ‘projects’, all of which you own. Projects can range from your own personal home, farm, garden and furniture etc to theme parks, ice rinks amongst others. [The idea being that I can add new projects and perhaps even adding tools for users to add projects, items, furniture and more themselves.] I like the Animal Crossing idea where you maybe go into world each day for 30 minutes and add a little more to the world, perhaps plant a few more plants, create a new chair, excavate some resources, ferment some wine etc. Of course I don’t want you to be limited by 30 minutes a day as this is by no means meant to be a casual game, but you should feel that your world is a constant work in progress.

Skills:

You will have skills that you can work on such as cooking, construction, farming, mining, handiness amongst others. I have yet to work out specifics but I don’t want you to feel like it’s a grind… (I must get 3 levels today to get access to this new chair kind of thing).

NPC’s

The AI! I think the world would get pretty boring if you created a wonderful house and had no one to share it with! As this is sandbox I plan on giving the user a bunch of different options to play with and allow them to decide what they want to do. For example: One of the tiles will start as an AI Town which you can visit and the AI first spawn there but eventually they can move out and you can create new houses for them etc.

Collectables

I enjoy this aspect from Runescape and The Sims 3 and also Minecraft to some extent… its fun to hoard stuff! I want you to be able to create rooms in your house to store items you’ve found or been given from AI, maybe one of the projects could let you build a ‘space craft’ and let you visit a different planet etc the possibilities are endless.

Modding/Expandability

Ok its just me creating this game right now, and I’m learning C# as I go so it will take time but the idea is that the game should be open for modding without breaking the game. Now I have no issues with allowing people to edit the code and source etc but I’ve seen this cause issues and unless I create an API its going to be hard to add stuff to the game without breaking what I release officially. However I do intend to help in some respects for example creating XML documents for certain areas so that the user can edit the data and maybe add new items and custom crafting recipes etc.

Release?

Ok this covers a few points. When I think the game is playable I will release an Alpha version, I’m not sure if I’ll release it cheap at say $2 and then increase the price to maximum of say $6 when the game is out of Beta or whether I’ll release it open source and do a donation based set up of getting it, I’ll make sure its fair and hopefully think of the best option.
As previously mentioned I will release the game when its in Alpha stage, what this means to me is that you can create a world and a save and you can do some of the basics like survival, create a simple ‘project’, harvest some crops from the land, chop a tree etc and gradually I’ll add to this and release new versions every so often. When the game has enough content to be enjoyably interesting to play I’ll put it into Beta, here I’ll continue as before adding new features, perhaps the space part will be done here, finally when I think we have some kind of ‘end game’ (it’s a sandbox like minecraft, I don’t intend to make it end with ‘you win’, more likely you gain access to a cool feature and everything else is stable), I will then release the game.  Development is intended to stop here though as I want to add more to the game as this really is my own personal dream… having a game that suites my needs completely not someone elses idea and of course people are free to mod and do what they like when they have the code.

Aaaaand breath.

Any questions?

Feel free to ask me or PM me, I’ll post screenshots and updates soon, but give me a while to get the basics down.

Progress Update:

Completed the basics of the text engine.
Currently working on: Tile Generation.

Side Note:  I know this is my first post and yes im advertising but I do actually play dwarf fortress, so I figured I might aswell post, feel free to move or remove if you don't think I should post here.

Thanks.

[Nomus]

I like this idea and will be keeping an eye on it.

[ductape]

though this should probably be in Creative Projects, since it is a creative project. Other Games is pretty much about discussing games and the gameplay of those games. If everyone who was "making their first game and learning as they go" posted their project in here, it would be a very different place indeed.

I wish you the best of luck on your project, my advice is to keep the scope manageable and finishable. Dont make DF on your first go, most first attempts at making a game never turn into anything playable. Keep that in mind and if you bite off something small you can complete, you wont fall into that category.

[Scelly9]

Sweet. This sound awesome.

[Nytician]

though this should probably be in Creative Projects, since it is a creative project. Other Games is pretty much about discussing games and the gameplay of those games. If everyone who was "making their first game and learning as they go" posted their project in here, it would be a very different place indeed.

I wish you the best of luck on your project, my advice is to keep the scope manageable and finishable. Dont make DF on your first go, most first attempts at making a game never turn into anything playable. Keep that in mind and if you bite off something small you can complete, you wont fall into that category.

Yup well I have a great IRC channel full of professionals helping me a long the way, but I don't have a deadline purely because I fully expect to recode things and alter everything, but the way I view it is that im starting small and building up. The game will begin as a simple survival and since its not DF im not using ASCII.

EDIT: I failed to mention that I have done basic programs before this one, this is just my first real project so to speak.

[Nytician]

Menu Interface.

Ok, so I've been working on random Tile Generation, the Text Engine and the save formats. Currently you can save but not load, im working on that.

Next on the list is to finish up the GUI, and make it so that the user can 'move' between tiles and the basic framework is then in place to add the more interesting features such as the early projects, resource gathering and keeping your 'you' alive.

Heres a quick screenshot of the Menu, feel free to comment, I don't know if I like the color scheme.. I wanted to save the brighter colors for when the user doesn't something good like planting, harvesting etc.

[ductape]

still think this thread belongs in creative projects. I would not like to see this section of the forum turn into a devlog situation.

[Deadmeat1471]

I'll keep my eye on this, looks interesting at the very minimum, promising!

*Also you probably might want to move it to creative projects, people on here have OCD for that sorta thing. Place a post here when its saleworthy or something though i'm sure that be fine.

[Sowelu]

Yeah, belongs in Creative for sure, but looking good so far!  Keep at it!

[Leatra]

It sounds interesting. I'll keep an eye on this one.

Good luck!

[Nytician]

Oh, thanks for all your comments! Yes I agree it does, wasn't sure at first. (It will be a devlog), if someone wants to move it feel free I don't know how!

EDIT: I now know how hah, didn't see the button. (Which is odd since I mod another game with SMF forums hah)

[Nytician]

Today I'm working on text wrapping (needed to be done at some point), after this I want to work out how to load the data efficiently back into the game which shouldn't be too hard. Yesterday I spent some time prototyping inventory, skills, projects etc and it looks like it will be quite interesting to see come together.

An example of this is the storage for items, I plan on having an items struct which will contain variables and a constructor to assign them. I will then proceed to store these using a storage class. I will store all the items in one List<items> and then create a storage method which will take in size of storage, name etc and use this universally for player inventory, house storage and any other places where I may want to store items (chests etc).

Everything is beginning to take shape but im holding off taking too many screenshots right now, partially because the content as of yet is rather boring but also because im changing a lot of things I want to wait till I have something interesting to demonstrate.

Thanks for your response.

Teaser image:

[fred1248]

Awesome. Keep up the good work. 

[Nytician]

Brief Update:

OK so the project is coming along rather well now! I've held off posting too many updates because I really want to show the more interesting features but unfortunately until the core game is in place I can't start coding the interesting stuff!

I ran into a wall because of loading and saving but now that' fixed and its rather quick right now with possibility for expansion later when needed.

The screenshot above shows the load screen (functionality only), I'm not worrying too much about presentation aside from basic color schemes right now because I want the game to actually do something first, but after that I'll hopefully make the GUI look a bit nicer.

Now I'd say I've more or less got the core in place, the text wrapper is done, the game load / save classes work well and the command handler is ready to accept an unlimited amount of new commands!

Next up as I think I mentioned before its going to be inventory and basic resources appearing dependant on the tile. After that it will be basic crafting and projects, with the idea being that all of these things should allow unlimited amounts of new items, projects, crafting recipes, tiles worlds etc. (For me and modders.)

Oh yeah! Something I was thinking about was how to make the game have more 'charm'. Because with a sandbox its about giving the player customizability so I don't want to take that away and create something linear. Instead I thought about having an 'EVENTS' system where things can happen in the world. Its meant to be tranquil so it wont be disastors etc, but anything interesting, perhaps 'mega projects' or anything really (ideas welcome).

Next update expect an array of pictures and less text, I want to show off the features. Shouldn't be too much effort to implement the inventory system etc because I've already been drawing out how im going to do it so it really is implementation only.

Thanks for your comments and support! Really enjoying this experience.

EDIT: Also increased window size.

[Leatra]

Keep going! It's nice to see some unique games. We already have a crapload of dungeon-crawlers.