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[Sirian]

I'd like to share a project that i've been thinking about and working on for quite some time now, i called it Space Colonization so that people know what it's about just from the title.

I started this over 3 years ago, but couldnt find the proper motivation to make any serious progress, so it remained a dead project until i decided to revive it several weeks ago, to prove myself that i was able to do it.

Most of the previous work was on the scenario, game mechanics and such, so it was mostly text about how this and that should work.

To turn it into a game, I decided to use Game Maker 8, after giving XNA Game Studio 4 a try, because even though it's not a really optimal tool, it allows me to quickly turn my ideas into actual working software, which is the most important thing for me, at least for now.

Ok, so you might be wondering what the game is about, well, you basically manage a human settlement in the sagittarius galaxy (at least that's the intended starting place for now), on a mildly hostile planet (atmosphere not breatheable and harsh temperatures), starting with a landed colony ship as your main base of operations, and millions of humans in cryogenic pods that you can revive as needed.

For the first alpha release, i intend to enable only basic surface operations, which mostly consist in building stuff like mines and factories, with very basic technology, and no access to space, but eventually i plan to have inter-galactic travel, space bases, and lots more.

The focus of the game is on an elaborated tech tree, with many technologies to unlock as you explore, analyse and build new things, ranging from simple upgrades to new physics theories. The game itself is in 2d, wich obviously is way simpler for a first project, but unlike many 4x games, i intend to make something that ranges in scale from RTS-like buildings and operations (starcraft style), to colonizing hundreds of planets (actually unlimited but it could become hard to manage for both the user and the game after some point, although i have a couple solutions for that in mind, in a distant update).

For now, i make all the art assets myself, as simplistic placeholders, so if someone is interested in drawing sprites for the game after the first couple releases, please let me know.

Oh and i should probably have mentionned that earlier, but the universe will be procedurally generated as realistically as possible.

The few unrealistic things will be the planet sizes, because real planets are so freaking huge, so a planet like earth will "only" have a surface of 300 000 km˛ (510 000 000 km˛ in reality), and because of the 2D, there will be 1000 times less stars in a galaxy than in reality, (which is still huge, but that's why it takes place in a dwarf galaxy, so as to reduce the scale of things to a reasonable level).

I don't want to promise too much(ok, too late for that one) and not deliver, so i won't elaborate on the possible features, but please, if you have any questions, ask away, and feel also free to make suggestions/comments and such.

And because i know we all want pictures to see what it's really like, here's a quick (half resolution) screenshot of the surface view as it is now (subject to lots of change of course):

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Sirian]

placeholder for future updates

[klingon13524]

Millions shipped to a single planet? Make it more like hundreds or thousands of cryopods.

[Sirian]

Millions shipped to a single planet? Make it more like hundreds or thousands of cryopods.

It's actually something i thought about, but the scenario explains it : thousands of those huge colony ships were launched because earth was starting to get overpopulated (like tens of billions too much people), but that's only part of the plan, there's also some science fiction related to the fact that you end up in another galaxy, and on a planet not suitable for life. The idea is that you must find a way to get off the starting planet with most of your colonists still frozen, and find a earth-like planet where to establish yourself. Numbers in the millions are necessary to provide a steady output of population (i've done the math, and with realistic reproduction rates, you need millions of colonists if you don't want to wait ages before colonizing other planets). Also, i tend to think that only hundreds of colonists means a severe rate of inbreeding, and we don't want that.

[NRDL]

This looks awesome, will humans be the only species in the universe or will there be aliens?  The more important question is, if there are aliens, how do you interact with them? 

It would be cool if you could give a more detailed summary of your plans, instead of just saying it's a colonizing game.  I have to admit, I've always wanted to try a 4x game, and your game-in-the-making seems like it can deliver.  Good luck, and live long and prosper ( yes I'm a sort-of-trekkie ). 

Oh, and posting to watch. 

[Sirian]

This looks awesome, will humans be the only species in the universe or will there be aliens?  The more important question is, if there are aliens, how do you interact with them? 

It would be cool if you could give a more detailed summary of your plans, instead of just saying it's a colonizing game.  I have to admit, I've always wanted to try a 4x game, and your game-in-the-making seems like it can deliver.  Good luck, and live long and prosper ( yes I'm a sort-of-trekkie ). 

Oh, and posting to watch.

To be honest, i intended to give a more detailed explanation, but i was afraid to write a huge wall of text on the opening post, because there's a lot to be said. That's why it's probably better to ask questions like you did, so that i can give direct answers.

Concerning the aliens, they are planned, but in a later version, as they're not central to the game. I plan to have sort of NPC factions occupying some parts of space, and react to the player's actions (though trade, combat, etc). They will have different technology than yours, and some will be at war with each other. If you manage to get your hands on alien technology, you will be able to reverse-engineer it to some extent, and gain new technology otherwise unavailable. You might also find archeological remains of alien civs, on occasion, but it'll probably require high levels of scanning technology to find them.

You'll also have to research an alien language after the first contact to be able to interact with them in a non-violent way.
Oh, and depending on their biology, they will have different standards concerning the planets they occupy.

[NRDL]

Once again, Awesome. 

[klingon13524]

So what's humanities way of traveling to another galaxy? Warp? Taking advantage of wormholes? Trillions of years of conventional travel?

[Sirian]

So what's humanities way of traveling to another galaxy? Warp? Taking advantage of wormholes? Trillions of years of conventional travel?

In fact, it depends. Your starting colony ship was slower than light, and as such it will have taken a long time (about 1 million years) to reach the sagittarius galaxy (if you do the math, that's travelling at 7% of light speed). This is why it's using cryogenic pods.

However, at some point you'll be able to discover faster ways of travelling through space, including several generations of hyperspace drives, and eventually building the equivalent of big stargates in space to link your main colonies. However, I don't plan on including natural wormholes, unlike many 4x games where each solar system has convenient gates linking it to other systems (i always found that very unrealistic).

Related to that, since many things are based on realistic numbers, and we don't want to wait realistic periods of time while things move around, everything in the game is 720 times faster than in reality. It means that 1 real second = 12 game minutes.
It all falls nicely into place so that 5 seconds = 1hour, 2minutes = 1 day, 1hour = 1 month, and 12 hours = 1 year (360days).

[thobal]

Millions shipped to a single planet? Make it more like hundreds or thousands of cryopods.

Also, i tend to think that only hundreds of colonists means a severe rate of inbreeding, and we don't want that.

Supposedly, someone ran the numbers and decided 200-300 would close to the minimum you'd want to take with you if genetic diversity was your only concern. Of course, frozen material and careful genetic screening would be prudent in case of undetected undesirable trait.

[Sirian]

According to a quick excel approximation i just ran, if your population has an average lifespan of 80 years and 6 kids per couple, you need almost 30 years to double your population. With 5 kids you need almost 40 years, and with 4 kids you need almost 60 years.

Considering the fact that one year in-game is 12 hours in reality, you'd still have to wait a freakin long time if you started with hundreds or thousands, and wanted to become an actual civilisation and not just a little town ^^.

Heck, even if you were a race where couples had one kid every year, with the offspring able to have his own children next year, and no mortality whatsoever, if you started with a thousand colonists, you'd still need 40 years (20 days of continuous playing) to populate a planet at earth's level (~7 billion people).

But yea, maybe hundreds are still ok as far as genetic diversity is concerned.

[_DivideByZero_]

I've used game maker before. It's quite a handy tool, perfect if you plan to learn java later on. I'm currently using java for my projects (or project... when I actually start... eh, never mind) but I've used game maker since 6.1 and stopped using it at around the time when 8 came out. It's definitely one of the most useful tools out there for creating a game with potential, though it isn't quite optimized enough for my tastes. I've made an RTS in it before. I find that you really have to balance the features you want with the scale of the game. If you have a few units that run a lot of code at once, that's fine. If you have hundreds of units running dozens of lines of code every frame, there's no way you can get 60fps without some optimization and culling of features, sadly. That's why my RTS died, and I've since then moved on to learning a language that doesn't impact your performance so negatively.

HOWEVER, that was back with 6.1 and 7. If Game Maker 8 is more optimized than the former, you probably don't have to worry as much.

That said, I wish you luck.
Also, how do you plan to do the graphics for this game? I have a bit of free time (At least until school starts) and I was planning to do some pixel art in the meantime. Maybe I can help out and get some practice in at the same time.

[x2yzh9]

Posting to watch. I've always wanted a game that focused on space colonization. Questions, however, from me are such; How long will it take to get out of the solar system? Personally I've always favored the very long time to get out of the solar system theory, maybe it should take av ery long time to research the necessary tech to cross into star systems? Ie. life support, electronics durability, anomaly damage control, etc. Either way, it looks like it will be fun when it's finished, and I can tell you right now I'll be following this all through development.

[Sirian]

x2yzh9> Actually that's exactly the plan ^^
To be more precise, i have sort of "technological ages", although it's more of the way i organized the core of the tech tree and decided to pace the game, not stuff ŕ la age of empires. There are 5 technological levels, and although there will be more and more stuff in each of them, you will still need to reach the 3rd "level" to be able to leave your home system. The first alpha release will feature only the first level of technology, which is about making steel, crude plastics, basic electronics and glass,build basic infrastructure, and also producing food, water and oxygen for your colonists. I won't spoil what you will find in the next tech levels, but suffice to say that you won't get the hyper-propulsion right away :p

_DivideByZero_> About game maker, i think it'll be ok, because most of the things will be static and i'm running it at 12 steps per second, also i'm trying to make it so that things like production and consumption are centralized around bases (your first base is the landed colony ship), and the production update is every 4 steps (3 times per second). Things could get out of hand if players built really massive and unoptimized empires, at this point i might migrate to something else if i feel there's really a need to.

If you want to make art assets, you're welcome to. Right now i'm using Paint.NET, which is surprisingly good. The first sprites i draw were really basic (colored squares with a text), but when i need to make new ones i'm now being a bit more creative. For instance, here is the last sprite i draw (the main base) :

The nice thing about game maker is that i can easily replace the current sprites with something more inspired, so if you or anyone else is interested in drawing them, send me a PM and i'll give you a list of stuff you can draw.

[Starver]

Your starting colony ship was slower than light, and as such it will have taken a long time (about 1 million years) to reach the sagittarius galaxy (if you do the math, that's travelling at 7% of light speed). This is why it's using cryogenic pods.

The way I read your explanation, I assumed the freakish accident had gotten your colony ship to this (presumably unintended) destination, and so with sub-light (or not quite good-enough FTL) engines, you're now stranded.  Anything from ST:Voyager first episode to something akin to the Stargate:Atlantis one.  Although the Red Dwarf setup plot-point might well apply.  Put it this way, there's plenty of reasons that can be re-used, so don't feel obliged to use any or too guilty to let yourself do so either...

The reason for the millions of settlers (in-potentia) could also be anything from "Earth is in danger, evacuate everyone" (give or take the overtones of Douglas Adam's implementation of this with the three ships, although that only just now occurred to me ) through to Earth (and probably the solar-system) just having so much in the way of Megacities that a couple of people in a neighbourhood deciding to take the option to emigrate could easily acrue some indeterminate number of millions of individuals, world-wide.  Assuming there isn't mass vacation of an overcrowded area for some reason.

The fact that you have the possibility of other settler ships could (assuming there actually wasn't so much in the way of freakish entry to this sector of the universe, or perhaps even then if the others got caught in the same phenomena but didn't necessarily end up in exactly the same place) provide the basis for your opposing civilisations, or at least creating pre-existing points of conflict between any extant aliens and humanity in general.

One tech-tree system I've been working on recently for something of my own (but I'm pretty sure it's not going to be unique, so I'm happy to push it out there anyway) is something that's actually more of a combined technical/political tree, and with a Rock-Paper-Scissors nature to it.

Spoiler: If you're interested... (click to show/hide)

Developing warlike/combative capabilities sends you out in a particular direction within the "tech cone", with two other directions being isolationist (largely a matter of defensive systems) and verdant (population and economic growth, including trading and colonisation).  Very much bowdlerised, this means that the isolationist civilisations keep hidden/protected from warlike ones, the economic ones ingratiate themselves even through the isolationist 'barriers' to contact and of course the warlike ones plunder the less militarily capable systems that are set up to not so much "expand" as "explode" out beyond their original worlds.

It's actually far more fine-grained than that (with a full-circle cycle encompassing concepts such as republics and democracies in one segment and warmongers vs hostile in another, with a continuum of similarity "only slight more/less warlike/isolationist/expansionist").

However, the nature of the tech-tree is that each viable technology has a position within that tree.  Shall we say "Hue, Saturation and Luminosity", because I was not a little influenced by the "colour cone" idea, when initially developing this.  The Hue-equivalent (yes, predictably red==war, green==verdency, blue==isolationist) is an indicator of the society that could best pursue this approach, so that it is easier for the warlike nation to develop more warlike tech, etc.  Saturation gives the degree to which this applies (there will be some 'grey' techs, or nearly so, which aren't within anyone's normal sphere of research, but neither are they totally outside of the norm, whereas a "severely cyan" tech might be difficult for the warlike race to pursue, or even attempt) and the Luminosity/Brightness/Value/whateveryouwanttocallit is a measure in the "futuretech" direction which means that when even when pursuing a tech that your society is heading in the right direction for, it may be beyond your conceptional horizon.  And the less-matched the 'colour' is, the closer to that level of tech you need to be before it comes into range.

It might be assumed that techs of an opposing flavour that you had already passed might be obtainable through contact (typically conquest, integration or spying for your basic R, G and B-flavoured civ) with a race that has them, but it may also be that having passed them by you've passed them by and you may never know the joys of a basic economic theory, or a  particular melee-combat weapon, or the concept of camouflage.  Whatever it is.

And, of course, by pursuing more tech-types of a given colour sends you further round the colour-circle in that direction (or part way across the grey centre where the Jack-of-all-trades-Master-of-none zone is) and affects your outlook (and interactions) accordingly.  Thus the warlike race can settle more and start building population and, or become more secretive and withdrawn.  Etc.  The repercussions for play might be that you lose the ability to maintain the MegadeathCannon you once strove towards, even while you gain the ability to consider even more tech within your new political and societal domain.

The above spoilered account isn't really relevant to the OP project (and a lot of the actual detail omitted and replaced by the bare concepts), but something you said reminded me of it, and I really need to get back to developing some of the other parts of the game which is itself a space-traversing one, though more of an individual ship's journey than a civilisation-encompassing plan... at least for the player, as the system also affects how the NPC civilisations represent themselves and interact with the player/each other, allowing asymmetric interactions both between neighbouring NPCs and NPC/player.