[Make-a-Game] Do you ford the black hole, or caulk your spaceship and float it?

Xaviar

Soo.. Was watching SG-U the other day. (MAJOR SPOILERS)

The one where that angry guy kills himself, the annoying-ass fat guy sends himself into a coma, the cool science guy gets abandoned on a desert planet, and the everyman who runs the camera-thing starts to get a little jaded.

Good show, by the way. I really enjoy it. Unfortunately I only know all the characters by "that guy" and "that girl."

Anywho, I was thinking to myself... Gads this would make a cool-ass game. A bunch o' folks stranded on a ship with various random systems on the fritz, various other random systems nowhere to be found and it going out of control from one planet to the next, where you have a limited time to scrounge what you need, with some time between planets to explore, repair, etc inside the ship itself. Plus interpersonal drama and epic random events.

And the replay value could be huge, because there's no reason damned near -everything- can't be randomly generated.

So, I downloaded python, and started throwing together some generators because I didn't know where else to start.

Sidenote: Wow python is snazzy. Took me one night to hash out some stuff that would have taken a lot longer in c++. Also I love dictionaries. Made making my planet generator way easier.

So I've got a pretty slick generator going, I think. Some examples:

People and ships:

Captain Julianne J. Vasquez of the Angter
Captain Estella S. Aldridge of the Purerun Crashmorn
Captain Dianna A. Hand of the Gryphon Indignation Event
Captain Jane C. Eason of the Cosmos Axiom Allswing
Captain Ashley M. Hemphill of the Trensee Runner
Captain Damian A. Acevedo of the Nostalgia Intrepid
Captain Hester R. Manning of the Abandoned Nemesis
Captain Jenny A. Allred of the Elcrash Fartren
Captain Greta D. Diaz of the Sunpure
Captain Hester R. Manning of the Blue Icarus Dropana

Note that all of those middle initials actually have full names behind them. I wrote in a little config file, so I can have it (1,3,4) for what you see (first name, middle initial, last name) or I could do (1,2,4) (first, full middle, last) or (4,5,1,3) (last, comma, first, middle initial - Aldridge, Estella S.) or really any combination thereof. I guess if you really wanted you could make it (1,1,1,1,1,1) and you'd just get their first name over and over..

Any way..
Planets:

Coramma is a massive planet that is half tundra and that has some freshwater. It has several ancient satelites.
Ranovthu is a massive planet that is mostly volcanoes with pockets of grassland. It has several ancient satelites and five cratered moons.
Amsisi is a massive planet that is covered in forest.
Belpet is a average planet that is half tundra and that has some saltwater. It has a few ancient satelites and a moon.
Rapetarma is a small planet that is half tundra and that has some forest with pockets of saltwater.
Athuar is a medium-sized planet that is mostly grassland with pockets of forest and desert. It has wispy rings.
Olra is a massive planet that is mostly saltwater and that has some tundra. It has some beautiful rings.
Ramramamausi is a giant planet that is half desert and that is half forest. It has a large ring and a network of broken satelites.
Dreolcheder is a massive planet that is mostly grassland with pockets of tundra. It has a beautiful ring and a network of satelites and several giant craters.
Olsonok is a planet that is covered in grassland.
Oltortilalia is a miniscule planet that is covered in forest. It has a large ring.
Thusonthu is a miniscule planet that is covered in grassland. It has one malfunctioning satelite.
Astaterol is a small planet that is half forest and that is half grassland. It has two small moons.
Bermaolalco is a average planet that is half saltwater and that has some grassland with pockets of tundra. It has a wispy ring and a network of malfunctioning satelites.
Checook is a giant planet that is half grassland with pockets of freshwater.

The thing to note here is that while the description is generated with the planet, all of those features are tracked separately in the object, so you could set up random events with higher probabilities on planets with certain features.. Example, a higher chance of a meteor shower on a planet with several craters. Even higher if it has cratered moons too. Things like that.

Also it's easy as pie to add more words and word-parts and biomes and features to any of the dictionaries for the above.

Now I'm actually pretty dang pleased with myself.. But I don't really know where to go from here. I was tempted to start genning stats for the people, ships, etc.. But I want to get a framework to put those stats into first, so that I'm not making the framework fit the stats, I'm making stats that make sense as I add features.
(for instance, I plan on making food and air toxicity tolerances for the people.. each person a little different.. but maybe you can pick up alien crew members later who might be radically different, and need rebreathers on the ship or something...)

Anyway, I guess what I'm really looking for are suggestions of what direction I should head in.. What I need to do next.

This isn't going to be a ridiculously fancy thing. I guess the picture in my head is pretty much a randomly-generated choose-your-own-adventure. "The situation is this: xxxx You have lots of options here: xxxx The result is: xxxxx Which presents a new situation: xxxxx"

[edit]
Wow.. There were a lot of ancient satellites in that batch.. Usually it's more random than that.. I didn't look, just copy/pasted.. I'll gen some more quick and see if I can't show a bit more variety.

Molybdenum

We no longer speak of the.... Gryphon Indignation Event.

Sounds like procedurally generated oregon trail. Following that ... trail ... you could start by having a starting and ending point: you have a vision of what is ultimately a large middle section. What happens at the end, and how do you get started? Maybe a space age Independence, Missouri is in order. Divide your crew possibilities into races and classes. Give the player the choice between military- or corporate- sponsored ventures and independent prospecting.

Again using the Oregon Trail model, or maybe more like Fallout- what do you work towards? Exploration itself is fun and all, but I think you might want to limit it. Set a 75-planet limit before you inevitably have to return to start [if you have enough fuel and the ship is still functional, of course]. Make a lost treasure somewhere in the galaxy that you have to find in a certain amount of time, with clues on each planet.

Xaviar

Eheh.. That one sounds more like a band to me than a ship

But yeah, I was actually thinking I wanted a randomly-generated origin, a military crew would interact differently than a civilian one, for instance.

But actually I think I like better the idea of getting to pick. I'd like to have multiple goals.. I wonder if I should have each origin have a set of goals that is randomly picked from? Maybe have some overlap..

Or as I reread your post.. The idea of finding clues is good too.. Hrm.. You have given me food for thought and I thank you

Klyka

"Do you want to try to ford that black hole?"

Xaviar

Klyka wrote: »

"Do you want to try to ford that black hole?"

Heh. More shooting for:

You are on a planet with toxic atmosphere. You need your pressure-suits to survive. Scans indicate large predators in the forest. Your ship is low on food and water. The closest water source is a long way from your landing-site.
Do you:
Test the local fauna around the ship to see if it can at least be processed into something edible?
Try hunting some of the easier prey for food, risking damaging your suit? If so, how far away from the landing site are you willing to travel? Depending on how much damage to your suit, you may not be able to make it very far back..
Head for the river with the same concerns as hunting?
Search and scan the planet for signs of sentients/technology?

Who do you send on these missions? Your science guy really doesn't get along with your weapons expert. Do you send the weapons guy along to escort anyway, and risk your science guy getting in an "accident"? Or do you send him to test the food alone, and risk him getting ambushed the the locals?

Not really in a series of yes/no questions.. More a:
"You already know your situation from playing the game. Here is what you know about the planet. What mission do you want to send, who do you want to send on it, with what equipment, and how far are the allowed to go?"

That kind of a thing.. But yeah. Totally changing that to the title

Klyka

The obvious answer would be "Don't be a fucking idiot and just fly closer to the water source, god damn landing sites are for kids."

FuriousJodo

In Oregon Trail you ford every river, I don't care how deep, how far across, or how fast the current is. You ford every river, you jump that river like you are the Dukes of Hazzard.

Mustachio Jones

You ford the river, or die of dysentery.

Oh who am I kidding? You die of dysentery regardless of what you do!

Xaviar

Teacher: Okay children, today we are going to learn about Outstation Independence. Does anyone know anything about it?

Timmy: Wasn't that where we all came from?

Teacher: That's half right, Timmy, be we come from even before that. Waaay, way back, before history was history, the galaxy was full of people. Th-

Jimmy: Wowww! Full of people?

Teacher: Shut up Jimmy, I'm teaching. Now we don't know very much about that time, because it was so very long ago, and so much was lost. But we do know that all the people of the galaxy worked together to build Outstation Independence. Do you remember where it was?

Timmy: Wasn't it outside the galaxy?

Jimmy: But how did all of the people in the galaxy work together on just one station? Even if it was a big station, wouldn't it still be too small?

Teacher: That's right, Timmy! Jimmy, I'm warning you. Where was I? Oh. Right, they built it outside the galaxy, in a giant ring, with an artificial star at the center.

Jimmy: Like in Halo?

Teacher: No you stupid child, not like in Halo. As advanced as they were, it was still a station floating in space. It was a series of enclosed hulls linked together in a ring around the star. Anyway, the star provided power, heat, and most importantly, a point of gravitic stability which was desperately needed outside the galaxy as it was.

Timmy: What happened then?

Teacher: Well, the best and the brightest all moved to live on Independence. It was meant to be the city on a hill. The shining example the rest of the galaxy could follow. A Citadel, if you will, watching over the galaxy.

Jimmy: What do you mean it was meant to be? Wasn't it?

Teacher: I'm getting to that, if you'll stop interrupting me. It really was a very big place, and so far removed from the rest of the galaxy, that as time went by, more and more it just became worried about it's own internal politics. Sure, it still held the seat of the galactic government, but that became such a bureaucracy that the people in the galaxy just stopped caring. People started managing their own affairs, because any they sent to independence would be resolved on their own before they were heard.

Timmy: And what about the people living on the station?

Teacher: They thought themselves better than everyone else. And only bothered in galactic affairs when they absolutely had to. Over time, as you can well imagine, fewer and fewer petitions came; trade slowed. Outstation Independence was truly becoming just that: Independent. As was the rest of the galaxy.

Jimmy: So if the galaxy was so full of people, then how come everybody says we come from Independence?

Teacher: You must be thick. Obviously, they all died.

Timmy: Well how did that happen? Will it happen to us?

Teacher: You see, Timmy, they were so sure of their own medical prowess, that when a virus broke loose from one of their labs, and started mutating, they didn't even worry. They thought they could handle it. Well they lost an entire planet to the disease, and they finally started to worry. But it was too late. Whole systems were dying in a matter of months. Traffic to and from Outstation Independence and slowed so much at this point though, that when word came of the outbreak, they hadn't even received so much as a shuttle since before the virus got loose.

Jimmy: Couldn't someone still bring the virus to them, though?

Teacher: That's it, Jimmy. You are staying after class. No one could bring them the virus, or even so much as seek refuge, because when they got word of the outbreak, they shrugged their shoulders, sent their ships on auto-pilot into the star, and bolted the docking bays.

Timmy: How did we get back, if they bolted all the docking bays?

Teacher: That's a very good question! You see, years and years later.. So much later that they had even forgotten about the galaxy, a ship arrived. Now, Independence was designed to be self-sufficient, but after so many centuries without help from the outside world, it was starting to fall apart. And when this ship showed up, people were curious. They had to get their best scientists to figure out how to work the docking computers again, but they did. And the Gryphon Indignation Event docked itself to the Outstation in autopilot. They didn't know how to fly it, but as best they could tell the autopilot was set on a loop out into the galaxy and back to Independence. So the put together the best crew they could, with Dianna A. Hand as captain, and sent them out. The story of their trip is for another class, but I will say that the knowledge and technology they found on their voyage allowed us to build and pilot our own ships again, and come back to repopulate the galaxy.

Timmy: Coool!

Teacher: Class dismissed. Jimmy, you stay here for the next hour and think about what a naughty child you are. And while you do that, I want you to write the name of the disease that so decimated the galaxy eons past.

Jimmy: *sigh* What was it?

Teacher: Our doctors named it: Dysentery

<---End Transmission--->

I guess taking a cue from Molybdenum, I needed a start and a finish.

You are out on a loop from Outstation Independence in your ship, and before you get back you need to find some way (there will be several) to allow you free return back to the galaxy to repopulate. You need technology to repair your ship (it won't be in full working order). You need to stay alive. And bonus points if you can find the cure for dysentery (it's out there.)

Actually putting that all into shape has giving me a good starting place, I think. Thanks guys.