Uncharted Galaxy - Starship Command Adventure RPG

Good observation. It's so much better looking in the editor. When I build to my device, for some reason the UI's transparent backgrounds are so much more transparent.

I'll either make them fully opaque or provide a user setting to adjust it. Thanks for the input!

I work full-time as a web developer for a GIS company. I do, however, spend most of my lunch breaks working on my game, and 2-4 hours per night (from 9:00pm once we get our daughter to bed and the house cleaned up until I pass out exhausted (and often frustrated)). So 21-35 hours / week, on top of the day job.

I'd love so badly to be able to work on it full-time. For a while I held onto the dream of getting the game to a state where I could run a Kickstarter campaign for it, and try to scrounge up enough to fund the game for a full year. But that sounds like a whole big distraction, and then, of course, there's the issue of being forced into a timeline and everything. So for now, it'll just be the grueling after-hours stuff.

Stop it! You'll make me blush!

There are a number of people on these forums I look up to as role models. I was going to list them, but

1. it felt like pandering
2. I realized there are more than I initially thought
3. I don't want to leave anyone out and make them think I don't look up to them

Suffice to say, you're one of the guys I really respect around here, and to be given the kind of praise you've bestowed upon me is a difficult thing to describe. I think the closest I can relate it to is being a parent: I'm honored and proud, and also terrified I'm going to screw it all up.

But then, maybe that's all part of being a game developer...

 

I love GIS work, I had a friend who did contract jobs mainly for the military, and I did arcGIS contract programming for him from time to time. My favorite little program would analyze the entire network of pipes on base and tell the user what was interrupted by a given valve, or what valves to shut off to stop flow to a given location.

I just got lucky, at my latest gig I'm evaluating a new software stack which is not yet allowed on the company network, but happens to almost exactly match the server-side pieces for my game, so you can guess how that's going!

I've also been pretty impressed with your progress. I really dislike working on my game in short stints so motivation has been hard to come by now that I've returned to regular work. (Took a few months off recently.)

 

This gig is my first time doing GIS stuff. We, of course, use ArcGIS as well, because ESRI owns the entire industry. It's a neat toolkit, though I often run into things that boggle my mind. Guess that's no different than any work I've done, though.

The thing I've found with working in short bursts (an hour here, 3 hours there, 20 minutes here) is that it's really important to go into your work session with a goal, or at least a specific focus. Whenever I go in thinking I'm just going to "see if I can improve my character model", I end up putzing about with it for most of the time and either don't get anything really accomplished, or I wander off and work on non-essential things.

You also have to be a bit more... I dunno... Loose with your standards? I spent months at one point working on the event scheduling system, trying to write it in a way that would scale to any need I might come up with. When I came back to it after my 2.5 month break, I decided to summon the spirit of Tim Gunn and just Make It Work. The existing system is now pretty specific and will need to be extended if I ever need to schedule events for something other than Characters or Ships, but it works now.

Another way to look at it would be: Do I want to get this one feature perfect, or do I want to get it "good enough" so that I can move on and actually make a game? And then come back to the feature later to improve it. The risk, as any web developer knows, is that when you commit that file with the // TODO note in it, you never come back and change it. So committing yourself to "good enough" feels like you're limiting your game to being mediocre at best. But if it's between that and never finishing the product...

 

Friendly suggestion. Dont change what your doing @Schneider21 - from the outside watching and reading the succinctly well thought out details you have been able to explain - it seems you are managing the struggle well, even with unexpected, difficult hurdles.
Funding efforts 'could' negatively impact the process - especially when time dedicated for development has to be reduced to spend towards building the community following needed prior to the kick off of any funding effort.
Although with your past abilities to breakdown and dissect others kickstart efforts - I think you have uncommon insight about what it would take to succeed going through a funding campaign.

 

Thanks, D!

Part of the reason I've been able to put in so much time and effort, I think, is because I'm only doing it because I want to. With backers, it's kind of like you have a bunch of bosses, I feel. You're accountable for schedules and every detail gets put under a microscope... I have to feel that there's a tendency for projects to feel like they're not yours anymore, and knowing myself, that would be a motivation limiter during those tough times.

There's also the weird issue of how to even handle rewards in that scenario. Most people wouldn't back a game Kickstarter without actually receiving the game for their donation (because of the perceived purpose of KS being a pre-order platform), and I don't have a clue how that works with mobile games (as opposed to generating Steam keys for PC, for example).

I think, if anything, that once I have the game completed, I may try to do some funding to port it to desktop/consoles. It would be an easier pitch with a finished product (that I'd obviously add features to for the new release), and I think handling the promotion/funding/rewards would be much more manageable while only doing porting/expanding vs full-game development.

Funny enough, during my "break" here, I'm working just as hard on the branding and web presence side of things. Won't be as exciting an update, but it'll give me a more consistent platform for promoting the game and hopefully continuing to build that audience!

 

I would definitely support adding PC to your platform list. I would rather play it on PC than on mobile.

 

I hear ya.

I definitely want to focus on the single (mobile) platform first. Like I said previously, if I can get it working there, porting to PC should be no problem.

 

Phew!

This has got to be the fastest I've ever spun up a website. But all things considered, I think it's one of my top favorite that I'm most proud of.

Those interested may now browse the (currently sparsely populated)...

Official Site for Uncharted Galaxy!​

It wouldn't be like me at all to post something and not talk about it extensively, so let's take a quick dive into what was involved in making this site. (Those not interested in web development or websites in general can leave now if you prefer).

I am web developer, hear me roar
It didn't hurt that I do this stuff professionally. I went to community college for 2 years and got an Associate degree in web development, after which I got a job at a marketing agency where I mostly worked on small-to-mid-sized marketing websites built with WordPress. It's probably been a year and a half since I really did any meaningful WP stuff, but it was still a natural choice for me. I briefly considered using some crazy and fun new framework, but figured the fastest and best solution was something I was comfortable with already.

Long-time readers will remember that I don't think very highly of my own art skills. This has always been a crux for me when working on personal web projects, since I never liked the aesthetics of something I'd come up with. At work, I always had designers giving me Photoshop comps of what to build (which they'd then annoy me to no end with to ensure I was accurate to the last pixel, but I digress).

Once again, though, I decided to embrace that limitation and go for keeping things as simple as possible. It also really helped that I had decided on a UI look for the game itself, so I could emulate that as appropriate.

The other important thing to me was designing/developing in a true "mobile first" mentality. I started by putting my browser in mobile-display view, and didn't change it back until I was done. This was a lot easier than I thought it'd be, and it turned out I didn't have to do too much to make it work for desktops, either.

Lastly, I had a crazy idea for handling comments that I'll go into a bit later.

The Attention Whore


I wanted to do something eye-catching for the header. Eventually this will probably be a background video of a trailer or select gameplay clips, but for now I just whipped this up: a moving starfield and the player's ship drifting across the screen. Kinda chincy, but it'll serve. (Note: A lot of things had to adhere to the "good enough for now" mentality. There were so many times I wanted to sit and fine-tune something, but I'd still be working on layout if I had given in.)

Beneath that is the brief description (which I'm sure I'll change a hundred times before the game releases, trying to best explain what I think the game is), the list of recent posts, social media links... standard fare.

Where it gets exciting is inside each post. At the bottom of the article, where you'd normally find the comments section, I opted to go with three icon links: one each for Reddit, Twitter, and Facebook.

When a blog post is published on unchartedgalaxy.com, a plugin I wrote automatically shares the link to that post on /r/UnchartedGalaxy, posts a tweet from @unchglxy (yes, it drove me nuts that @unchartedgalaxy would have been a legit name but is locked up in an inactive account), and posts an entry on the UnchartedGalaxy Facebook page. The links to each of those are saved within the post meta itself and added to the bottom of the post.

My thinking is that instead of having a separate comments system tied to the site itself, let people (and, in fact, encourage them to) discuss it on the social platform of their choice. The discussion remains more public that way, and the link to the content should be highly visible and always accessible.

To pull this off, I integrated 3 separate wrappers for each platform's API. I'm sure it's much heavier than it needs to be, but it gets the job done. If, for some reason, the post fails to share on one of the platforms, a link to the root of that platform will be displayed instead. Meanwhile, the fields for those links are visible to me in the site admin page, so I can post it manually and update the links if need be.

Going forward
So what does this mean for this devlog? Well, I'll still be posting here. But I'll primarily be posting on the website, and I'll likely be posting summaries here with a link to the full article. Of course, I'll still be happy to discuss Unity-specific or gamedev-related topics in full here, along with just chatting about things that don't necessarily fit with a specific post's comments or whatnot. I just like you all so much!

As always, thanks for reading!

 

I like it. Matches the game very well.
One request - could you provide a newletter email signup for the devlog? I'm weird and prefer to get updates on individual game websites via email.
I can use blogtrotter I think as long as the devlog has an rss - which I think it does from the button on the site.

Also - if I may ask just for general knowledge, looking towards the future.- approximate - how much would you charge to create a site like this for another indie dev, at a reasonable speed (not warp speed) if requested?

 

I'm looking into it. MailChimp offers a free plan up to 2000 subscribers it seems, so I'll tinker with getting that set up. I'm sure WordPress has a monthly digest plugin that'll generate a "posts from this month" kind of email, so it might not be more than that, but it's a start!

This is slightly embarrassing to admit as a developer, but I've never done much of anything with RSS. WordPress generates the file for you, so I assume making a link to it is all I need to do to have that available. If you try using it and it doesn't work as expected, let me know and I'll see what I need to do to fix it!

I charge a lot. For custom website jobs, I've typically charged between $50-75/hr, which I wager is appropriate considering I get turned down on around half my estimates (if you're not getting turned down, you're not charging enough!)

I think it'd be a neat service to provide to the indie dev community though to set up a fairly cookie-cutter templated site with all the standard features, lightly styled to match game branding at a reasonable cost. The more cookie-cutter they are, the cheaper I could provide them. Unfortunately, the initial setup to get an easily customizable theme in place isn't a light undertaking, and every hour spent on that is an hour away from my game. Perhaps once I run out of my own web stuff to do during my "breaks", I'll look into this service.

Of course, for a respected peer with coveted modeling/rigging/animation knowledge and skills, I'd be willing to trade for services straight up. Those fingers ain't gonna fix themselves.

 

LOL - But you wouldn't get the privilege of learning some cool techniques if services were traded. LOL though that is a great offer to consider - not out of the question for the future!
Unfortunately - html, css, js and all that stuff is just like other code to me - impenetrable to the part of the brain that is supposed to be able to understand that.

 

I know, you're right. And as much as I might constantly declare otherwise, I really do want to make the entire game myself. With Viking Chess!, I licensed fantastic music from Kevin MacLeod. When I showed the game to some family and friends, they mostly complimented the music...

That's how I feel about art and animation! If you're certain I can learn how to do that, then I'm sure you can learn to build a website!

 

Hi, this is a cool project!

I was reading but this jump to me:

Given my familly (and my ex) I can confirm that those exist naturally (it's frequent enough where I live to not be a curiosity)

 

No kidding? I'd love to hear more about you and where you're from! Being an American, I'm often guilty of not being educated enough about other cultures/nationalities (though I like to think I'm more educated than a good portion of us!).

I had created a thread to try and determine the right way to approach this a while back, and I ended up settling on names being the same across the board. I've been pretty satisfied with the "race" part so far, and it's funny: even though there's only a 20% chance a human in UG will be black (rounded up from the US's ~12%), there are plenty of times when I generate a bridge crew where 5 out of 7 are dark skinned! Happy to say the future is looking appropriately race and gender equal!

 

Yeah lol, with actual randomness the odd of seeing black people increase tremendously compared to curated content lol, that's a known proof to show there is bias.

I'm caraibean (martinique) and we are heavily mixed, but mixing isn't less than in the state I think, there is just a bias of curated representation that bog people down on few stereotypical looks, You don't see much blasian either on TV, they do exist. Here is the yang ting family where I live for example:

We almost don't have separated asian community at all.

Of course I tried to see if I could find dark skin + ginger on google and couldn't find any good pictures (in fact I was looking for image with a great view on the eyelashes to separate from dyed hair). Also black people can be naturally blond or have any eyes colors, genetics don't care.
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/492018328019032233/

But if you want mad head turning karma point, put people with vitiligo!


Though I don't think your engine handles it (I think you just shift the mesh color, don't you?).

 

@neoshaman Thanks for sharing! You're right, the system I have in place just shifts UV coordinates to change colors, so each mesh face can only be a single color. Though if I end up making a system to handle some sort of textured look for aliens, I see no reason why it can't be integrated into the human generator as well!

I also want to point out that although randomly generated characters are bound by my "normalcy" rules, when creating their own characters (and that of their bridge crew) players are free to choose any skin/hair color and body features they like!

 

Does the website dev log mean you aren't going to post here?

A little feedback ... after looking at the website that font looks good on buttons or titles, but it can be kind of hard to read in larger blocks of text.

 

@MV10 No, I'm not going to stop posting here. The astute observer may notice that I haven't been posting on the devlog either... The truth is, I've hit a wall. Well, not even so much hitting a wall as having difficulty finding the right walls, even.

I ran into the classic problem of chasing an idea and not a game. Every time I tried to reign myself in and refocus on actual gameplay elements, especially ones I felt were in line with my skillset and current availability, I'd end up with a watered down set of gameplay elements I couldn't get excited about. When I tried fleshing them out and shaping them into ideas I was excited to pursue, I found myself looking at an enormous pile of work that would scare me away from getting started.

It didn't help that my situation at work changed: I got moved to a project where I was busy, challenged, and satisfied with what I was doing. When I was making good progress before, I was working on something that I hated, was not feeling satisfied with, and left me with enough brain power at the end of the day to want to keep working on my own stuff.

I spent the last 2 months of my free time playing games instead of working on making them. Lately I've been getting the itch again, though, and I'm trying to get back into the swing of things. To aid in this, I'm taking up Gigiwoo's 12 week challenge to see a small, unrelated project through from beginning to end. My hope is that this gives me that kick in the pants I need to reacquaint myself with game development and get back to work on my opus.

So for now... Uncharted Galaxy is going to continue gathering dust. But it'll be back. And those following here (or on the devlog site or social media) will be the first to know when things get back in motion!

Oh, and thanks for the recommendation on the site font! I'll look at adding some word-spacing and see if that clears things up a bit.

 

Ah sorry to hear that. I had similar problems with my larger, main project. I've started a smaller-scoped side project that I think I can knock out a lot more easily -- and one which takes a lot less mental effort, which is nice when I get home all brain-fried from work.

Being a rank amateur in game-making, I've gone down the idea-vs-product rabbit hole a few times already, too. On this smaller project I made myself sit down and actually document a plan for the game. Scoped, loose description of UI and interactions, rules, etc. -- hoping to avoid getting stuck with a half-implemented idea and no clear picture of where to go next. 16 pages later -- and I found quite a few things that needed tweaking and rethinking just on paper. It was a bit of a grind in itself but at least for the way I work, it was worthwhile.

 

Been there, done that : /
Something that i found helped me was to really break down the game into small personal "releases" like 0.1, 0.2 and so on, and then break down those as well into smaller pieces and put them on something like Trello. That gives a better sense of progress and therefor better motivation. A lot of work does not give any "visual" changes to the game since its just code under the hood, so making those changes visible helps me a lot to get a sense of progress.
Even if you dont think what you do is grand enough, you can always scale up when your done with the basics : )

 

As always, thanks for the support, guys!

@virror, I know that's great advice. I had spent a lot of time building systems that didn't produce much visual, and felt disheartened when I couldnt demonstrate to people what I'd been doing. I'm sure that's a big factor in what led me down the "make something that looks like a game" path. And it's something I'll be consciously avoiding when I get back to UG.

 

Yeah, thats another thing thats easy to fall for, the will to create visual things and show them of to ppl as soon as possible. I did that for my last failed game project, started a thread and showed screens of the game. It looked cool but there was zero gameplay, so i promised myself to not focus visual things for this game. I have done a lot more work on this one but not even started a thread yet, because im afraid that will make me go back down the "visual path" again : )

I do enjoy looking at other project though, and that makes it sooo hard to now show my own sometimes : D

 

I've done a bit of both of what @virror suggests.

I chopped up my games into "Phases", which are full features (ex. combat, crafting/building, npc/life) or multiple smaller ones (ex. polish phase, 3x minor features, "extra" features not required for core of game).

I wanted each Phase to, on its own, be a game (or close to it).

Phase 1 is gathering items, crafting from what is gathered, and building a home/structures. Deals only with a blank player (no stats), no npcs, just items you pick from the ground/foliage, like Flax--> Rope.

Phase 2 is where I breathe in "Life". NPC's, Animals, and Player Stats (health, hunger, etc.)

I structure these in smaller pieces.

Phase 1A = Gathering
Phase 1B = Crafting
Phase 1C = Building

I dont shrink them any further than that. Each smaller piece is a big enough chunk to add a lot to the game to feel progress within a Phase and each Phase is thematic & big enough to feel like a huge accomplishment on its own. I try to make each block a single feature, a single focus.

So once I finished Phase 1, I have an entire game by itself: Crafting. Upon Phase 2 completion, the world is alive...you just cant interact with it. Bees look for honey, NPCs roam but are otherwise useless. Phase 3 introduces "Action", such as Combat, Conversation, or any interaction with NPCs or Animals. Etc. etc.

This helped me a lot. One step at a time to accomplish a big game piece by piece, but big enough chunks that when I finished just Phase 1A, I felt a huge accomplishment. Same for 1B, etc.

Importantly, I complete these features in their entirety. Graphics & visible progress is a must. Playable gameplay for each Phase, full GUI, placeholder animation/sound if needed, polished, fun, etc. As much as can be anyway for the moment. And I order them based on what I think is the core of my game. Crafting/Building phase is IMO, a bigger focus than combat, puzzles, or a weather system. Which is why it comes first. Even though the game is pretty useless without all of those things together. It also helps ke to make each individual feature as fun as possible all on its own merits. Not relying on the rest of the gameplay helps me avoid features that feel "tacked on" or feature creep.

 

Good post, i always try to squeeze in some "fun" parts in my phases, even if i have one phase thats only coding, i always put it some "pointless" graphical stuff in there to make it a little more fun and rewarding.

 

I hope this game will go where no game has gone before!

 

Haha. Thanks for the sentiment!

If it's not obvious by the amount of time that's passed since the last update, Uncharted Galaxy is in a bit of a holding pattern. I couldn't find the commonality between my current skill set, the vision I had for the game, and a game that was simple enough to complete in a timely fashion while still remaining fun.

I also ran into the additional problem that happens when you're working on something too long... I started disliking things I had already completed, and felt the need to go back through and redo them. For example, the idea of the ship having no windows became unacceptable to me, and fixing that would mean recreating almost all the level assets I already had done.

So... for now, it's on hold. I'm currently working on a different game that can be playable and fun with almost zero art assets, so my hope is that one gets to MVP status much sooner. Who knows, maybe I'll get bored of that one and come back to UG! Stay tuned!

 

I have the same Problems. Too long at the same Porject,...

 

Yeah, exactly as @Schneider21 describes, was the problem I had for several years. It took me going full time indie for a year to actually finish and publish some projects, and even then, I considered those to be small. Now that I have full time employment again, I have limited time for the game project again, and the end is nowhere in sight.

 

Someone recently mentioned (I can't remember who) they have 3 concurrent projects going at the same time to overcome this stale feeling. They hop from one project to the other, when frustrations begin to set in.
I remember they mentioned they have one large project, while several other smaller projects.

I doubt I could do this as my schedule doesn't allow for it, and I think I would feel like I'm never getting anywhere on one project. But - who knows.

 

I honestly can't imagine having more than one active project at any one moment. A single game takes so much work to complete, it is unfathomable for me to do anything but work on it (if I want to see it actually released one day.) That isn't to say I work on it all day, every day. It's just that IMO, the solution to "I can't finish a game!" is certainly not "So I will make 3 at a time!" That just sounds lunatic. Although I do understand why they do that- it makes sense, motivation wise.

 

In a sense, working on multiple projects at a time is what I already do. I work on something for a while, until I either stall or feel uninspired, then I switch to a new or existing project for a while.

I agree with @CarterG81... It's horrible. It definitely allows you to cash in on that feeling of accomplishment you get from completing mundane tasks without ever making significant progress. I also feel that it almost encourages scope creep, as instead of solving a problem you falter on, you come back to the project and work on something unimportant instead, which may be a side feature that has no real bearing on the main gameplay.

I don't want to derail my own game thread too much by talking about a different game of mine, but the new project I'm working on will, as I said, have far less emphasis on graphics and shouldn't get bogged down in art creaton/recreation like UG has. Additionally, rather than starting with an idea as I did for UG, I've started with actual gameplay ideas that will give me a focused target to hit. As a bonus, the stuff I'm working on now, at least, will also be used for a portion of UG as well.

Thank the gods I'm only a hobbyist at this stuff, or my next game would be called Homeless Simulator 2019. </meta>

 

@Schneider21 I think your descriptions of the "behaviors" of indie and/or hobby game development through your own experience is articulated pretty well. I'm kind of sad that that will be trapped in your game's thread, as it's a really good topic that I think a lot of game developers share, but don't quite understand on a personal level.

 

Thanks, @aer0ace. It's actually been kind of a difficult thing to address. On one hand, the very act of making games makes us game developers, right? But a game developer who doesn't finish his games is an unsuccessful one at best, and scarcely a developer at all at worst. So dealing with that publicly, even in the context of being a hobbyist, is something I have to force myself to do.

We all want to present ourselves as our best versions: what we're aiming to consistently be. Because games themselves are a lot of work to make, it's so tempting to grab that low fruit and satisfy your need for achievement in other ways. Some of us do that by "forming a game dev studio" which usually amounts to a Twitter account and a hastily drawn company logo. Others work on their game, but not the important parts. And some people even just write long-winded posts about the process or piddle away on the forums giving advice to newbies instead of writing code.

Sometimes it feels like what I imagine struggling with drug addiction is like. I want to just make a game. I really, really do. But the day winds down, with a few hours before I have to sleep. And I'm tired. And I open my project, and my To Do list of tasks. And yesterday's unsolved problem looks back at me, and it's so easy to justify why tomorrow would be a better time to tackle this problem. I'll feel better rested, and I'll have had some time to think about it and have a strategy and... Before I know it the MacBook is shelled up and tucked next to the bed, and I've got my phone or a controller in my hand, and the night is lost.

It's not always like that. Sometimes I really do make some great progress. But fighting through those tough times, when Inspiration isn't holding your hand and pulling you along, those are the times I really struggle.

I own the book The War of Art, and its message speaks to me pretty strongly. But like all my projects, I started reading it and never finished. It's now on my Shelf of Good Intentions, to be picked up and paged through again some day.

Damn. This is not the post I intended to write. Maybe it's time to rename this thread "Why, after a cursory Google Search, no one should ever back a project of mine on Kickstarter or Early Access."

 

As for UG, one thing I wondered from the very beginning is: what's the game loop?

Most similar-ish games (e.g. FTL) have a combat-based game loop. You fight, you get loot, you spend loot to upgrade your fighting.

And if you think of this as "adventure in space"... well, almost every adventure/RPG is also based on a combat game loop.

But @Schneider21 (quite appropriately, I thought) didn't want a game based mainly on fighting. There's hardly any combat in Star Trek, yet they managed to create interesting stories every week for years. But without fighting, what exactly do players do?

It could be a puzzle game, where each mission leads to some thorny story-based problem you have to sort out using the resources of your crew and ship. But that's going to be a play-once game, for sure, and coming up with all those story puzzles is going to be hard.

I really love the idea of this game and want to play it... but to me, this is the core design issue that needs to be addressed. (If it hasn't already been, and I just missed it!)

 

Thank you! And you're absolutely right... It is an issue.

I recall clearly you challenging me to detail the gameplay. "You aren't making a cartoon" or something like that. I thought "I'll have that answer to you very shortly, Joe! Just... as soon as I figure it out..."

I had this idea that if I created a bunch of interesting systems, the gameplay would emerge from that. Enabling players to travel to different stars and planets, land, explore around, interact with characters... That I'd find a way to just have this emergent gameplay that kind of reveals itself.

I've only just -- as I'm typing this -- made the connection to No Man's Sky... They made a game based more on an idea than gameplay design, and I think regardless of the PR nightmare they went through, that issue would have been one that sunk their game. A system of systems to experience, as I was planning, may have been passingly interesting, but the holes or lack of continually compelling content would lose players' interest just as quickly.

I'm so glad to have this avenue of communication with you guys, to continue to learn and develop. I'm confident my next project will benefit from this knowledge, but I have every intent of revisiting Uncharted Galaxy with a real plan (which is trying to form itself in my brain at this moment, but I'm intentionally suppressing to keep my focus where it needs to be). I believe there's still a way this game can be made and be not only something fun to play, but fit with the core vision I originally had.

 

In the AI research field, "emergent behavior" has finally been relegated to the status of wishful thinking. It took years and years of dry, technical, esoteric argument, but the heavy-hitters finally reached a consensus. This has caused a sea-change in the focus of the major AI research efforts. They're backing away from the idea that if everyone just creates enough complex subsystems, the combined result will somehow "wake up" (not unlike the stories we all know where the Internet magically does this). Now that the smoke has cleared, the bleeding-edge work is to create a formal definition of intelligence. (My personal understanding of formal logic is fairly shallow, so I've already lost track of most of the resulting discussions pursuing this problem!)

You're reaching the same conclusion about gameplay, and I pretty strongly agree. You and Joe already covered all the reasons, but I just wanted to point out that some pretty staggeringly brilliant researchers had a very hard time swallowing this idea (I think at this point Ben Goertzel is the only remaining holdout), so you're in good company if this is a recent realization.

 

My take on emergence is that instead of looking at system we should look at language, ie how functional category work together to build an expression, the problem with emergence as a discussion is that the expression is supposed to happen magically instead of crafting, the thing is we create language like system all the time, minecraft had emergence but it wasn't call like that, it was call crafting and each element had a function to others, so even though redstone allow for emergence, it was design to be expressive to begin with, at a fundamental level. They replace it later with code block who are even more expressive.

In short to design emergence, don't design system, design explicit grammar.

 

Hi, I've been reading for a little while now, sorry for your crisis. I'm pretty sure not only developers but almost every entrepreneur at some point goes through this.

Maybe you can find motivation and joy again by adding new perspectives to your project. Maybe this won't help, but I'd just like to tell you what I'd do when your project was mine. So, when I think of Star Trek, I think of short, condensed scifi stories. It's really short-story driven. Story writing is tough, but there are lots and lots of people out there doing this. Maybe you can find some who'd give you permission to use some of their stories as episodes in your game. Or even team up with one or few. And then wrap your systems around those stories. The players will say: "Ah, you remember episode blah, the one with the shady reptile girl and the blorgs? That was my favorite!" "Oh yeah, but man, my ship was totally wrecked after that one."

Just trying to help

 

This was my exact thoughts when developing Away Mission's primary game design.

I even began to dig into not just components of story, but similarities between stories so that I could define specific elements (pieces or concepts) that can be combined with other parts that can generate believable short-stories, procedurally. Not a procedural replacement to hand-crafted content, but a lore more like a hefty boost to it. A supplemental procedural system to take all the content I create & extend its life in new & interesting ways.

I mention the latter because of its importance. Creating a completely procedurally generated story system is a lot more difficult than creating a slightly procedural booster to make hand-crafted content reusable.

I see very few games tackle this approach. It's usually an either/or. Either they go 100% procedural or 100% hand-crafted. Both have their strengths & weaknesses, and as always I try to innovate a new system that has all the strengths of both but none of their weaknesses. I take this approach in most of my game design. For example I think, "How can I implement the meaningful travel of a Everquest-style MMORPG without the negative element of that pointless life-draining time sink?" The result of that question finds its way into three completely different games, in one way or another. It defines a hefty portion of each of my game's "Travel" component. Something I seem to love so much I place it in every game, at least on some level.

IMO, making a design that focuses on the strengths of a system (the easy part) and designing ways to eliminate the weaknesses without diluted that strength (the hard part) makes for some interesting game design.

It also makes for some interesting life application, period. "What are my strengths? What are my weaknesses? What type of game could I make, if I made that my central focus? A game I could complete perhaps!" Play to your strengths. Eliminate your weaknesses. (A lot of the time, that results in a GiGi challenge of making a small game in 12 weeks. Because we all know how hard it is to make a game that takes longer than 4 weeks to make.)

 

Thanks again, guys. I do find all the feedback encouraging and inspiring!

Just to clear something up, I think my misuse of terminology confused things a bit. I never intended Uncharted Galaxy to have "emergent gameplay" in the way Minecraft or other sandbox titles do. What I meant to say was more that the core gameplay loop would make itself clear to me as I got all these systems (character interaction, interstellar travel, issuing crew commands) hooked up together and that, at that point, I'd be able to answer the question of "what do you actually do in the game?"

I totally agree with the short story idea, and that being core to the Star Trek formula. My mission/quest system plan was/is to have a number of recipes that can be selected from with variables for the different phases that can dramatically change the course of the story. Example:

The idea is that it's a simple premise that gets complicated as you progress, but with enough variance that the same formula will play out a number of different ways depending on chance, player decision, and the quest system nudging things in a target direction.

Obviously, this is a complicated piece of code to put together, and one of the reasons I put it off to grab lower-hanging fruit. But I think it's absolutely the right direction to go, and I'm not willing to compromise and make a starship combat game instead. So I'm taking a bit of time away to build my experience and skill set enough that I can come back prepared to take on the challenge, and when I do, the focus will be on these important pieces and not stuff like game art that doesn't matter as much in the end.

 

I also have The War of Art. Suggestion - sit the book on your desk where you work. Every day before starting to work, read 5-10 pages. This book will get you motivated fast! This is the strategy I'm currently using and I think its resulting in positive results.
If the procrastination is getting to the desk and sat down (I also have this "problem") Set a timer/reminder for yourself - it's time to get busy!

Although I agree with the concept of short story driven experiences is very relatable to Star Trek and interesting, I really think designing from a story first perspective isn't the proper way forward - for most designs.
@neoshaman and @JoeStrout are onto something with there posts. If you can find this core loop (functionality) as discussed by others the systems to support that core loop should be evident.
In addition to the core loop the one element I think might be missing (I'm guessing here) is the overall / overarching story arc.
To me - Star Trek is discovery, different races, and new characters. I also like the puzzle solving the story arcs present, and the companionship/comradery between crew members.
As far as overarching story goes - I think a great story would be the introduction story to the main crew, discovery and 1 main puzzle/enemy to solve. And include these other smaller elements, new races, new crew members, puzzle(s) to solve, and comradery, wrapped around the core loop you described, planet A, deliver B, attacked by D, ship E etc etc.

 

I feel that the nice thing about a randomized mission setup is that players fill in a lot of complexity on their own...

 

Yep maybe it's a lack of methodology, I never knew where to go in my early attempt to do design, now I have the right tool to succeed at generating idea whatever the context, the thing is I don't need motivation or inspiration. Being "creative" is a job that is taught, though the only difference is that it doesn't guarantee you to be a "creator", creator is more about catching the elusive emotion into a specific expression, being a "creative" help but it's not the same thing.

The first thing is that you have a very clear theme, it's half the work already. Basically I class game into DO and BE, do game have clear goal and a linear progression toward it (even if they are open ended game) there is a definite win condition. BE game still have progressions but they are more about enacting a role, they are "growth" rather than end point to achieve. Mario is a do game (generally action game), sim city is a be game (generally simulation and management game).

It's rather obvious that you tilt toward a BE game with DO sequences, so you can separate the design between the overall BE loop and the design of each sequences. The problem is that you try to think the BE part as DO and therefore figure out the do part but struggle to conceptualize the BE part. The BE part is basically enacting the theme, just like to enact BEING a mayor in sim city is constitute of a series of inter dependent action (choosing policy, planning the layout, etc ...), you must find how the action you take enact BEING the role you put the player in.

IN fact you can prototype that part by reducing the do sequence to black box with random outcomes and see how the system evolve. But you need to figure out the GROWTH. SO if I understand correctly you want the experience of being the captain of the ship, question become what is the growth and where are the pressure against that growth.

As an example I imagine that the goal is to get federation ranking that grow with more exploration and successfully spreading the federation prestige in the outer world, which give you more budget, that you can spend on ship, crew and reputation (that help with mission), pressure would be reparation of the ship, affinity with different crew member, diplomatic affinity with different faction, restocking the ship, etc ... They are interdependent because conducting diplomatic events or exploration events depend on yor crew well being (restocksing) and affinity and /or your ship equipment/state, and failing might lead to losing ranking.

The game would generate various mission of various difficulty (so you don't get stuck into infinite low ranking because you can't do anymore mission) and also use past action and affinity to generate an ever changing situation through stakes. Basically the same situation can happen very differently because the stakes is build on your current states, fighting the mighty Argonian is not the same with a fully repaired and stock ship with a morale boosted crew than with a ship that barely made out of storm with a crew that threaten mutiny, that mean that the plea of the Talkor queen to help them might be a difficult one, the queen will remember you let her down, but helping her in time mean traversing the Argonianspace and they really don't like you because of how you save the Pyr which are their mortal enemy.

Basically your game would be an infinite FTL with open progression and diplomatic events. DO sequence might also add spike, because it's not a management game, it would be a light management layer that ties the growth loop together. THe do progression can be standard progression in which each completion update the overall state of the game, and that state generate new mission by adapting their template. So going to see the Talkor queen involve many templated step that takes the world as an input but still have finite sequencing to be a full little story. Similarly you can hook events base on those many gauge, for example having a certain afinity with the queen make some events possible to happen, and the last max affinity level can be use to too. For example, you use to be in excellent affinity with the talkor, but now you are mortal enemy, you can have events that show regret from the talkor or even spawn a redemption storyline with some specific pre requisite.

I'm just improvising something, remove combat from the equation it was an example to explain the methodology quickly.

 

@neoshaman Great input!

I totally agree. I don't really meant designing mechanics from story.

The problem, as far as I can tell from here, is that all the thinking about meaning, story, motivation is killing the development process, because its simply too much additional work for a single spare-time dev. So why not try outsource and get inspired by that input?

The other thing I notice is that you all see there is a need for a global overarching storyline, political system etc. Do we really need that? I never followed Star Trek enough to get any overarching story or politics, to me that was very diffuse, they were representing federation on an exploration mission and thats it. However you could still just jump in at any point and enjoy any episode as on its own.
So I might feel different about it. In terms of gaming, I'd compare it to D&D modules, these prewritten adventure books. It might be mixed up a lot, but I basically see two modes: 1: "Town" - You can do all the management (shopping, leveling, learning spells etc). And 2: "Adventure" - You control your party and roleplay to solve a quest. You have lots of freedom in playstyle (the dungeon master can adapt), but you have a fixed local storyline and enjoyable writing. And when an adventure is finished, its over. Low to no impact on the global story line (Your party gains xp and inventory though)

 

Wow. I had a crummy night, but waking up to these last two responses has been a treat I didn't expect.

Thank you @neoshaman for your well-articulated response. I love the way you described do and be, and I think you're absolutely right about me confusing the two. This post will be incredibly useful in honing in on the right direction for the game.

And thank you @PhilippG for your dissenting opinion! I've gone back and forth between "Big Story" and "Little Stories", but I've been leaning towards what you described for some time now. If for no other reason than my favorite series, TOS and TNG, were mostly drop-in-whenever, while Enterprise (the only other series I've seen) has this overarching storyline that just never grabbed me.

I think there's a perfect marriage available of the two ways of thinking, though. Each mission would be a self-contained sequence of events built from templates with randomized portions, that may include recurring characters (rival captains, comic relief smugglers, etc). Additionally, your ship's crew would be a persistent factor, including their health, happiness, progression. I think that's enough to aim for to start out, and see if it needs developed further from there.

Thanks again for all the input, guys. I feel like I'm reaping the benefit of being in Early Access without having to even release a game at all!

 

Many moons ago, @JoeStrout pushed me to find the gameplay loop for Uncharted Galaxy. I couldn't answer what that was, which was the reason the game just floundered in the 'tech demo' sort of stage. I had loose ideas for what kind of gameplay elements could be included, but nothing to pinpoint as the solid game loop. Last night, nearly 7 months after the last time I had actual progress to share, I came to a revelation. In Uncharted Galaxy, the player is the Captain.

The Captain Makes Decisions.

Okay, so this is kinda obvious. Watch any episode of Star Trek and you'll see the guy/gal in the chair receiving input and passing back orders on what to do. I think what I failed to grasp, though, was that it's this decision-making process that is the compelling part of the role. Games in the series either focused on the action/combat too much, having the player take a very active role in that part, or they force you to focus on the minutia of the role of commanding, including micro-managing your subordinates. Even games that are so close (Bridge Commander) hedge their bets by allowing you to take control and fly the ship yourself, if you choose.

The Captain's job is to make decisions. Yes, he can yell things like "Fire all photon torpedoes!" and double-ear slap a giant lizard-man in a tunic, but those actions are in support of his primary role of making decisions.

The core gameplay loop of Uncharted Galaxy should be one in which the player is presented with a developing situation that requires their input. How they respond will affect the status of their crew, their ship, the mission, and their character. Obviously, it will also affect the next phase of "action" gameplay, whether it's engaging in ship-to-ship combat, fighting it out in a narrow corridor of a derelict freighter, or re-negotiating a treaty between two rival factions. There should always be multiple ways to solve a problem, and the captain decides how to attempt it.

The very next thing I need to make, and the only thing that really matters at this point, is the system that can create these decision-prompts. Everything else is just mini-games.

This direction excites me, and I'm looking forward to thinking through this system and developing it. I've got another smaller project I want to do first, but UG will be in the back of my mind while I'm working, so expect to hear more about this sooner rather than later.