I have not really "created" but more like pieced together elements from various other files out in the YoYo boards, and I put them together into a turned based (optional) space game.
I have not really figured out what exactly I want to do with this game, but I have several possible options.
I started this project in order to create what I consider to be one of the best PC based games that came out when PC games first started becoming popular, called Master of Orion.
It's a turned based game here you select how many AI opponents you want to come up against, and how large of a galaxy "map" you want and you win the game by either conquering all the other opponents or through diplomacy. You also chose which race/species you wanted to be, and of course, each species had their advantages and disadvantages. It was really fun, and you can actually change each game that you play by choosing difference options, not just which species you were, but if you only had 1 AI opponent and a large map, than it was easier than say 3 or 4 opponents and a small map. One of the things that I really liked about this game was the capability for the player to build their own ships, using various options. Each size of ship were allotted a certain amount of space, and you could pick from a range of weapons, computer controls, defensive capabilities, all of which you would have to spend some of your resources (money) on researching, or stealing the "tech" from others through espionage (which was one of the species specialty, so was research/tech). There was a certain amount of strategy to pretty much each and every element of the game. You could build a whole bunch of small ships but they are easy to destroy, those could be scout ships, because the game did not display
The other option that I was considering was an interesting game that I acquired and started to play but while the game concept itself was somewhat fun, I think the programers/graphics team could have done a better job. For this reason, I won't mention the name of it (and I can't really remember it anyways, but I could find it out if I had to). Anyways, you are the owner of a transportation business (spacecrafts, of course) and there was a series of about half a dozen planets that each produced a list of goods, and they also had a list of goods that they wanted to purchase, and you were to select a planet and purchase some goods, and take them to a planet that wanted them, and hopefully sell them for a profit. The prices (buy and sell) were pretty much set by the game AI, but it wasn't like it was completely random, going up high when you buy then dropping way down low when you sold. The game had other options involved to keep it interesting. You could upgrade your engine so you could arrive at the planets before the other "traders" (for whatever reason, all the planets were the same distance apart, so the arrival priority was based on engine speed - something I think I would change ... the distance between planets, I would still like to have engine upgrades). Also, you could increase your cargo space on your ship, so that you could carry more goods. I often found myself splitting my cargo hold between multiple products so that I wouldn't be reliant upon one sale to make a profit. There were also crew members that you had to hire and payroll to be paid out, depending on if you hired seasoned veteran crew, or newbies that you wouldn't have to pay as much to keep them employed, but they were also more likely to make mistakes. Speaking of which, there were some random events that took place, sometimes during a flight between planets you would run across a stranded traveler and had to decide if you wanted to pick them up and take them to their desired destination, and if you did, do you do it right away interrupting your plans or wait until you drop off your existing cargo.
I think a third possibility would be to combine these two and allow the player to chose if they want a strictly economical game, or a purely political game, or both.
Here is a screen shot of the main map. There are a bunch of planets, each having a different environment represented by different colors. At each planet is a group of ships - which isn't typical for the beginning of a game, the player only starts out with a small group of ships, like a couple of scouts and 1 colonizing ship. Also, each planet has a gate transporter, again, not typical of the beginning of a game, this tech has to be researched, but I was playing around with game code, so that's why they are all there right now. I guess the screenshot doesn't really show you a lot of what the framework has in it, like you can give a group of ships a route by clicking the ship, then clicking the destination planet, and a green line shows up and also a number telling you how many turns it will take to get there. The logic for this doesn't yet involve engine upgrades, but it can be added. Also, when planning a group of ships' route, you can select which type (from a total of 3 types of ships - displayed in the bottom portion of the screen) and how many you want to send. So, in other words, if you have 10 of each of the 3 types of ships, you can send any amount of them in different directions, it's not all 30 or none. Also currently in place are details of the planet like population, production points (used to calculate how long ships will take to build, based on their cost) and missile bases - displayed on the right side of the screen. I still need any other details like shielding (I don't know whether to strictly use Hit Points an with each shield upgrade just increase the HP or what?).
I still have access to the old game (and can share it :-) but I don't really want to do a direct copy of what they had. I'm not sure how similar I can get to it and still market this as an original game. Of course, the original game is so old, I'm not sure if there is an legal copyright concerns, I would just rather avoid all that possible hassle. There is an Open Source version of the original game that people have gathered together to make, but I tried loading that game and they have gotten way "bloated". Instead of the galaxy/map being 2 dimensional travel between planets, you travel from one "system" to another and each system has a series of planets. Their technology research is way out of control, having so many different branches it's confusing to keep track of. I tried playing it for a short period of time, but couldn't get into it like I did the original, so I just uninstalled it.
If you've ever played the game I based this on, there some similarities (on purpose), but some of what I don't have, that I could use some help on, is the opponent AI, the list of technology (missiles, lasers, shields, etc.) and how many research points they need before being able to use each tech, and the battle AI.
Just to make one last possible suggestion, I was playing an on-line game for awhile that involved teaming together with others, and playing interactively, like group against group. They called them Guilds (it was a medieval game). And this gave me the idea of having teams play against each other. But to take that one step further and play on the whole espionage idea, each player could potentially be involved in more than one team/guild and be a spy or double-agent, or actually just be playing both sides of the fence and be in it for themselves, but they run the risk of (possibly randomly) being found out to have multiple memberships.
Also, I would like to see if anyone that is artistic would like to contribute, as everything that I currently use is taken from somewhere else. I have tried to only utilize other peoples images and code that have posted it for sharing, but since I wanted to have original art work done for this game anyways, I didn't really keep the info of what I used in order to give proper credit.
Btw, I build this using GM8, but could possibly port it to Studio, which might be a good idea, especially to utilize the social aspect of the guild/team play concept.
If you've read this far, I have more ideas to share, but this is probably already longer than most other posts on the team board. Send me a PM if this project is of interest.
