Ostranauts - spaceship management sim set in NEO Scavenger universe - now available on Early Access

[Immortal]

Hey Folks!

I've been wrestling with a design decision recently, and figured I'd see if any ancient lore in the 'dex could help. In short, I'm looking for an engaging and intuitive way to present dramatic and procedural crew activity to the player.

As most of you know, I'm working on a top-down crew management sim. This screenshot is one of the latest iterations:

This UI followed a discussion of various dialogue presentations in the comments on this devlog post.

The problem is that there will be a lot going on in a given ship. Crew will be walking the ship, interacting with each other and equipment (i.e. their duties), and I'd like the player to be able to watch and engage with these events in an entertaining way. Note that dialogue is likely to be more generic like the above, rather than specific/topical lines. It's meant to minimize content creation costs, allow for emergent/procedural drama, and leave just enough to the imagination to be interesting.

I think the shipboard duties will be pretty easy to handle, as this is a known problem solved by many games (FTL, Rimworld, Sims). The trick will be making the dramatic portion more interesting (and not overwhelming).

For example, the above animation shows one approach where the currently speaking AI is bracketed on the map while the bottom of the screen shows their portrait and interaction details. This is fine in some games, but I'm finding even in this limited case of 2 AIs talking that my eyes are constantly darting from map to dialogue and back. It's a lot of work to keep up with it, and this would only get worse the more AI we throw in.

I've considered floating text immediately above each AI:

which could work. Even if many AIs were talking at once and the player couldn't keep up with it all, that wouldn't be contrary to expectations in reality. Focus on the convo you want at a cocktail party, for example. This might start to dominate the play screen, though. Especially with the addition of portraits (which I'm warming to for variety/personality benefits).

What I'm wondering is: are there any other presentations you've seen that might handle this situation well? And suggestions for how else I could approach this?

One suggestion I've received is to make an interaction a generic word bubble above the participants, requiring the player to click it (or something) to see more. This would be akin to approaching a group at a party (or else just eavesdropping deliberately). It keeps the big picture lively but not crowded, and allows the player to probe deeper as they wish. This seems good on paper, so I may try that next.

Any others?

Also, I guess the above problem invites the question of point-of-view. Who is the player in this game? Are they the captain? Are they each of the crew equally? Some omniscient god?

My first instincts was to make the game similar to Rimworld or Prison Architect: the player inhabits each AI equally (excluding visitors, prisoners, etc.). The player can know anything about any AI at any time, and is limited to their knowledge/awareness (line of sight, instrument read-outs, etc.). I haven't sorted out whether the player will "drive" any AIs, or just set their priorities a la Rimworld. I like the latter, but it could limit certain player input down the road (e.g. making plot decisions, if any, or puzzling out better equipment designs on a grid).

Anyway, I'd love to hear what you guys think, and if you have any suggestions that could help!

You could do a Sims type style where you use contextual images / symbols to show what they are doing (if they are interacting with an object or performing an action)

I could picture basic symbols like REPAIRING, TALKING, FLIRTING, ANGRY, SAD, HUNGRY, EATING ect ect..

In the case of contextually *important* dialogue you could then fall back to the "CLICK HERE FOR MORE" or throw up a speech bubble.

In a game as heavily focused as yours on autonomous background actions.. I would really avoid *emoting* What everyone is doing, this will quickly become tiresome to read when you have 6+ crew members walking around emoting every tiny thing they do.

TED IS HUNGRY
TED IS WALKING
TED TALKS TO TINA
TINA TALKS TO TED
TED LIKES TINA
TINA WANTS FOOD
TED STILL HUNGRY
Immortal turns off game.

 

[dcfedor]

Immortal I agree that there is such a thing as too much feedback from AIs. I definitely don't want to inundate the player with inane status messages. However, hiding AI interaction sort of undercuts one of the design goals of the game.

Traditionally, long system voyages are part and parcel to space sims, and the usual solutions are:

1. Do some sort of time acceleration to skip the boring travel.
2. Do some sort of FTL speed to skip the boring travel.
3. Shorten the distances to reduce boring travel time.

I was hoping to try and use that "boring travel time" as an asset, though, and make one of the core game loops the management of the crew and ship in-transit. Having personalities interact in a confined space is a common tool in drama, and I'm wondering if I can use that in this game. So I'm looking for ways to make these interactions part of the entertainment.

E.g.
Player: Huh, I wonder why Ted is just sitting there at the end of that corridor, not doing anything? <Clicks Ted>
Ted: Ted is moping around, dejectedly.
Ted: Ted is listening to voice mail over and over.
Player: That's not good. What the heck happened? Scrolls around ship to find rest of crew. Sees Tina and Vallerie chatting in the mess hall. <Clicks conversation icon.>
Vallerie: Vallerie puts a hand on Tina's shoulder.
Tina: Tina vents about Ted's constant advances.
Player: Hm. <Clicks Tina's avatar.>
Tina: Tina refuses to be around Ted.
Tina: Tina is considering terminating her contract with the Flying Dutchman Co.
Player: Ah crap. I'm probably going to have to get rid of one of these next port. Or else keep them on opposing shifts from each other.
Game: Alert! Pipe freeze in the main coolant system! <Fluid starts flooding the HVAC chamber.>
Player: Crap again! Drama's going to have to wait. Time to roll-up my sleeves and jury-rig a fix for the busted cooling system. Hope we have enough coolant left to reach Io...

Easier said than done, though

Taka-Haradin puolipeikko that's the second time someone has suggested I look into a Screwfly game, so I'll have to look into it. At a glance, I really like their UI style, as that's something I want to try out in the prototype. One thing I enjoy in space sims is functional cockpit controls.

I'll have to see how they handle AI relations, though. They may have more hard-coded emotions/stats than I'm planning, but I may still be able to emulate the more engaging things they do.

Thanks!

 

[e-mailio estevez]

One suggestion I've received is to make an interaction a generic word bubble above the participants, requiring the player to click it (or something) to see more. This would be akin to approaching a group at a party (or else just eavesdropping deliberately). It keeps the big picture lively but not crowded, and allows the player to probe deeper as they wish. This seems good on paper, so I may try that next.

I like this idea.

You could do a Sims type style where you use contextual images / symbols to show what they are doing (if they are interacting with an object or performing an action)

In the case of contextually *important* dialogue you could then fall back to the "CLICK HERE FOR MORE" or throw up a speech bubble.

This is probably the best way to handle it.

Have something like a speech bubble appear above the characters heads, but with an icon representing the 'tone' of the conversation or whatever they're doing. Click the icon for more details. That way if your crewmates are having an argument, you'd know you need to step in, but if they're casually talking you'd be safe to ignore the conversation.

 

[Immortal]

<Feedback>

Let me clarify. Then you let me know what you think.. (if you still haven't decided)

I think detailed feedback should only be given when the player chooses to interact with a ~situation~. (With some exception.. you could have mandatory issues the player has to deal with immediately)
What I was saying about Contextual Icons was merely intended as an "at a glance" feedback to the player about what is going on.

My assumption is that you will have a basic set of animations / sprite positions for tasks that could be more complex than "crouched over, tinkering with X, sitting in a chair".
Providing image feedback about what a crew member is doing - then allowing the player decided if they want to prod further, would aggravate players less than filling the screen with constant chat bubbles. IMO

*~*~SIMPLE EXAMPLE~*~*
You could for example have two crew members "talking" but than represent it by :

• Speech Bubble for neutral conversation,
  
• Heart for some kind of flirtatious banter,
  
• Squiggly lines for some kind of aggressive conversation.

Then Let the player decide based on the interaction happening if they want to pursue this further or ignore it.

I think this will allow players to pick and choose what they want to engage with - while still giving them quick feedback about what is going on..
so when two crew members are later trying to kill each other, the player isn't completely in the dark / feeling cheated about how things evolved over time.

This may be completely against what you want, or may hurt the mood of the game if the icons look like something out of a Harvest Moon Game.
However - The thought of a map filled with 30 chat bubbles that are constantly changing or a Console menu scrolling constantly with random updates, hurts my eyes.. especially if this is meant as "background" information. If I am trying to perform some kind of action and I am constantly moving my eyes over to a console or trying to see around chat boxes, I'm gonna get annoyed quickly.

Of course - I could have misinterpreted a design goal.

 

[Exxos]

Just dropping to the idea pool that Dwarf Fortress does this to a certain degree, though with 200 dwarfs it is kinda hidden.

But when you suddenly see your dwarf crawling trough corridor leaving bloody trails, you can delve into logs, personal page, wounds etc to discover how a lucky strike from a frustrated cow can leave a dwarf without a leg.

I also believe that as to the fear of spamming the player with messages, it depends on how many actions the crew-members can do in, let's say a minute?
Then there are situations when I can believe spamming the player is almost unavoidable. I mean if during a meal there was a radiation leak right into the room I do expect a lot of unintelligible shouting.

 

[Mustawd]

I would really avoid *emoting* What everyone is doing, this will quickly become tiresome to read when you have 6+ crew members walking around emoting every tiny thing they do.

TED IS HUNGRY
TED IS WALKING
TED TALKS TO TINA
TINA TALKS TO TED
TED LIKES TINA
TINA WANTS FOOD
TED STILL HUNGRY
Immortal turns off game.

 

[Beastro]

Just hit me, an interest graphic aesthetic for a game would be one that looks like pencil scribbles on paper like that.

I would really avoid *emoting* What everyone is doing, this will quickly become tiresome to read when you have 6+ crew members walking around emoting every tiny thing they do.

TED IS HUNGRY
TED IS WALKING
TED TALKS TO TINA
TINA TALKS TO TED
TED LIKES TINA
TINA WANTS FOOD
TED STILL HUNGRY
Immortal turns off game.

Agreed. The only place that's appropriate is in a Sims death dungeon.

Can we get something like that in this? Like a ornate, ritualized air lock?

.....please?

 

[dcfedor]

Hey Guys! Sorry for the delay. Website issues.

Immortal I think you're picturing close to the same thing I am. I don't want chat bubbles blinking all over the ship like Xmas lights or anything. I expect there may be one above any group of AIs that are chatting, but I'll ultimately have to see how it looks/feels once in action. Ditto for the running logs.

I probably won't have custom animations for everything due to budget constraints. But I think I can manage one for talking, one for acting-on, one for prone/sleeping, etc. (Basically, typical isometric RPG anim set.) More would indeed be better, but I don't want to overpromise.

Exxos I like the sounds of DF's method. I've only tried playing DF a few times, and never got familiar with the hotkeys/UI enough to actually "play" it. But DF gets called-out in almost any discussion about AIs in sims, so it certainly has a following. Leaving it up to the player to backtrace an AI's logs might be sufficient if the current approach feels too "in your face" upon playtesting.

Beastro I agree! In fact, one of my early concepts for the game was "Spaceship Blueprints" in the traditional white/blue scheme. I like this in Prison Architect, too. I may make the building/design mode use this, but I think I'd prefer to play the game in pixel art.

As for ornate, ritualized airlocks, I think it sounds fun, but might be left to modders. The tone I want to strike is somewhere between Alien and Firefly with the NEO Scavenger X-Files weirdness threaded through it. So utilitarian, blue-collar sci-fi about a crew scraping by in a cold Solar system. And every now and then, someone forgets to pay homage to Yuri Gargarin's shrine in LEO and ends up horribly dessicated in a space accident.

 

[Exxos]

Hey Guys! Sorry for the delay. Website issues.

Exxos I like the sounds of DF's method. I've only tried playing DF a few times, and never got familiar with the hotkeys/UI enough to actually "play" it. But DF gets called-out in almost any discussion about AIs in sims, so it certainly has a following. Leaving it up to the player to backtrace an AI's logs might be sufficient if the current approach feels too "in your face" upon playtesting.

I hope you won't have to do that. I wanted mostly to show other ways of tackling this problem. To be honest when I read the OP and got to the whole crew interaction part I was to say the least.

DFs ways is great for AAR when stuff already happened, but it's not that great at the moment it happens. In other words what works for DF's 150 dwarfs doing their stuff when player is planning new mining corridors, making rooms, planning farms or stockpiles. All that over 150 z-levels and everything is happening at the same time, does not necessarily might be the right way for what you want. Rimworld did something in between, abstracting the logs to the +'s and -'s in the mental tab while showing for instance the chat bubbles when colonists talked, or those hands when they did something.

On the art side I'd recommend at least checking out SpaceStation 13 for a look on how much cool stuff can be done with limited graphics.
Looking at this

reminded me of setting up reactors and atmospherics.

Whatever you do I'll d1p it anyway.

Damn, I'm a fanboy now...

 

[dcfedor]

I keep kearing SS13 mentioned, so I finally took the hint. Glad I did! The screenshots are greeble-tastic:

And yeah, the hope is that players will be able to setup their HVAC, white/gray/blackwater systems, rad shielding, etc. I'll have to figure out a way to allow that level of detail without becoming unusable. The SS13 screens help visualize one approach, though. (Basically, everything is one or more tiles in size. No sub-tile objects.)

Not gonna be easy, that's for sure. But hey, it'll be fun trying

 

[Turtle-Zone 3000]

Theres been plenty of stuff put up on the blog since February, the new game and mobile version of neo-scavenger, so check that out if you want.
http://bluebottlegames.com/main/blog/1

Of interest would be this vid from the end of September which goes over the premise and some ship building.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

http://bluebottlegames.com/main/node/5363

Want To Win a Steam Copy of NEO Scavenger? Put Your Naming Hats On!


published by dcfedor on Tue, 10/11/2016 - 11:40
Hey Folks!

Do you want to win a free Steam copy of NEO Scavenger? Well, you're in luck! Until October 21st, Herblin is hosting a giveaway of 5 Steam keys on his YouTube channel, and it includes a chance for you to leave your mark on the upcoming space prototype!

Check out the video for complete rules and explanation

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

http://bluebottlegames.com/main/node/6187

Webdev Setup, and Some Orbital UIs


published by dcfedor on Tue, 05/16/2017 - 17:34
Hey Folks! Still a bit of downtime as Tiago finishes up the DPI-switching code, so I continued my resurrection of the orbital plotter prototype today. I now have the orbit plots aligned with the display center, and scaled to "kiss" the edges of the display. This will be my default 100% zoom of an orbit, from which I can start scaling up or down to represent zooming in/out.

The next step will be mapping a combination of zoom amount and physical distance to the display, so I can just pump some actual planet data into it and still see them on the screen. Eventually, the idea will be to start animating them based on the passage of time, and hook up some nav UI to plot the ship's position in the System.

I'm expecting flight to be somewhat indirect. It'll be mostly plotting routes, calculating supply needs, and waiting. I may have small sections where the controls are more direct, for things like docking clamp alignment, or maybe mid-route orientation reversal to begin deceleration. But no dogfighting or anything.

I think. I did rather enjoy planetfall in Starflight, so I'll have to see how that feels when I get there.
...

 

[Turtle-Zone 3000]

Good to see the fella getting back to something new, feels like he was working on updating Neoscavenger for mobile for quite some time.

 

[Turtle-Zone 3000]

http://bluebottlegames.com/content/space-vacation
http://bluebottlegames.com/content/isotope-mine-bug-and-more-course-plotting

Space Vacation

dcfedor
onAugust 29, 2017

Hey Folks! I woke up to a bit of disheartening news this morning. Despite mobile's early success on the market, and the welcome reinvigoration of Steam sales, it looks like the party was short lived. Mobile sales took a hit a few days ago and are holding at the new low. And worse, the Steam boost appears to have run its course, as well.

It's not a crisis or anything yet. It's still paying the bills, and I think it'll at least break-even as a project. But it's a clear indicator that I need to get moving on whatever's next soon, as that runway is maybe shorter than I'd like. And since Tiago's still got a bit more work to do on his save file fix before we can launch a mobile patch, I decided to take a mental vacation day.

In space.

I've sort of been working on this whenever I had downtime, but I've been limiting my discussion of it to text-only until mobile was out (so as not to create too much confusion/noise at launch). But now that launch window is behind us, I think I can safely share a sneak peek without crossing my channels.

The image at the top of the post is the orbital plotter UI, which is also turning into the flight planning UI for the ship. I'm hoping the player can direct their pilot to a terminal where this UI comes up, and they start fidgeting until they get a course they like. Then, they "engage," and walk away to continue drama-ing on the ship with crew.

Right now, the user just moves the orange crosshairs around the system map, and can zoom in/out to see orbits of planets and other bodies. On the right, we have some buttons and readouts to control and display course info. In this case, I've used "Snap" to help me snap the crosshairs to the nearest body, which is Venus. Then, I can increase the number of "N Steps" to show what a trip to that location would look like if divided into equal time slices.

The indicator to the right, "per Step" is telling us that each time slice represents 7.79 hours of travel time, while the orange triangles show where the ship would be at each slice (green triangle is current position), and its orientation. It's basically a two-stage trip burning at max thrust towards halfway there, then reversing thrust for the remainder.

You'll also note that the crosshairs are pointed at the head of a "snake" or orange dots around Venus. Each planet also gets orange time slices drawn, to help the user visualize where everything might be during the trip (and hopefully avoid fatal collisions).

When the user hits "Engage," the course is locked-in. (Note: the "Lock" button is confusing, but is there to lock the crosshairs if you want to hold a spot and browse away from it.) Engaging means that the ship will begin executing the plotted course, but only if you adjust the rate that time passes in-game, using the "Rate" buttons. Here, I've adjusted the rate to 16.67 minutes of game time per second of real time. And we're nearing our destination, Venus (the blue dot at the bottom, below the crosshairs).

Finally, our green triangle ship has reached the end of the plotted course. And as you can see, I've missed by almost two "dots." (~15 hours before Venus gets there.) This is the bug I need to solve next.

Also, it was supposed to arrive at a velocity that matches Venus's, but is currently sitting at a dead rest (which is very bad .

So this was my mental break day, and the thing I've been keeping under wraps for a few months. Hopefully, some of you who've been patiently awaiting news on the space prototype will find some cool stuff here!

Isotope Mine Bug, and More Course Plotting

dcfedor
onAugust 30, 2017

Hey Folks! Bit of a split day today, as I worked on both mobile bugs and the space prototype.

The morning bug fix session focused on me catching-up on forum bug posts, and then tackling an encounter crash reported in the Isotope Mine. It seems if the encounter uses part of a stack of items, the game crashes with a null pointer.

The culprit, as I discovered, was that the encounter clean-up code was deleting the unused stack items along with the used ones. This was due to some bad recordkeeping as it started removing items from the stack, leaving the game thinking it was safe to delete them when it wasn't. Adding some extra code to check every item in the stack fixed the issue, which should fix maybe a handful of encounter screens in the game.

On the space prototype, I continued refining the flight computer course plots and execution, to get a bit closer to the target location and velocity.

One problem I ran into was that the ship would end up far away from the target planet, and sitting still. This was just a minor bug in the code that forgot to apply the velocity-matching thrust correctly (it was doing it half way, then undoing it the second half).

Fixing that resulted in an endpoint where the ship was moving roughly the right direction and speed, but was offset from the planet by a wide margin. This, too, was related to incorrect application of the velocity-matching. In this case, I wasn't accounting for how much the ship would be offset by this component of the thrust over the time of the trip.

The solution (so far, anyway) was to figure out how much error this velocity-matching component introduced during the trip, add the opposite of that to the desired destination point, and then re-plot the course.

The result? Much better agreement at the destination. I haven't yet added code to show me the distance from target apart from just the visual plot, but I did add a relative velocity output to the screen. And if my calculations are correct, it arrived with a relative velocity of about 6500km/h (roughly half to a third of the space shuttle's typical re-entry speed). Not bad for some napkin math and a multi-day burn from across the system!

Further refinement will be needed, but we're getting close to something I can leave as "good enough" while I move on to other game systems. Basically, I want to be able to roughly keep track of the ship traveling, know how long the trip takes, and then the crew sim knows how long until the next event happens (such as docking).

 

[wyes gull]

Oh good god, find out about 2 good-looking upcoming games in the same day? Hmm.



Neo-Scavenger was legitimately legitimate. As of now, so are expectations.

 

[Perkel]

Yikes! I hadn't thought of that. It's an interesting and legitimate question to ponder, though. NEO Scavenger had to wrestle with similarly touchy subjects, and usually erred towards implying rather than implicit. (Edit: Duh, I mean explicit) I'm pretty satisfied with the tone in NEO Scavenger, and this game shares the same universe, so I'll probably stay the course.

Well there is market for this. And Alien 4 brested chicks.
Introducing TITS.
https://www.patreon.com/user?u=121401
$30k a month

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

http://bluebottlegames.com/content/starting-skills-languages

Hey Folks! More work on the paper prototype of character generation today. I think I've nearly wrapped-up the homeworld selection process, and how that leads into language selection.

The first step was to finish physiological side effects for each homeworld. Fortunately, most of this was figured out yesterday when I tackled the first handful. Almost everything in the System fits into one of 3-4 categories: microgravity, low-g (e.g. Europa or ~15% Earth), medium g (e.g. Mars or ~40%), and near-Earth (~90%). So once I had some decided upon for a category, I could just follow that example later.

There were exceptions, though. Some places seemed like they should have poorer quality of life, so they have immune system or other health drawbacks. Others were so rich and/or high tech that inhabitants were expected to be almost identical to Earth people in their strength and health.

Insomnia factored in quite a bit, despite the above. Quite a few places had little or irregular day/night change, either due to being too far from the Sun, weird rotational periods, or shrouds of liquid, cloud, or even regolith blocking the light.

Nationality turned into a bit of a trick, as many of these places are not sovereign nations, technically. Some are just "independent" stations or colonies, with barely a hint of government. Others were so highly regulated that citizenship status varies based on social strata.

So I settled on each homeworld choice assigning a stat to remember where they're from, and later, when social strata is chosen, they'll get an appropriate assignment. E.g. citizenship, worker's visa, international certificate of identity. Basically, a lot of characters are going to start out with no nationality.

And languages turned out to be no less complex. Trying to figure out the languages of the day is pretty hard when you're projecting off-world development a half century into the future. I'm pretty sure English and Chinese are going to be common, but things get hazy after that.

With space elevators in Indonesia, DR Congo, and Brazil (and each being co-sponsored by other nations), quite a lot of the Solar System is going to be shifted in favor of who owns the means to get there. Portuguese seems like a strong candidate simply due to 30% of all passenger and cargo coming through Brazil. That said, Spanish is a much more widely-spoken language, including in places like the US (who would both be in space pre-elevator, and a co-sponsor of the Brazil elevator).

And then we have Nigeria, which has pretty much dominated African influence in space. Despite DR Congo's physical presence at the elevator's base, Nigerian corporations largely became the primary mortgage/financing and shipbreaking industries. So that might be one case where the local language of the elevator (French, in this case) is superseded by an outside culture (English, from Nigeria).

I always figured Russia might be a major player, given its history and goals. But the way things are looking, they may have been left behind in the wake of a super aggressive US/China space race and subsequent Earth orbit collapse.

Anyway, this is still a bit of a nest to untangle. But my leanings are towards English and Mandarin for sure, and probably 1-2 other languages as choices for players. Anything else is still part of the cultural fabric up there, but not a main language of trade.

http://bluebottlegames.com/content/system-colony-review

Hey Folks! Mostly a writing day today, as I primarily spent it looking over Michael's System colonies.

Before that, however, I did sneak in a bit more design work on character creation. I hit a bit of a roadblock on social strata, as I'm now rethinking its role in the game. I still think there's something important there to be recording, but maybe it shouldn't be treated like a stat.

It might make sense for players to start with full citizenship where applicable, and depending on the place, they can opt for lower-class status to gain some bonus points. E.g. take "work visa holder" or even "undocumented person" status for extra chargen points, in exchange for the trouble of not being an official member of the colony.

Of course, some colonies just have no "official" anything, so I'll have to test this theory out.

On to colony review, Michael recently put the finishing touches on his tour-de-System, so it was time for me to take a look. And so far (10/12 of the way through the docs), it's all looking good! Some minor edits here and there, and the occasional question. But they're really solid places now. Locales in which to hang more plots, people, and adventures.

In fact, I'm already starting to see some really cool player origin story possibilities. And I hope to be able to make those a part of the chargen process once the basics are covered.

Languages are still a bit of a concern, however. Given the diaspora of Earth cultures during the System colonization rush, and the space elevator funnels they pass through, a lot of different outcomes are possible.

I still think English and Mandarin are far and away the big players in language. And maybe that's just the end of the story. After all, things like air traffic control have standardized around English, despite worldwide participation. And it might've continued into space were it not for China/Xinhua's absolutely massive sponsorship of so much activity. And now, we have parity between lingua francas of space.

On the other hand, I really wanted South America, Indonesia, and Africa to be major players here. I think there are a lot of fresh ideas that would stem from their cultural dominance. And, to a degree, that's already the case in the various brands and colonies we have. Nigeria, Brazil, Indonesia...they all have front and center influence in the tapestry of The System. (E.g. your ship is owned and insured by a Nigerian mortgage brokers, your food and coffee is almost certainly Indonesian in origin, and a large number of places you dock start with "Porto")

Maybe that's the influence. The languages echo those of current global trade, but the cultural fabric of the new world has shifted away from US/Russia/Europe.

Whatever the case, this is turning into one heck of a setting. It's already grown well past my ability to keep it all in mind at once!

http://bluebottlegames.com/content/chargen-and-encounters

Hey Folks! Digging further into character generation today, and starting to define an encounter system to possibly run it.

Earlier in the day, I mainly focused on the sorts of questions chargen is going to answer. What will it tell us about the player? How can it be used in the game? In what order do we need to define things? I perused some of my favorite old pen & paper RPGs for ideas, and the overall structure started to solidify.

Basically, it'll be like a mix of NEO Scavenger and Traveller RPG. I think the overall structure will be closest to Traveller, where the game guides the player through a series of questions about homeworld, education/career, and special events. Each step along the way, the character evolves with new skills, abilities, and drawbacks, as well as social network changes and wealth. A mining gig can result in a permanent injury, or a mineral boom windfall. Or maybe a strike resulting in possession of a mining rig and outlaw status.

The NEO Scavenger part comes in with respect to the way stats are measured. Instead of "navigation 3" or STR=5, we'll go with NEO Scavenger's descriptive terms like "Navigator" and "Strong." If you're not strong, you don't get "Strong." That simplification worked pretty well in NS, and I think it'll work here.

There's a lot yet to figure out, such as how to present these choices, how much variety player's will have, and what types of rewards can be given (and how). But I think this approach will result in the player getting invested in the game sooner. The character creation process will feel more story-like, requiring less perusing of rules and stats, and just "rolling with it." And when done, the player should already have an idea of where they fit in the world.

With that structure in mind, the other question that started begging an answer is "how do I present this?" And one of the first things to spring to mind was "the encounter system."

This sort of Q&A process with the player is exactly what the encounter system is meant to do. Present the player with a situation, their options, and based on their choice, present additional situations. I've already got a pretty good template to start from in NS. And furthermore, the space prototype has a related system called "interactions," which uses a lot of the same rules and fields. So I'm considering merging interactions and NS-style encounters together.

The big benefit to this is that finishing it means I also get the game's story dialogue UI as part of the deal. Not only can I get the player character established, but I can use the UI to present the player with missions, encounters, conversations, and other events.

It's a pretty big undertaking, though. This system was easily one of the more complex ones from NS. And interactions are one of the more complex ones in the prototype. But the good news here is that both work, and at least one is battle tested. So it's just a matter of salvaging pieces that work from either and making sure they fit together.

Well, that, and beginning the process of adding a boatload of content

 

[lophiaspis]

This may not be what you have in mind at all, and you may be way too deep in the current design to even consider it, but when I see your pitch, it occurs to me that the recipe for an outstandingly engaging narrative experience in this setting might be a system that somehow dynamically generates scenarios à la Alien or Event Horizon.

I intuit that there might be a contradiction between the humdrum task-fulfillmentness of Rimworld/FTL style crew management - even the combat part of such management - and the kind of extreme thrill and emotional tension you could achieve if you really played up the psychological space horror angle. This I believe is an unexplored niche that would make your game stand out more sharply from Rimworld, FTL and the like if pursued.

Again, this is just my hunch, so please don't take it as a critique of your current design. NEOScav showed that you are definitely one of the most talented designers today. But I suspect that it might be more intense if instead of having direct control and view of all crewmen, you only control the captain and can give orders to the crewmen. You can tell them to go to the hold and check out the mysterious cargo you just picked up in the Jupiter-Europa Lagrange point, but you have little idea what happens to them once they leave your sight. They could have been smooched by a facehugger, possessed by a space ghost, and you would have no way of knowing until they unleash whatever blessing the xeno entity bestowed at the worst possible moment. Or they might simply disappear without a trace. It could end with captains getting so freaked out they throw their crew out the airlock just to be sure. This way the ship itself could be transformed from a work environment in which survival tasks are steadfastly carried out, into a terrifying maze filled with unseen dangers. I love RimWorld, and there is tons of tension in RimWorld, but there is no horror in RimWorld. And considering your pedigree being the intensely creepy NEOScavenger, as well the 'genre conventions' of movies about spaceships investigating strange anomalies, well, it seems like it would be a bit of a waste to focus this game on straightforward management instead of making it as intense and terrifying as possible.

Have you played Yahtzee's 7 Days A Skeptic? It might seem like a strange example considering that it's a point and click adventure, but it's one of the most intense in space, no one can hear you scream type games I've played and if your game could somehow procedurally generate the same emotions as that game it could be an instant classic IMO. Again, I'm not trying to impose in any way so sorry if I came across that way. And thanks alot for the excellent NEOScavenger.

 

[dcfedor]

Thanks for the kind words! And I think my plans for the game are fairly well-aligned with what you're describing.

Before I go further, let me reiterate that this is still NEO Scavenger. It's still the same universe, with the same tone and sci-fi/paranormal possibilities. The natural laws that produced enfield horrors and the DMC still run the show "up there."

The main difference is, Earth is a mess, and The System is, despite some typical international dysfunction, still relatively civilized.

On Earth, civilization has fragmented into pockets and enclaves separated by wilderness and ruin, and supernatural activity lurks outside (and sometimes, within) the walls. A little bit of everything failed, causing a synergistic collapse. Orbital space was not exempt, and is an impassable graveyard of hypervelocity debris dotted by automated defenses. Everybody is in the dark down on Earth, and the things of myth, legend, and nightmares have started creeping in again from the periphery.

In the System, things are a bit different. Earth's collapse was devastating (especially to some colonies), but there was enough of a network from which to recover and grow. There are multiple sovereign states and agencies, interplanetary trade, and even relative opulence and luxury in places. But there is no shortage of strife, often more in the form of capitalistic dystopia.

And weird things still happen. Where there are people, there are unexplained stories. Ships gone missing. Crews gone mad. Rumors of biological tests and experiments. Glitchy audiovisual snippets suggesting "something" was there, when nobody could have been.

The possibilities are still going to be there. But it is going to be a bit more of an X-Files/Alien/Firefly vibe compared to NEO Scavenger's Rifts/Shadowrun/STALKER vibe.

On the topic of narrative pov, you're pretty much on target with player-controlled captain. I'm leaving it open to revision later if playtesting shows otherwise, but I agree the limited pov seems like it should add a lot of tension. I want the player to have satisfying cycles of tension and release, whether that be through drama, action, or dread. And leaving them questioning what goes on beyond their line of sight is an excellent tool for that

 

[AdolfSatan]

Man, I can't believe it, a game in the spirit of my favourite game (FTL) done by the very maker of another one which I consider outstanding. My undergarments have thoroughly been soiled.
You've got my D1P, absolute support, thoughts and prayers, and likes and shares for pictures of kids with cancer and beaten dogs on facebook.

 

[Turtle-Zone 3000]

Wow a lot of activity on the development blog, even art.

Skills & Careers

dcfedor
onFebruary 15, 2018

Hey Folks! Reworked the skill list today, and moved from there into careers. And there's been a change of plan.

After some more thinking, I decided I was going to try the opposite approach for skills from NEO Scavenger. Instead of adding skills one-by-one, and trying to make each equally useful, I'm going to just add all of them right away, and try to find uses for each.

There's a bit of a risk here in that I might end up having unused or limited use skills in the game. But based on NS's reviews, I think that was already the case with the other approach, too. It's just hard to make a story to fit all possible builds equally. This way, characters can be a lot more well-rounded. I can pepper encounters and other events with more opportunities to use skills, since there are more to choose from. Plus, I can more logically make skills and careers prerequisites for other careers with the added granularity.

A fourth benefit comes from this approach, too. I think I can get the AI interaction system to use skill info as a sort of "common interests" tool when AIs talk and form relationships. If two AIs are at a bar, and they each have skills in excavation, they can shoot the breeze about that. Kind of like one would at a club, convention, or shared place of work. So even if "excavation" doesn't come up a lot in minute-to-minute gameplay, it becomes useful in some secondary way. (And some day in the future, when I have magical time, excavation will be there waiting for me to add some mining gameplay activity to use it on.)

I think this plan will work. We'll see!

After that was decided, and filled-out with the options in the image above, it was time to start on careers. I've only just started here, and it's primarily been schools so far, but it's starting to take shape. Each career lets you choose skills from a list of those relevant to the career. You learn these over your time there, which will likely be in 4-year increments. (5 years experience is kind of the recognized rule of thumb for mastery of a career, 4-years is a typical undergrad career, and 2 years is typical of tech and specialty programs. So 4 is sort of my average.)

You also get contacts, which will likely be auto-generated based on the career (using this same career-mapping system). Probably some income/debt. I'd like for there to be some special events that could happen, such as windfalls, advancement opportunities, tragedies, scandals, etc. You'll get various conditions applied, mostly behind the scenes to track what you've done.

And I'm toying with the idea that each career term gives you a chance at gaining access to a ship and starting the game with that. It won't always happen right away. But eventually, your career-hopping ends when you find yourself in control of a ship. Might be yours. Might be stolen. Might be mortgaged. Might not be on the registry.

Whatever the case, it's how you became a captain of a ship. And with it, probably a raft of problems at your heels. You'll have freedom to go where you want at this point, but the chargen and career choices (and consequences) should hopefully provide some narrative structure to direct you. Whether that be hiding from a pursuer, seeking revenge on a rival, finding a lost relative, finding a gig to pay off your debts, or whatever.

Career Development, OOO Monday

dcfedor
onFebruary 16, 2018

Hey Folks! Work continues today on the career path part of character generation. Roughly 30-40% done with the list of careers I've set out to do.

I decided to try and tackle the more interesting careers first, rather than just going through each from top to bottom. This includes careers where I can picture how the character gets their first ship, as well as careers most likely to be selected first. So far, that includes: shipbreaker, squatter, doctor, law enforcement, private security, and prisoner. And probably some tech and pilot ones next.

I'm starting to get the hang of doing this, and each is getting faster. Mostly, I'm focusing on the skills available during each term of the career, and prerequisites to get in. And as a result, I'm finding myself splitting some careers into more specific steps.

The "medical" career I had, for example, now consists of undergrad, med school, medical residency, and doctor. But there are also some branches off of that, such as going straight into paramedic/rescue after undergrad, or following a nursing path after med school. Health admin is another related, but different path.

Similarly, law enforcement is going to have officer, detective, and probably pilot specialties. And at least in the case of detective, one will have to earn it through officer career.

Squatter is meant to cover situations where the player is basically homeless or a refugee on places like Luna or Mars. I.e. you're not "in the system," so a lot of your life involves scavenging and hiding to stay alive. Maybe crime.

And that's where prisoner comes in. Some careers run a high risk of getting caught, while others can have this as a special event. Whatever the cause, some things can land you in prison for a term. Like anything else, spending a few years in an environment will teach you things, and in this case, those things are usually taught by criminals And like real life, this will bar you from certain future careers.

Finally, shipbreakers are folks who professionally salvage decommissioned ships. Basically, working the junkyard to pull whatever they can sell. Some are on the books, others freelance. The one big place for this in the System, K-Leg, doesn't technically allow this. However, in practice it doesn't care too much if you stick to the lower priority hulks. They'll never get around to them anyway.

The one exception is if you find something good. And that's where the game's origin story comes in. I want most (all?) of these careers to offer some chance of starting the game with a ship. Whether legally or not, something happens in said career offering the opportunity to start with a ship. Could be a junker you bought and fixed-up. Could be a hauler you mortgaged. Could be a prototype you stole from a manufacturer. Whatever the case, this is where your backstory ends, and your game begins.

I don't exactly know how this'll work, but I'm roughly planning on the player starting with a budget to buy or build said ship. The budget only represents the value of the ship they start with, not money the player gets to keep. So the player then either shops through a list of ships for one that fits the budget, or builds their own from the budget. Then, depending on their situation, they either pay for it with career money they've earned (if they can afford it), loan it and owe money, or steal it.

I think that'll get players invested in their story quickest. It'll be their special starting ship. They'll have a backstory and connections in the world. Probably some friends and rivals to watch for. And immediate goals as a result. Or so I'm hoping!

Out of Office Monday
Also, Monday is a stat holiday here, so I won't be working that day. I'll see you all Tuesday instead. Have a good weekend, everyone!

Theres more stuff on there I havent put into the post. Go check em out.

 

[agris]

Before I go further, let me reiterate that this is still NEO Scavenger. It's still the same universe, with the same tone and sci-fi/paranormal possibilities. The natural laws that produced enfield horrors and the DMC still run the show "up there."

Hey Dan, did you ever play Duskers? While a very different game than what you've outlined, I think there are some things it did in terms of building tension and the pacing that you might find inspiring.

 

[dcfedor]

Indeed I have! I loved the atmosphere, and how it toys with lack of information as a means to increase tension. Also, the drip-fed background story is right up my alley

Alien Isolation is another game I've turned to for reference. In some ways, that game minus the xenomorph is the feel I'm going for. Just blue collar folk trying to get by in a System that doesn't care about them.