Some poorly written insight into this amateur's game design process.

Following this post, I decided to share with someone a bit about game designing Away Mission.

My process isn't something I can simply convey without a lot of forethought, but I can try to quickly summarize how I came up with Away Mission.

Take note, this isn't really in chronological order. Some things I came up with before watching the television show, I can't remember when I came up with a big portion of it, etc. I tried my best to give a general idea.

Now to start with Step 1.

1. I get pissed off there is a huge lack of certain types of games.
   I played FTL and I liked it, although I thought it could have been so much more.
   Weeks/Months later, I got another email for yet-another Kickstarter that promises to be a Star Trek type game, but it is still about Combat. I laugh. I cry. I facepalm. I enrage.
   I get pissed off every game is about Combat, Combat, Combat.
   I know my greatest weakness is my art. So I say to myself spur of the moment, "I will try to draw a pixel art space guy in the FTL style. If I can't draw any art for this, I can't even make the game."
   I pretty much fail.
   
   Durrrrrrr!
   Right before I give up, I decide "What the hell? I'll try one more time." What is this? Something resembling what I want? Awesome!
   
   Football!!!
   Again one more time and...Voila!
   
   
   I have a really awesome looking Star Trek pixel art guy! Let's color him!
   
   
   
2. I create the idea.
   I now have the artistic means to make a pixel art space game. What's one of my favorite games? Starflight, by far. Also when I first loaded up FTL before playing it, I thought to myself, "OMG, I have my own Star Trek Crew! And Ship! OMG OMG OMG!" It would be pretty great if I made a game that was what I thought of FTL Before I realized it was nothing like I imagined. That means I basically have to make a completely different game, but I really like some elements of FTL. What if my game was similar, but you got to make your OWN ship?
   
   I made a prototype in Unity (left and right side of images). I went as far as trying to see if I could easily draw exterior graphics to the ship's white squares (right) and how one could differentiate the professions by room color (left). It was really really fun to custom make your own ship, but ultimately & unfortunately... not right for the game.
   
   
3. 
   
   
4. I tried to capture that feeling. It's only from memory, but I tried to remember my thoughts, expectations, and excitement when I first loaded up FTL. Those first few hours of playing, before I realized how simple and shallow the game was. Can't remember much, but I think I got the jist of it!
   
   
   
   
5. I play Starflght. Still pretty great game, but some parts are kindof lame. Great enough where I think I will want to remake this. Taking lots of notes. Dissect the game's systems and design. "It has dialogue encounters with aliens. It has ship upgrades. It has crew upgrades and crew positions that are entirely pointless but sound awesome! It has mining on planets. It has a story."
   
   
   Time to make a Starflight inspired travel map / gameplay.
   
   
   Okay, that failed.
   
   Let's Try Again!
   
   
   Wow, I really really like this! I love the red dot representation, and IMO the universe is gorgeous! Another designer gave me a tip to make the movement go into "warp drive" but I wanted it slow in the big map. So I made it "warp drive" in the solar system map but not the universe map.I add my own feature to make the idea more unique. "Starflight is cool and all, but I don't want to remake it or clone it, do I? It's a popular game, so it's a great fallback if my own ideas don't pan out. People would buy a Starflight remake with FTL graphics no doubt. However, I can do better can't I? Hmm... maybe a customized space ship? People would love a FTL game where you could build your own ship. Idk..." and then I plan on making game systems similar to Starflight before adding in my features. If my features prototype poorly, I will default to a starflight clone. If my features are awesome, I can always change the rest.
   
   
6. Yea, I definitely don't want my game to be anything like FTL. That game was exillierating, but ultimately pretty damn disappointing. Too simple. Plus it's entirely about Combat. That is the LAST thing I want in my treky game.
   
   
   "I will be better than FTL! Muahahahhaa!"
   
   
7. I watch a similar themed television show. Star Trek: The Next Generation, and I loved the series. I took note on why I loved it. What made that show great. "It's the characters! The characters!" The moral dilemma's, the non-violent resolution, the technology, the diplomacy. It's Captain Picard. "I want to make a game where the player feels like they're Captain Picard!" and "I want to emphasize the Science! Lots of Science!" Last but not least, "I knew it had nothing to do with Combat. Mother *#$@#ers and their obsession with Combat. Star Trek is the anti-thesis of Combat."
   
   
   
   
8. I create systems to emphasize those feelings. What does a captain do? He runs his ship. How? By having a crew of course! Who are those crew? An engineer! A science officer! A tactical officer! Hmm... those professions seem very important. I'll allow the player to customize their ship based on the profession type. If they pick a lot of tactical officers, they'll be a war ship. If they pick a lot of science officers, they'll be a science vessel.
   
   So the player is a captain, and that captain takes action through his crew. The specialized crew will then fulfill whatever need they're suppose to serve. So a tactical officer will need a combat feature. The science officer will need a feature to do "Science". The engineer can upgrade the ship, so I should add in ship upgrades. So the game should be focus on the Crew + Ship Upgrades.
   
   
   
   
9. I add my own taste to those ideas. I like my games realistic. What would a future starship have? What are some of my favorite TV show characters? Ohhh, I love the psychologists. I also love the bartenders. Psychologist & Bartender should be their own profession. Also I'm a Foodie. There should be a Chef Profession.
   
   
   
   Most importantly, I add in my favorite features and themes in all my games.
   
   Travel is incredibly important. Difficulty, as I'm a hardcore gamer. Depth, because I'm sick of shallow stuff. Innovation, because I hate how derivative the industry is. Non-violent resolution, because games are incredibly violent and always defined by killing people. Even when they add the skill "Science" it is just another way to add combat buffs to killing things.
   
   Also I'm a huge fan of having an enormous amount of playable races. Since the pixel art is so easily created (I could create and fully animate a new species in 1 hour, 3 if it was a brand new non-humanoid species).
   
   
   
   
   
10. I developed all the professions. Still vague, so I need some game design details. They need game systems. Okay...so what do you do in my game? Well...you roam space in your Ship and you encounter story. How should I do story? I'll have "Events". Like alien encounters in Starflight, or maybe something like Point & Click adventure games. I sure do love Point & Click Adventure Games. Maniac Mansion, Scooby Doo for Sega, TellTale's Walking Dead, Simon the Sorcerer, oh man!
    
    So... how do you play "The Ship"? You upgrade it... and...things break down. Item Decay! The engineer repairs...er wait...everyone maintains the ship in some way! So... "Ship Maintenance" and "Events". Every profession should do one thing for each.
    
11. The tree is from right to left. If you notice, I have all professions listed in my GDD. In this section are their "Actions". The ways in which they actually play out. The beginning of creation of the game systems.
    
    Note: This is not the actual GDD in its present state. This is some random screenshot of some part of my GDD somewhere near the beginning. It's all I could find showing the early stuff.
    
    ex. The Navigator manages fuel & avoids weather (asteroid fields, space lightning, etc.) and during events they transport the crew and stealth the ship!
    
12. I begin to just jot down ideas. Whether on the official GDD, on scratch paper, or in notebooks. I do this a lot. I've probably written the "Professions- Actions:" out 20+ times. Sometimes I forget and come up with different ideas.
13. I try to achieve balance with each profession. Each profession needs to, all by itself, be fun. There shouldn't be a boring profession. The player should be able to play any of them and have fun. They should also be very different. (This is why the Chef was combined with the Entertainer. It's why the Rookie was removed entirely and set aside in "Unnecessary, but maybe later." pile of ideas.) Every component of your game should have a purpose.
    
    
14. I refined these ideas and their playable systems over and over until they work well. I need them to make each profession feel powerful, capable, worthwhile. I need them to be balanced, and for each to have not just a purpose, but a strong purpose. After all, these professions ARE the game! This is how I achieve replayability. This is how I allow players to have individuality. They prioritize each of these professions and decide what kind of ship they need to be. So now I know any gameplay I create needs to revolve around these systems.
    
    
    
    
15. So what about the Ship? How big does it need to be? How do I graphically represent it? Should I make it customizable?
    
    I initially drafted some concept art. A customized "engineer only ship". (Back when the engineer handled teh teleporter.)
    
    
    I like that, but idk. Captain Picard's ship was truly massive. How would I do that? Maybe red dots to represent living crew since they'd be so tiny?
    
    
    
    So should each room be a "Profession Room"?
    
    
    
    I really dislike that. I like the red dots though. I like the smaller FTL style ships a lot more.
    
    The more I thought about it, the less I liked other people's ideas (FTL) and the more I wanted something entirely different. Something that made more sense for my game, since it was so different. I also hated how in a large ship (which is what I wanted) my crew were so tiny. Zooming in/out sounded like a bad option.
    

 

13. Then somehow, I don't remember how, I decided to have a huge ship, but chop it up into Profession-Based Rooms.





I also messed with some ideas about making all the rooms actually connected and a minor (unimportant, but cool) feature be that the player can "manage their ship" in one big map. Scratch that, maybe this will be polish or post-release.


14. I constantly think about what the player is suppose to be. Suppose to do. How he should feel. Now remember Carter, the player is suppose to feel like the Captain, not the crew. What does the Captain do? How should he feel?

15. Well first, the Captain encounters other alien ships. There is always a scene on the bridge where you talk with aliens or analyze encounters.


This is where I can insert the dialogues between the player and alien encounters.



16. But the Events will sometimes be on the planet. I need some interface where the player (the Captain) makes decisions. I need an Officer's decision room. Kindof like on Star Trek TNG.



What does the Captain do in this room? Captain Picard would listen to everyone's advice and then ultimately make a decision.

So they should all matter and they should each propose plans to help the captain.




17. Going forward, I worked on giving each of those plans a life. Creating alien civilizations, cultures, and personality. i.e. Content generation. After all, by this point (and I"m sure I'm leaving plenty of things out) I've already got all the systems and game design flushed out and polished. Everything is working well, and I've got a pretty great alpha going so far. Still might want to redo this system or that one in code/unity, but the design seems pretty stable now.



18. A large portion of development was game design. I give this attention to game design detail for all my projects. It's incredibly important to me to know that what I am working on is awesome before I work on it. I try to do most of the software engineering beforehand as well. Figure out how I will code certain features, what assets from the asset store I could buy to make it easier, etc.

Interesting enough, this game started out as:

A board game / card game. Players picked a profession, crash landed on a planet, then had to explore and draw encounter cards. The player then formed a colony with other players (cooperative card game) and built their colony, upgraded their technology, and analyzed the alien world.

Then, it began as a prototype that was more similar to Dwarf Fortress. You start with a colony and there is no ship, no space exploration. Just colony management, profession management, and planetary exploration.

 

I know there's a lot I left out, but this was suppose to be a quick example to help another user. I liked all the pretty pictures and alpha uglies, and I figured at the very least someone could see insight into one madman's mind.

Primarily this:

You can get some great game design ideas or dissect systems (even story / writers who have a "system" to write stories in)

• Board Games
• Card Games
• PnP Games
  
• Books
• Television
• Walking outside and seeing a blue car.
  
  

I also made extensive use of "art drafts" or quick Unity prototyping.

Photoshop, experimentation, and copy/pasta are pretty great for trying to understand how your ideas can pan out without having to actually code them all. (Hint: They turned out pretty awesome. Seeing them implemented into the game, animated and everything? Pretty great. Not sure how fun it all will be though. But if it's not at all fun, then I simply do something else and find a way. Game Design is dynamic like that. When it's not, there is always "Release it anyway." or "Release it for free / open source?")

 

I like it, its all good stuff. Good reading. Many elements interested me although I would like to shoot some green face. This is probably why aliens haven't been in contact. I'm not going to comment on the game because it could be quite special and shouldn't be tainted by premature feedback.

 

Fantastic! One of the best write-ups on pure game design that I have seen in many years! Reminded me of the stuff I used to read decades ago. It is amazing how refreshing this is. Most of the stuff these days seems to be centered around how they got the right look or otherwise achieved the best graphics. Yours shows a real focus all of the time on game play and interaction. The way it should be IMO!

I found it very interesting and definitely can relate with the trial-and-error approach you used. Ultimately this stuff is just idea after idea that are tested. The bad ones are thrown out and replaced with better ideas.

Thanks for sharing this!

 

Thanks, I'm glad you liked the read.

For the tactical-minded individual, there are still war ships. It just transcends violence, as in Trek-style theme you could disable their weapons, engines, shields, etc. and then do as you please. Ultimately, I want the player to be able to still have the choice for non-violence even if they crew a war ship. Although in some events, it may not be much of an option.

I also wanted to allow for a variety of ways to "combat" the enemy. Combat is an event all to its own, and thus each profession will have their own suggestions. (For example, the Navigator may suggest rushing into an asteroid field or clouding their scanners via a Riker manuever of some kind.) While other professions would be less "shoot some green face" and more deceptive "Invite them over, then drug their food." or simply using the Entertainer's skill as a chef to make sure they eat plenty, get drunk, and remain distracted.

I figured that would be more interesting then, "BLOW THEM UP!" Although technically if you want, that is still possible I guess

I accomplished this through a combination of Event-Specific actions (unique, special actions) and Universal-Actions (actions you can nearly always take, such as "Fire Weapons", "Run Away", "Communicate", etc.)

Hahaha, it really probably is

Imagine if aliens determined if they should visit based on browsing "The Internet". Reddit or Digg or 4Chan. Or worse, they read one line from "dood38" and decide the invasion must commence!

I wanted to show how the design could change significantly, so I made sure to include plenty that isn't even part of the game anymore.

I also didn't have any "Before" shots to include to compare the evolution of the aspect of planetary exploration / events systems.

Although it does relate to Game Design.

You'd find stuff like this



on the planet




I began messing with some ideas of a more interactive GUI, based on my experiences (and love) playing "Papers Please".

Something like taking scientific tools from your toolbelt with the mouse, and moving it around to discover or analyze things similar to how you manipulated things in Papers Please.

I was beginning to really like where it was going, but don't know how well it fit with the game overall.




I wanted to include this part because it helps to emphasize the inclusion of random off-genre game components into this. I'm sure if they were more major features, it would be considered genre-blending like how we've seen with the inclusion of RPG elements to FPS games.

For art, I would create a ton of drafts to get a general idea.



And in the end, I used NONE of those, hehe.



Here are also some other early concepts of the dialogue between the player/aliens on the Bridge.



Followed by a re-draft of the same concept art, which was how I actually put it in the prototype in Unity.





A concept for a more starflight-y ship combat / visuals.





And most importantly of all: a rough draft of all the possible game modes, including draft visuals. How they connect with one another, etc.

As bad as this looks, this was pretty big for me going forward. It also really helped define the game and express to others how each "Mode" worked with one another.

[/quote]

 

Another thing I believe is important in Game Design is attention to detail, especially related to the GUI and how the player interacts with objects or entities.

Here, I needed to put in every profession on "The Bridge". The player would click a profession to open the menu for their actions. (ex. Want to raise shields? Click on the Engineer --> Divert Power to Shields.) (ex. Can't speak their language? Hearing static noise? Click Xenology ---> Translate.)

I wanted it to both look and feel right. So I tried pretty much every possibility.





The above just for placement of the captain / 1st officer.



This for the design of the bridge.

The result was what I thought significant. Polished well.

The captain in the middle with lots of space around him makes him look a lot more important. The 1st officer being at the back and highest (if you can even tell those are stairs), giving off a "Supporting position" vibe. The language expert and navigator being at the front/bottom made sense to me. Especially since the navigator is in the very front in Star Trek.

I give this much attention to detail (and more) in all my designs. I thought that was important to emphasize.

The same was put in how to differentiate varying levels of Crew members, from Officer (far left) to rookie (far right, in the onesie).



Anytime a player sees a onesie, they know it's a newb crew.
Anytime they see a long coat, they know it's the one and only officer.
When they see a normal shirt, they know it's a normal.
And when they see something fancy without a long coat, they know it's an expert crew.

This gives a visual representation of the crew. Also since there will be far more on the right (normal/newb) and far fewer on the left (Officer/Expert) the player can visually tell what his away team's capabilities may be. Also, it'll make the player feel more awesome having fewer onesies.

The color-coding is also extremely important. It is easier for me to memorize profession by color, than anything else. All GUI, all rooms, lights, and clothing are color-coded. So anytime the player sees orange, he knows it's engineering. No matter if it's a drone, a room, a character, an item, etc.

 

Looks wonderful!! Very unique and special.

 

colourblind mode can simply have a letter above each head ie E for entertainment. It's a minority audience so you don't have to go too far to please them, merely make it accessible to them. I'm hard of hearing. I don't need closed captions for sound effects, but I still want to follow conversation

 

I have yet to read through all of this in detail but before I dig in, I immediately thought about Craig Perko's blog. I've been following it for a few years and he has talked a number of times about designing a Star Trek game that is less about combat and more about people. You may find it helpful, I have in thinking about my own work.

Some of good ones:
http://projectperko.blogspot.ca/2014/09/generating-playable-star-trek-plots.html
http://projectperko.blogspot.ca/2014/07/star-trek-interiors.html
http://projectperko.blogspot.ca/2013/05/crew-of-starship.html
http://projectperko.blogspot.ca/2015/04/how-to-sci-fi.html
http://projectperko.blogspot.ca/2014/09/science-fiction-games-are-different.html
http://projectperko.blogspot.ca/2014/07/utopian-scifi-and-families-in-star-trek.html

 

Beautiful write-up, and looks like a great game too. I think your visual coding of class and experience is very well done.

Out of curiosity, did you look at Trexels?

 

Thanks a lot for sharing so much with us! It was very interesting and educational. I'm looking forward to play that game one day!

 

@CarterG81 - Thanks for taking time to write all that! I really like how you identified a specific feeling and have designed all of this to convey that feeling. That strength of vision really ties it all together.

 

Hahahha, although that came out after I started my project, I do remember watching this video about it:

It reinforced my thoughts that my game was a great idea and would sell very well. I had only wished I released around the same time so I could get on his spotlight It would be pretty great if a high profile game was released and you became known for being the "not horrible version", blowing them away as competition. Unfortunately the game was a bit too early to even make a blip on anyone's radar at the time

What actually got me inspired/annoyed to start a treky style game is Tiny Trek and another treky game around at the same time on kickstarter. It didn't take much to see how poorly those would turn out, at least IMO anyway. I don't know which one, as I can't find the webpage section that made the promise, but one can be quoted talking about how they were tired of seeing treky games that were just about combat, then it game proceed to talk about ship combat, ground combat, etc. I'd quote it if I could find it, but I can't even seem to find Tiny Trek's website (or Bit Odyssey's website), let alone the name of that other game.

 

Thanks Tony Li!

Btw, since I made this game with Unity I used Dialogue System for the alien encounters. So thanks for that, saved me a lot of time developing and allowed me to prototype really fast too. I never got around to developing the personality of each individual crews, but Love/Hate seemed pretty interesting too at first glance. Anyway, when I talk about the Strengths/Weaknesses of Unity, I am always mentioning Dialogue System as an example of one of Unity's biggest strengths (Unity's biggest strength IMO is its asset store, and DialogueSystem always comes first to mind as an example of how the asset store can save you a lot of time, learning, and work.)

 

Are you sure it really would play out that way? I could see how you could have the critically acclaimed better version of the game that hardcore gamers like, but on the opposing side there might be a 6 or 7 figure marketing budget, official brand license and the casual market that does possibly not read any of the reviews for your game...
Maybe I'm too cynical, but I don't think you'd have a chance at having better sales than the official game, no matter how good yours is. I think becoming known as the "better version of FTL" might hit the audience that would potentially buy your game a bit better.

 

I think Away Mission's concept is unique enough that it stands on its own ("command a crew like ST:TNG"). The visual style will invite comparisons to FTL, of course, but that needn't dominate the marketing discussion. After all, Minecraft isn't known as the "better version of Infiniminer" even though they look the same at first glance.

If you were trying to sell Away Mission to a publisher, "a better version of FTL" would be a good angle because publishers want something similar to proven sellers. Gamers, on the other hand, are looking for unique experiences.

 

Going to be honest, if you ever finish it, I would totally buy it.

Really interesting write up too, you're a hell of a lot more organized than I am.

 

This write up is ACCEPTABLEEE!!!!!!

 

I'm going to throw out another idea here.

A big part of burn-out, I think, is working in a vacuum. You're toiling away for months with little encouragement, because nobody knows about it.

If instead you release it as an early alpha or beta, or do the full-on incremental development model (like we've done for High Frontier), the situation is different. You'll get a core of players. Start a mailing list or web forum about the game, and get those core players to post (we're still struggling with this in our community, but it's slowly starting to happen). Then, update your game frequently — talk about your design challenges and solutions, as you've done in this post, and get feedback from the players.

Now you're no longer working in a vacuum; you have people watching and cheering you on (and occasionally, maybe even providing useful ideas — especially useful in a game like this one, which needs a lot of creative event scenarios). This will probably get you re-invigorated and past the burn-out, and help you push on to the finish line.

 

This is such a great idea. If you don't want to open up critique to the whole Internet yet, you could always find a local gaming group through a service like meetup.com and get feedback from a smaller, local pool of people.

 

This is actually what I needed. I'm feeling a bit of burn-out now, and I think it's because I haven't been public enough with my current project. In the past I created WIP threads as a matter of course and shamelessly promoted my current projects...this one, I've tried the "just do it, don't talk about it" thing, and that doesn't work. I guess I'm more of a social creature than I thought I was.

I should try to get back in the swing of things. Here goes.

*Ahem* Saleria: Zombies vs. Knights is the best game since buttered bread!

...I feel a little better already!

 

I dig that, and I totally support you in your need to be social about what you're working on... but please make your own thread, let's not hijack @CarterG81's.

Also, really, buttered bread wasn't such a great game — the challenge wears off pretty quickly, and there were never enough power-ups to keep me engaged. The sequel (buttered toast) was better, but still...

 

Spoiler: OT

How about trying the whole "finish a game" thing. That one tends to work wonders.

 

No arguments from me, on either count.

@CarterG81 talked about some interesting stuff. It's given me a few things to think about. I think the most important thing they talked about, was the passion driving their project, though. That's something I've felt slowly leaking from my own projects, and is a red flag that should never be ignored!

 

Your game description was so outstanding I had to create an account only to commend and support.
The non-violent spirit reminds me of Balance of Power (if someone triggers the war, all players lose). It also featured advisors who gave you their point of view before you made a decision, as you show in one sample screen.

I'll throw in a few parallels with other games :

• How do the different crew members get along with each other ? In Midwinter, each character might ignore or distrust other people depending on his or her background story
• A recent online game named Mush revolves around using each character's special skills to fend off "ship decay" and other events, including traitors on board. The major difference is that Mush is a multiplayer game (16 players in each ship, and as many characters aboard). Cooperation is required but not always achieved, and more than a captain was assasinated, or left stranded on a planet after a mutiny. I'll be really curious and eager to have all this in a single player game.

 

Thank you very much for this, I really appreciate the support.

I just wanted to reiterate to everyone that I didn't write this up to advertise the game, but to share some insight into how I design games. I didn't want this to be about Away Mission, but about Game Design. That is why I am not answering questions about Away Mission, which won't be released anytime soon. I greatly appreciate the support though, and look forward to being very involved when the game is ready to be more involved with the community.

 

@CarterG81 I think kickstarter would be a much better place if those developers did what you've done here. Even while quickly scrolling through you can get hyped over the progress going on between posts.

 

Really great stuff man!

 

Hey wait.

This is neither poorly written nor do you seem very amateur...

 

Thar's a great point! Thanks for this. If I ever do a devblog, I think I will do something similar to this for the beginning post /front page. Or at least have a "See Progress" page on the website.

 

Kudos! Well written. Look forward to seeing this progress.
Gigi

 

For indies, the devblog often is the marketing @CarterG81 ! it builds up a following ahead of time (which will get you charted on release, ie be a good release).

 

A devblog would be amazing. If it's anything like your posts here, it would manage to be both enlightening and get people excited about your game.

Also:

Not sure if it's deliberate, but I love the fact that the last crew member takes a last look into the room before leaving

 

@CarterG81 - I always assumed this was your devblog: https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=44805 but that you got too busy actually making the game to keep it updated. Seems like you could develop a following there, too, since you already got comments like "Neat concept. FTL +!", "Looks really impressive," and "I've been waiting for a game like this..."

 

He knows it's the last time any of them will ever see that room. #TrumpDiplomacy

 

Actually, that's why it's great. I don't know if it's because I've been trained by old school JRPGs, but as soon as I saw that I started thinking:

-Are they going on a mission? Is he afraid he'll never see that room again?
-Did he hear something? Is there someone/something hidden in the room?
-Is something bothering him? Is he in an introspective mood and sometimes likes to just stare at things for a bit?

 

I really appreciate all the posts. This excites me to share a bit about what the game is about. Although it's a poor explanation (I'd have to make some gifs or branching tree charts to show you how it works), it's always exciting to talk about.

If I get my way and program it correctly, it will be all of the above

The core of the gameplay revolves around procedurally generated stories which link directly into procedurally generated personalities. Part of being the Captain would be not just choosing your Crew & Officers, but learning about them (and ultimately Dismissing them, Promoting them / Encouraging their behavior, etc.) That, and how much you feel you can trust that officer and their estimates. (I guess you'd technically "win" the game if you figured all your officers personalities out and thus predicted the result of every event.)

A lot of variables are blackboxed, and some things which are not are actually misleading to the player or not entirely accurate. This also includes each Officer's estimates of success and even sometimes their reports. (An original hire for Tactical Officer in the beginning of the game may indicate a very kind, charismatic person- only to later discover through a series of crew-losing or violence-occurring events that he is in fact a sociopath. However, the player may think that is the best type of personality for a Tactical Officer, if they want someone who does not value life but rather only values success, and can live with him under-reporting the estimated casualties of any conflict.) It is important that your Officers are not always correct, because part of a good story are events which occur that you cannot predict, and then your cunning to get out of the jam your officer or crew just created.

It sounded like a PITA to balance, but ultimately the entire point of the game outside of the repetitive management tasks. After all, Star Trek: TNG was all about the Personality of the Crew, even more than it was about the missions they embarked upon or the cunning plans of the heroes. How many times did Riker's integrity and code of ethics stop the Enterprise, or even all of humanity, from being destroyed? And how many times did Picard rely on Riker's pride and character consistency to fulfill the exact message he wanted to send? (Specifically, I'm thinking about episodes like Hide and Q).

The main part of the game is simply the "Events" which happen all throughout your journey. These are a series of hand-crafted content mixed with procedural generation, with an AI that figures out how those connect or where to go from one event to the next. It's a lot simpler than it sounds. To make it possible to have procedural stories, I reuse a lot of the same events, but they are chopped up into segments, with enough variables to give them enough to feel different (or "different enough." Obviously there's a limit). So at any moment in one event which has a predetermined path to it, you could interrupt that event's story by doing some cunning plan, which then results in either a resolution or a new series of events. Each piece is very brief. The one you see where the blue shirts all leave the room was one of my longest segments, and IMO almost too long (I was afraid the player would get bored quickly if they had to watch stuff like that constantly, since it takes so long to fully animate.)

One example would be a 4-part diplomatic event. During any segment, you could simply select the Tactical Officer, select the command "Arm & Imprison" (or whatever), and it would then generate a scene with the same diplomatic table you were just in (room, artwork, eating animations of diplomats) and then tell it to spawn [X] number of Tactical Crew (based on how many you chose for the plan), and the result would be calculated just the same as it would be in ANY scenario. The AI knows the entry/exit points of the map, the obstacles (pathfinding), and can immediately calculate success/failure and if needed- I design specific locations characters have to move to in order to animate correctly.

So you'd be seeing the same animations, the same few outcomes, the same plan- but all in entirely different contexts (and thus entirely different outcomes). For example if you imprisoned some diplomats aboard your ship, if they were a ship that were superior to yours and violent, then it would initiate ship combat mode or give you a generous warning (event). If they were inferior, they'd beg or run away immediately and take the loss. This is the same generic "beg" or "generous warning" event or dialogue that they'd use anytime they'd ever need to respond in this way. So those responses are re-used generic events themselves. If during ship combat you escape thanks to a skilled Navigator officer/crew, then the game would make random rolls later on to determine when to Retry for a "I found you!" event, which is nothing more than a normal ship encounter but with very aggressive variables. (If powerful, they'd eventually return though, as they always would in a TV Series. Drama. If insignificant, you may never see them again and only suffer a tiny faction loss against that uncommon species).

The animation and AI wasn't the hard part in content generation. I had that working pretty well before I stopped working on the game. It was actually the writing. Writing the dialogue for branching decision trees and various events, having different personality types- it is a lot of writing. Not so much that it was hard, but that it was very very time consuming. Significantly more than creating multiple animated events. When I return to the project, I will most likely approach it a bit differently and open it up to a form of modding so that the players can contribute, making their own storylines and write their own dialogue. I'd provide them what is essence "story forms", and the game would simply parse the forms and either fill them with generic dialogue or generic procedural content if missing pieces or resolve them just as the user intended. Either that, or create a game tool to create these stories more efficiently (for myself) and merely share it with all users (mod tools). I think for a single event, including all Officer's plans and their resulting scenes, animations and everything- it only took me an hour. That's 9 very specific (non-generic) events. Writing the dialogue for those events and all possible responses took me two hours. That is what I mean by writing taking up so much time. I wanted to make sure it was as efficient as possible, but couldn't figure out how to make writing more efficient. I wanted to be able to create a single "Story" composed of 9-27 events in a single day. (This can give you an idea how short and simple these events are, and how automated the AI is.)

It sounds like a lot of work, but it's nearly the entire game. The rest is pretty simple elements, and even those are basically just simplified events anyway. For example, mining. That's just a single event that shows a few seconds of animation and either then transitions into a second event (the mine collapsed! there was an explosion! someone was hurt on the job!) or it simply says "Success! +10 minerals" or whatever. It sounds complex but it's a lot simpler and more feasible than it sounds. Although I didn't have the chance to play the game as complete as I wanted, the prototypes of doing these events this way were pretty damn awesome.

Balance is the only thing I was afraid of that I had no way to anticipate. It sounds like a Nightmare to balance. I was hoping that balance would resolve itself, since the game is not meant to BE balanced. You are supposed to, by design, encounter aliens that are infinitely superior or inferior to you, with only a few (major) species that are around your level with various techs. I also wouldn't mind if "the right choice" was harder to do than a cheap lame psychopathic style of play or someone abusing the stealth action. Still, sounds like a nightmare to balance.

If I can load up the old Unity project, I will post a single prototype event and all of the Officer's unique resolutions and plans, so I can show you how you resolve many of these events. The "interupt" decisions are pretty much just choosing a universal "officer plan" that can be done to ANY event (Shoot their Ship. Set Phasers to Stun/Kill & Attack. Get Ship into Stealth Cloaking, etc.) So if the player wanted, they could initiate a Trade with an alien ship, go into Stealth, then the aliens would say "Where did you go? Hello? Hello?" and that's it. So you could troll them for no reason if you'd like. Unless of course they find that offensive rather than confused. Then they'd respond in whatever way their culture responds to offense, according to whatever integer value that type of offense has for their procedurally generated culture.

Needless to say, I had a blast creating this game and nearly anytime I see this thread, see any of my art, or think about Sci-Fi, I get excited and can't wait to return to this project immediately after I finish my current one (which has reduced complexity, and a lot less innovative).

 

Sorry guys, I tried to load up my old Unity 4 project in Unity 5, and even after I resolved all the compile errors, everything was totally messed up (especially the pixel per units). It would just take me too long to create a preview of the two prototypes events I had.

(One was an event called "Murder Most Foul" which was setup in branching parts (1a, 1b, 2a, 2b, 3a, 3b, 4a, 4b, and 5). The beginning is an unknown crew murdered an innocent crew member, and the Psychologist (who is in part, basically a detective) has to go around trying to figure everything out. Each part has success/failure, and the ending resulted in either the correct person being found, an incorrect person being accused of murder, an admission of failure, the level of confidence in the officer's findings ("I am certain he is the murderer!" / "I believe this is he, but I do not know."), as well as whether or not they found the physical evidence (part 3 or 4, which includes your Science Officer/Crew's work). The end result is part 5, in which you then decide what to do (which creates a new event such as an "Execution" event, or simply resolution text.)

This was to prototype an "Episode" where the central focus is on a single officer, and how I would put together other officer's skills alongside it. (Psychology Primary + Tactical/Science as supporting roles). I wanted to see if I should have these story-based "Episodes" in addition to or instead of the decision based "Events". The former is more focused on characters, not the Captain.

The second is a Captain-focused type of system with a prototype of something along the lines of the crew being "Captured by Natives" which is just some random crew types in the center, but made to prototype the decision making of the Captain in the conference room, where you hear out all your Officers, ask them what they think, then choose one of their plans. Not very much story at all, but heavy on the player action (decisions).

I had them fully animated (which is mostly just them walking off screen, the pathfinding knowing to move from A to B) and with some resolutions (brief dialogue, and a result animation), but the only build I could find was one that I either disabled animations or was before adding the command for them to spawn & move to point B? Not really sure, but here it is if you want to see where I was going with it:











Anyway, you get the picture. It's the same scene (One Scenario) but with different groups of characters spawned with specific AI commands / animations. I simply spawn specific characters, do simple pathfinding, possibly some animation or AI script ("Dive Attack" = pause, dive to nearby point, phaser nearest enemy, then "RescueCharacter" = MoveToCharacter(captive), animate something, repeat until all captives untied, then All "MoveToLocation" + "FireAtEnemy" commands, thus moving off screen while firing back at nearest enemies), and have the AI basically decide what happens, or trigger dialogue ("MoveToLocation", when finished, StartDialogue("CaptiveNative3")) Tweak until it makes sense and works well, and Voila! Re-use AI components constantly.

Then polish this "Event" in multiple scenes (different planets, different species, on space ships, in cargo room, etc.) with different characters, obstacles, etc. That way it's the "Rescue Event" and hopefully the AI will help determine success or failure before or during animation. If that doesn't work out, then probably use the AI to generate content, then tweak that content manually to fix each scene individually. Any way to be more efficient in creating content. After all, content creation is an enormous time sink, especially in story-heavy games. If an AI can automate a lot of it when it needs to be repeated (in the case of one "Rescue Character" event being used in multiple scenes) then that saves me from doing repetitive work even if I have to still polish / fix up ever scene.

I wanted to post this part because I think it is a good idea to always think of ways to be more efficient in content generation. Not just reusing components, but making them reused in different settings (keep it fresh). Dashing in some hand-crafted content in the mix, having some universal generic content that can be applied to everything, etc. Gives more freedom to the player to do what they want, without having to hand-craft an enormous amount of branching scenes/levels. Having AI figure things out with certain commands is a lot more efficient than hand-crafting each event, animating it second-by-second, and then polishing it.

If I was still working on this project right now, I'd have done better with the gifs or shared an example demo. It pains me to not see them at least animated walking around. Sorry, I wanted to share but I've already spent way too much time in this thread and NOT working on my current project :\

 

Can you expand on how exactly this was written? As I understand it, the resolution would essentially be an automated combat situation, you spawn relevant crew and relevant enemies, then the crew is provided a specific routine (set phasers stun). The AI resolves it. This is fairly straight forward.

The 4 part diplomatic event though. Why is this broken up into distinct 'parts'? Each part has various actions/dialog nodes that would fire off different followups right. So this would essentially look like a conventional branching dialog tree no?

When you write these, you would have like dialog nodes that have certain prerequisites, "If AIShip is warship" then attack, "If AIShip is peaceful" then flee. Branching from these would potentially be followups if the action was successful or if you initiated some kind of response "use tractor beams to prevent flee"?

So, if I understand, the procedural aspects would mostly be in the resolution of each of the actions at each node - not in the actual generation of the dialog/action tree itself?

EDIT: Regardless, it's a very ambitious system and it sounds like you're putting it to great use. I'm just trying to understand how this system works in a little more detail so that I can improve my own approaches or borrow great ideas.

 

So it can be reused. You could take multiple episodes of a sci-fi television show that all start with diplomatic negotiations, but all lead to an entirely different result. You could also take a story that starts off with battle, but concludes in diplomatic negotiations.

Another reason it is split up into parts is to make it more "episodic" and tell a story without having to do all the needless/worthless in-between scenes. Skip the boring stuff and go straight into the meat of the story. Load a scene where you are already sitting at the table, and that animated scene can appear the same but have entirely different pretext (the dialogue you read at the start of the scene, which tells you what is happening before you have to make a decision).

Since the animation and art style is very simple, it's easier to just load in and say "They are being extremely rude, and even after having explained your culture, they do not seem to care." then have the alien species ask for a favor, and you get to respond- "Yes, No, 'Not until you apologize', etc.) Rather than animating something that is difficult to tell what is going on and requires a lot more dialogue writing. So to cut down on how many scenes I have to animate, how long the scenes are, and how much unique dialogue I have to write.

I mainly just want the player to experience the good parts, with as little filler as possible.

The procedural aspect is mostly just the thread that pulls all the hand-crafted content and alien culture variables together. It creates the events more than it does the resolution of the events.

I'd really have to just show it in action or with pictures/code, but I don't have time to do anything like that right now.

From my understanding (which is limited on what a neural network actually is), the system is a lot more similar to a Neural Network than it is a Behavior Tree. Not that it is either, but just to give a better idea. There are dialogue trees / behavior trees in single events, and in "Bridge Mode" (which is entirely just dialogue trees). Depending on the content, the procedural part may know to load in an entire "story" (multiple events) or to simply start with one and load them as needed.

 

Hey @CarterG81, just wanted to thank you for writing this up (as well as showing the content on your dev diary thread). I'm working on my own Trek-inspired game, and getting a peek at your thought and design process here is immensely useful.

Looking forward to reading more!

 

So you sort of approach the story as a series of modules?
"Battle Module" - "Diplomatic Module" etc.

If that's correct then something like the "diplomatic module" would take inputs like relative party strength, and have some different kinds of output conditions, like payments, demands, etc.

Is that basically correct? If not, would you mind elaborating a bit on how your approach differs?

PS: Sorry if I worded the previous post rudely. Your game sounds awesome man, but I don't want to pass up the opportunity to pick up better techniques for building out dynamic story.

 

That sounds pretty accurate, I think you got it.

I didn't test this stuff extensively, it was all in prototype phase still (although seemed to be working great) so in the end I'm not absolutely sure what I will ultimately decide on. I mean, all the different types of events and gameplay will remain (Bridge dialogue, star map movement/scanning, story-based events, major player decisions & branching stories, etc.) but I can't really say what the end result system will be. As dynamic as I want it to be, if the system doesn't turn out the way I want/need, I may end up doing something different or worst case scenario just scrapping it and doing more hand-crafted content (which would be a lot more work and IMO would be worse, but I go with the flow in development and don't stop until I get something that produces the results/feel that I want.) By the time I start the project again, I also might hire an additional programmer or two to help create something more complex/awesome (if my current project is successful enough to generate that kind of revenue, of course). I am after all an amateur/novice (self-taught programmer, figuring all this out myself for the first time).

 

I just stumbled over this and thought it might possibly be interesting for you guys:

http://store.steampowered.com/app/323060/

The videos on the store page are worth a look too.

 

Fixed all the images. They keep dying on me everytime I try to link this to someone.

I should google "Are imgur images temporary"?

 

Pleeease keep working on this, looks promising!!

 

See, @CarterG81, you will have to actually make this game or it is just going to keep coming back from the dead, lumbering along with half of its images broken and sinking its teeth into the brains of any unfortunate souls who stumble across its path.

 

For the life of me please finish this game!