Skip to main content

Frontier Explorer

I've been thinking about, tinkering with and procrastinating over making a game for years. I have untold gigs worth of Unity projects clogging up, not only my desktop & laptop hard drives, but also our network storage drives! I sat down to do some serious thinking at the start of this decade and realised, the main reason I so often don't follow through (or get anywhere near even alpha stage) is because there is no actual story or driving idea behind my projects. Every few months I sit down to make a game. Once my prototype goes beyond the most bare bones mechanic, I eject like a boulder from a trebuchet. That or I spend several great night's working on getting a level designed, only to realise I have absolutely no clue what I'm going to do with it!

This time it's different! This time, I have an idea. An idea based on a game that has already been made and works really well. Yes that's right, I want to make a game very similar to and inspired by one that already exists! I want to make a space exploration game where each world you visit is unique, each solar system different from the next, a game where there is basically no end as it all gets generated on the fly as the player moves through the universe (except for maybe when the data needed to run the game gets so massive I/the game can't keep paying for hosting that much data). I am of course talking about a game very close to No Man's Sky.


If you've read this far, you're no doubt thinking, "But that game already exists?!", and that is a very valid thought! The best rebuttal would be, one is not enough. Call of Duty isn't the only military fps, Fortnite isn't the only battle royale, Destiny isn't the only looter shooter. More of a good thing, especially in gaming, is never a bad thing.

To be completely honest though, exploring space is the coolest damn thing ever, plus it's one hell of a challenge! The shear technical backend that will be needed to even get a tenth of the way to NMS would be a major feat for a single dev game! My goal is actually to do mobile first, because I want to cruise around space exploring new worlds on my phone when I'm on the porcelain throne. Obviously with the ability to port your account to PC at some point, and who knows maybe one day even console 🤣 

For now, watch this space 😉

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Knowledge is Power - Society is Weak

Never more true than today, knowledge is power. Or more aptly in today's world the ability to provide & control the flow of knowledge is power. Recently there's been several large course corrections occur, several years too late but hey, better late than never as the saying goes. This highlights one of the biggest and most major flaws with the way we consume information on the internet. Social media, for good and for ill, is now a major source of information and "news" for millions of people across the planet. There are countless examples of the way that misinformation & even disinformation is created, spread and broadcast across the web. None more prevalent & far reaching than social media. Social media disarms in a way that in person discussion & social interaction previously couldn't. If you heard a story in person that even one or two people could corroborate it would be easy to accept as true, or just as easily refuted by the same small number...

The Worker Bee

Do what you're told, follow the rules, don't over step your bounds, stay in your lane. The true cornerstone of modern enslavement to work. "We can't all live our dreams", why is that? Because then we'd have to change, to collectively actually think and enact a way all people could realistically achieve a base standard of living & contentment. Allowing people's mind free reign on real questions rather than worrying where the next meal is coming from & keeping the lights on.  Bee animation by  Joe le Sale While I have no answers to life's great mysteries, I do know this about the meaning of life - it definitely isn't to toil & labour day in and day out to fill the wallet of our bosses or investors. So how is it that we find ourselves with that holding such a giant sway over our lives? This of course is rhetorical, we all know the answer, you don't bite the hand that feeds you. Which brings the problem in to sharp focus, we no longer ...

How to Think

Moving an arm and thinking about moving an arm are two vastly different things. Even thinking about thinking about moving an arm is a natural thing to do even if reading it is very odd. Now the hard part, how to you design thinking ? The deliberate process of simulating scenarios to either logical or illogical ends would seem like a great fit for computers that can do millions of calculations a second. The slow an deliberate winding down a thought path seems to be the missing link to truely intelligent machines. We are very good at making machines. Even more so machines that actually produce things and have purpose. Since the earliest primitive forms of man, our tools are defined by their use. Or more aptly by the end result they achieve. So what is the end result of smart machines? To drive our cars, build our structures, do the heavy lifting and manage our lives? To do all that the ability to compute and apply action is needed but not actual thought. Most business tools and modern ap...