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

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...

My Shout - App Idea

With everyone working from home a lot more these days, especially in the face of a global pandemic with self isolation in effect in most place still, it becomes tricky to make good on that old "buy you a coffee" promise to your friends &/or coworkers. My Shout is the idea for a service to send things to people by alias only. The service would leverage home delivery services such as Menu Log, Favour, etc. but aimed at sending things to other people rather than ordering for yourself, though that would be an obvious function of the service. The address and location details of the person are only known to the service and hidden from others, it would be a breeze to then be able to gift things to your friends, coworkers, or even favourite creator, etc. that is halfway across the country or even the world without knowing their address. Once a "gift" has been sent the recipient gets a notification and can schedule when to get the gift, or even exchange to an equal valu...

Vacuous Social Data Sharing

It's the not so secret, dirty secret of our modern lives. We live in a golden age of free services that make our lives interconnected on levels that our ancestors couldn't even fathom. Instantaneous realtime interactive updates and vision of someone on the other side of the planet. For free!! We really do live the utopian lifestyle, or do we? We are being monetized. The really insidious thing is, we like it. We crave it. Likes, follows, subscribers, retweets, pins, shares, the list goes on. We're subsumed in a culture of instant gratification and constant engagement. These "free services" have hijacked the way we think and live, all while making copious amounts of money from the personal data we all but throw at them. Whilst there is an innate understanding in all of us about the nature of how insidious and conniving these services are. We still gobble up every morsel of social media's bright lights and flashy features, mostly without a single thought of wh...

Inkie Beard

Search This Blog