Gameplay programming notes

Last Friday we had an internal meeting on this topic: all engine features are already 99% done, so now we are focusing entirely on the gameplay. These are our notes for the next month of development:

Top priorities:

• Harvesting ore
• Building, protecting and upgrading space stations
• Fighting
• Traveling the solar system
• Inventory

Solar system and all its sectors will be procedurally generated

Small ship parameters – health, armor, ammo, inventory/cargo, radar, credits/money, etc…

Persistent world

Schedule solar wind

Dying, re-spawn, checkpoint

Factions – friend, enemy, neutral

Simulating actions and interactions on higher level (above real-time sector level) – e.g. faction A attacked factions B, hero X goes to kill enemy Y.

Mother ship

• If you own the mother ship
  • Move stuff between your small ship and mother ship cargo – foundation factory, ammo, weapons, tools, etc.
  • Traveling the solar system
• If you don’t own it
  • Buy or sell stuff: prefabs (or maybe only the foundation factory), blueprints, ammo, weapons, ore, etc
• In both types
  • Recharge small ship fuel, oxygen, etc. – Maybe automatic and free of charge?

Building your station and mother ship (in the editor “builder mode” – not the editor “god mode”)

• Place a foundation factory somewhere and that is going to be the center of your container
  • Foundation factory = current green cube in the center of a prefab container – but we will make some pretty prefab for that soon
• For all other prefabs you need to purchase their blueprints and also deliver required ore
• Creating prefabs requires time – first you place an order to your foundation factory, then it’s created and you can use it
• You can own more foundation factories

Later: transferring stuff between foundation factory and your small ship (e.g. if some prefab created new ammo for you or other stuff)

Basic “mission scripting” – the player needs to be pushed to actions

• You start the game and you will appear in some sector – as it’s right now
• Your mother ship will be somewhere close
• The enemy will attack you and your mother ship – you have to guard yourself
• After you kill them, new mission pops up – travel to some other sector and buy foundation factory
• You travel, buy, etc.
• You come back, place factory at desired location
• Start building your base, build prefabs if you have their blueprints and after you have collected required ore
• If you need better prefabs (e.g. more advanced ore refinery) – you can travel to other sectors and purchase blueprints from some other mothership

Later we will find a way how to add building into our MW1 story – because story doesn’t need it and we can’t just throw it out.

Default weapons needs to be user friendly

• Problematic aiming with auto canon
• Guided missile as default one? Make better HUD for it?

Try to make every in-game interaction generic – we never know if we decide to allow player to sell or buy a new mothership, whole prefab container … and crazy stuff like that.

Inventory screen

• Buying and selling with other mothership or players
• Looting other players
• Transfer between the mothership or foundation factory and your ship

Finishing weapons and tools

Radar and HUD – ore locations, custom position marks

AI / bots

• Investigate current AI status, what’s wrong, what’s not finished
• Factions
• Spawn points
• Aiming, fighting, shooting
• Movement

Multi-player / networking

Destructible prefabs