I’ve decided to try implementing a basic real-time tactics game about a fleet of spaceships trying to journey across space to find a new home. I recently played and enjoyed Homeworld, and I think it’d be fun to tackle a project with a similar theme, but some different gameplay approaches.
Earlier today I worked with some classmates on a brainstorming assignment for my capstone class. I brought up the basic question that fueled this idea: how can you make it hurt when a player loses a unit in a strategy game? We came to the idea of making every unit unique within the game – i.e. you have to find or recruit them between missions, you can’t easily acquire more, and every ship is one of a handful of its type within the game. In addition, we came to the idea of giving each ship a character who commands it, in order to give faces to the spaceships and help the player build a connection to each one.
I know my idea is one of 187 in the class, and it’s therefore not terribly likely that it’ll get picked, but I think it’s got some potential that’s worth exploring. So, I decided to start working on it in Unity. Unity’s my go-to engine for 3D prototyping, mainly because I’m familiar with it; it was the engine my Traditional Game Development team used to create White Mirror.
I decided to use a navmesh system for relatively straightforward point-and-click movement; I’m not terribly concerned about hyper-realistic physics or flight models, especially since I’m abstracting this game down to a 2D plane (at least for now – full 3D might be a challenge worth pursuing in the future). So far, so good – I’ve implemented a system for selecting ships by clicking on them (or shift-clicking, if you want multiple ships in your selection) and getting them to move around the map.
Right now I’m just sketching out ideas, especially since I’m still adjusting to the new semester. Once I figure out my school and work workload, I’ll be able to figure out a specific workflow and development schedule. My main (though admittedly nebulous) goal is to at least have a basic combat system done within a month or two.
Evan Parry 