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[forsaken1111]

This is extremely relevant to my interests. PTW

[Xinvoker]

 

Always on the look for such games. Ptw.

[simoroth]

you can be as unlucky as the project zomboid team

The Zomboid team are really cool guys. I actually spent the last 3 days with them getting drunk off my face with them at Rezzed. We even did a game-jam together! Andy (@captainBinky) is probably Maias biggest fan, he literally started throwing cash at me in the pub.

If anyone would like to see the engine in action, I actually used it for the game jam to make "Thomas was Alone", the indie platformer, in fancy 3d.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Er4FVUn2nTg

Just how open is the modability going to be?

The entire graphics pipeline is XML based. You can chance the entire look of the game. Textures are just TGA's so you can go in and do a full reskin with any paint package. Models will be exportable from Maya (3d software) via a Pymel script. I'll probably help the community port that to blender too.

As for gameplay, once its all in roughly, I will add scripting support.

Is the game going to be purely sandbox, or will there be objectives, missions, an 'end game'?

Once I'm happy with the game I will make a campaign of 4-5 missions, they will encourage players to try different styles and mess about with features they may have been scared of before in the sandbox.

Are resources going to be limited purely to what can be found in the explorable area, or will there be ways of acquiring resources from elsewhere?

Lava and water flows will come in from off the edge of the map. This means that if you carefully manage it you can obtain more resources. (cooling lava with water will create precious minerals) Animals will also wander into the level on the surface as well as plants that will create resources. I may even add supply drops (that will cost you a massive amount of energy, your most important resource).

Is there going to be a limit on how many inhabitants/bots/creatures are running around?

Yes there will be a limit. However I'm aiming at PC's only, so that limit will probably be criminally high.

Is the game going to be single player only?

If I raise a pile of cash I will add multiplayer that allows you to be an IMP bot in your friend's colonies. However, if I raise a mountain (300k+) I'll go nuts and bring in net coders so you can play on a massive coop server with your friends.

You're probably not looking for any further influence or ideas at this stage, but it might interest you to check out some Startopia gameplay, if only for curiosity's sake. I'd be interested to hear how close it is to your vision of Maia, how similar or different the style and gameplay might be, etc.

Edit: Some non-trailer gameplay here.

More influence is great. Its good to be a sponge when it comes to designing games. Otherwise you end up repeating other peoples mistakes and looking like a right idiot.

I'm not sure how close my game is to it to be honest. One of the key things about my game is the very definite style, that will be much more realistic. My main inspirations are filmic like 2001, Silent Running and Gerry Anderson's Space 1999.

The life of every colonist will be precious and every death will be a massive blow. This will hopefully make the game much darker and get players invested in their colony.

[forsaken1111]

Are resources going to be limited purely to what can be found in the explorable area, or will there be ways of acquiring resources from elsewhere?

Lava and water flows will come in from off the edge of the map. This means that if you carefully manage it you can obtain more resources. (cooling lava with water will create precious minerals) Animals will also wander into the level on the surface as well as plants that will create resources. I may even add supply drops (that will cost you a massive amount of energy, your most important resource).

What about the possibility of 'off-map' expeditions? Send a few colonists and bots off map to exploit a mineral deposit, take care of a problem, etc? Maybe even have different sites with inter-site transport of goods?

[simoroth]

Are resources going to be limited purely to what can be found in the explorable area, or will there be ways of acquiring resources from elsewhere?

Lava and water flows will come in from off the edge of the map. This means that if you carefully manage it you can obtain more resources. (cooling lava with water will create precious minerals) Animals will also wander into the level on the surface as well as plants that will create resources. I may even add supply drops (that will cost you a massive amount of energy, your most important resource).

What about the possibility of 'off-map' expeditions? Send a few colonists and bots off map to exploit a mineral deposit, take care of a problem, etc? Maybe even have different sites with inter-site transport of goods?

Certainly a possibility. Although at this stage you don't really need it. The 2km^3 area is obscenely huge. I don't see any players exhausting the fun they can have in it for a good few months of gameplay!

[forsaken1111]

You could add a little bit to the fun by including some randomized special areas on each map then. Ancient boreholes, unknown vaults leftover from an ancient culture, prolific and mildly toxic weeds/fungus/other plant life. Animals and pests... anything to break up the monotony of 'mine more, build more'. Granted I haven't played your game but I have played some similar games. The feeling when you uncover something interesting while digging around in dungeon keeper et al is fantastic. It would be great to have to break open an ancient vault, risk your colonists on exploring it for a possibility at some technology or other benefit.

Also will you have off-map trade with a parent civilization/other colonies, or any kind of visitor/tourist type mechanic where other people can come to the colony for short times and either help or cause problems?

You're on the Dwarf Fortress forum after all, we want all the different kinds of FUN we can get. And for us... losing is FUN.

[ScriptWolf]

You could add a little bit to the fun by including some randomized special areas on each map then. Ancient boreholes, unknown vaults leftover from an ancient culture, prolific and mildly toxic weeds/fungus/other plant life. Animals and pests... anything to break up the monotony of 'mine more, build more'. Granted I haven't played your game but I have played some similar games. The feeling when you uncover something interesting while digging around in dungeon keeper et al is fantastic. It would be great to have to break open an ancient vault, risk your colonists on exploring it for a possibility at some technology or other benefit.

Also will you have off-map trade with a parent civilization/other colonies, or any kind of visitor/tourist type mechanic where other people can come to the colony for short times and either help or cause problems?

You're on the Dwarf Fortress forum after all, we want all the different kinds of FUN we can get. And for us... losing is FUN.

THIS, we demand more "fun" ! and !!!Science!! we must have a wide verity of !!!Science!! available to us!

also personally i think this game could achieve £300,000 i would like to hope so ! just get your game posted on more stuff, like release more stuff to rock paper shotgun and try and get on PC gamer and other web sites, really hype up your game before the kickstart

also reposting, we build the robots from scratch right ? so will we have the choice on what goes into them and their function ect....

also any modes of transport ?

[lordcooper]

The Zomboid team are really cool guys. I actually spent the last 3 days with them getting drunk off my face with them at Rezzed. We even did a game-jam together! Andy (@captainBinky) is probably Maias biggest fan, he literally started throwing cash at me in the pub.

If anyone would like to see the engine in action, I actually used it for the game jam to make "Thomas was Alone", the indie platformer, in fancy 3d.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Er4FVUn2nTg

Oh man, that was you?  It was between this and that 'typing' game for my favourites.

[simoroth]

You could add a little bit to the fun by including some randomized special areas on each map then. Ancient boreholes, unknown vaults leftover from an ancient culture, prolific and mildly toxic weeds/fungus/other plant life. Animals and pests... anything to break up the monotony of 'mine more, build more'. Granted I haven't played your game but I have played some similar games. The feeling when you uncover something interesting while digging around in dungeon keeper et al is fantastic. It would be great to have to break open an ancient vault, risk your colonists on exploring it for a possibility at some technology or other benefit.

Also will you have off-map trade with a parent civilization/other colonies, or any kind of visitor/tourist type mechanic where other people can come to the colony for short times and either help or cause problems?

You're on the Dwarf Fortress forum after all, we want all the different kinds of FUN we can get. And for us... losing is FUN.

THIS, we demand more "fun" ! and !!!Science!! we must have a wide verity of !!!Science!! available to us!

also personally i think this game could achieve £300,000 i would like to hope so ! just get your game posted on more stuff, like release more stuff to rock paper shotgun and try and get on PC gamer and other web sites, really hype up your game before the kickstart

also reposting, we build the robots from scratch right ? so will we have the choice on what goes into them and their function ect....

also any modes of transport ?

Yes yes and more yes.

I want tons of things to find buried in the ground. You know the scene in 2001 where they find the monolith... the look of my renderer and most the environments is based on that scene.

Robots will have different arm attachments. Many of which will be researchable. There may be more forms of robot soon as well once we have these ones polished.

Science will be a big thing, lots of new things to build over time so it doesn't get boring once your colony is stable.

I havn't put much thought into transport. As I said I'm trying to get the basic game play down. I think there will definitely be some sort of 70's style tube monorail like they have in Space 1999.

The Zomboid team are really cool guys. I actually spent the last 3 days with them getting drunk off my face with them at Rezzed. We even did a game-jam together! Andy (@captainBinky) is probably Maias biggest fan, he literally started throwing cash at me in the pub.

If anyone would like to see the engine in action, I actually used it for the game jam to make "Thomas was Alone", the indie platformer, in fancy 3d.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Er4FVUn2nTg

Oh man, that was you?  It was between this and that 'typing' game for my favourites.

Hah yeah. I was the guy with the beautiful hair.

[simoroth]

also personally i think this game could achieve £300,000 i would like to hope so ! just get your game posted on more stuff, like release more stuff to rock paper shotgun and try and get on PC gamer and other web sites, really hype up your game before the kickstart

Yeah I hope so. I did an exclusive review with Eurogamer at Rezzed. A full feature should appear soonish that should get a lot of mainstream interest.

[Aklyon]

You could probably (much much later) ask TotalBiscuit if he could do a WTF is... of it once you think its good enough to be considered 1.0, to get some interest later on from people who hadn't heard of it yet.

[ScriptWolf]

oh also question, i plan on kickstarting for $60, will we also still get to add a named character to the game ? and could we use our forum names ? , can we also pick what art we wanted for the poster ?.

and this invite to the launch party... tell me more .

andddd these creatures we see in the screenshots, i take it this is one type of robot you can build ? and we are still going to have human colonists ?, also how many levels up/down can we go ?

also ever hear of this game ? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Colony_%28video_game%29 yours is really reminding me of this as well.

[forsaken1111]

You could add a little bit to the fun by including some randomized special areas on each map then. Ancient boreholes, unknown vaults leftover from an ancient culture, prolific and mildly toxic weeds/fungus/other plant life. Animals and pests... anything to break up the monotony of 'mine more, build more'. Granted I haven't played your game but I have played some similar games. The feeling when you uncover something interesting while digging around in dungeon keeper et al is fantastic. It would be great to have to break open an ancient vault, risk your colonists on exploring it for a possibility at some technology or other benefit.

Also will you have off-map trade with a parent civilization/other colonies, or any kind of visitor/tourist type mechanic where other people can come to the colony for short times and either help or cause problems?

You're on the Dwarf Fortress forum after all, we want all the different kinds of FUN we can get. And for us... losing is FUN.

THIS, we demand more "fun" ! and !!!Science!! we must have a wide verity of !!!Science!! available to us!

also personally i think this game could achieve £300,000 i would like to hope so ! just get your game posted on more stuff, like release more stuff to rock paper shotgun and try and get on PC gamer and other web sites, really hype up your game before the kickstart

also reposting, we build the robots from scratch right ? so will we have the choice on what goes into them and their function ect....

also any modes of transport ?

Yes yes and more yes.

I want tons of things to find buried in the ground. You know the scene in 2001 where they find the monolith... the look of my renderer and most the environments is based on that scene.

Robots will have different arm attachments. Many of which will be researchable. There may be more forms of robot soon as well once we have these ones polished.

Science will be a big thing, lots of new things to build over time so it doesn't get boring once your colony is stable.

I havn't put much thought into transport. As I said I'm trying to get the basic game play down. I think there will definitely be some sort of 70's style tube monorail like they have in Space 1999.

Yesss... and finding such a monolith or whatever other !SCIENCE! surprises you have in store should just be the first challenge. Excavating them, researching them... constructing elaborate safety chambers around them or moving them to secure labs...

!SCIENCE!

*foams at the mouth*

[Bluerobin]

Hehe they're adorable.

[Metalax]

A few more questions for simoroth

With the hidden fun stuff scattered around, will at least one of each always be present somewhere in the world area or do will you have a chance of generating a map without certain hidden stuff available?
You've mentioned research, is there going to be a limited ammount of research, ie at some point you can go 'Alright, thats it, we have nothing left to research.' or a system where you have the ability to slowly continue to improve components/items/capabilities if you continue to research them?
Also blind or directed research?
Will there be the ability to toggle certain game features on or off, similarly to dwarf fortress, eg able to disable organised hostile invading forces from arriving, enable/disable external trade, enable/disable internal economy, etc?

Hehe they're adorable.

They look like Sectoids. Been playing to much xcom lately.