Initial project launch!
If you've found this devlog, then welcome to Last Frontier! This will help serve as a record for the work being accomplished and help drive the game forward. I am currently in casual development of this game, as I am also taking care of my new baby and working on Ph.D. work. So why start now? Well, for months I've mulled over a challenging thought project:
How can you create a game which:
- Creates unique experiences for each player without shoehorning players in preset directions
- Allows players to actively impact the world around them
- Provides consistent explorable/unknown content (is "wiki-resistant")
- Can be played casually as well as actively
- Is fun and fair!
And the reason that I've started this devlog now is, I think I have an answer! Significant planning and development of basic and advanced concepts has led me to decide that the only way to move forward is to start implementing! That being said, for the sake of convenience (and suspense), these logs will address these concepts as I begin to implement them. For now, what you have to look forward to is:
- A world with procedurally generated wildlife and ecosystems
- An evolutionary algorithm which can track player impact on wildlife and have it directly affect the natural evolution of the species
- Resource drops with RNG tables tied to these auto-generated wildlife, resulting in MASSIVE variety in potential drop quality/attributes
- A crafting system which allows slotting of many various resources as well as the option for automatic or manual crafting
- A procedurally generated landscape that is near infinite
- Many different groups and factions that you can work with (or against) to impact not only the environment but the life of the frontier "towns"
- Fleshed out non-combat roles and activities, such as surveying, cooking, farming, entertaining, building, crafting, etc.
- Attributes and skills which develop via active usage rather than arbitrary "leveling up" or "assigning points"
- Relevant bonuses from attributes for ALL activities (no "combat exclusive" attributes)
- And more!
With a list like this, how can we ever expect to finish? Well, the first step is to start! As we move forward we'll gradually add features, and once we reach a minimal point where required Stage 1 features are implemented we can begin more public testing on servers! While much of this game IS still in development (even the name may change!) the core functionality has already been established and solved, it just needs to be fully implemented and tweaked.
Development of this project will be slow for now as I work on wrapping up other work, so unfortunately we'll just have to see how long it takes. However, this has become a passion project of mine, and as such I intend to develop it regardless. So if you are reading this, thank you for taking the time and I hope to have more to show you later!
Expect the first technical post within a few days (once I get time to sit down and make another post)!
Last Frontier
An in-development sandbox scifi-MMO about Evolution and Time
| Status | In development |
| Author | Menector |
| Genre | Role Playing |
| Tags | 3D, Exploration, MMORPG, Multiplayer, Sci-fi, Unreal Engine |
| Languages | English |
More posts
- Tech Post #4 - Procedural Modeling76 days ago
- Tech Post #3 - Pressure and AvoidanceMay 21, 2024
- Tech Post #2 - Sight and MemoryMay 18, 2024
- Tech Post #1 - Creatures and EvolutionMay 18, 2024
Comments
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Solid mission statement! TL:DR -- "first"
It'll be a blast exploring the line between creative vision and engaging playability. As we've discussed "offline", a significant portion of the gaming space is saturated with development taking advantage of LONG-established norms -- which isn't inherently "bad", though it isn't nearly as gripping and often requires adjacent aspects such as the Content itself to make up for the "been-there-done-that" factor. Speaking personally with a more direct example, each new roguelike-deckbuilder that hits the market needs to acheive a higher bar in order to grab my attention... because even though I'm a sucker for card games, the most important aspects to me are often the learning -> optimization -> mastery phases, which often establishes skills that translate between roguelike-deckbuilders! This dilemma especially emphasizes the impact of those willing to break through the creative mould and force the player to challenge their preconceived skillsets. Starting with the dream and using development to make it a reality knowing there will be bumps and pitfalls... that's how you become one of those axiomatic systems others treat as the norm!
Emphasis here on "systems", too. Games are made up of an ecosystem of features organized (some loosely, others tightly) into control around a given experience. Sometimes they're wholly independent like Dwarf Fortress's "era-generation" and "unit anatomy" systems or Star Control II's "space-combat" vs "lander exploration" systems -- others symbiotic, like the multitude of "sensing" and "interaction" examples leading an entity to make meaningful decisions based on what they perceive. Starting with the desire of a system leads naturally to designing/development, and I think the experimentation therein is critical to expanding the communal imagination. Not every system will be novel, nor does it need to be in order for the overall experience to evoke that same sense of wonder & reward.
Personal axiomatic gaming inspirations relevant in some way to this project (I'll absolutely be missing some, plz forgive):