Slime Salad

Yes, lol, "Robots in Space" is a cool idea for a game.
Not that I would know how to create one, just fun to hypothesise, as a thought experiment. I was originally considering to enter a simple game in this format for the multicart compilation, but it seems the deadline is near/gone and I am not quite skilled enough to bring such a vision to fruition.
I present it here in the hopes that it would be of inspiration and education of some form.
Most of all, I wouldn't mind hearing your thoughts on a simple implementation of such features, or their feasibility. AFAIK everything I've suggested here should be possible in CUSTOM, albeit with a lot of coding (momentum for example is a PITA)

Firstly, being set in space is awesome.
Every movement the player takes feels like floating or flying in space. It's a cool feeling.

The player would be a giant robot (or possibly a space ship) piloted by a (?) human, which possibly has it's own gameplay elements associated with it.
Possibly the giant robot is a vehicle or craft, using the vehicle feature of CUSTOM.
There would be distinct gameplay for human, foot-based sections, and sections where you pilot a ship or robot. It would help break up the monotony, and distinguishes thematically between social/human themes and technological/space themes.
There could be a third gameplay type integrated into both, such as hacking. (more on that in a bit)

STUFF A ROBOT CAN DO

can move around using thrusters or boosters, possibly with faster movement, perhaps constrained by resources such as fuel etc.

can fight other giant robots, either by firing projectiles on the map, or closing in to do melee stuff (let's face it: military technology tends towards blowing stuff up from far away, not building increasingly bigger swords, even if that is what our minds expect. still cool thematically tho!)

then I had some cool ideas which I am happy to share with you:
There could be obstacles in space, such as meteors, drifting around, or possibly pushable, and with a crude momentum system. Objects in motion stay in motion until acted on by another force!
Then there could be more interesting obstacles such as man-made weaponry or defense systems.
there could be turrets or lasers, and the player's giant robot could have special capabilities to avoid being detected, negate damage, or disable an attacker.
Hacking is a cool thing to implement in an rpg or game, and requires very little graphics to pull off! it's mostly words and numbers, lists, icons, that kind of thing, and creating even a rudimentary hacking sim is a MUST project (perhaps we can have a contest later?) to increase your skillz and improve a games depth.
Where was I? Oh yes, space robots.
The robot could dock, interface, cloak, and have sensory capabilities such as EM, infrared, radar, etc.

The player would avoid dangers such as rockets and mines (more on that in a bit) using evasive maneuvers and technological abilities, such as chaff, scrambling, hacking, or some virtual/digital solution to this theoretical problem. Being set in the future means we can make it up, but it should be reasonable.
Rockets would follow you, be seeking or tracking or guided, and a player would have to destroy the source or flee.

A player could explore space ruins, such as destroyed vessels, scavenge, salvage and loot crafts, space stations, whether in disrepair or manned by civilians, or occupied by military forces. Limitless possibilities. IN SPESS

Mines. Ah. There should be different kinds of mines. The player robot should be able to deactivate them, and maybe reprogram them.
There would be different kinds of mines, such as hidden or invisible types which require special software/hardware to detect or pick up.
Ones that activate when you are nearby and head towards you (scary!)
They should differ, and some more dangerous examples with larger blast radii should be included, as well as different types of damage, such as explosion, ballistic, laser, thermal, energy, all that jazz.
Players would buy, upgrade and maintain armour for various circumstances.
It doesn't have to be purely giant-robot based!
I think space-mines are a cool idea and having many different types of obstacle would make traversing space exciting!

Now onto narrative stuff. For me, games are an artform of expression.
There should be heavy political vibes and themes. Everything must be relevant scientifically and in a societal sense. Things must make sense.
Space is vast and empty, with tiny pockets of activity. Something like this should be worked into a space-based game to be realistic.
There are all kinds of physical laws to consider.
For a simple game, suspension of disbelief may stop the programmers brain from bleeding onto the keyboard.

Basically, being set in space provides rich and ample opportunity to visit far flung destinations and exotic locales. This is hella cool

The game has tonnes of room for upgrades, expansions, whether to the player, robot, craft, hacking, weaponry, sensors, modules etc. and being set across space might lead to some very complicated situations involving various factions.
Technology would create diverse reasonings and destinations.
Space stations, satellites, research stations, foreign planets, space craft of various kinds, such as mercantile ships, military craft, freighters etc.


Basically, it's Gundam Wing. Yup. All political machinations, told against interstellar societal upheaval and class struggles, as illustrated through the concepts of warfare via technological instruments such as GIANT SPESS ROBUTS
It's also Cowboy Bebop. Imagine you're like a secret agent or spy, in interestellar conflicts with more factions than you can keep track of, and you run around and infiltrate bases and shizz (did not know that slime was a wordfilter until recently :p) and in the spare time you pilot a giant robot or craft and fly across space avoiding rockets and mines and other giant robots, and you loot and scavenge the decaying husks of technological ruins of varying and assorted degrees.


So, I wouldn't mind hearing your thoughts on the feasbility of such a game.
Something like the hacking section would be easiest to create.
Shooting and running around is definitely possible in the engine, I just have no idea how to do it in a sane and concise way (as opposed to insane and overly elaborate, messy , dysfunctional manner)
Perhaps the most difficult thing to implement would be a physics systems that closely mimics what actual space travel is like. It'd have to be a Master of Ur-Quan type dealy (not that I liked that game... well, it was cool)
Every thing else would be relatively simple. Rockets and Mines only need to seek the player. They can also detect when the hero enters their range. Relatively simple.
There are some limitations, for example, on what you can set the move speed to be.
If it were pixel based, it would mitigate some of that (perhaps)

In a simple implementation, it could be a game about a giant robot that has to do clean up duty of derelicts and wrecks in space and has to avoid mines, defense systems and more. It would be simple narratively too, just like a space janitor. IN SPESS wait I already said that. Well, could be a scavenger too, no need to go heavy on the ol' THEMES for a simple 8-bit game (unless that's your style) (that's my style)
Enemy defense systems could simply spawn NPCs until they are turned off.

The deadline isn't gone, you just need more confidence in pushing your luck!
(But obviously, this thing is about 10x too ambitious to be for the multicart anyway)

But, ok, thought experiments can be educational.
Though only ask what you learned from the process.
Once, a decade ago, I started on a space exploration game with Jabber, codenamed Fleetgame. Although I did start programming it, it would still be an exaggeration to say it ever got beyond the endless ambitious plans. It put me off too much planning... but I've repeated the mistake several times since.

I don't agree that momentum/rudimentary physics itself is difficult to script. But did someone say physics? Does that include proper non-axis-aligned-bounding-box collisions and stuff? Is so, now we're talking about some real problems. But actually, we probably aren't talking about that sort of physics.

But of course, the number of games which try to stay true to the laws of physics is very low . Few moments treat momentum accurately, because in the sort of games that they are, it just wouldn't be fun. That doesn't mean that the laws of physics are diametrically opposed to fun (in a fantasy university with similarities to our own) if you design things with that in mind rather than trying to make a shooter or 4X. (But, let's face it, in the real universe the rules of the game really are unfun. Noone wants to spend a thousand years to visit a distant star system. I think the missing term in the Drake equation is "proportion of civilisations that can't be bothered engaging in projects that require a thousand years to complete")

My takeaway from all of this is that robots are just much more versatile than space ships. It sounds like a typical space-flight sim game, except you can do more than just fly around, shoot, and dock. Honestly, I get a bit disappointed when a hear any game set in space is a trading game. We can do that on land, where you're much less likely to see weird immersion-breaking goods like crude oil. And any space game that's not about cargo (or mining rocks) is about shooting up space pirates. Now, while I find that a bit more fun, it can also be unfun, if the laws of physics get in the way of your aim, or the whole thing turns into an RPG grind. But there are so many other possibilities. That's one of the things I loved about FTL: you had hull breaches and alien lifeforms and laser beams cutting across your ship and radiation storms screwing up your sensors and crew management.

Aside from the potential for all those cool mechanics, if only the designer would show some courage, there's the main reason I love games set in space: the limitless potential for imaginative stories and settings and exploration. The ultimate adventure in an exotic land. (Allow me to plug Dreg Sector: The Tract by Willy. Mechanically, it's mostly just a regular OHR RPG (plus trading). But still, it's a space exploration game.) Just as long as you don't spend your life sitting in a tin can watching that distant point of light grow brighter.
You didn't like The Ur-Quan Masters/Star Control II? One of my absolute favourite games. Maybe you don't like exploration as much as me, or didn't play enough to get into the fantastic story, or didn't like the combat or resource gathering or planets quite get quite boring by the end. Sigh.

I liked masters of ur quan but for the life of me could not get hang of the combat!
Once I started encountering that hostile race (cannot remember the details now, it was many many moons ago) I got squashed repeatedly, as if running into a wall, so I gave up.
Still one of my inspirations, well, the first half, at least.
I really loved the planet scanning, and for its time, it was really cool.

The combat did require some practice, especially because the combat was over so quickly. I remember being really bad at it to begin with, and living in fear of those drones which randomly appeared which I couldn't kill. I don't remember that endgame hostile race giving me that much trouble though. I think it's because by that point I had access to so many different fighter types/races that I could use something that I was quite comfortable with, maybe because it allowed me to outmaneuver and get easy shots on anyone.

but why on earth would you tie the game to such a finnicky mechanic?
It's basically a bottleneck! Pretty crazy. I don't think I won even one battle against that fricking race.

SC2 is basically 4 games glued together. Something that was more common in yesteryear. The way combat works in SC2 makes more sense when you realise that the combat system was basically taken from SC1 (a game I haven't played, but I think it was mainly about space skirmishes). So they were probably committed to keeping it that way.