The kind of game I'm making is a Tower Defence game with a Sci-Fi theme. The premise is as simple as anyone can come up with: Aliens want to conquer earth, and you are put in charge of a modular space factory with the instructions to transform it into a fortress of doom against the incoming invaders. My inspiration for this game comes from Dwarf Fortress and Mud and Blood 2. If I can't get a graphic artist, this game will use ASCII graphics like Dorf Fort.
I'm putting my whole thought process here both as a way to organize myself, and to get some feedback. Having people bounce ideas back is motivating.
The game play area is divided into two screens:
- Station Layout
- Star Field Battleground
- The Grid displays the current state and positions of modules, and can be used to place new station modules or manipulate existing modules (repair, dismantle, weapon targeting priority). Each play session begins with the Command Module in the centre of the grid.
- The RPC you use to determine the kind of resources you wish to accumulate, the ratio of each. Resources come and go in cycles.
- The Crew Manifest shows the current personnel and their state, and allows you to request or dismiss personnel if you don't like your current staff. You should to request more personnel to run a bigger station or you will find that things aren't getting done as fast as you need it to. Just to be mean, you have to manually dismiss incapacitated and dead personnel.
- The Inventory Log simply displays what kind of things your station has in the various storage modules, as well as unplaced station modules.
- The Production Queue is the list of things you want your factory to produce, in the order in which you want them produced. You can create new production orders, change the priority of current orders, copy current orders, or cancel orders.
- The AHRS takes up most of the screen. At the bottom is a small pulsating white dot which represents your station in the vastness that is the corridor of space you defend. Enemies also appear as dots as well, Red dots, though if I get a graphic artist, I can have an image appear when the mouse hovers over the dot. Friendly ships will appear as Green or Blue dots.
- FAW is a button that toggles weather or not your station's weapons will default to shooting every enemy based on their priorities. Default is off.
- Engage is used when FAW is off. Click this button (which will change the cursor) then click an enemy dot, and your weapons will gleefully fire upon it, then the cursor will change back to normal. Click Engage and hold shift to attack multiple targets. Enemies that shoot your station are automatically targeted.
- Disengage. Works like Engage but tells your gunners no to shoot instead.
- Priority Target changes your cursor to select an enemy target that your really want taken out. You can only have one enemy selected as the Priority Target, and selecting a different enemy simply reassigns the Priority Target tag. If weapon module has the option to fire at many targets, it will target the Priority target regardless of it's own priority settings.
- Launch/Recall Fighters is a bit self explanatory. Fighters are a versatile weapon, but also very expensive and vulnerable to certain enemies and friendly fire.