Game features overview
Here we describe the features of the game currently in development. We have a segment that briefly covers each major feature; the list is of course not exhaustive, and later segments will become more developed as those assets and features get closer to integration.
A procedurally generated paradise!
Our homeworlds stretch 16 kilometers around their equator. In abstract, they are cubes which are mapped to spheres. They are composed of primarily cubes half a meter in length. They divide into biomes by lattitude, moisture levels, and surface altitude. Some of these biomes include marshes (as pictured here), deserts, grasslands, jungles, temperate and coniferous forests, taigas and tundras, rolling hills, rocky and forested mountains, vast canyons, and alpine valleys.
These environments are inhabited by over 30 creatures, both gentle and hostile. Some have their own uses, such as ridable giant cassowaries, and some are best avoided at all costs.
Hundreds of kilometers of unforgiving caverns!
The underground world dwarfs the surface world. It is essentially unknowable. These caves run for hundreds of kilometers in length, and go over a kilometer below the surface. The player will not be able to travel for very far before they become hopelessly lost, or worse. The unprepared will quickly meet their end at the hands of all manner of dangers.
Navigating and learning the secrets of this second, greater world will be key to advancement of any kind. The player will have to learn to navigate these depths, identify their own limits, and seek and acquire dozens of minerals and products.
Underground worlds of wonder!
The underground environment is home to many surprising biomes. One of the more interesting of these, which occurs deeper than most, is the "Undergrowth". The Undergrowth is the site of a bizzare ecosystem of chemosynthetic "plants", which will seek to poison or daze the player in a number of ways, or even outright lunge out.
There are also several kinds of insectoids, including bioluminescent "Glow hops", "Acid ants", swarming "Divebarbs", and vicious "Centivipers".
Surviving and collecting resources in hostile environments like this one will be essential for progress.
Build a new civilization!
In order to thrive in their world, the player will need to construct settlements where they can defend themselves from hostiles, farm, store their acquistions, build their workshops, work their crafts, and express their personal artistic design sense.
These settlements will develop over time from humble holes and huts, into active classical era villages, churning industrial hubs, and massive production sites.
Learn the intricacies of dozens of crafts!
The player will need to master the techniques of a very large number of artisinal crafts in order to produce materials to build their environment, and produce the tools and gear needed to advance further. They will need to learn techniques such as float-glass making, masonry, woodworking, fabric weaving, animal husbandry, and millworking. Probably the most complicated craft of all in the classical era will be metallurgy.
They will need to learn how to find and acquire the right ores, smelt those ores at sufficient temperature, reduce them to purified forms with the right co-agents, provide enough flow to smelters, remove and vent toxic smoke, and cast and work the extracted metals, and even combine some into alloys.
Clad yourself for adventure!
What is an adventure without gear? The player will need to manufacture progressively better tools, weapons, and armor in order to procede into deeper and more hazardous corners of their world, and eventually into other worlds altogether.
As an example, they will pass through a progression of armor types, starting with relatively easily acquired but weak gold amd copper plate mail, on to stronger bronze, iron, and steel plate and chain mail, sophisticated steel-alloy armors, ballistic kevlar suits, high-impact ceramic composite suits, carbon nano-tube exo suits, and even supremely powerful self-repairing diamond lattice suits maintained by swarms of nanites.
Reason out the hidden workings of your world!
In several places in the game, the player will have to use deduction and empirical trials in order to expand their civilization's knowledge base, and produce products such as agricultural hybrids. One such major place this mechanic comes into play in is the alchemy system.
In this system, once the player has the pre-requisite tome, they will be able to construct the aparati for dealing with plant infusions in solution; they will need to use processes like distillation, osmosis, magnetic separation, filtration, and heat-based denaturation to collect and purify compounds with the desired results. And of course, they will need to learn about what effects these compounds have by trial!
Produce art and music in game!
Many forms of art will be practicable in the game environment. The player will of course be the designer of their own habitat, and its engineered solutions, which is an art in itself, but they will also have access to assets like easels and pianos, where they can paint original pixel art works, and compose midi-based masterpieces.
These can of course be displayed and played ingame, and traded to other players in a planned online exchange, where artistic players will have the chance to enrich the experience of the whole community.
The music system is planned to be piano-roll based (like fruity loops studio), but if there is interest, a full sheet-music system can be integrated as well.
Explore wonders, and build monuments of your own!
Some of the mid-level stone strata will be found to be the homes of long-gone dwarf-like civilizations. These will contain vast architectural wonders, and perhaps more importantly, vaults of knowledge, which can be raided to expand your civilization's fabrication abilities.
These regions can of course be salvaged for materials to construct your own great monuments; the player will also acquire the knowledge to carve these elements on their own over time.
Feed a hungry Industrial empire!
Mining and acquistions will become an unending quest in the industrial era. There will never be enough of what you need, and you will need to find ways to efficiently gather, transport, and sort your material income. Several types of mining systems will be available to help you meet your ming needs. These include vertical gantries (shown here), armies of micro-mining robots which can target specific regions and minerals, and horizontal tunnel-boring rigs which you can use to mine at desired levels.
You will need to use systems such as rails, supply delivery vehicles, and pneumatics transport tubes to process your materials.
Power your machine!
Minerals and energy production are the main resources that will run your industrial economy. The player may generate power from thermal sources, solar and wind power, fuel burning, steam, and many others. Shown here are some of the assets for generating power in one sort of system.
This system takes in steam from the left, and transports it steam turbines. The low pressure steam travels then to the cooling site, while the turbines in turn transmit their rotation to the electrical generators, which transduce the rotation into electrical energy output. Transformers take in the extreme voltage input, and step it down into high voltage which can be handled by the highest storage cells. The transformers shown here are also taking in transformer oil coolant to increase their capacity. Pumps are handling fluid transport all around the system.
Irradiate... everything!
The player will have access to a large number of alternatives for power production, not the least of which will be fission, and much later fusion reactors. With fission reactors, for example, the player will need to learn about the many features and safety systems necessary to run their setup. They will need to learn to balance fuel and control rod exposure with heat output, coolant flow, and steam production, as well as necessary condensing time for the water loop at the cooling tower.
They will be able to integrate these systems with computer monitoring and control hubs, which they can configure to safely watch and operate their plants.
But accidents happen!
Field a robotic army!
There will come a point in the game when native enemies and raiding parties become so powerful that the player may be challenged to overcome them alone with their current gear. The obvious solution to this problem, as most things in life, is robots of course. When the player has the necessary infrastructure to construct and power these martial robots, they will serve the player faithfully. Many tiers of progressively more mobile and able robots for a variety of tasks, including construction, will become available.
The player will have several commands for controlling these; they will be able to select the behavior of each in their internal interface, where they can set behaviors such as "follow me", "roam this area", or "eliminate all enemies in sight". They will also have wireless controls for ordering robots on the proper frequency channel to path to specified locations when desired.
Expand into space, and new worlds!
The player's experience doesn't end with mastery of their home planet- in some senses the journey begins there. With their industrial empire in place, they will construct vehicle assembly and launch sites, where they will use a modular system to design complex missions in many stages.
Because of the obvious issue that the missions cannot be launched from the site they are constructed at, they player will also need to engineer solutions to transport the vehicle to launch.
This chapter will allow the player to touchdown on entirely new worlds, where they may build colonies to persist in hostile environments, and mine new environments for valuable resources.
Experience accurate orbital mechanics!
The space-faring experience will be one of the greater challenges that await our players. Worlds will orbit their central star in real time, and will exert gravitational influence on anything that enters their outer gravity spheres. We intend for that environment to function very much like it does in real life, and that means the player has alot to learn about how to plan a successful mission, and how to control their craft to efficiently use fuel to modify their orbits and trajectories to carry them into the path of their targets.
In fact, the trips will be so challenging and risky that we plan to provide our players with a "training simulator" asset which will allow them to plan out and test simulated versions of their intended missions so that they can learn the ropes before they wager the time and resources actually manufacturing and launching a mission.
