Discover a ever expanding universe in this endless Space exploration game. Featuring procedurally generated everything! What is Tiny Trek? So I long time ago I played a game called Starflight, in fact it was my first game I ever owned. It was on two 5 1/4 floppies and ran on my Tandy 1000 PC. I loved this game and it inspired me in many ways. in the back of my mind I have since then wanted to build a game like that. So in my free time (What's that?) I have been plugging away and today I can announce to you as "Tiny Trek" This game features a endless galaxy to explore and procedurally generated almost everything. It is most certainly a labor of love and I am excited that it is being to take shape and take on a life of it's own. We do have a few challenges left to over come but overall Tiny Trek is nearing completion, You can find more information on the game at it's Kickstarter page. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2064021040/tiny-trek About the Game From the creators of Vincere Totus Astrum comes for a universe of exploration and adventure. As the Captain of your own Starship begin your trek of literally endless worlds by first selecting your randomly generated race and ship, then set out for the stars. Encounter alien races and exotic locations as you travel in an endlessly procedurally generated galaxy. No two game are the same. As you explore, randomly generated “Episodes” will have you fighting hostile ships, helping aliens and exploring the surface of new planets. How long can you survive the deep of space? How far can you travel? Who knows what is waiting for you! Your trek begins now! Features -Galaxy is big: And when I say big I mean really big like a never ending Galaxy with stars, planets, nebula and other space phenomenon. -Do you have that ship in a different color? Yes we can do that with our procedural generation algorithms. Everything from the planets and stars to ships and races is created on the fly. And then to take it step further we provide you tools to edit your Ship and your race. -Lets fire blue particle cannons full... Engage in battles of one on up to three enemy vessels. Cool thing is with the Mission Matrix, a ship might jump out of battle and you may get the option to chase them, once you catch up you may finish them off or two of his friends might be waiting for you. -You think they have apples on an alien planet? I don't know if apples will be there, but the idea is that you can explore endless alien worlds and conduct various away missions. Planets will contain unique items that your science officer can scan, and your engineer can collect to bring back to the ship for trade. -Making Friends will be important: Talk, trade and assisting other spacefarers will benefit you as each race you encounter will store an enemy, neutral or friend status. That will effect how your next encounter with them will be. -Episodes for everyone! In Tiny Trek we have worked on creating a generator that creates randomized missions or as we call it, episodes. Each episode last around 3-8 minutes on average and include everything from search and rescue, transport, battles and more. Imagine receiving a distress signal, then approaching a ship to discover it's a trap. After defeating them and searching the ship discover that the stranded crew is on a nearby planet. The unique Mission Matrix generates over a 100 different "episode" types and puts them together. -Stuff is cool... Player will be able to collect and store unique plants, materials and relics you discover on your journey. And trade them for other resources or information.
Just backed this, looks awesome! If it is procedurally generated, what kind of file size growth do you experience when you travel out far distances? I can't imagine it would be too bad, but there is the case of big Minecraft worlds growing to an unruly size.
Excellent question, I am currently using a 3d array in combination with a ini file structure, a large chunk of the data, Planets, races, etc are stored in separate data storage, but the map data that stores the galaxy map is stored in the array, as resource pointers to the data storage. I am concerned about slow down when these storage files get large, but so far I have not seen any effect. Hopefully when the Kickstarter backers get the beta they will be doing some long distant trips to test it broadly. Great question thanks!
This looks wonderful. It's nice to see that it's close to completion and the funding goal is reasonable and attainable. Just pledged, and looking forward to Tiny Trek!
@kcur, Great question. So when it comes to your race, you start by picking a homestar then a home planet around it, The type of star and planet type effect your base stats. Currently you can the "Roll" for your races Avatar and ship design. The ship design can be edited and it's shape does effect stats in game. I do have planned the ability to make a avatar editor and make the ship editor more robust. It's in my stretch goals I believe. Hope that answers the question.
Correct MrMojoRisin, I will provide a Beta to anyone who wants to participate that has backed at the $5.00 mark or more. It will be mostly PC builds at the beginning. Then nearer the end I would scan for some iOS gamers in the pool to adhoc builds out.
Space Stations A Backer convinced me of adding space stations to the mix, here are some procedurally generated Space Stations, Do you guys think they look all right?
It's the circular part I am worried about, everything it tiny trek is built out of various sized squares starting at 3x3 pixels, doing a round part might hurt the brain a bit, but for you I will continue to experiment!
@Bronxsta , Indeed PC, Mac, iOS, Android and Ouya. I am also trying to sort Linux and Windows Mobile 8
Personally, I think the space Stations look great! You have a very alien vibe going there. Concerning the landing party. Are those big guns just for show or can you have battles on the surface on the planet ? Do you have control over each team member? Can you research better weapons. Can you capture aliens and their weapons for study? Thanks
Ahh damn! Just saw this, thought 'Wow! I'm having that now'. Only then did I realise it's a ks. I guess it'll be a year or so before we see it? Good luck with it and I hope it turns out better than that abomination of a space game that's Star Command
@ gemineye62 Security officer is the one carrying the big gun and yes he will shoot Hostiles (Using the Colonel's, from Avatar, voice on Hostiles). You will encounter friendly and not so friendly people and creatures on away missions. You have on any away mission a party of three which can consist of any combination of Security, Science, Engineering and Medical officers. you have direct control over one and the other two follow you around. You can switch between them at any time. No we won't have research for new weapons at least in the initial version. Let me know if that answers your questions!
@Mene, We are shooting for a May 31st 2014 for a release, If you decide to back the Kickstarter at $5.00 or more you get to participate in the Beta release. From that group I hope to find some iOS beta testers.
Great, thanks! Edit- just visited the KS page, as I don't have a PC, which pricing level do I buy to get the ios version?