Part 2: The Dyson Shell
Thinking about an epic story was paralyzing the actual development of the game. I had to let it go. File those dreams under the mental cabinet marked "will do when I have a million dollars". The correct course of action right now would be to forget about story and completely focus on gameplay.
I wish I had done just that.
"No! The game must take the player on an epic journey! If not across the stars, then maybe around a single one".
A Dyson shell is a mega structure that an advanced civilization might build around their home star to capture all of it's energy. Anyone who reads and watches a lot of sci-fi would be familiar with the idea. To my knowledge, there hadn't been a game that fully explored the concept yet.
It solved a lot of the story problems too... The sun's energy would power the factories that produced the ships. With that much energy, you could produce a spaceship very quickly I imagined. Such a thing would also provide motivation for different factions to fight for control over. It seemed perfect.
I was so confident in the idea that I went ahead and made the Title screen:
and the level select screen:
This was done by creating a huuuge self-illuminated sphere in 3DS Max. The "shell" part was a smaller segment of sphere that hovered over the main sphere. I used the "select random polygons" tool to punch holes in the outer shell. Lastly, I extruded the outer shell, added the Greeble modifier, and added a healthy dose of glare. The rest was done in Photoshop.
I got the title of "Solarmax" from one of my earlier games. It seemed to fit the theme.
The backgrounds would now have to be redone. It took many iterations to get the effect I wanted:
I started with a flat plane and punched out some segments. I put the Mental Ray light source under the structure to give the impression that it was hovering above a searing hot sun. The rest of the work was done by the Greeble modifier. This first version looked too basic. I tried adding some curves.
I tried using circular tubes instead of planes. Hmm still looks too messy, and there wasn't a lot of variation in the details.
This is the layout I was finally happy with. Good variation between large and small structures. I tried some color tests:
This is what the final render looked like:
The glowing furnaces would be the strategic points that you had to capture. There was no longer a Mothership. The furnaces would produce ships for you so long as you controlled them. To win, you had to capture all the furnaces.
All this time, I was skipping out on a crucial part. I didn't actually test to see if the game was fun before committing to the idea.
I focused on getting a playable level working. By now I had the ship movement mechanics working well, but it was the actual strategic gameplay that would make or break this game. I could only hope that it was fun to play.
Yes! It was fun on the first play!
It was fun on the second and third plays...
And then doubt started creeping in. The more I playtested it, the more I realized that the gameplay was too shallow. There wasn't enough thinking involved. I needed to add different types of strategic points.
This was a problem because the furnaces were built into the level. They weren't assets that I could move around... they had to be rendered along with the rest of the map to get the correct lighting effects.
By this point I had created around 6 levels. They were fully rendered and good to go, but I soon realized that they all looked the same. Despite the different layouts of the background structure, there was nothing that distinguished one level from the next. They were all orange and black. The setting didn't leave much room for a change of palette.
It wasn't working out. The Dyson Shell seemed like a cool idea at first, but it wasn't fertile breeding ground for interesting gameplay.
1 month left.
There was a time when I would have just shelved the project. Back when I had a steady income and wasn't on a time constraint. I couldn't do that now, not with my savings running out and too much work already put in.
I threw out the Dyson shell, along with all the rendered levels and the title screen.
I found that ambition is the greatest motivator when getting started, but it can easily turn into your greatest enemy when finishing.