Realistic space colonization game
Hi,
I am a space enthusiast, a software developer, and also a strategy game fan.
I think we will live exciting decades with the first settlements in space. And I want to play it in a video game, and build my own base on the moon, to have the feeling I am Elon Musk ;-).
Unfortunately, to my knowledge, all space colonization games are too much in the future. I do not want to terraform planets, I want to build my space base with current technology.
So I am planning to develop an indie video-game on this theme. If you are interested, feel free to visit the site and subscribe to the newsletter. Content will be progressively added in the next days.
As a side note, it is also a project I will do with my two daughters, to get them interested in engineering and software development. They already started influencing the design, and as a result, an hydroponic strawberry ice-cream dispenser will be part of the first available equipment of space settlements ;-).
Hi,
I just created a subreddit for those who want to follow the project without leaving their e--mail address. https://www.reddit.com/r/OuterSpaceShack/
Hi,
very interested by your comments on the first draft of living quarters.
https://outerspaceshack.com/station-interior-space/
Very excited to see how this turns out. Goodluck!
This is ambitious and I like your optimism. What kinds of games have you built before?
Hi alchemist,
I am an experienced project manager (biggest project managed around 20M$), and developper (biggest single development around 150K lines of code, I put around 2000 hours in it as a side project). Now, to be transparent, I have not been developing games since a loooooooooong while (back in the 1990s...).
I have been playing around with 3D design also in the last 20 years in many contexts (research, engineering).
So I am confident in my capacity to plan the project, to manage 'customers' and to develop the "simulation" part of the logic.
Still, I plan to 'derisk' the parts I am not familiar with before I launch a kickstarter campaign, because it would be immoral to take money from people without being sure of succeeding:. This includes giving a good style to the graphics, and learning the ropes of Unity in the context of a management game. I am not too worried, a lot of things seem easier than back in olden days.
Sounds like you're good on the dev experience side, but games can be a wily beast... Best of luck!
Good luck.
You might want to check out the project : Terra Invicta. They are supposed to include a realistic models of the solar system in the game.
Sounds very nice!
Do you track your email subscribers? That's my dealbreaker these days to subscribe. Would be good to include it on the page.
What do you mean by tracking email subscribers ? I am transparent with you, I have no experience in setting up a newsletter. I just understand asking people to give their e-mail to register to a newsletter is a good way to see if they are really interested in the project, or just saying nice things on the forum.
I am of course ready to do anything to prove to people I am doing that in good faith. I do not plan to sell the e-mail address to any 3rd party or do anything dirty, or any advertisement, just send a newsletter every month or so, and when the kickstarter campaign is ready (would require at least a video demo of the gameplay), notify this campaign to the newsletter subscribers.
Happy for any feedback on this too.
Most platforms default to privacy-invasive tracking of opens and clicks. See how Hey.com fights agaist it: https://hey.com/spy-trackers/
I don't have Hey to protect me, so I am asking if tracking is turned on in your campaign.
Hi, no, I use absolutely no advanced tracking. The site is (almost) vanilla wordpress, and I plan to send plain HTML newsletters, at the beginning probably by hand using Mozilla Thunderbird.
If the mailing list reaches in the thousands, I will probably use a better newsletter tool. Do you any advice of such a tool you would be confortable with ?
I see absolutely no need to do complex / nasty web marketing stuff: I do not have any advertisement budget, and I do not plan to sell any personal data to make money. I plan to recoup development cost by simply asking people to pay the typical price of an indie-game.
Perfect, signed up!
You can use most of the famous tools, but just have to ensure to turn off their tracking. I have Mailchimp now and it's a box before the send button.
But yes, ideally I would love to use software that explicitly isn't build and marketed this way.
There better be a good plan to add a hydroponic strawberry ice-cream dispenser in one of your newsletters otherwise I'm opting out! XD
All seriousness, I love the idea of a current-tech space sim strategy game, and I wish you all the best!
By the way, did you try to subscribe to the newsletter ? I did not get the notification. Maybe, there is a bug.
Else, feel free to subscribe.
Just subscribed :)
Be sure that I have a lot of pressure to keep the strawberry ice cream at home ;-). Do not worry.