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voidmission

Overview

Void Mission is a science-fiction game inspired by roguelikes. It is in an early stage of development right now because I am still working on the engine. But my notes are here for you to enjoy (and perhaps comment upon?)

The main ideas of Void Mission are:

Setting and structure

The story of Void Mission takes place in a remote research outpost called Installation 774. It is the size of a small city and is composed of square, uniformly-sized, interconnected modules whose interiors may be configured for different purposes and environmental conditions. For example:

These modules are about the size of one city block, approx 60x60 cells. Various airlocks separate the modules from one another. Some modules have become depressurized and therefore you need an armored robo suit to explore them. Some areas are so radioactive or toxic that only a remote-controlled bot can enter.

The city is designed to house about 1,000 employees, contractors, military personnel, and various visitors.

Ideas for roguelike activities

  • Confront dozens or even hundreds of enemies at a time
  • Wreak havoc in highly destructible environments
  • Mine minerals and manufacture stuff with them
  • Run around placing bombs on other objects/enemies, then run away and explode them! This idea is stolen from the PlayStation game "Silent Bomber."
  • Feel the paranoia of never knowing what is around the corner
  • Pit yourself against time as maps fill up with water or poison gas
  • Destroy security cameras to prevent the BLS from seeing you
  • Create temporary force fields to block enemies and protect yourself.
  • Upgrade skills with chips/software/modules. You can find them by taking apart other machines.
  • Locate schematics for fantastic devices and build them using raw materials and manufacturing work stations.
  • Remote-control a limited robot in areas with too much radiation for humans to explore
  • Get radiation sickness and take antidotes
  • Experience and deal with extremes of temperature
  • Researching objects, requires a workstation and research skill
  • Stealth play, sneaking through dark areas to avoid detection
  • Explore a machine-hollowed planetoid whose surface is speckled with numerous robotic installations and mysterious crash sites from a previous expedition
  • Homage to Compile: a roguelike inspired by Zanac, Aleste, and Guardian Legend (this could absorb many of the ideas above)
  • Surround yourself with slave robots who do your bidding and defend you from enemies
  • Wear mecha suits of different types and capabilities.
  • Dyson sphere exploration (whoa)
  • Opening of game: ship runs out of fuel soon after. You're stuck with no weapons, no fuel = no unassisted overworld travel.
  • The ship in orbit guides you through the early part of the game and helps introduce the backplot, via radio, but they are destroyed by the BLS after the game's first real challenge.
  • OK so i'm going to steal the rather cliche concept of a hyper-powerful race of Ancients who leave artifacts behind. Except, they did not inhabit our galaxy and only left behind a few sites, maybe three, which are jealously guarded and exploited by the Corporation for their technological value. What you discover is that this planet was a research station for the ancients, which makes it extraordinarily valuable in terms of technology and information. Thus, the Corporation and the Authority, already in deep conflict, are both vying for control of this planet. The ancients are not gone, they just left the milky way out of fear of the BLS once it took over. The BLS is one of their experiments gone wrong. The Ancients created the faster-than-light drive, which humans discovered in a ship floating derelict. In fact perhaps the Corporation and the Authority have a monopoly on FTL travel and control it very strictly.

Roleplaying system

The roleplaying system is a property of a particular RLX game, not of RLX itself. This allows different games to use different and unrelated roleplaying systems. This section of the document is about the particular roleplaying system I am going to develop for my game. One underlying principle is that there is no "character generation screen". The character's attributes result entirely from in-game actions over time.

At first I will just develop the basics, the raw minimum for a sci-fi game to work, then develop it further.

Stats

In the RPG system for Void Mission, numeric quantities like skills and characteristics are subsumed into one idea: stats.

Both characteristics and skills enable you to do something, and can change:

  • permanently, as when leveling up
  • temporarily while certain items are equipped
  • temporarily while a certain effect is active

Stat values factor into various computations: for example, eyesight could determine the radius of your vision under normal lighting.

Basic stats

  • Strength (attack power).
  • Intelligence (perception, etc)
  • Dexterity (attack/defence success)
  • Constitution

Secondary stats

  • Hit Points (HP) - from Constitution and Strength
  • Psi Points - from Constitution and Intelligence
  • Fatigue Points - From Constitution and battle fatigue
  • Speed - From Dexterity and Strength and Intelligence

Skills

  • Eyesight (intelligence)
  • Hacking (intelligence, dexterity)
  • Research (intelligence)
  • Close combat (strength, dexterity)
  • Ranged combat (strength, dexterity)
  • Stealth (dexterity, intelligence)
  • Vehicles (dexterity)
  • Medicine (intelligence)

Rolls

Make it so that "average" skill of 10 is about equally likely to fail as succeed. Must roll less than or equal to controlling stat to succeed.

Improving stats and skills: experience and leveling up

Combat

  • Player signals attack with M-direction 

     :action :attack :to attacker :from direction

  • This is resolved to: 

     :action :attack :to attacker :from defender

  • Attacker rolls dexterity for hit/miss.
  • Attacker hits!
  • Attacker rolls Strength for damage power, add to weapon roll
  • Defender rolls Dexterity for dodge
  • If hit, roll Strength, modify by weapon strength and close/ranged combat skill 

     :action :defend :to defender :from attacker :detail points

  • Defender rolls Strength to resist damage, modify by armor class, sends to self: 

     :action damage :to self(defender) :detail points

Is this too complicated?

Places to visit

Each place will have associated enemies, items, and a selection of special things to do.

  • Cold storage 665... find strange items
  • Highway 291-M (randomly generated name).. with a vehicle you can speedily navigate the universe
  • Caves with minerals to mine and freaky insects to defeat
  • Power transfer stations... radiation!
  • There was originally just an outpost on this planet, a research station... but eventually IT took over and hollowed out the planet...

Author: David O'Toole <dto@gnu.org>

Date: 2008/01/15 11:53:04 AM