games for building support

On 4/29/14 6:05 PM, sailorbarsoom@... wrote:

> I haven't played Kerbal Space Program, though I'm starting to think that
> I will. What I did play was Roller Coaster Tycoon. So I look at what
> you suggest and see a couple of "Space Tycoon" games.

Hey, thanks for the feedback! These are good ideas.

I still think it would be possible to combine them into one game, where
you start out building 20-person hotels, and work your way up to Island
Two (or bigger) space colonies. This gives you a big growth curve,
which is highly appealing to gamers. For space advocates, it also helps
demonstrate how to get from "here" to "there" without an undefined gap
in the middle.

Moreover, I don't think you should ever just be handed a basic colony
structure (e.g. a Stanford Torus) to outfit. Rather, let the player
choose the geometry by snapping together primitive shapes with whatever
dimensions they specify. Sure, they may make something that explodes as
soon as they pressurize it, or starts tumbling as soon as they spin it
up. Oops! They'll learn from this and move on.

(Every KSP player has had their fair share of rockets that have blown
up, fallen apart, made a crater, or otherwise undergone rapid
unscheduled disassembly. KSP has a built in "revert this flight"
feature that lets you roll the clock back and try again with no penalty
except the time you spent on it. Perhaps our game could have something
similar.)

For example, I'm a big fan of multiple decks and artificial lighting, as
you can get a lot more "land" area out of your pressurized volume. But
Mike prefers open plans with piped-in natural sunlight. OK, so we make
the game support any combination of these, and have the simulated
residents include a mixture of preferences. The player can build what
they prefer. I imagine an open-sky hab would be more popular and
command higher prices per resident, but a multi-deck hab would be
cheaper to build and fit more residents in. Such trade-offs make the
game interesting.

One thing I'd really want to include is some high-quality rendering.
Most people right now can't visualize a space habitat at all, and when
we try, we mostly have to reach back to paintings done in the 1970s.
Elysium helped, but that was only one (and not a very realistic one at
that).

Again this is something KSP does really well. The other night I was
flying a capsule around the Mun (Moon analogue) for the very first time.
On my way back towards Kerbin (the Earth analogue), I was in the
planet's shadow most of the way, so it appeared as a thin ring
surrounding darkness. Then I emerged into the light, and the sun
suddenly blossomed on the edge of the planet. It was gorgeous and moving.

THAT'S the sort of experience I would want players to get when they
enter some beautiful space colony they've designed, strap on a pair of
virtual wings, and swoop down the axis for the first time. (Yeah, I
know, I know, you can't really do that in a multi-deck design... score
one for Mike!)

Cheers,
- Joe