Links

Video Dev Diaries: playlist

Motivation

This build is my absolute favourite, of all time (As of yet). Game development was probably the thing that pushed me to start learning programming wayyy back; An old pdf with the basics of C++, a tutorial on writing a Ticktacktoe program and I was hooked - Well... It took me a while to convince myself that programming was not the spawn of Satan, or to understand what the hell 2D For loops were

But I am here now, I like to think that I've now very much tamed my hyper-dimensional loops, and I can easily convince people I am an experienced Software Engineer (Most easily by slagging off some on-the-rise frameworks and laughing at languages which start indexing arrays at 1). Which brings me back to this project.

Stellar Conquest (name is not final) as a concept was born sometime in my first year at University, but I dreamed of a game like it far earlier than that. The idea revolves around building space-ships by strategically placing certain components in order to create the ultimate war machine; and after that smashing it into other war machines. The components would range from: steel walls, airlocks and crew cabins to: titan ship mega-weapons, life-support modules etc.

A large part would be played by realistic crew mechanics and ship destruction - designed to be as satisfying as possible. Stellar Conquest would be similar in some senses to FTL or Space Engineers and perhaps a little like RimWorld , but set in a much more light-hearted world.

Progress

While I worked on this project pretty much on my own, with one or two occasional guests hacking away for a day or two. I manged to raise the scaffolding of the game:

  • Ship Editor
  • Ship Destruction
  • Ship Steering Modules
  • Basic Weapons
  • Basic Crew AI (Behaviour Trees)
  • Custom Serialization for full mod-ability (this one was tough but rewarding)

Below are some clips presenting some of these features:

Editor:

Ship Damage & Ramming:

Ship Steering Modules:

Crew AI & Pathfinding

Weapon Basics:

Challenges & Obstacles

Currently my biggest problem in completing the game is time. I had a lot of spare time at the beginning of summer to work on it, but after a while I had to take up projects which I could finish more easily and quickly to build up my portfolio. Of course life also gets in the way: COVID, moving flats, university preparation for next year etc..

But I will not give up on Stellar Conquest! I am planning to keep hacking away at it long-term, I am not here for profits, and programming this has already taught me so much.

Future Plans

I will keep posting or updating this article whenever I get to make some progress on this project. I plan on finishing this build by the end of my degree (around the end of 2022).