RETROTrek - Early Development Thread
Posted: Thu Sep 03, 2020 11:50 pm
]Introduction - Welcome to RETROTrek
Hello, everyone! Having gotten the itch to program something AND do some community contributing, I've decided to try my hand at a small game. One of my memories from elementary school was playing games on the C64 and the PET. One of them was a Trek-Clone. There were many, many Star Trek games on old computers, and that trend went way into the DOS-era systems. So, I thought it would be interesting to try my hand at one, myself. Welcome to "RETROTrek". Inspired by years and years of Trek-clone games, some as far back as 1967 and 1972 - RETROTrek follows in the vain of old trek games for the C64 and PET, but with the aim to evolve and improve on the design and experience.
You can check out progress at my GitHub - RETROTrek Github Project Tracker
THE BIG THREE THINGS OF RETROTrek
1. A tribute to early EGA and VGA trek-clone games - for the Commander X16 first, and hopefully compatible with the Commodore 64
2. Simple design - Text and Grid based for the platform CharSet. Has to be a FINISHABLE game project.
3. Easy to play - everything displayed on same screen.
You are a freshly minted Starship captain of an alliance of peace-loving explorers that has been tasked with exploring an unexplored and contested region of space. Your ship and crew are ready for your commands. The game takes place on a 20x10 grid representing this uncharted region of space, with each grid location being a sector that is a 10x10 grid. In this area, you must Explore, Survive, and fight the evil KLORG - the alliance's foremost enemy.
Knowing that this might be something I may not absolutely ever finish, I've decided to develop the game's features in distinct phases.
PHASE 1 - ONE OF EVERYTHING AND REPEATED SECTORS
This phase will be completing a game that has only the absolute minimum loop. WARP will simply move you to a new area to explore before you continue on. Perform tasks to gain points. Do this 10 times, and you win. Very simple.
Phase 1 will be about getting all the the core systems and programming structure in place, and setting the state for expansion. Because I am not familiar or particularly experienced with this version of BASIC, It'll be a struggle, but I am no stranger to new things, and I am mostly working on engine parts. Aim Low, Deliver High.
PHASE 2 - SPACE, THE FINAL FRONTIER
This phase will introduce a navigable 20x10 map of space. The WARP command will now take you to a destination of your choosing. As well, what appears on the two maps will be Masked and requiring scanning to reveal. I expect to add most of the more fun bits that will create the game part of the game in this phase. For Phase 2, there's tons of things I'd like, but given the idiosyncrasies of BASIC, I might be limited.
PHASE 3 - SPACE WITHIN SPACE
This phase will extend the components created in Phase 2 by extending them to the sector map. Here, we will introduce a space within space in the 10x10 Sector map; drawing us closer to the old EGA trek-clones. As well, the movement commands should work as originally intended, and the player will be able to freely navigate the stars, orbit planets, and perhaps other space functions like hailing, bartering, and of course - being stranded and needing aid.
By the end of this, I will have a game that will have three game modes:
Explore - Your primary mission is to explore/make contact with a sufficient amount of objectives in the region. Be careful, though!
Secure - Your primary mission is to survive the spacial region long enough to eliminate the objective number of Klorg ships.
Contact - Your primary mission is to make contact with an objective number of populated alien planets.
PLANNED FEATURES (Not a complete or final list)
Turn Mechanics (Passive and Active uses of resources and crew each turn)
Combat mechanics (Phase Cannons, Torpedos, and Particle Streams)
Game Over Conditions (Crew Dead/Mutiny, Ship dead in space, Turn Limit)
Self-Destruct (Simple, Animated, Fancy)
Randomly Generated Maps
Regional Discovery Mask (Fog of War)
Region and Sector Simulation per X turns (The REALLY hard part.)
Random Generated Alien Species and Planetary Systems (Tough, but doable!)
THIS THREAD AND EARLY DEVELOPMENT
I am sure I will need lots of help, but I'm confident that I can at least get phase 1 complete if I try. This is a project I don't expect to finish or devote much of my time to, so I hope I can make big inroads to progress to something interesting and fun. If anyone has any thoughts or advice/tips about this, please post up! I'd be interested in hearing what you think is possible or desirable for this game. I created the thread for the purpose of early development discussion, as I don't think I'm quite ready to put a non-game on the site for download.
When Phase 1 is functionally ready to be played, I will post the initial version and this thread will change or be moved/locked.