Hooligan Labs

Well spotted, but no actually! The "piggies" in the Ender series have a really, really complex reproductive cycle, but they not hermaphrodites. But this brings up an interesting scenario. I have currently classified ages based on human-like reproductive capability and work ability: Infant: Does nothing but consume resources. Child: Can work but not reproduce. Adult: Can work and reproduce. Elder: Can work but not reproduce. The "tree" stage of a piggie's life cycle would be a unique situation where the being could reproduce but not work. Humans are almost never in this state except for the last few weeks or days of pregnancy. I'll have to consider this special case in the future. Of course, this also opens up a whole new area of potential alien activity: metamorphosis. Butterfly from caterpillar, etc. That would be very difficult, but fun, to program. BTW: Just programmed gestation period into the game. I'm also closing in on having births be possible to simulate. I'm focusing on just the females for determining when babies get made. Of course the other genders heavily influence this, but the code is simpler by starting with those who can actually make babies.

That is a good point. Micromanagement of population could be a gameplay factor. I will have to think about it. What I am currently aiming for is a way to try building interesting or wacky cultures and seeing how well they do over time in the closed environment of a spaceship. Seeing if a chivalrous matriarchy, a barbaric renaissance or orthodox consumerism could survive seems fun to me. Especially when you throw in technical challenges. If I succeed, then people will talk about the game like, "Oh, sure, dynastic polygamy is fine if you have enough radiation shielding, but you will want to pivot to at least a feudal system or your authority is going to die off from mutations." Of course, a lot of my coding is taking twice as long since I'm trying to leave it open to aliens too. It would be a completely different challenge with a bee-like race, with only a single queen, or hermaphroditic sentient trees.

That is the weird thing when you get into game design. You don't just see the code, you write it! And you have to imagine what code best meets the game goals. Banished has many similarities. But I think birth control in there is simply how many houses you have? That makes sense for a game about turning a forest into a city, but we need something else for a generation ship. What changes in a closed habitat is the people. So I need to create a model of life expectations and society and how it influences population growth.

Not dead! I will definitely say when it is, but I plan on making this work no matter what. I just moved to a new house. Also, scripting in a reproductive system is very hard. Aging and death wasn't too bad, but when you have individual characters determining when and who they reproduce with is tricky!

Grats on getting on KSP's Facebook page! https://www.facebook.com/kerbalspaceprogram/photos/a.240767269275838.66315.240760572609841/891556587530233/?type=1&fref=nf

Big update! 4 Ways to Save Everyone from Dying in Space on Your Interstellar Generation Ship Includes new pictures of gameplay, including the upcoming resource system and 3D GUI.

I have been writing and re-writing example scenarios. I keep wanting to post but I have been making a lot of progress on gameplay and it's evolving / mutating rapidly, and I don't want to share anything that won't work with current gameplay design. This is something that I've debated a lot. By my current gameplay goals, you as a ship and an AI can't be permanently deactivated - even if the habitat is destroyed and everyone dies, another civilization will rebuild you ten thousand years later because you and your ship are far too valuable. There is hard science to back this up. I'm currently working through all the ways your ship's civilization can implode (and explode!). There are so many ways this can happen that it will be a full game unto itself. Having the people attack and destroy the AI would be like kerbals burning down the space center with torches.

Going to post stories soon. First, I'm experimenting with new GUI and sharing animated GIFs of it! Follow link for larger animation!

This brings up an interesting distinction. As you are a computer program and the people on your ship have free will, you can only influence how they act. So you may set a school program to educate children on the importance of cleanliness, or you can zone more rooms for medicine production, but you can't actually make more medicine. Also, these are more like trends. Disease is a trend, but an bioweapon attack by an extremist would be an event. Trends are dealt with on a high level by changing policies and room use. Events resolve themselves within days, if not seconds, by extreme methods. If you have a room whose occupants have been exposed to a horrible virus then you better damn well seal that room. What follows is the choice if you will let doctors in to attempt treatment, risking the health of everyone on the ship, or if you simply wait for them to become inert biomatter for the recycler. The choice becomes even harder when the virus attack strikes your electrical engineers. If they die, what if no-one else can figure out how to keep the lights on? Will the rest of your habitat die in dark?

I think I can do that. I'm working on the game system now that measures how close your habitat is to suffering from disease, warfare, ignorance or apathy (all very deadly in space). If you have any events in mind that would push the people of a starship closer or further from those disasters then share them with me!

Update: New hall art! Starting to look like a real spaceship inside! This is the half-kilometer wide version with 200 rooms, where maybe a thousand people could live. See more pictures here!

New post: Hallway Progress. The prefabs from the Sci Fi kit help a lot but I'm having to reorganize them to support my gameplay goals, including procedural generation of the habitation ring. Read more here! By the way, thanks everyone for the reputation! I have a lot going on but your feedback helps me try to keep up the pace.

As promised, new website with new art! Even a logo! Click! And what's this about procedurally generated scientifically accurate galaxies? Not even I really know!

That's actually a demo video for a Sci-fi parts package you can buy from the Unity store. So I could take what is in the video and put it in my space ship, replacing the current gray uniform blocks. For example, I could put the holographic projector thing outside the recreation rooms. More details are in the article linked above!

Website still being redesigned. First, wanted to talk about procedurally generated planets and ships! What do you think of this art? Click here for all examples and full article

Thanks for the feedback. I do need good art for the background, this is just a placeholder. I also need a logo. I will see about updating the site by the end of the week.

Long post about the art and procedural generation of ships and galaxies coming. In the meantime, here is my list of what is coming in the alpha. What do you think?

Nice! Is it still necessary to touch the ground to save?

One of the original names I kicked around was "Slower Than Light" I've put an alpha signup on the page! The more people sign up the sooner we can get this done. I'll post a more detailed progress on the alpha soon.

Short post today on the UI progress!

Thanks Endersmens! Every bit helps. I've made a lot of progress on gameplay stuff like interacting with the habitat ring. Thus far I have been able to stick to the Augmented Reality style interface, no toolbar or inventory necessary. Everything you need glows and floats in space.

Aside from enough money to fund me going full-time on this, what the game really needs right now is to be shared! We will need hundreds of people following Interstellar, via the mailing list, Twitter or whatever, before I can consider doing a Kickstarter or something to get the game finished. I'll post another update soon. If you have any suggestions of ways to popularize this idea, let me know.

Your timing is rather amazing, a new update on gameplay just went up! I'm trying to get my head out of the code and update at least once a week. If you want to hear from me more often, just ask about something!

That might work! Just hope it doesn't get confused if the airship starts to tumble. KSP hilarity ensues?

I almost had that working long ago, but lost the code. I found it important to include in the UI an option to have the ship's Z or Y axis be "up". That way you can handle zeppelin or more typical balloon designs.