Space Fortress
Space Fortress is an ongoing game project I would love to get to demo phase. I build a little demo (retroactively named Space Fortress Classic), and I realized that it wasn’t exactly the game I wanted to make. I was young and in love with Dwarf Fortress and did not listen to my own creative juices. And by creative juices, I mean my stockpile of things-other-people-did-I-enjoyed.
I think the new SF (not a rewrite from scratch, because most of my code still good) will be less roguelike and more RTS. Regardless, there is a lot of generic infrastructure that needs doing before it takes off.
Space Fortress Classic
Space Fortress Screenshot
Space Fortress came about after a lot of time spent in Dwarf Fortress. I also played a lot of Miner VGA in my formative years. It’s not particularly innovative to think DF would be better if its interface wasn’t so VI-like. There is absolutely no way anybody can touch its world generation and incredible depth. But I wanted to make a fluffier, arcadier version. Theme would have been over-the-top silly sci-fi.
I had a lot of fun whipping up the UI. In Java, using Slick, I built a little demo where you could order a couple of little workers to mine-out the dirt. I stopped working after it after a silly little issue grasped my attention fully. After looking at an ant-hill, I realized “holy crap, where is all the dirt going to go!” then the feature creep hit me deeper. It lost its arcade spirit! I think I’d like to pick this one up again soon. I tried to keep its bits recyclable, so there is hope.
I also got a puppy during this development. I couldn’t code as she was busy peeing.
One thing I did right was try to write little scenarios so if I wasn’t coding, I could still think. They can be found here.