Plan B

Well I haven't received any interest from programmers to do the work but I'm not willing to give up my idea just yet. I will have to do it all myself, however, that will a good deal of patience from the audience as well as aide from time to time by actual programmers who know how to properly format a game.

First of all I'll be asking for donations so I can purchase a RAGS license (either 1 or 2 year). If I can't even get enough curiosity in this game to go that far than this idea ends here. After that I probably won't have much to give to anyone until I have a basic framework of the game.

As I build the game I'll be watching the RAGS tutorials on how to program but I will also be asking others to help me create a combat system and format the game so that I can easily add scenes and characters as I go along.

I haven't decided how I will be releasing editions of the game, but the final product will be free and available to everyone (whenever that happens). I have three ideas as follows:





One-time donation: with one donation you will be added to the list of supporters and automatically receive game releases as they become available. Differing levels of donations will also provide additional benefits such as a cheat tool, scene requests added to the game, etc...

Periodic donations: donations provided at the time of a release will grant access to the newest version of the game. While this would require you to pay more often for the releases I would also make the threshold correspondingly less expensive.

Crowd-Funding: any and everyone would be asked to donate whatever they would like to and once said goal has been reached the next release will be available to everyone. This would be similar to periodic donations, but would not exclude anyone from receiving the game once the funding limit had been reached.

My preference is the last one as I would be allowing everyone to play the game who wanted to but it would also give me a bit of an extra push to finish the next update as fast as I could.


In addition the game will not be containing any pictures at the beginning. This is because I would be making money off the game and would be liable for trying to make money off of the work of others. To add images to the game I will need to either receive permission from the creator(s), have images donated freely for use in the game, or commission said images. I hope I could would be able to get by on the first two as they would not necessitate any additional expenditures by anyone, but that's something to worry about at a later date.

Finally, as one final enticement, I've made a little video for you. I couldn't get my converter to work properly so I only have it available in .wmv, but if you really want to watch it you should be able to find something in which to play it.

https://www.mediafire.com/?iayx617a4lttpe5

Proposal

I believe I’ve received enough feedback and interest to move forward to the next step where I start to codify what I will be laying down and start to solicit help for the project.

The game will follow the path of your character immediately after you sign on as an independent contractor. While not being officially part of the military, you will be paid by the sector’s defense department at a level equivalent to your abilities and experience (you will not be promoted, but you will receive pay raises). You will start the game off with one of three (any maybe more) backgrounds as either ex-military (where you will receive a bonus to your defensive capabilities), former bounty hunter (providing a bonus to your attack), or a medic (giving you bonuses to your healing and related abilities).

A skill tree will be accessible for you to place a rank in each time you are promoted, however the highest rank(s) of the tree are available onto if you possess the proper background (i.e. you could only perform emergency surgery if you were a medic). In addition, if you perform an extraordinary task or have saved up enough money, you will be able to access training to gain a rank on your skill tree, though these occurrences will be rare or prohibitively expensive.

You will be paid on a weekly basis by the government so long as you have performed either general or weekly tasks. In addition you will be able to turn in effects collected from slain aliens at a bounty office (poison glands, harvested carapace, etc…) for rewards. The more dangerous the enemy the more you’ll receive for returning with a trophy. Furthermore there will be periodic optional missions you’ll be able to sign on to (some repeatable, some not) where you’ll be put into a dangerous situation and rewarded accordingly (not always financially).

All publically available equipment will be attainable from the beginning of the game though the higher the quality the higher the price. Certain extraordinary equipment (experimental or top secret) will only be gained by completing special missions. In addition to traditional armor and weaponry, you’ll be able to purchase genetic modifications to make you a more effective fighter, resist poisons, regenerate parts of your body, etc…. Your body may also be augmented to change its outward appearance for aesthetic reasons (altering your hair/eye/skin color, giving you scales, fangs, et al).

Fighting will be conducted with a turn-based system and will rely on a combination of your skills, aptitude and equipment. Having the best equipment won’t mean as much if you aren’t properly skilled in how to use it, but inherent abilities you have may balance out other deficiencies while you become accustomed to new or strange materiel. You will be able to hire another to aide you from a selection of NPC’s, though you will need to pay them periodically to retain their services.

The aliens themselves, depending upon their type and your (equivalent) rank, will be seeking to kill, corrupt, or capture you. For example: at low levels you may only be worth killing by a minor peon, but a strong enemy may see a chance to capture you and take you back to the hive, whereas at higher levels the minor peon will recognize that it can’t kill you and try to corrupt you instead while the strong enemy won’t take a chance that you can injure it and try to kill you rather than risk capture.

Corruption will be a straightforward process of the aliens trying to convert you to their cause while you try to resist their efforts (or not). You will usually be aware of any influences on your mind and be able to remove them if you want, though at a certain point you may become too corrupted to undo or resist the effects.

Being captured will entail an entirely different set of circumstances. You may be able to attempt escape prior to or after being taken to the hive, you may be fed to juvenile aliens, you may be experimented on, the aliens may attempt to integrate you into their hive, you may receive the full Kerrigan treatment (Star Craft reference), or any number of other events that will have multiple paths for you to escape, be corrupted, or die.

Becoming a member of the alien hive will have a number of different outcomes. If you are not obviously altered you may be able to return to the human camp and act as a mole, providing information, sabotaging, or assassinating as needed. You could also remain in the hive to be changed further and become a humanoid hybrid. You could be converted into an alien commander, leading and coordinating the alien forces, or be made into a hive king/queen, breeding successive generations of hybrids. You may also simply be molded into a drone and become one of the innumerable swarm destined to die in the war at the behest of your controllers.

I would like to set up additional planets to travel to where you could perform other tasks such as specialized training, relaxation, fighting rebelling governments, pursuing romantic relationships, etc… but that will be achieved only if the support is commensurate with the difficulty in implementation.

Now we come to the biggest hurdle: I cannot do this by myself. More specifically I cannot program a game that would entail all of these elements. I can write any and everything that would come up but I would need someone else to provide the framework of the game. I do not believe that what I am asking for is easy and would probably require a great deal of time to accomplish. To that end I would need someone willing to devote a great deal of their time to this game and would be willing to compensate for services rendered. Because this project would (financially) rely entirely on donations I can’t even begin to estimate what I would be able to afford, but I’m sure I could work something out regardless of the outcome.

I would need to secure the services of a programmer before I begin to solicit donations as I could not live up to my end of the bargain without one. If anyone would like to sign onto this project for an indeterminate time and unknown pay please PM or email me at my blog. I would caution you not to apply if you do not have experience with programming or do not have a good deal of free time coming up soon (Spring semester is ending soon and I doubt I’d have anything needed much before then).

Any feedback is welcome.

Possible New Game

The more I think about it the more I come to the conclusion that there simply isn’t enough to do on each planet. For this game to achieve its potential I would need to vastly increase the amount of activities each world provides, like actually finishing the casino’s hotel, or allowing you to take a part-time job at the Sergorin mall, or imputing the college on Bornal and allowing you to take classes.

This is possible and I do have the ability to do it, however it would take a large undertaking to make it worthwhile and with my (slow) programming ability it most likely take a very long time. I’m willing to do this especially because I see it as necessary, however, over the past several days I’ve had a thought bouncing around in my head and it’s started to snowball into a fully-fledged idea.

I’ve been thinking about the next chapter for Spaced. I’m not bored or disenchanted with the game, but I do like to know where I’m going. For those of you not wanting a sneak peek into my though processes or a spoiler as to where I may be going stop reading now. I’ve been thinking that part 3 of the story is going to be an invasion by the aliens of one or more of the planets in the sector, not necessarily any of the ones that have already been presented.

I intend to start your character off as a recruit in what are effectively the Marines as they are transported to the surface of the planet being fought over. As opposed to the first two games I would allow you to choose the basic characteristics of your character, gender, hair color, etc… though because you would be a soldier you would have to start off within a certain set of parameters (thin, in shape, et al) but that could change over the course of the game.

Because of the history that I have written into the game it wouldn’t be much of a stretch to allow a doctor to alter your character in outward or inward ways. The limitations that I had imposed on myself for not imputing transformations into your character to which I didn’t have pictures would be eliminated as I would either not use images, or commission visual representations (see below). Your character would be able to encounter and combat enemies similar to what you can do in Flexible Survival or Corruption of Champions.

I would like to advance your character without having to use levels, but replace it with something similar. I would allow you to purchase any and all equipment upgrades at any time, however some would be prohibitively expensive at early stages of the game. As you advance in experience and your military record improves you will be available for promotions to higher ranks. The higher rank you achieve the higher your pay scale would be, but that wouldn’t be your sole source of income. I would want to have an independent contractor in the area that would periodically offer opportunities (quests) for motivated marines.

I’d want you to be able to choose capabilities/equipment to progress with, such as concentrating on offensive, defensive, or healing abilities that you would receive upgrades for as you advance in rank. To further the equability of each style I’d have you work in a group with three other marines that you would have at least a limited ability to choose (at the start) and after a fashion you would be able to select each member with no restrictions (such as after become a Sergeant).

In a similar vein to Flexible Survival I would want losing in combat to have transformative consequences, though not immediate or always apparent (such as an incubation period or developing an internal gland or telepathy). At a certain point if your character has been transformed multiple times by the aliens and hasn’t received medical attention to reverse or make the changes benign then you would start having to fight back against an impulse to seek out more transformations or even join the aliens. Joining the aliens would then entail being a mole if your transformations aren’t too obvious to your comrades or if you are too conspicuous you would try to escape to the alien enclave.

There’s a great deal more that I’m still mulling over as to what I would like to do and what is actually possible, but what I cannot escape is the fact that I wouldn’t be able to do this on my own. I would most definitely need a partner to program and code most if not all of the game. Additionally, because of how awful I am at making or altering pictures, I would need to find someone else to provide artistic services for characters, aliens, scenery, and anything else I might want.

I would like to include as many fetishes as possible, however, at the same time I don’t want to just rehash the same formula that others have done. I don’t want this to be a copy of Flexible Survival, or Cursed, Trap Quest, but I would like to include elements of all to create the most rounded game possible.

I would like to make this game incredibly complex, in depth and lengthy. Because of this, for my idea to come to fruition I would need to have some kind of investment in the project in the form of OffBeatr or something similar. I don’t want to assume anything, so for the time being all I’m doing is gauging interest in this project. Nothing is set in stone and I would welcome any and all constructive input to make the possible game more enjoyable to play.

One More Time

Another bug fix

• The modeling job should (I hope) be fixed now
• The bugs with the Sergorin sidequest should now be fixed (partially tested)
• Fixed the remodeling for the Bornal Townhouse (the mistake I made here made me want to kick myself)

This will be the last bug fix for this release unless I'm told of something game-breaking.

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Bug fix

I fixed a few of the bug reported, though some of them I could not repeat so I can't address them. Remember, the more detailed you are in your description of the bug and the circumstances that brought you to the error the easier it will make for me to be able to solve the problem.

• sidequest choice bug should be fixed
• sidequest sleeping bug may be fixed (I'll) need some feedback to see if it continues
• modeling bug fixed, you can only get one contract per week
• you now have 3 days to make it to the modeling site instead of 2
• cheat added to find next transformation (it should work but don't try to fully play the game with it)

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Ta-Daa!

Here's the next version of the game, such as it is. Let me know if you find any errors (if you use the cheat and find errors, that doesn't count). This version contains the following changes:

• Bornal sleeping active
• The townhouse can be remodeled
• The third transformation is available
• You can now become a model through a pathway accessible in the slums area
• Raven can be taken to the mall
• Assorted bug fixes

 I'm trying to think of something else to say, but you should all know the routine by now.

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Late

You ever have things planed out only for something to pop up out of nowhere and bit you in the ass? Well sorry for the delay but life always take precedence over fantasy. I've one and a half scenes to finish before testing then I'll give you an unintentionally buggy release.