Frontier Project
Overview
A singleplayer management game made in 14 days for the 2024 Pirate Software Game Jam. It can be played in the browser here.
Frontier was designed around the game jam's theme of "It's Spreading." As such, you represent the main computer of a sleeper ship, destined to colonize the TRAPPIST-1 solar system. To accomplish this goal, you need to balance the inputs and outputs of the various systems on the ship. The Pathfinder IV must survive dangerous encouters in open space.
In retrospect, the concept was overambitious, however I learned the limits of what I can complete as a solo developer.
Gameplay
The premise behind the gameplay was that the player should be guided into dilemmas, where they have to make a decision that will impact the course of the game. With this in mind, the game was structured around an event timeline system, which allows the player to select a reaction to the event's effects. For example, one of the suspension decks fails, waking a large amount of crew who were prepared to sleep the entire journey. The options for this scenario are to put them all back to sleep, or make use of their skills in maintaining the ship.
To accomplish this premise, an in-depth UI system was required, the current implemented functionality is:
- Resource network view, with input and output statistics.
- Ship system inspection, with boosting minigames.
- Crew management and relocation between systems.
- Event popup section and detailed view avaliable.
- Timeline showing future events.
- And lastly, a play, pause, and fast forward system.
To create the dynamic UI, over 6,000 lines of custom code were needed, in addition to the unique 2D art assets, and interaction sound effects. The result is lacking a tutorial, and the depth of events that I had planned, but most of the core gameplay is in place.
Art
The facet of making the game that I learned the most from was the 3D art. I have significant experience with modelling software like SolidWorks, but Blender has a very different workflow. However, I think the end result fits in well with what I wanted out of Frontier.
I am most proud of the suble emission textures and lighting effects, that help the model feel real, within the detail limits imposed by browser rendering with OpenGL.
Another challenge I encountered was making the icons legible on the target resolution of 960x600. This took a lot of trial and error, and designing distinct shaped an geometries for important sprites.