I've been playing a bit of Torchlight recently. I'm not really a fan of high fantasy settings, but this game keeps me coming back. The openness of this procedurally generated game always gives you something more to play for, while being so open you can never actually finish it.
It got me thinking about how this kind of open ended procedural game play could be applied to other genres, such as my own personal favourite science fiction.
RPGs usually have a few different classes with different styles. In my space RPG you'll play a starship rather than a single character, the player class from a fantasy RPG becomes a "Hull Class", so let's have a Fighter, Explorer and Trader hull designs.
Collectable "Stuff" with a variety of stat bonuses comes in the form of Trinkets, Armor and Weapons in Torchlight, where they can be sold or used to upgrade your character. Let's translate that into "Components" for our hulls in the categories: Stardrives, Sensors, Shields, Weapons and Cloaking devices. What kind of hull you chose can determine how many component slots you get for each of those types. In torchlight you get a fixed size of inventory regardless of class, i'd like to see the amount of cargo space determined by the hull you chose, it makes sense that the trader will have more space to carry spare components that the Fighter, who can carry more weapons & shields.
Torchlight has Gems that can be used to boost the stats of "socketed" stuff, gems are rarer than stuff, so make for a better reward, without being of all that much benefit. The sci-fi equivalent, "Chips" to install in socketed components. Ridiculously torchlight makes these take up a full inventory slot each. I'd give the player an interface that can hold as many spare Chips as they want.
As far as actual stats go the fantasy genre one are fairly standard elemental based themes: fire, ice, poison, electricity etc. So let's cook up some sci-fi equivalents : Space, Time, Light, Matter, Nuclear, Magnetic and Thermal.
Fantasy character health translates into Hull Integrity fairly directly, we can even consume "Repair Canisters" components taking the role of the ever present "Health Potions". Magic or Mana translates into "Power" from your Hull's reactor, with "Power Cells" doing the job of fantasy "Magic Potions". I'm thinking that installed components (weapons, shields etc) would draw power from a reserve in the reactor when they are active, so power drain becomes another component stat.
Cloaks conceal items(baddies/wrecks/portals) in space from ships without Sensors with higher stats. Weapons can be blocked by shields with higher stats, attacks that aren't blocked reduce the integrity of the ship that is hit. Drives enable ships to pass through "Portals" with lesser stats to other regions of space (dungeons/maps).
Baddies come in 4 basic forms, with various themes:
* Mooks - numerous, small, weak, easily killed, little threat, little chance or reward
* Henchmen - rarer, larger, tougher, more dangerous than Mooks, better chance of reward
* Spawner - rarer, larger, tougher, more dangerous than Mooks. Creates Mooks as one of it's weapons. Better chance of reward.
* Boss - Very rare, Massive (bigger then the player), very tough and dangerous. Very likely to give rewards.
In Torchlight baddies drop stuff, but never use it themselves. That goblin might have been carrying the "god axe of awesomeness" but he'll just nick you with a knife instead... yeah right. I would have baddies in my Space RPG generate their components when they are created and use them against the player, it' just seems more realistic that way.
I'm not quite sure, how "experience" and "levelling up" can be applied to Spaceships. Apart from the temporary feeling of achievement i'm not sure they add anything since the baddies scale to whatever "level" your player is at anyway. Maybe an offer of a better hull? or extra component slots?
The scenery of space seems fairly monotonous, stars, nebulas, asteroids. How can I procedurally produce an interesting, interactive environment for all this baddie blasting, component collecting fun?
