Generantis isn't supposed to be a normal game. I had that intention from the beginning. But, a great way to explain the game is by giving some examples, so read on...
Starting your adventure in Generantis is pretty basic. You actually start in "Generantis" itself, the planet that the game's subtle story depends on. In this planet, everything is completely random when generated. There are a lot of variables in this sort of generation, from the firerate on a weapon to what kind of minions a boss will summon. Generantis (the game) is really good at creating truly random stats on every item. Stat balancing may vary, seeing as how every stat is independent and could therefore result in very wild and untamed results. You control a player, destined to explore the infinite spanning environment, completing objectives and collecting loot. You face a monster that jumps very high and when he shoots, he occasionally summons another monster. Killing the jumping mob will drop an object, which actually is that mob! Exploring further into the completely random planet will allow you to discover more completely random events, weapons, players, gear, armor, and more. Everything about this game is contained as a lootable object.
Objects in the game have normal stats which give it a certain behavior, then there's components, which add the ability to further characterize objects with certain added features. For example, a map with the component "Dungeon" would help spawn dungeons in game. A player with the component "Heal onJump" would heal the player on the event that he jumps.
After exploring Generantis, you can now journey further... but where? There's no other planets in your menus to play around with! What you do is spawn a new one branching off the previous one, in this case, "Generantis" has a new child planet named "Gremdoria" or whatever you want to call it! When creating this planet, you put objects inside it with an inventory space, similar to a bank in an mmorpg, create a description and other data, and now you can explore a new planet that features these themed objects. Did you put a dungeon map in there? expect more dungeons. Did you put lots of tough flying mobs in there? There will be more flying mobs that are out to kill you in Gremdoria. You can put any normal object inside the new planet to create one.
On top of that, except a feature where user created dialog takes place on the fly as you play in a planet. In a future version, pressing enter will bring up a menu similar to a chat box that you can type messages into. While exploring Gremdoria, you find a quest called "Rescue player." Typing "Help me! Gremdon trapped me here, we need to stop him!" will allow the planet to repeat the dialog each time you reach that part of the story. Then when reaching the boss, you could make him say: "I'm Gremdon, fear me!"
Most recently, I've had a new idea to implement in later versions. The component system is fairly nice and is very flexible, but lacks the ability to be modded by players. Having the ability to add a scripting system sounded great, but I decided after a lot of frustration to try something different.
There could be a new object, called "Code." It actually matches well with the story of the game, so I thought it would be neat to include it as an objectified lootable crafting item. Code works differently than the other objects. They don't have components like the others, and instead have a specific type and value/property. For example, you could find a Code object that's called "Weapon onShoot," another called "Spawn player," "sizeX," "sizeY," "+3," "+4." These crafting objects might combine into an inventory space to create a component called "Spawn player onShoot sizeX+3, sizeY+4" which would spawn a much bigger player each time you shoot a weapon. These could possibly be added to the game from here, saved forever, and enabled or disabled for new trees of planets you make.
A lot of the Code object idea is still only a rough thought, but with some time I might be able to come up with something that will work. Otherwise if that doesn't work, I'll still try to find some way to make components more dynamic than they are now.
Thanks for reading, I might have a public playtesting demo posted on TIG forums and here soon, so stick around for a while and eventually I'll see what I can do! Cya later!
