Introducing AU: Abandon news

Firstly, welcome and thank you! Thank you for taking a look at this article. In the next few paragraphs I'm going to give a brief overview of what kind of game AU: Abandon is, how I'm developing it and how it works and then try to explain what I want to do with it in the future.

So what is AU: Abandon? Well, fundamentally it's a project to encourage me to finish games. All game developers sometimes find it hard to finish ideas, many game ideas never get past the initial design. For me this is a continual state of existence. Abandon is a game I'm not going to let myself ignore. It's development spans this month from around the 5th to the 31st of December (edit: changed to early January). That's not long (it's almost over in fact!) and I'm a bit terrified that it won't be finished in that time.

Note: The game will be free, this is a quick short project so I don't intend to charge for it.

Because of this short space of time the game is going to be rather simple, but hopefully enjoyable. The setting of the game is a procedurally generated, never the same twice, universe which is currently manifested as the vast star systems you can see here on IndieDB. The premise is that you are stranded in a distant star system with no hope of help (as far as you know). It is up to you to survive for as long as possible or perhaps until help arrives. At the same time you have the opportunity to explore the star system's planets, moons and asteroid fields.

How does it work? Abandon works by using small algorithms to generate big things. Within the development code I have an algorithm for star system layout, an algorithm for planet formation, an algorithm for colour schemes, etc. Put all of these together with some random numbers and you get a unique experience.

Sadly a draw back of procedural generation is that it often produces only slightly varying experiences repeatedly with not enough difference to be called truly unique. I don't want to fall into that trap, but equally for this particular version of the game I've decided to constrain some of the randomness slightly to aid gameplay. However I have some interesting ideas for the future that will very much increase the differences between one star system and another.

Where next? At this moment in time I've finished working on the major portion of the star system generation and I've got a moving working ship. This isn't gameplay yet so I need to work a fair amount to actually get the game going.

After the 31st December (edit: changed to early January), depending on how much I like AU as a universe and what others think about it I may start working on a new version. This explains the Abandon part of the game's name. Later versions of the game will have a different name and, hopefully, many more interesting features.

Standby for a video of the current project, additionally if people would like an early development download to take a look at the game simply comment below!

~Sydan