Soaring Gaia Windows, Linux, SteamDeck game

Hi everyone, on this article I`ll be going over the current state of the game development and planned features, as well as why I decided to make this as well as my gaming references.

For my background, that matters at least, I'm a dotnet Backend developer with years of C# experience, as well as some 3D Modeling experience from modding and other game projects I've worked during the years as a hobbyst and a bit of digital art/drawing.

I've always enjoyed space games and RPGs, like Kronosaur's Transcendence, Fractal softwork's Starsector, Egosoft's X series and many others. Some of which I've spend hundreds of hours and even made mods for, and I always wanted to be able to play these kinds of games with other people which sadly was never possible, so here we are.

State of development

Right now most multiplayer systems, combat, inventory management, flight mechanics and spawning are working as well as fully modular Entity/Equipment/Components to allow some modding support in the future. I'm going for peer to peer connection, due to infrastructure costs, a custom list server is used to allow players to search and join public/private games, the networking solution right now is Mirror(this might change later).

So, how this works? You can join a game using a character or a ship owned from one of your current playthroughs, as for bringing money and items that is TBD right now but it's probably gonna be a custom rule set by the host.

You can also play this fully offline, as there is no external dependencies since the list server is only gonna be required when setting rules for others to join or when joining a existing game.

The game data is saved locally, and is serialized during a pause state in which the universe stops moving (this goes for multiplayer as well), pause timer, disable pause, as well as save cool down time, save erase on death can be set as custom game rules.

Features

The game map is the Sol system, with every large cataloged object being represented, this means not all moons will be objects in the map nor any known small asteroid.

I'm trying to keep it at around +800Km for permanent objects, unless its a moon from a planet with few moons(like mars). Moons, planets and large permanent asteroids have named zones which can be controlled by factions, the zones can be used to build stations.

Asteroid fields and belts are procedure generated, trying to instantiate and manage over 100.000 entities resulted in, erm-- poor performance. If you find an asteroid you like, you can tag it so it becomes permanent till destroyed.

Here is a 'short' summary of gameplay features implemented or in development:

• RPG character progression for both player and other entities in the game simulation. ✅
• Character stats that affect ship performance, from time to fix stuff, debuff timers to outright dodging bullets. ✅
• Customizable player avatar, its top down so don't expect too much beyond a hat/shirt color.
• Ship boarding, if you do it personally with your avatar you can engage in close quarters top down combat. If not, its math based on the characters inside the ships.
• Multiple ship classes and sizes, from small personal shuttles to massive capital ships. ✅
• Background simulation, as we don't want to simulate all objects all the time due to performance reasons. Objects are pulled in/out off the simulation based on its distance to the player, this is also how asteroid fields work. ✅
• Crafting system, both for small items the player can use to full scale industry. ✅
• All items in the economy need to be crafted/processed/collected by NPCs or players.
• Ships require fuel, projectile weapons require ammo, avatars require food/water, etc. ✅
• Tech progression, you can set at which level each faction (corporations/nations) start at, their tech level will advance/degrade based on whatever is happening in the game. Some stuff require specific stations/equipment, others just research. As tech progresses, different stuff is available.
• Dynamic missions/events, as things happen missions are dynamically generated. Most missions are not generated only for the player tho, this is also what moves NPCs around(at least the simple ones).
  
  • A pirate ship attacking a friendly ship nearby? Rescue mission is generated.
  • People are starving on a station? Delivery mission is generated.
  • ...

Maybe features

These are not priorities right now, but maybe after "everything is working".

• Player fleets with a tactical map
  • RTS style controls to send ships places
  • Manually assign jobs/missions/salaries to ships
  • Allow the player to conquer and manage zones
• Another solar system, maybe tied to tech level progression of the game? a mission to help build a gate or build one yourself?

not sure where to put this, but I'll also be releasing the code for the basic systems for a multiplayer topdown space game eventually. After I polish everything and make some documentation.