Project Starblazer
During the 3rd year of university we sat a double module called Advanced Game Tech (AGT), which included a major assignment running the entire course of the module, requiring the production of a game prototype.
Over the years AGT has always been ran as an individual project, and anyone that has requested to work as a group has been turned down, for fear they would not complete the assignment due to factors such as managing a small team and working together, however there is always an exception to the rule and upon asking if we could, myself and my friend were granted permission to pioneer team work within the module, with the intention of discovering a template that could be used in future years. Being granted this opportunity was a big honour and so we set out to create something big.
Project Starblazer was originally designed to be an RTS game, we wanted large scale space battles and complex multi-tier AI, about half way through the year however, during the post-Christmas break team meeting, we decided that an RTS game, of the scale we wanted within our time-scale wasn't possible, and so the plans were scaled back. We looked at what we had, and what could be re-used and moved to a space-based tower defence game.
The new game was to be played on a hex-grid, with the player building towers that would "float" in space and attempt to fend of increasingly powerful waves of enemy space craft. As development progressed we decided that the project had now gone the other way, moving from "too big" to "too small", a bag-standard TD game seemed boring, and lacking vision or innovation. Our solution was to add an extra mechanic where-by instead of the towers being placed freely in space, instead the player would first have to place a space-station which would allow offensive towers to be attached to it, this change added an extra layer of strategy, as well as opening up different game types that could be created.
My main focus during the development of Starblazer was working on the engine; I created a fully scriptable component based entity system, which allowed great flexibility, and rapid prototyping of ideas. The way this engine was designed was what allowed us to switch game so easily half way through the project.
To go that extra mile, we had one last surprise up our sleeve which was putting the final professional polish to the project in order to set us apart from the class. We therefore produced a full box-sleeve and insert booklet which means Project Starblazer fits perfectly in the middle of any game collection.
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