Minor tweaks

I’ve made some improvements to the way parts get serialized out to save games (I’m afraid this will break any existing saved games).  I’ve also removed all options for multi-player from the game.  The current networking implementation isn’t ready for prime time, and multi-player is currently on the back burner while I work on the rest of the game.  I don’t want to promise what I may not be able to deliver, hence the disabling of multi-player for now.

Game design and project planning

On the subject of what I hope to deliver with this game, I have been working on finishing the overall game design and planning out all the tasks needed, at least up until alpha release.  This has meant facing some harsh realities about project scope, as I’m the only one developing this game, I have to try and be realistic about what I can get done.

I have decided to settle on a fairly simple design consisting of two game modes, “creative mode” (basically the existing sandbox mode), and “challenge mode”.  This second game mode will have a series of distinct challenges that get unlocked as the player progresses, each challenge will require the player to build a particular construction and then use it in some way to complete the challenge.  My hope is that this will give the player a feeling of progression and will gradually ramp up the complexity of constructions they build.  Ultimately I also want players to also be able to create their own challenges and upload them for others to play.

This alone will still take me quite a while to build, so that’s why I have sadly had to cut out all the crafting, exploration and survival ideas.  I have also cut multi-player from the plan, at least until post alpha.

I have lots of ideas for challenges for the challenge game mode, which I’ll share as I get to working on refining them in more detail.