Project Kuiper is another attempt to write a computer game. It is a turn-based solar system exploration game with a focus research, technology and corporate growth. Starting on Earth, you will draw cards to perform actions such as building research trees, extracting resources, initiate special projects and launch rockets, satellites, space stations and more. There will be an extensive tech tree - or rather, a tech web - but crucially you will not be able to choose the next tech to research. Instead, you'll invest and focus in scientific disciplines, such as physics, biology, engineering, psychology and others. Each tech will have a different combination of research requirements, and there will be some randomness in those requirements. Each playthrough will be different, I hope.
The core idea of Kuiper is much the same as a previous project, Project Herschel. So similar, I was tempted to keep the same name, I'd already used that name in the GitHub repository.
There are two core differences between the two:
- I've done a lot more planning on the gameplay for Kuiper
- I have switched to the Godot game engine (but writing the scripts in Kotlin
I am also trying to stay away from worrying about artwork and look-and-feel at this stage.
To that end, I have been working on a very basic UI, and teaching myself Godot and Godot-Kotlin. Everything I have written so far is a proof-of-concept. The last few days have been spent learning drag-and-drop, which will be essential for my card-based gameplay.
I am not sure what the next step will be, but I need to start fleshing out the gameplay loop. Back to pen-and-paper, and create some tasks in the GitHub project.