I'm supposed to be sunning myself in Tenerife for a short family holiday. Storm Éowyn had other ideas, cancelling my flight and that of my brother. I could have rescheduled for Sunday, but that would have given me just one full day in Tenerife before flying home. Nearly 10 hours of flying in a cramped Ryanair jet for so little time in the sun did not seem worth it.

So I've stayed home, tried to tidy up some of the debris from the storm, and make some progress on Project Kuiper.

After quite a lot of fighting with Godot UI elements, I decided to tackle one of the fundamentals of the game - the research system. To that end, I've created a Technology class and I've stubbed out a few possible techs. I also have a Science class, representing the different science disciplines that will combine to unlock that technology. In my proof-of-concept, I randomly assign different science costs for each tech. E.g., hypothetically, Basic Life Support will cost:

  • 9 physics
  • 2 astronomy
  • 12 biochemistry
  • 1 geology
  • 4 mathematics
  • 8 psychology
  • 2 'unknown'

These sciences are all placeholders - I don't know how many I want in the game, and what they should be. They might even vary as the game progresses. Equally, the science 'costs' are entirely randomised. In the real game, they will be slightly randomised, with a bias that I've set up beforehand. This means that Basic Life Support will be biased towards requiring biochemistry and psychology, and so on. Not sure how I'll implement that yet.

On each game turn, a random science amount is added to each science and each technology. Over a few turns, each of the science components will 'fill up' and once all are completed, the technology will be unlocked.

The player will be able to see the progress of each tech, and I'd love to be able to add some flavour tech as research progresses.

  • "Our physicists have done all they can to progress the field of 'Basic Life Support'."
  • "Scientists have outlined the theoretical framework of 'Basic Life Support', but there's still so much to learn about the psychology of space travel."
  • "There are working prototypes of 'Quantum Computers', but the mathematics to make them fully useful is still lacking."

My hope is to give the player an immersive sense of how research is progressing, without showing them raw numbers.