What is Fractured Universe? New direction

[Tony Richards]

What is Fractured Universe?

Originally Fractured Universe started life as name without a game. I was involved in helping RenWerX create a remake of their Renegades MOD. Originally their MOD was for Tribes and then later Tribes 2, but this time around they wanted to make a game from scratch. While we were kicking around names for games, the name "Fractured Universe" came up... I loved it, registered the domain name, but eventually they settled on Ascension.

Real life happened and I ended up stopping my contributions to Ascension, and nearly stopped my game development hobby altogether.

Eventually I came across an MMO contest sponsored by Dream Games. The competition was to take their MMO Starter Kit using Torque and make an MMO game in 90 days. The game had to have at least two levels and must be mostly playable (although "playable" was rather vague).

Originally I hadn't anticipated entering, but I love challenges, and a bunch of people were saying "Indies can't make MMO games, especially not in 90 days." I wanted to prove them wrong, so I entered the contest.

I needed to get the ball rolling quickly, and since at the time I only had one domain name registered (fracturedUniverse.com), so I simply used that and called the game "Fractured Universe".

Well, long story short, we won the contest... but I wasn't very interested in the game itself. I also got sidetracked on making some tools and make some game engine middleware and that's taken most of my time over the past two years. (hence things being stalled on Fractured Universe up until recently).

Now, it's about time for me to resume development of Fractured Universe, and I've had a whole lot of time to think about what type of game I want it to be.

Most games I enjoy for two reasons... graphics and one other thing that until recently I haven't really been able to put a finger on.

For instance, I loved playing Sims and Sims 2. I really enjoyed Tribes 2. I played City of Heroes and I liked that. I love all of the Ages of Empire games and a bunch of other RTS games, but most of those I love buiding up the bases or cities or empires or whatever, but I didn't really enjoy the combat portions.

So, putting all of that together, and with some help discussing things with Ravenborne, I've finally figured out that I'm not really after a game... I'm after a toy. Something that I can play with that really doesn't even require much of a "point". I.e. you don't really win with it or beat it or compete with it... you just play with it.

So that's what I want to create and call "Fractured Universe." It's a toy that I would enjoy playing... and if other people enjoy playing with it too then the more the merrier.

Granted, I'm probably a little strange because this is what I want to play with, but I can take it a little further and add some other elements that I enjoy.

I love making buildings with Sims 2 and making levels using tile-based editors like the one's that come with Neverwinter Nights, so that's one of the features I'd like to add. Simple drag and drop wall and tile based construction for interiors and exteriors.

Another thing I enjoy is story telling.... so I'll add some features that encourage people to write stories about their toons. Background stories, adventures, quests, etc. You can write your own quests or adventures, place some toons in the world to help the story along, or even dive in and play along as a GM or as a player.

If you wish, you can host your own AI "server" (although it's a lightweight application that you can run on your PC or you can fun it on a Linux or Windows or Mac OS X server). As long as it's running then your NPC's and toons can be controlled via your custom scripts. You get an AI toolbox that you can use, or you can write your own tools.

The initial "game" elements will primarily be based on hunter-gatherer, economy and trade... pretty much real-world type things with persistance. You can't create anything from thin air and there's a finite amount of "coin" available.

Additional game elements would be more standard RPG type elements, such as classes, spells, combat, etc, but the primary focus would be to write the AI that plays the game and not necessarily play the game (although at any point you can dive in and take control of one of your toons and play along if you want).

Call it a "God" complex, or maybe I just like creating things... whatever you want to call it, this is the game I want to create because it's the type of game I would love to play (and maybe others will enjoy it as well).... we'll see, eh?