My first ever foray into programming was writing a video game. I was inspired by the seemingly simple idea of xkcd #91: what if the game Counterstrike was a text adventure? However I was young, and dijkstra's confused me and map traversing AI tripped me up the first time. (Although, I got the server/client code to work and managed to get a rudimentary chat function working between a friends computer and mine.)

Since then, I have programmed mainly as part of my University course, rarely just for pleasure. (Although programming for uni is still a pleasure in itself!)

Today, I am a researcher studying fluid flow of dense suspensions, and I am primarily lab-based. Lab based meaning I am locked out currently due to the global pandemic of Coronavirus. This has left me feeling unproductive in a time where I should be at my most busy: I have less than 6 months of funding left and a bunch of experiments to get done before then!

This has lead to me envying the computational crowd. A set of simulations can be scripted to run with the desired mix of parameters and then… left to do its own thing. This process can take days, weeks depending on the hardware. In the meantime, you're free to write, analyse, whatever knowing that you're doing two things at once. I envy the compound productivity.

I have always like that idea, of setting something up and letting it run and enjoying the benefits (like a savings account, like a good playlist, like an idle game). That last though gave me the idea to create a game. I like the general idea of idle games, but they tend to micropayments and boredom. I really just like the idea that a game can continue in the players absence, perhaps on autopilot (like EVE online).

I thought, if I can't have simulations running to compound my productivity, what about an idle game to give me a feeling of ersatz productivity? Enter: Àite.

I decided to start writing a strategy game, one with long-timescales, one which runs in real-time (sort of), no pause, with possible multi-player but that's not the focus, with exploration at the heart, with discovery rewarded with a story pieced-together through fragments of the whole picture. And so Àite was begun.

The name is Scottish Gaelic, it means "profound place". (Perhaps a deep space?)

In Àite, the player controls a colony punted to a random location in the universe. The colonists are equipped with basic necessities required for survival, but far from enough. They must be guided through their progress through projects dictated by the player; generation-spanning projects to match the scale of the environment.

Their needs must be met or face rebellion. Governance and social care are as important as resource management. People act drastically in large groups if not treated properly. Mistrust of their governing body (whether the leader of the group of colonists, or the president of the colony of planets) can not end well.

Culture and art are an important part of a society. People enjoy art, a developed culture helps a society cope with non-ideal circumstance. A culture may independently develop a religion, or they may assign meaning to random acts. Nurturing a culture is an important factor in ensuring a peaceful society.

New technologies will need to be developed to facilitate the exploration and colonisation of new worlds; a world can only support so much life!

Multiple colonies can exist in the same universe. Given the vastness of space (dictated here by the size of the double type), there is an almost nil-chance that two colonies in the same universe will ever interact. If they do, they will gain the chance to trade, to cooperate or to fight, whatever they wish. Given the nature of the game, the reaction of a colony to another may not entirely be under player control. Perhaps an expansionist colony will disregard cultural exchange instead for the chance of claiming worlds for themselves?

This covers roughly what I want the game to be; a long-scale strategy game about survival. The game is procedurally generated, but I do want there to be a story told in the Dark Souls style; given in drips and drabs, ambiguous, pieced together. This can be unveiled to the player by their investigation of a planet (by geological survey, archeaological dig etc) slowly feeding them information about this fictionalised universe.

The game will have be client/server, where the server runs the world and the client merely interfaces with the server. I am mainly planning on a simple readline-based CLI interface, but an ncurses based TUI would be nice too. A GUI would be nice, it would be very cool to zoom about the universe, but it is not really the priority of this game.

The CLI will be a simple command processor parsing arguments and performing basic syntax checking before sending to the server, waiting for a reply.

$ aite_client show_messages
Messages:
  Discovered planet. It has been named Aname.

Through the client, the player can check the status of their colony, issue commands to alter ongoing projects, add new projects, cancel previous ones. Projects are the main manner in which a colony is directed.

The basic cli is to be simple and quick, so that it can be run, say, from a .bashrc so that a player can see their colony's progress quickly on login. The main pay-off for the player, I expect, will be the vicarious discovery of new worlds, nebulae, stars through the use of semi-fictional new technologies like the hypothetical Dyson sphere.

There is so much in the universe we can't see: dark matter is hypothesised to make up 85% of matter! If life is possible in visible matter, why not in dark matter? New technologies may shed light on the unseen, life may exist all around us but we just can't see it.

What I've been reading:

• Xeelee Sequence by Stephen Baxter
• Foundation trilogy by Isaac Asimov
• Dune by Frank Herbert
• Forever War by Joe Haldemann
• At the Mountains of Madness by H. P. Lovecraft

What I've been playing:

• Dark souls (FromSoftware)
• Civilization V (Sid Meier)