It’s been a while.
That should probably be this site’s catchphrase.
I’ve been working on Unbroken Dawn, the latest permutation of my space game a little bit here and there. Currently I have the the galaxy generation and planet generation down, and I’m working on the Star System generation to try and make sure things generate in a way that is both interesting, and doesn’t risk any two planets clipping through each other at any point during gameplay. It’s slow progress, and not because I’m working on it, but a lot of the maths is in place now.
So I just finished watching the video A Thousand Ways of Seeing a Forest by Jacob Geller. I’d highly reccomend watching it too, it’s a pretty good video essay thing and I’m frustrated I put off watching it for so long. So yeah, if you can, watch that before reading this, it’ll open in a new tab.
But if you don’t have the time, or if you’re like me, and you sometimes like people talking about stuff you haven’t seen: Basically we all have different perspectives of what something is, so when we make art based on something, it’s coloured by that.
At least that was one of the things I got from it, the whole point of what I just said implies what you think after seeing it could be different frrom what I got from it.
So now that we’ve all seen that, let’s get back to talking about Unbroken Dawn.
Unbroken Dawn is, probably, a game about Exploration. It’s a game filled with stuff that you can explore, and the tools to do that. At least it will be eventually.
But that raises the question: Why would you explore it? So here’s a non-exhaustive list of reasons I can think of why we flesh humans explore things, and some of them overlap.
Exploration for Understanding
Sometimes exploration can be less about finding something for yourself, and more about finding something for someone else. Maybe you want to take pictures on your holiday to show to family members who didn’t get to go, maybe you’re looking for stuff to put on display (ethics of which being highly dependant on who already owns it and what they think about you taking it), for students, for kids, for your peers.
I have a couple of videos on my youtube channel showing off the galaxy generation algorithms in various states of not done, I would say that counts as this. I’m showing off what I’ve discovered while making things, partially because playing a timelapse of it helps me work out what’s going on with it but a lot of the time it’s also to explain what and how it’s doing so people can look up at the skybox and think “there’s a structure to it that someone has gone and worked out”
I think a lot of time people go out into the world to find places that they fit in, or at least places they can get invested in. From the places you hang around in as a kid, the tables you sit at in school, the universities and homes you move to as an adult, we do look to discover places to fit ourself in.
Hey, y’know, maybe you are just in it for the money, or the acclaim, or maybe you’re just doing it because it helps with something else like making your speedrun better or your gameplay videos worth watching. Nothing wrong with that at all. No need to have fancy high concept reasons to explore. Maybe you just want to find a rock that looks like a gentleman’s area to post in your friend group discord. These are all good reasons and there’s nothing to feel ashamed about for doing them.
It’s undenyable that people have done a lot of finding bits of the earth that someone else owns, to see what resources they have and quickly put up a flag and/or murder a lot of people so they can have that stuff for themselves.
It’s something that’s happened, but, and I cannot stress this enough, Don’t do this. Unless you want to make an iron farm.
Well, I just kinda wanted to think about what gameplay experience I’m actually creating, and if there’s something I can expand on to make it a more complete experience.
If any of you have any other reasons you explore, feel free to drop them below, I’d like to hear what I’ve missed.
