Space Pirates! – The Gameplan

The Idea

You are the captain of a small space craft. You must head out into the galaxy in search of fame and forture. To this end, you can capture hostile ships, trade goods between planets, and explore uncharted territories. Will you help expand the empire of your own race, or will you be mercenary pirate, plundering any ship foolish enough to cross your path? Something along the lines of Sid Meier’s Pirates, but with space suits and funny looking aliens.

Progress so far

• Parallax starfield gives nice 3d movement effect
• Ships move/rotate with proper physics
• Keyboard controls player ship
• Ships can shoot lasers
• Seeker AI that follows player and shoots when close enough

Milestone 0.5 – Basic Combat Test Cases

• Enemy ships attack, die, and respawn
• Player can take damage (should respawn after death)

The first step will be to figure out whether combat like this can be fun, or whether I need bigger/more/different ships of some sort. Drawing inspiration from the ship to ship combat in the original Pirates is tricky, since that combat is very slow.  It seems silly to just have big ships sit next to each other and shoot, so we need something a little more interesting.  To start, I am testing small ship dog fights which require a lot more movement. At this point they look cool, but I’m not sure if there is any real strategy or enough fun.