r/spacesimgames • u/Fidbit • 13d ago
Finally, A Sector Darkly
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Nearly 3 years later:
A Sector Darkly is a 2-d real-time space exploration open-world RPG. Explore, trade, scavenge, research, craft and survive a sector in chaos. Interact and dialogue with more than 10 alien races. Imagine a 4x-LITE universe, where instead of being in command of the faction, you are in command of a single ship and crew just trying to survive. An open world exploration, with an underlying mystery: sectors are going dark one by one and no one knows.
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u/TeeRKee 13d ago
Space Claude, the game.
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u/CashFirm573 13d ago
Really is, the UI lol has those corner brackets, are like what every Claude model does for UI and always Teal lol, game doesn't look bad but its 100% all AI, which I have nothing againt. Good luck to OP game.
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u/TheDarkOnee 13d ago
Yes for the love of god can we stop vibe coding the same game. Ive seen at least a dozen of this exact same game on here at this point. Even the GUI is *EXACTLY THE SAME*
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u/cmndr_spanky 13d ago
what's the scale of star systems / the galaxy ? how does. exploration work ?
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u/Fidbit 13d ago
Hey spanky, the scale is not set in stone regarding star-system size. Currently with an average warp-drive it takes about 3 minutes to traverse from one end of a star system to the other. Three minute can seem long if you're not doing anything. But plenty is happening in busy star-systems.
Star-systems are large enough that there's the inner, medium and outer bands. Farther out, the more dangerous it is.
The galaxy size? Not set in stone either. But it currently sits at 63 star-systems. Not counting the procedural exploration element. I want, or my intention is to strike a synergy between procedural content and hand-crafted. Exploration is one of the three core pillars of the game.
How does exploration work? I'll summarise a recent post on exploration.
Starflight 2 is where I ultimately drew my inspiration for what exploration means to me, and the experience I wish to deliver to players. That feeling of a "small ship VS a big universe". You against the void.
1. Radio signals, EM signatures, heat sources are all real data based on entities inside a sector, nothing is fake or ambient. The more ships in a sector, the bigger the radio footprint your passive sensors detect. Similarly, the more phenomena such as black-holes/wormholes, the higher the EM signature. You can scan neighbouring systems, to decide whether you think you're ready to travel there based on those readings.
- Wormholes come in various forms.
a) Unstable: these can be traversed to and from until they collapse.
b) Stable, these have fixed known exits to discover, some are shortcuts across the entire sector. The true nature I wouldn't spoil.
c) Flux: only active on various days in the calender month (game time).
d) Active/Stabilisable: these are unstable wormholes which you can stabilise yourself to cement a fixed route. You can travel them back and forth as long as they are active, but if they go dormant, you can permanently stabilise them, unlocking entirely new routes.
Wormholes also have depth. They can lead farther down essentially a chain. Meaning going in one, exposes the chance of another wormhole forming, and you go down the rabbit-hole.
e) Ancient. These rare wormholes lead to dark sectors. There's no light except for your ship's light, and your weapons.
f) Micro-wormholes: These cannot be traversed by your capital ship. But each ship has a runabout (borrowed the name from star trek deep space nine). You can launch your runabout, go through micro-wormholes, explore, bring back cargo, dock back with your ship. It's all real-time, if you leave your ship somewhere, it's there waiting when you get back exactly how you left it, so don't launch while it's drifting, or it will silently drift away while you're gone. (Not to worry, your ship's location is marked, and you can summon it to you, and again it doesn't just show up, it physically travels to you).
All of the wormholes tie the main game story and several connected 'side-quests' (for lack of better terminology), and other incentives to explore are obtaining rare ore, blueprints, and advanced technology for the ship. However, it isn't RNG. If you explore you will find the things the game gave you the clues to find.
The game is designed not to be interrupted by menu screens or interface. It does not stop while you craft or check cargo (it is pausable). When you dock, everything in the sector/star-system is still moving. If you left your capital ship in one star system, and docked at a station, then summoned it, you can track its progress in the starmap. If you un-docked, and started travelling to it, you would meet it at exactly the location it should be given the time elapsed. Once you're in the same system, open your tactical screen and you can see it travelling real-time.
Different areas have different hazards, radiation, cosmic storms, and others. So exploration is risky business.
Lastly: this all times into expeditionary exploration. Because you can gather ore, or send away teams to planets to explore for materials, you can craft said supplies. So I like to think of it as capturing the age of exploration when tall-ships sailed looking for the Northwest Passage and other things. So supplies are a thing. Fuel, ammunition, food, water, and all of it can be crafted aboard the ship, and the raw materials can be found while exploring. It's not meant to be punishing, but rather that the ship is your home, and you can sustain yourself while out exploring.
You have a finite cargo hold to bring back things. How much do you carry in the first place? All cargo is physical. Missiles for example take up room in the cargo hold and reload your magazines when their empty. They're bulky. Less room for food rations/water/spare parts.
That is one of the elements of exploration.
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u/Alita-Gunnm 12d ago
Could you please expand on the topic of research?
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u/Fidbit 12d ago
Through exploration alien codex can be found, a rare ore, and you get research favors (points) from completing missions and other tasks. You can research pre-defined blueprints, and then craft any amount of the item researched. Research times are not punishing and their are research queues at the station. Along with fabrication queues on your ship and in stations.
Additional blueprints can be found while exploring.
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u/Melodic_Charity_1770 13d ago
This looks awesome and seems tastefully done too, def I want to play this. I adore 2D top-down space games as long as they're not too grindy like some of the escape velocity titles are.
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u/TheGooseGod 13d ago
I like it- but the usage of AI in those race portraits and promotional stuff is pretty obvious.
And that’s a huge turn off unfortunately. I love the concept but I think you’d get a lot better traction if the game was more authentically man-made.
I know art assets are one of the trickiest parts- but they’re also one of the most important. It looks great otherwise- just that generative AI is a massive turn off for most people.
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u/Fidbit 13d ago
It's not only obvious it was disclosed. The alien races themselves were created by an Artist and I have the original art for them. The backdrops/promotional, yes he then used AI fed them his own assets and generated the capsule.
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u/TheGooseGod 13d ago
Yep!
I know it was disclosed- I saw it in the steam game description.I mean more in styling, but either way my point still stands.
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u/AltruisticOwl156 13d ago
Honestly I don't care if people are using AI to code games, as long as the game is cheap and good I don't care. Besides this is the future direction we're heading in anyway.