About Constellation Control

• History
• Design Goals
• "Making-Of" Archival Development Screenshots

History

In the beginning, there was MOO, and MOO was good.

Then there came to be a second MOO, and it too was good.

Then developers said "Let there be a third MOO", but lo! MOO3 was very bad.

There was a rabid following for the Master of Orion series leading up to the release of MOO3. When it bombed, there was a backlash from fans who thought they could make a better game themselves. That spawned a small kernel of indie development projects like Free Orion, Ray Fowler's Remnants of the Precursors (a MOO1 remake), and my own personal game design noodlings including AXIS and PointSiege.

MOO3's unfortunate demise also helped start my career path as a web developer. At the time, i was running a very popular MOO3 fan site called The Orion Sector (now defunct) and was developing software for hosting MOO3 tournaments and rankings. When the game itself disappointed, the community disbursed. I went through a long phase of C++ game research and development, eventually creating a 2D game engine in OpenGL and making a small puzzle game (unreleased). I also began working professionally as a web developer.

Fast forward over a decade later and much has changed in web technology! So much so that the prospect of being able to make a complete 4X game that runs in a web browser using nothing but javascript started to become a reality. I wondered if i could put together my web development experience with my game development experience.

Constellation Control began as a tech demo and learning exercise for the Aurelia javascript framework. The game design itself started with some notes i had scribbled down over the winter of 2015 and even older game design discussion with forum members from the early post-MOO3 years. I would continue to tinker with this "tech demo" over the next several years, driving it forward as i realized that this could end up being a big deal.

Design Goals

My approach to the project is:

• Minimum viable product. The first phase of this project is to get foundation laid. That means i'm only developing the minimum number of features to get a good, working 4X game. Better to be Spartan than dysfunctional.
• Keep it simple. I wanted a game that was accessible like MOO1 and avoid the recent trend towards over-complication.
• Less parts, more interactions. In my notebook is an important underlined design philosophy: "Fun" comes not from the number of game elements, but the ways in which they interact. Design elements that are "monotaskers" i often discard. This keeps the game production work feasible, makes the game easier to get into, and leads to emergent strategies.
• Cowboy coding. The project is being developed entirely in javascript. Javascript lets you do all sorts of "bad" things that other languages don't, and lends itself to fast-hacking. The game design itself has inherited some of that free-wheelin' spirit.
• Free! I'm not planning on making money from this project (but i would like to - i've worked hundreds of hours on it).

The design for Constellation Control has changed tremendously over the years. I have an entire notebook of "cool ideas", but most of these have been cut out to have a shot at actually producing a complete game, as opposed to an abandonware alpha.

Particular Issues I Want To Address

I specifically want to make a game that doesn't just boil down to "conquer everything". That game has already been made many times. I would like to make something that is more about exploration and storytelling, with less emphasis on the "extermination" aspects. I would like to see galactic mysteries and diplomatic intrigues play a larger part of the design.

One big issue i want to tackle is the "end game mop-up", the bane of virtually every 4X game. Some games have alternative victory conditions (like being voted President in MOO1, or getting a "Tech Victory" in some other games). However, we all know that these are really just military victories in disguise. What if conquering the galaxy wasn't the point of playing?

Instead, I want victories that could be described as "a puzzle with many pieces". For example, one victory condition might require you to do all of: find something, trade for something, research something, and defeat something, in no particular order. The first civ to nab all of the parts of the puzzle wins. This makes gameplay more interesting, taking the player in a number of completely different directions. It also makes the game a race. Turtling in the corner while amassing a doom fleet may no longer be a viable strategy.

I also want a variety of fun scenarios, either player-chosen, or randomly occurring. Imagine starting the game as a David fighting an already-established but crumbling Goliath empire. Or perhaps you and the rest of the galaxy must unite to stop the ravenous Space Amoebas from literally devouring the entire galaxy (already implemented!). What if the goal was not to assert dominance and destroy, but to work together to solve a mystery or to prevent a catastrophe? I have pages of fun scenarios ideas that can be added once the core gameplay mechanism are in.

Of course, many players will just want the classic 4X sandbox experience. For them, the baseline game will deliver that.

Memory Lane

Development screenshots: