I've been working a bit with UE4 and want to develop a small space game for VR. I love cockpit games, and complicted systems, so I want my game to be quite flight-sim or space-sim in terms of gameplay, managing electrical and atmospheric systems, flipping switches and so on.

Due to various reasons, I need to avoid orbital mechanics, and landing on planets, so action limited to a 15km cubed area. I will have the physics and handling as realistic as I can get it.

The thing is, I'm not so sure what kind of scenario to have, or what longer term missions I can implement within the above constraints. So far I came up with construction work, maybe at the top of a space elevator. Asteroid or ice mining, towing chunks of mineral about. Or perhaps being some kind oF stealth ship where you sneak up to the side of a giant carrier and scan it and try some intrusion systems, like a submarine in space... I'm not so keen on pew pew lasers or combat though, I think space engineering and flightsim like gameplay should get the focus. There's enough combat games.

any suggestions for what other situations or game worlds might work with these mechanics and restrictions in mind?

I like it; there aren't very many few first-person six-degrees-of-freedom games that aren't pew-pew.

In addition to your other ideas (which are good), I think I'd like to play a "delivery" game with 6DoF, like flying around and through a complex space station picking up and delivering things/people/aliens. Aliens would mean lots of neat life-support switches (like picking up a Qchari you need to vent oxygen in pod 2 and fill it with methane, and get the temperature down to 5 degrees), and com switches (like for being hailed or for communicating with your passenger).

There's a natural upgrade system there, too -- you get money, you buy more passenger modules, additional life support options, translation capabilities for your com, access to station shortcuts, etc.

I love games like this. I wish more games would have used the Steel Battalion controller. I also fully support making a game without guns or swords. It seems nearly every game design includes violence and weaponization.

I'm not a big supporter of VR, but this type of cockpit game would work great for VR, allowing you to look around the cabin and see all the buttons and switches... maybe even hide some buttons in hard-to-reach places.

Valrus' idea of a "bicycle messenger" in space sounds ideal. Lots of opportunity for configuring and upgrading your rig, endlessly variable missions. Plus, it could all take place in a space station city (sorta like a flotilla of space stations) that would fit in your 15km limit. Ships and stations could come and go, allowing for endless variety in the environment as well.

Hello there

I can offer for your game something special.

I am known among the SE (Space Elevator) community as an odd ball since my contributions over several years were not in accordance with the popular concept of the CECNTTSE (Centrifugally Extended Carbon Nano Tube Tether Space Elevator).

Unlike most people that believe that a SE should be a device by which vertical accession should culminate with the implicit orbital insertion of a spacecraft at an altitude of +/- 50,000 km (i.e.; GEO) I do not share either definition as a proper definition for a SE.

I will not (at this time) go into too much details regarding the history, politics (of me and the ISEC) or mechanics of what I can offer, but share a few introductory ideas.

A couple of assumptions follow.

1. 1) In the first place, the vacuum of Space is at 99.9% when at an altitude of 30 km.
2. 2) Being in Space does not equate with being in orbit. I.e.; if a SE with a height of 30 km was possible, and someone that has reached its summit decided to step off it; that person would fall back to the surface of Earth.

Discussion.

For your game, there is a simple way to launch a spacecraft from atop the summit of the tower I am suggesting.

The method I will illustrate with the following hyperlink is a technology that has been pushed by NASA as a challenge with a purse prize prior the Centennial Challenges, and you can find on the internet abundant information to backup the reference I've made. However, my method does not use a traditional balloon as is used by JP-Aerospace.

The basic idea of LTA (Lighter Than Air) assisted launches is to eliminate the cost of First Stage Propulsion and have at a minimum cost (really very little) a Second Stage Propulsion system just for the purpose of Orbital Acquisition. While also reaching an altitude at which maneuvering procedures prior to engine ignition are simple due to the absence of wind.

We (all) already know that a CECNTTSE will not be built due to many problems. Chief among them is that we do not have the CNT (Carbon Nano Tube) unobtainuim. So we are left with Space-Towers as the only method by which an elevator can be housed. However, this is a concept that is not very popular, since it is not as elegant and simple as the spinning Yo-Yo and because it is assumed that such structures should only be possible by traditional building techniques and material with all the complications they bring with them.

The solution to; how to build a structure that would not collapse due to its own weight is what I am proposing. Please follow this hyperlink to the YouTube simulation on how to deploy (construct) such a tower. And, in simple terms, consist in replacing the beams of a Latice type of structure (e.g. the Eiffel Tower) with super-pressurized LTA inflatable beams (aka airbeams, as a practical example a type of airbeam known as a TensAirity beam can be seen among these pictures)

Here are a couple of links to let you know who I am (1) (2) (3) (by the way, the Wikipedia article about the SpaceShaft was removed some time ago not before it was vandalize. However, mention of the SpaceShaft was not removed from the main SE article about Related Concepts.

In a nutshell, if you like the concept of a SpaceShaft (or better called an Atmospherically Buoyant Spar Platform Space Elevator (ABSPSE)) I can assist you with the engineering and physics of how the system works.

Bye for now

Anyone remember the movie "Inner Space?" Maybe there's some milage there, too. Very different environment, but could be a similar cockpit..

Hello,

Greeting of the day,

The Space Game: Take an asteroid field and turn it into a space station! Mine, build, wire and colonize. Open world games are almost solely single player. For this matter you just have to be imaginative. I like to play games as it is growing, innovative in terms of graphics, quality and presentation.

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