I made a 4 joystick game controller with arduino for space games. However, there is a game category that is lacking.
essentially, I need “velocidrone in space” ,, I have a pretty good grasp on the way that a space drone should race by now, I've played enough of the existing games that offer some sort of related activity.
Orbital Racer, Kerbal Space Program, Starmade, Lunar Flight,
other games that don't somehow crutch the physics (to make for airplanes in space) but don't really offer nav courses are Infinity Battlescape, Astrokill, Thrust and Shoot (to some degree)
Overload is a great game for my controller, but has nothing to do with physics.
what I need is a game that is focused on high performance “drone racing” for thruster powered space drones. This game would be designed so that players could do a lot of exploration themselves, since so many things are technically undiscovered. Specifically, course arrangement and drone thrust and fuel capacity all need to be able to be changed by the player, and these courses and settings would need to be exportable and importable.
So my game desire would work very similar to Velocidrone or Liftoff or etc. , but work for space physics. It would have at least one style of map editor, but ideally it would allow for the player to also have the option to place gates from an avatar they drive around, being able to place gates that appear around the avatar so that the gameplay of course editing runs a bit like minecraft creative mode. (this would also allow players to have an opportunity to develop their coordination without being in a high g manuever). Racing does not need to be a part of the game at all,, although having the ability to know where your next gate is is very nice. (so, with quadcopters, you can always just figure a course out for yourself around some trees, but if the sim knows when you go through a gate, and then directs you to the next one, it's easier to share courses with others that are less obvious with the gate order, particularly as some of the best moves are actually not in smooth lines).
I have a youtube channel showing some gameplay with my controller, this Kerbal Space Program video is really close to what I'm looking for.
what am I looking to do?? Well,, I want a game that is very affordable for anyone in the world to play, and runs on any potato. I want it to have the required features, but without being a big project. So, instead of nice graphics, gumball colors are good. Also, I would like to be able to share the project and edit it myself in Unreal. I don't plan to sell the game, and don't actually need to be the one listing it to be happy, it can be free, or it can be affordable, but the assumption is a larger game developer will make a bigger better game that fills the spot eventually, however along the lines of arduino style projects, it would be nice for people to have an option that works anywhere and for very cheap. I will happily send controllers to anyone interested in the idea. I don't think I will be able to learn from scratch how to make a game, but it doesn't need to be fancy. It is CRITICAL that players can make their own courses and share them, though, as the course elements that will make for good tracks will not be known until many players over time continuously explore new course elements. (like drone racing sims allow).
If someone thinks they can make a reasonable representation for reasonably little effort, I CAN pay for the project, but it has to meet my minimum requirements, work, and I can't pay very much. We're talking something a warehouse hourly wage worker can afford.
so a recap,,, the game needs to run on potatoes, allow the player to customize their thrust and fuel amounts, it needs to be FPV , the player needs to be able to make and share courses (physical hoops, that you hit), there are no AI opponents, and no racing, but it is ok for time trial functionality, and it would be best if it were possible for courses to have programmable gate order, although merely having solid objects and requiring the players to probably make a video showing the correct order is acceptable. The best way I can imagine to encourage course creation is for a mode where the player can fly 6dof with or without physics, and select gate shapes from an inventory, place them so they appear around the avatar, while connected they can move and rotate the gate shapes, as well as resize them probably with a toggle, ,, then they can disconnect from the gate, it stays where it's left and is immovable, then the player can go to the center of any existing placed gate, and connect to it to move or remove it, etc. ,,, then,, in this mode, it would be cool if the player could go to first gate, and then fly through them in order hitting a next button to order them while in “ordering mode” after they have all been placed, and perhaps they can automatically be ordered as placed unless later changed. Then in game mode, if you pass through the first gate, it will highlite the next gate, etc. I have some concept art.
