And so it begins.
With this diary I am intending to document the progress I make in developing Vertebrae, my final year project at the University of Plymouth. The project will deliver a game, it’s engine and a suite of tools for content editing. The gameplay will revolve around the advancement of a character in a fairly traditional RPG manner, combat, levelling, item management and questing. The engine will use procedural world generation to create an entirely unique tile based world on each play-through, though unlike many tile systems, the terrain will be contoured to a certain extent.
The editing suite allows content creators and authors to intersperse the generated world with set-piece content, such as pre-made locations, items, quests and non-player characters, supporting the creation of a deep storyline set in a world that is different for every player.
I will be utilising Microsoft’s XNA Framework 3.1 to produce the game and engine, and the .NET Framework for the content editing suite. The suite will be a set of tools to allow the creation of set-pieces, such as locations, quests and non-player characters that can be placed into the world intelligently by the procedural system.
Procedurally Generated Content
- Game world
- Locations
- Non-player characters
- Side quests
- Items
Fully Featured Editor Suite
- Location designer
- Ability designer
- Character designer
- Quest designer
- Item designer
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