User:Jam

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James Hicks aka Jam, is the Managing Director and Game Developer for Fluffy Kitten Studios' Ascent.

Jam technically lives in Melbourne, Australia with his cat Louie, but can usually be found flying his hornet "Icy Hand" around New Elysia in the Jam-1 system.

Contents

The beginning

On January 1st, 2013, at somewhere between about 1am and 6am, two dangerously inebriated IT managers decided something. Very few things are clear from this entirely undocumented meeting, but it is alleged that the pair hatched a plot to start a computer game development company - with the vision to make games that "Everybody plays", starting with a space game, later named... The Space Game.

Despite sobering up, the pair registered a company, several domain names, and began expanding on their original high level plans. While trying to come up with a name for the company, Louie, an 11 month old blue eyed ragdoll kitten decided to stand on the keyboard, in between one of the humans and their monitor (naturally).

"Weow." he added to the debate, and thus the company was named Fluffy Kitten Studios.

Later that month, one of the pair, charged with writing a specification for the game, began evaluating various game engines. While evaluating Unity3d, version 4.0, he accidentally made a playable tech demo, with a space ship that could be manually piloted around a basic solar system.

Alarmed at this development, the same individual began two weeks' leave from his full time IT manager role a week later. With his girlfriend stranded in Turkey and only a cat to keep him company, he promptly developed a fully playable demo of the game, with eight star systems, each with its own unique tradeable resource, dynamic availability and pricing that grows with player activity, a complete client-server model with shared multiplayer data, a basic dynamic procedurally generated quest system, and an early tutorial system.

Two weeks later, he returned to work and resigned the same day, stating "This may well be the stupidest decision I've ever made in my life, but the last two weeks were just way too much fun not to continue."

More than a year later now, and as it happens, this wasn't a stupid decision at all. Of course quitting a great job and taking the leap felt crazy - but the game is now paying for itself, has a steady and growing playerbase, is closing in on getting Greenlit on steam, is beginning to get media attention (with several reviews in the pipeline) and has a wonderful community supporting it - and us.


Methodology

Modelling the Milky Way


History

We love complex space games, and play them all. But we also want to add one - one that reaches great heights of complexity, but starts with point and click activities anyone can pick up in an instant, and builds up slowly in difficulty and complexity, rewarding but without forcing players into it. We want to make the game everyone plays, and as our player, we want you to find exactly what you're looking for. And if you're new to this kind of game, we want you to ease into it, and enjoy the ride!

Games in this style began in the 80's with Elite, later Frontier: Elite II, and many variants since. Some may remember Wing Commander:Privateer, or Freelancer, or the more modern X series. The genre of the space flight simulator / space combat simulator / space trading simulator has grown over the years, although in terms of available new titles in 2014, this style of game is very, very thin on the ground.

Ascent - The Space Game is aimed to be the first ever in this genre which is easy to get into. As players, we here at Fluffy Kitten Studios love complexity, but we recognize that the hyper-complex nature of most games in this genre is a huge barrier several generations of potential players. Put simply, a hell of a lot more people like space than like space games, and the biggest reason is that space games, as a rule, are as difficult to learn how to play as a space shuttle is to pilot...


The future

The next major step in Ascent, well be creating and implementing complex population mechanics for player built colonies.

Imagine landing in a colony that you have created, and talking to the people who live their. Chatting with them just as you would any other player in the game, and having them talk back. This is where Ascent is headed!

The Individual Awakes

Laws and Culture

Personal tools
Namespaces

Variants
Actions
Navigation
To Begin
Travelling
Trading
Character Skills
Player Built Star Bases
Exploration
Settlements and Colonies
Politics
PVE Combat
Tools