Edge of Space, Part One: The Reckless Start

Many years ago I was obsessed with an online game that I classed as a passive play game, I could login in every few hours check my progress and then log off till the next check. At that point in my life with young children it gave me the sense of still being a gamer and connecting to my childhood passion.

The Game was OGAME a browser based game that had you attempting to conquer the universe by any means necessary, you could trade, attack, colonise planets or just build your planets up. I started playing OGame with a friend who introduced me to the intricacies of how to not just survive but thrive in the game.

I even eventually introduced it to my partner and children which had some difficulty due to OGames rules on multiple accounts from the same IP address.But we had a great time playing it and conquering the universe together.

It was for a long time a wonderful experience that we all shared and worked together, we all at different times moved on to other games but the memories will always live on. For me though it left an urge that never got replaced and every so often I would return to see what new features had been added some I liked and others not so much. I began to feel that even with all the improvements it was missing something.

My friend and I who had started playing OGame at the beginning had tried multiple attempts to recreate the game in our image but we never quite managed. I never give up though..

It took over 20 years but I started again from the ground up doing this solo, my game Edge of Space is a browser game built with GODOT engine and is my take on OGame mixed with the RTS games I loved as a child.

The Idea#

This has been a long time coming, I have had this idea from the moment I began playing OGame that it could be much more animated and visually appealing.

I'm not saying OGame isn't pretty or even nice to look at as the artwork used is exceptional and at this point instantly recognisable. But I grew up playing Command & Conquer, Total Annihilation etc and like to see troop movement and buildings being built rather than a loading animation on a picture.

So I began as any developer would and jumped straight into coding my master piece rather than creating a game design document. for a while it felt as though I had made the right decision as progress was being made! I had a login system, simple planet side view where you could build buildings that would have a predefined location to build it also had vehicles and people moving around. But then I realised that if I wanted to have this running as a long term game I needed to be able to alter the data build systems that didn't crumble at the slightest touch. So I whipped together a basic game design document to cover just what I wanted this game to be and the systems that would make it happen.

##This i The Plan

So now we have the plan we know what systems are needed and how they connect to each other