Since the last update quite a bit of work has gone into Eternity. The AI has been updated with both improvements to the current enemies and the addition of passive “Trader” NPCs. Planets also got a bunch of work and now you can land on planets and visit the Starport to trade in for a sweet new ship. There’s still a lot to be done of course! But in the meantime I had a little fun and put together a preview video for my game:
NASA celebrates 10 years of humans living in space
Today (November 2, 2010) marks the 10th consecutive year of the International Space Station’s occupancy. Pretty cool.
Although we haven’t put anyone on Mars yet, I’m excited for the day when we do eventually land humans on other planets and have them stay for extended periods of time. Some day…
Also, I discovered this delightful gem called AsciiSector. I don’t know how I missed it, but to me it feels a lot like what Eternity would be like if it were pure Ascii. In any case, both ‘discoveries’ today are huge inspiration! 
Eternity
As usually happens a few times a year, a really fun project idea has bitten me and won’t let go. This one is already looking really solid. Ladies and gentlemen, I humbly introduce to you Eternity:
Eternity Title Screen
Choosing a target
Basically this game will be a jump into the space exploration genre, taking after Escape Velocity which was one of my favorite games as a kid. It’s a nice break from the usual platformers and such that take heavy handed collision engines. Ideally I’d like to take this game to a level I’ve never achieved before, allowing some really cool emergent gameplay with the player able to visit different systems and trade items.. AI ships will travel from system to system, and they will range from civilian traders to rogue pirates to military vessels enforcing the peace.
Where it stands right now is that you start in a small shuttle, and as you cross a procedurally generated galaxy you may encounter pirate ships. You can dogfight with them and they explode into tasty particle engine goodness.
Enemy vaporized
The galaxy is recursively generated, beginning with a central star system and branching outwards, each solar system spawning a layer of children and so forth, as ‘space’ permits (ha, ha.) This produces some pretty interesting constellation-like formations in the overview of the galaxy.
Each star system may have planets, and each planet may have moons. As well each system has a unique star backdrop that is generated upon your entry into the system. I may have to drop this feature though, because it seems to slow down some computers rather harshly.
Anyway, if space exploration is your cup of tea, keep your eyes on this one.