Facts
Project Title: Sparc
Project Status: On Hold / Canceled
My Responsibilities: Story Lead
- Mission Design
- Game World Design
- Game Design
Project Description
Sparc was the first project of the newly found Acagamics Club. Goal of the Club was to form a meeting place for like-minded students not only to talk about making games, but also to find people to actually develop games.
Sparc was designed as a space action game with role-playing elements in the tradition of classics such as Elite or Freelancer. The player could fly around space freely, land on different planets and stations, accept missions or raid transport convoys in order to acquire credits. The credits could then be used to buy better ships and equipment. A key element of the game was the multiplayer mode, as Sparc was designed as client-server application which supported (at least theoretically) massive multiplayer gameplay.
After discussing a lot of the general game design, gameplay elements and story questions with two fellow Students (Eike and Christoph - both creators of Luxinia, the Engine that powers Sparc), the project was picked up by the Acagamics Club. I was assigned the task of Story Department Lead which was responsible for designing the game world, background story, missions and designing ships, weapons and any other equipment.
The Downfall
However, due to time or motivation issues, most team members dropped out. In the end there were only Eike, Christoph, Christian (Project Lead) and me left. Eike (formerly titled as Game Code Lead) did most of the game coding, wrote the server-client code and helped me greatly to understand LUA. He also wrote/gave me a basic framework to implement the missions in. Christoph (formerly Graphic Department Lead) did the graphics voodoo and i (the guy formerly known as Story Department Lead) scripted die Missions, made up a way to represent/store the game world and created the map.
For now, the game is playable: There is a map (even if it looks pretty boring without fancy graphics, every planet, base and station is represented by the same dummy graphic), you can pick a station to start on, you can buy one of a few dummy ships and launch into space. You can accept one of three types of quests and engage in combat with NPC ships patrolling space.
The project is currently “on hold”, as the three of us have no time or are otherwise unmotivated to continue working on Sparc. I hope it will be picked up/finished at some day but it is not very likely. Moreover, the projects sub-forum on the Acagamics Boards was deleted, so most of the concept documents are lost.
