Jinseo "Truewis" Park's Workshop

"Capsule" now has accumulated five test players' experience. Most of the playtime was spent on understanding how the interface works, and not a single player was able to complete the tutorial. The current UI of "capsule" is chaotic and unintelligible, which is not surprising considering that the main goal of the interface so far was debugger(me)'s convinience and cramming as much game content as possible. So, it was definitely time for designing a playable interface. If "Capsule" were a first-person shooter, then this would not be a huge job, just copy from other games out there(move, look around, shoot, etc.). However, since "Capsule" is quite distinct from most video games, I had to start from the beginning. Requirements: 1. Predict what the user wants to know, and give them that information. 2. Information must be easy to find. 3. Make the user's location in the menu system obvious, and make it obvious where the user can go and wha...

Obviously marketing is one of the weakest spot in my development plan. It is not that I was planning to make a fortune; I'd choose more popular genres like strategy or role playing game from the beginning if I were. However, even if the game is niche, developer simply should not neglect the game to be sink in oblivion.  So, how shall I market my game? According to successful developers, having a working demo and distinctive graphic/video seems to be #1 to go. These resources could be then utilized for Facebook/Twitter/Reddit ads, which seem to be crucial step in gathering your fanbase. The same could be achieved by streamers and youtubers playing the game. Once you have a fanbase, you could either crowdfund your game or start early access on Steam/Humble Bundle/etc. Applying to indie game fairs seem to be another option.  Writing blog posts is proven by many other developers to be time consuming and inefficient, but I don't have much choice right now. My demo is barely playabl...

Whenever you observe a star, you are measuring information it radiates through electromagnetic wave. In practice, the spectrum of the star, averaged over long period of time, would be attained. Details aside, a major gameplay element of "Capsule", signal analysis, has been inspired from real-world practices. The player accumulates raw signal from a telescope; The signal then must be decomposed into several spectrums. Available spectrums from cosmic objects are quite limited, so this process could be done by brute force, comparing the raw signal with every possible spectrums. However, the player could exploit their prior knowledge about the object of interest to both reduce the number of trials and increase the accuracy of the final result.

The development of "Capsule" is inspired by several different books, tv shows, and scientific articles, but the main theme of the game has been firm: the vastness of the universe. In many, if not most, popular science fictions, plot devices to overcome this major obstacle are introduced, which could range from faster-than-light spacecraft to interdimensional warp stations. This way, authors could ensure their interstellar society operates very similarly to ours, with comparable conflicts and wars, social hierarchies, economy, etc. The aforementioned are all interesting complex systems to design a game about, but there are plenty of nice games dealing with them out there, and I wanted to keep my game as small as possible. Also, I was rightfully tired of those space empires and warships without any reasonable explanation. So I ditched all of them and instead focused on the universe without faster-than-light communication.  Imagine a small settlement, with only a few hundred res...

The development of "Capsule"(exace title to be determined) has begun last July, but details have been fuzzy until recent. Now, since the development seems to be on rail, I am planning to regularly share how it goes. Capsule is a single player simulation game. Player operates a remote space observatory, communicating with nearby planets through light pulses. It shares theme with decades-old point-and-click text adventure games.  Hopefully my energy won't be depleted until the next post......give me some time.