Well, it's been a minute since we revisited this game. I took a longer break from game dev than I had intended, between finishing the latest Starfarer's Guide to Freelancing book and building some bunks to go in my bus (which is a completely different ball of wax that I may, at some point, document on this blog). And then working on my basement. There was a lot to do, is really what it comes down to. But I've spent some time over the past week and change actually working on the world building for the d4 starfighters game!
A game desperately in need of an actual name, even if we're still far enough from publication that it's subject to change. Let's call that the goal for today.
So, what have I been accomplishing lately anyway? World building is such a huge, amorphous term that gets thrown around pretty liberally in writing circles. Was I writing the history of a city? Drawing topographical maps of a planet? Defining the geological conditions necessary for a weirdly specific mountain? Or perhaps designing the technology needed to place interplanetary phone calls? Was I working on the sociology of the populations relevant to the game, or laying down the principles of their fictional religion?
Truth be told, a little bit of all of the above. Mainly I've been focused on that bizarrely specific goal I laid out in this post of having a faction based around the Cthulhu mythos, an effort which has been going shockingly well. I've landed on this being a religion based around finding the Old Ones in a quest for immortality, which is a foundational belief I think people can work from to generate both egomaniac BBEGs and sympathetic player characters. It's important that it be able to do both. I also managed to integrate their vague belief systems into the method by which ships traverse interstellar distances! The idea is that there's a "conduit" connecting the solar system with the in-game star system that allows ships to travel faster than light. It still takes ages to cover the distance, of course, so the people on these "sleeper ships" are still put into a sort of long-term suspended-animation coma for the trip, but instead of requiring a thousand-year generational ship they can make the trip in about eight months. The Old One worshipers believe this conduit is either caused by the passing of one of their deities in ancient days, or it's the same mode of transport across the stars that the Old Ones used.
Of course, what's some mystical mode of interstellar travel without in-universe theories as to its source and function? Star Wars, that's what. So to make sure I'm still planted firmly in the realm of sci-fi I also defined what this conduit actually is... sorta. See, I decided to lean back on every writers favorite physics crutch; dark matter. And also dark energy! These undefined physical concepts that we simply haven't been able to observe beyond noting the effects they have on the stuff around them and the fact that none of the math we have to define the observable universe works without them. Since nobody knows what they are, nobody can complain about my depiction of them!
So the conduit is made of dark energy, and it's part of a much larger network of dark energy conduits that ferry dark matter around the galaxy almost like a blood stream, connecting star systems and other large concentrations of visible matter together via the constant flow of unobservable dark matter necessary to keep everything in the galactic plane pulled together like it should be. It just so happens that the dark matter inside these conduits moves faster than light. Because it's convenient for me. And if you happen to stumble into the open end of one of these conduits you can ride the dark matter flow from one star system to another at a blistering pace. The hard part is mapping out where the conduits go and staying in the correct flow when a conduit branches off in multiple directions. I've decided this is actually super hard, which is why there's only the one other star system with humans in it besides the solar system.
See? Nice and tidy, but still sounds cool and gives plenty of scope for players to build on when describing the world they're playing in.
Now that I have some world details in place, of course, that begs a dozen questions that I'll need to answer. Like, for instance, if this method for faster than light travel is so hit-and-miss, how does faster than light communication work? (two words; quantum entanglement) Or what happens when you try to leave a conduit outside a star system? Is that even possible? And does this flow of dark mater into and out of the system affect the way ships and planets move inside the system? Plenty more to do for sure, but first thing's first; I need something to call this beyond "d4 starfighters".
D4 describes an aspect of the system, not the game. I've come up with names for stars and planets, but I don't want to implicitly limit the scope of play with the name. The game is, generally speaking, about "starfighters", so I suppose we could just call it Starfighter. But the setting is something of a hard sci-fi setting, and I'd like the name to evoke more than just the combat. Like yeah, the combat is where I started, but I also want people to understand that exploration, trading, and character building are fundamental components of the game, not just the whole ship-owning bit. Unfortunately video games have yoinked up all the good generic space titles like Destiny, or Starfield.
Outer Worlds. Freespace. Descent. There's also technically a Star Wars game called Starfighter.
Well, that's fine. Maybe we want something a little more descriptive of the game setting itself anyhow. Something that suggests the long trips through space in small craft, the desperate struggle to survive in combat, and the missions that take you from one surface to another. Something that references the fact that you're far from home. Something that paints an evocative image.
Something like... Above a Distant Sun
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