So, I started the compo with an idea about fighting over mining rigs deep in the atmosphere of a gas giant, with an awesome modular ship editor and stealth combat and multiplayer, and…

 

And then this happened. This is what happens when you try and use an obscure 3D graphics library, using an entirely untested wrapper, in a game jam. Although I’d been estatic about using Python, and the library, and ODE for physics, I had to reconsider everything. I didn’t want to try and make a twitch-based multiplayer game in JS (my backup idea), so that idea was out straight away.

So I floundered a bit, and then thought “Everyone is doing submarine games, what if you’re hunting something ‘Beneath the Surface’?” And thus the idea of hunting swimming kaiju from giant flying battleships was born. It should be an asymmetric multiplayer game where one player plays the kaiju (which has hidden movement, and a single powerful attack) and all the rest of the players play three of the big battleships and a number of smaller scout flyers. Action happens frozen synapse style, with each player performing their turns, and then they’re all played out at once and then everyone makes their new turns.

I have a sketch of the server, some of the engine code and the models for the ship and the flyers done. This is the first time I have successfully textured an object without basically assembling a papercraft in Google Sketchup. Tomorrow, more actual game, more server, deploy the server etc. Onwards to victory!