Cubic explorer is our entry for the #LDJam #LDJam38 !

We used a personal framework based on the Machinations and Mission/Space frameworks (by Joris Dormans), created inside Unity for my master's thesis called MaruGen!

You can check our entry here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/$17333

Description

You are a space explorer. Looking into strange, cubicle worlds! Cubic Explorer is a procedural game about a Magical space dude! Travel through different cubic worlds, and full-fill different objectives!. Enemies and item will react differently, according to random parameters. Random planets, keys, mystery boxes, conditions and objectives await you!

How we made this game

One of the central ideas of this game was to use a framework I developed for my master's thesis. Right now its called it MaruGen, which means MAchinations RUleset GENerator.

I took ideas from the concepts of Micro-Machinations and Mission/Space frameworks by Joris Dormans, an created a tool that can be used to "generate" Worlds, mechanics and objectives, given a series of user defined rules and a series of packaded rulesets executed in a certain order to create procedural spaces and mechanichs.

The idea is to find a way to explore the concept of "emergence in games", mainly described by Dormans in his frameworks, and by other game designer such as Keith Burgun and Raph Koster. And in the end this is an attempt to codify those frameworks and ideas in a possibly useful tool.

I will upload the source code of this game and MaruGen soon. I may just want to rest a little before... :)

Screenshots

A Possible world space that can be generated with this system.

A Machinations diagram for the main player. This can be extended with rulesets.

Hello everyone! Since its judging day, it would be a good time to post information about our game "Cubic explorer" and MaruGen You can check the game here, along with the source code and more! Any kind of ratings/comments are very welcome: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/cubic-explorer

Introduction to MaruGen: MAchinations RUleset GENerator

I created this framework for my master's thesis in computer science, works on the Unity Engine and it takes the basic ideas from the Mission/Space and machinations frameworks, created by Joris Dormans.

You can check more of his work in these free documents in which I based the main points: http://www.jorisdormans.nl/article.php?ref=engineering_emergence

https://github.com/vrozen/MM-Lib/blob/master/mm/doc/fdg2014paper34.pdf

But is no use to have a framework without proving it. That is why this game was created. Taking advantage of the Ludumdare Contest, I decided to make a game with the help of @okuroy.

How MaruGen works

MaruGen is based on the idea of "basic rules" of designing spaces and mechanics. Say, for example, you have a simple place (a cube in Cubic Explorer)

And now you can define two special rules on how your space grows. First there is an extension rule from the first place: And then a bifurcation rule:

These rules are good with your game design, you have tested them and you know work well. So what happens if we mix them, and iterate a random number of times? We may get these kinds of graph, with only two rules!

This is the core work for MaruGen, the idea of getting simple rules to make complex results. In more precise terms, these are called "L-Systems". These are also used for mechanics and inner rules in the game.

You can play our game and check out MaruGen in the link at the top!

Hello everyone!

We would appreciate a lot if you could come and play our game, Cubic Explorer, and also comment on our concept and toolset named MaruGen! Any kind of feedback would be immensely appreciated (n_n)b. You can download the game, and also play it online as well on WebGL. And we'll also primes that any one who reviews our game will receive a review by us from theirs. Pinky promise :D !

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/cubic-explorer

If you are still undecided. Maybe these screenshots might pique your interest?

The Idea behind MaruGen

Part of the idea that Cubic Explorer is for my Master's Thesis project about game design. We've created a special toolset called MaruGen, created inside Unity3D. We want to know how the results feel around this tool, and any review and score is greatly appreciated.

The idea of the MaruGen tool is about using basic rules in order to generate a complete game design.

The basic grammar is based on the Micro-Machinations and Mission-Space design by Joris Dormans. In principle you design the basic rule system, then you appropriate those rules into a generator, and then finally you will let the system generate worlds and mechanics by its own.

And the great thing about it is that aims to be agnostic, that is, the steps for generating worlds should not interfere with the initial rulesets, according to your definitions of worlds and mechanics, you ca interpret these diagrams as you see fit.

We also want to let you now that the whole source code for the game and the tool is available for you on the link to check it out!

Then again, any kind of review or vote helps us greatly on how to improve our craft and also tells us what you think of the tool.

Thanks a lot!

Hello everyone!

So, some of you may know we created Cubic Explorer, our Ludumdare 38 Game. Right now we need more votes to complete our 20 votes quota. So I think I will be playing a lot of games tonight so I can give feedback and also hopefully receive more :smiley:. I hope we can receive feedback in return as well.

Check out our game here, with source code, WebGL play and all that good stuff:

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/cubic-explorer

If you decide to leave a comment and also review our game, I promise you will get also feedback and a vote from mew. I guarantee that I will comply with this agreement :handshake:

MaruGen what's that?

Some of you may not know, but we used a custom framework for Unity called MaruGen.

The main concept is that you take a start graph, then some basic rules on how this graph "expands", and after some random iterations and generations, you will get a more complex graph that will represent your space (or game mechanic)

I personally created this framework for my master's thesis, using elements from another framework created by Joris Dormans, named Machinations, Mission-Space and Micro-Machinations.

You may want to read about it in his free doctoral dissertation "Engineering Emergence":

https://www.illc.uva.nl/Research/Publications/Dissertations/DS-2012-12.text.pdf

Some of you may know him for a game he recently created called Unexplored on Steam. I believe he uses some of these concepts in his game. And, of course, I want to be able to get his main ideas of how to generate spaces and mechanics and apply them into a useful, computational tool.

So, what about it? What's the future of MaruGen?

After I finish my master's thesis (I have to present it in about two weeks :fearful:), I want to to keep working on this tool. Now, you can get the initial implementation of for Cubic Explorer by visiting the source code in the LDJam page. But I want to actually use it in a more professional way, so I plan to use it in a project Glitchy Pixel is currently making (check out http://www.glitchypixel.com.co for more info :wink:). Hopefully the tool will improve and get better.

In the near future I plan to put it somewhere more visible, like in Github and maybe an asset in the Unity asset store? It would be a free tool of course, but I need to get my head around it so it can work ok and maybe people can use it as well.

In any case, I hope that I can make it more stable and usable in the near future, and maybe a true game concept can help it develop further. I've already fixed many things in the tool, and also tried to make it less arcana in the code os its easier to understand.

Well, if you got through all of this, thanks for reading! And I hope I got your attention on the tool. And I would thank you even more if you could play our game here:

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/cubic-explorer

Cheers, and have a good one!