Starship bridge simulator
A bridge sim in the spirit of Artemis, with full 3D navigation, six degrees of freedom, realistically sized worlds, and an AI director instead of scripted missions.
This project has several important components:
- Multiple crew stations including helm, tactical, engineering, sensors, and possibly others.
- 6DOF flight and physics model.
- Realistic stellar and planetary bodies and distances.
- AI-driven dynamic game narrative.
- AI-driven NPCs with memories of past interactions for dynamic storylines and diplomacy.
This project is inspired by Artemis and Star Control II (or Ur-Quan Masters, the open-source version of the game). I want to take the space simulator aspects very seriously, but I want the story lines, tone, NPCs, and game content to be similar to the level of comedy and snark one finds in UQM.
A few hard rules for this project:
- Realistic scale for star systems.
- 6DOF navigation and flight control.
- No scripted missions; narrative comes from an AI director, and there also needs to be an optional game master chat interface where a human can suggest narrative directions through chat with the AI director.
- NPCs are AI-driven and must have memories of past interactions and knowledge of current events that conforms with game rules governing the flow and speed of information.
One last thing: if ever I do succeed in getting this project far enough, I want to see a “reality TV” series focused on a crew’s LARPing play through of this game, complete with scenes reconstructed from in-game events like travel, battles, docking, etc.
The AI director
The game will provide the AI director with a set of well-defined “levers” it can use to govern narrative and guide gameplay. Its goal is not control the overall direction of the game, but rather it aims to work with the crew to build out a narrative for each play through that maximizes entertainment value and motivates cooperative play.
The end goal here is to make each play through completely unique: the universe starts each time with the same original state, but as the players make different decisions, interact with alien NPCs differently, and succeed or fail differently, the story changes, the director reacts, and each crew may come away from the same game with completely different stories to tell their friends. If you’ve played the game several times already, I want the next time to still feel fresh in important ways.
AI NPCs
The ultimate goal here is for interactions with NPCs to be completely unscripted, impacted by in-game current events, rumors, and past interactions, and carried out in a Star Trek-style on-screen conversation on the crew’s main screen, where the captain speaks, a microphone picks that up, and an agentic loop runs the conversation, adjusting in-game NPC ship behavior live as the conversation progresses.
Game Tone
In Star Control II/The Ur-Quan Masters, the cast of alien races forms an often comedic take on science fiction tropes. The game is smart enough to not take itself too seriously, and it takes that very seriously. By aiming for this same kind of tone in this project, I hope to avoid the trap of trying to be “too cool” and falling into the uncanny valley. It isn’t about realism, but rather entertainment value, and comedy is highly entertaining in the right doses and contexts.