Note

This is now directed at the src folder. The game folder is old code and is kept for example stuff.

Goals:

Make a multiplayer game that will run in the browser. This game should be a planet conquest type game where you can create a lobby and then players can join. Once you start a game only those players can play. This game should be time based. You will start with a system of planets and then over time you will gain ships and resources. The goal is to either eliminate all of the other players or to control a portion of the universe. As you explore you can encounter other planets and players. Each planet will have specific bonuses. Some can produce ships faster, others will produce more resources and in others you can find bonuses for different kinds of ships. I want to make it so that you can also upgrade the planets to improve the value of them.

The maximum player count in a game will be 20 however I want this to be scalable.

Thoughts:

I do not want the players to directly communicate with each other. I want each one to talk to the server and then the server to use an API for getting updates for each player and their stuff. This means that potentially there could be multiple clients for the game however I want to start with a web based client as I feel that is easiest for me.

Each player should be able to log in and then see what games they are playing in and select a game to resume. The game will continue even when the player is not logged in. This means that the player could be attacked even when they are gone. This means that the worlds need to be persistent.

As a follow up that means that each world will be always running. This means that if there is a main loop for the game it should be very lightweight so that it does not consume massive amounts of resources. Another thing that I want to have is that the game speed will change based on the number of players online. For example, if there are 4 players in the game and all 4 are active I want to have the game move faster so that they can play together better.

I think that each universe should be randomly generated that way the players have to explore it.

I do eventually want to have AI players however for now I just want human players. Make sure that you help me to keep this easy as I am programming.

Here are the resources that I am thinking of for now:

Food (Local to planet)
Energy (Local to planet)
Metal (Global)
Fuel (Global)
Crystals (Global)
Galaxy Credits (Global)

How do we have resources travel be tween planets? I am not sure yet. Maybe have another type of ship called a transport that can transport resources. This should be automated though so that needed resources are transported auto-magically. Another option is to have some resources like metal, crystals, and Galaxy Credits to be global while things like food and energy are local to each planet. This way you can build production buildings on each planet.

I also want there to be some form of tech tree that the player can choose and can research. Maybe add some rare resources.

Vocab:

Ship: a space ship. There are several different types:
- Explorer: Has a high vision range and can see far. It can not however attack or defend
- Fighter: This is a ship that can fight other ships. It will also have sub classes as well
- Colonizer: This ship is used to colonize a planet and is defenseless while flying. However when a planet is colonized the ship can be used to defend the planet
Universe: The entire game space. It contains planets and other objects
Planet: A planet that can be colonized/owned by a player. It can produce resources and ships
Planet Defense: Structures that can be built on a planet that will defend it from attack.

Final thoughts:

I am comfortable with Python and Ruby mostly. I would rather separate the game into the server stuff which will be API driven. I have done some Ruby on Rails however I am not very good at it. This means that I would prefer if we used rails for it to be purely an API.

I also am very inexperienced at authentication. I think for now I will just have player names. Anyone can use any name. This does mean however that if two people use the same name they will be indistinguishable in the server. Probably just taking a password and hashing it on the client and then using that hash as a 'token' of sorts would fix this. I am not super concerned with player account security however the server does need to be secure.

API overview:

The Universe class will contain everything in the universe. This means planets, ships, and other stelar objects. This will be the API that I can think of:

User accesible API

This is the API that the players will be able to access:

universe/
 - players/
   - planets/
     - buildings
   - fleets/
     - fleet1/
       - ships/
     - fleet2/
       - ships/
     ships/
   - tech/

Admin/server API

I want them to be able to do anything in the game incliding normally illiegial actions.

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