AU: Abandon

AU: Abandon is a game about vast procedurally generated star systems, a desperate search for the resources needed to stay alive and the peace and solitude of space.

There are two key game dynamics in AU: Abandon. The first is the necessity to have enough fuel to keep moving, however obtaining fuel (in the form of bright and obvious glowing crystals) also consumes fuel. The player must quickly understand the balance and control required to conserve energy in space.

The second game dynamic involves an ominous threat. Somewhere in space, unknown to the player, lie creatures waiting to hunt down and consume the player's ship. They are hidden and will either silently follow the player, remaining out of sight unless the player is observant, or emerge as the player searches for the ever more valuable fuel crystals.

Procedural Generation

AU: Abandon's star system map is generated using procedural algorithms so that each time the player experiences the game it is slightly different. Each detail of the scene is computed from a selection of simple formulas and is used to define many game parameters from the shape of the planets and the dimensions of the asteroid belt to the colours of rocks and stars.

While the procedural generation in AU: Abandon is fairly simple it does help to maintain the feeling of insecurity when the player is navigating the star system as they cannot predict the locations of resources and monsters.

Tool Set

Most of the development for AU: Abandon used Unity3D and Visual Studio 2012. I programmed the game logic and procedural generation in C#. The game is built upon my own set of Unity3D framework classes that provides a powerful event based architecture, a hierarchical state machine class for complex state interactions, finer control over physics for game characters and many other useful features. I also employed my own Unity3D focused unit testing library to help test the procedural generation algorithms.