Creating a New Retro Space Battle Game Inspired by Star Trek .BAS
Like many geeks of a certain age, I was heavily influenced by classic science fiction and the home computer revolution growing up.
It's surprising, then, that I didn't get to play the classic 1971 Star Trek game written in BASIC until I was a young adult having downloaded it from the, then new, World Wide Web. I still have a fondness for the game, though. I do however wonder how much more impressed I would have been had I discovered it as a kid!
Nevertheless, the 1978 Micro Computer edition of BASIC Computer Games (apparently the first million-selling computer book) made it available for lots of computers, as the book's code was written for Microsoft BASIC with advice for making the games work on your own particular machine.
Once you play the game a few times you realise some of the mechanics are only the way they are because of 8-bit computer limitations of the time, and the further reduction of speed due to the interpreted BASIC.
Many new versions therefore have been developed over the years, either building on the original(s), or inspired by them.
It shouldn't be a big shock to you then that I have often toyed with the idea of making my own twist on the game. Not even with a view of sharing it with anyone else particularly, just as a challenge in its own right and to tickle my personal nerd circuits with added game flavour that I would personally enjoy.
First, it always bugged me that the geography of quadrants and sectors felt weird. Short Range Scan would show an area with multiple stars but only a couple of Klingons, and maybe a space station. It feels both "zoomed out" and sparse.
My view has been that the short-range view should be the current star system. A star system, as the name implies, would have maybe one or two stars, but it would have planets, asteroids, and such too.
Why are there so few space stations and battleships if they are at war?
Another thing I would like to change is to get away from the teletype-oriented UI. You shouldn't have to switch mode so much, for example to view the long range scan of nearby systems.
Lastly, I do wonder if the game mechanics could be beefed up. Not sure yet of which way I will go with it, but some ideas ...
Have multiple star ships at your command?
More than two races of beings to interact with? Online multiplayer?
What about upgrades as well as repairs?
If you can upgrade, how does that work?
Do you have to earn credits to pay for upgrades?
Does that imply trading? Piracy/Looting?
Factories? Mining for fuel?
If I do expand the options of the game, I will likely not include a time limit as I think it would take away from the strategic aspect, but time does still need to pass so I could record the end star date of the players session as feedback rather than the score be based only on enemies destroyed.
I don't think I ever played this one, but something about it feel really familiar. It might have been something my dad spent the time typing into our old Texas Instruments. I used to play an old DOS game where you would move cargo between planets with ships and then you could add pods to the ships to beef them up. That was a fun game, but I don't remember the name of it. I shall have to do some research now!
Edit: I found it. Stellar Conquest III: Hostile Takover. Such a good game!
Guess I need to go play that now on the archive.org site!
https://archive.org/details/msdos_Stellar_Conquest_3_-_Hostile_Takeover_1994
I played that and scorched earth quite a bit back in the day!
I know I played this or a variation but I don't really remember what platform. Probably the Commodore 64. Possibly DOS. I've been wanting to write a game for a long time that has very simple graphics like this but would be a turn based strategy space battle game. The idea was to make it web based and multiplayer. I started writing it years ago but never finished. Too many other life distractions, lol.