Starship Simulator | Official Game Overview
Join developer Dan Govier at Fleetyard Studios for a deep dive into Starship Simulator, an upcoming sci-fi space exploration sandbox game set 200 years from today. The video gives us a tour of the ship, crew roles, tasks, ship customization, exploration, and more. A Kickstarter campaign for Starship Simulator is available now, and a demo is available on Steam.
In Starship Simulator, do your part to keep the ship and its 200+ crew members well-maintained as you travel across a procedurally generated galaxy. Find habitable worlds, uncover compelling mysteries, and make first contact with aliens through careful dialogue choices.
In Starship Simulator, do your part to keep the ship and its 200+ crew members well-maintained as you travel across a procedurally generated galaxy. Find habitable worlds, uncover compelling mysteries, and make first contact with aliens through careful dialogue choices.
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GamingTranscript
00:00 Hello, and thank you for taking the time to check out Starship Simulator.
00:05 My name's Dan Gove here, and I'm the developer behind the project.
00:09 Now I imagine quite a few of you might be thinking, does the space sim genre really
00:13 need another new title?
00:15 Won't this just end up being another clone of what's already out there, or a simple
00:19 rehashing of existing ideas?
00:21 Well hopefully by the end of this video you'll agree that we do have something unique to
00:25 bring to the table, which a lot of space sim fans, myself included, have been wanting for
00:29 a very long time.
00:31 Put simply, Starship Simulator is my answer to one simple question.
00:36 What would I do if someone handed me the keys to a real, fully working starship?
00:41 Without any hesitation, I would just pick a random star in the sky, and then fly off
00:45 to explore its mysteries.
00:46 And then along the way I'd be nosing around every inch of my new vessel to learn exactly
00:50 how it all works.
00:52 And that really sums up what this game is all about at face value.
00:55 You've got a fully working starship, a whole galaxy to explore, and the freedom to fly
01:00 anywhere you want just to see what's out there.
01:03 But if we dig deeper, there is of course a whole lot more going on under the hood.
01:07 Let's start with the ship itself.
01:09 Growing up I really wanted to be an architect, and despite ending up working in IT, that
01:14 interest in architecture never really went away.
01:17 So when it came to designing and building a starship, I really wanted to design and
01:21 build a starship.
01:22 Now in a typical video game environment, there's generally nothing going on behind the walls
01:27 and floors.
01:28 It's actually just smoke and mirrors to sell the illusion of a real solid location.
01:31 And that's absolutely not the case here.
01:35 Delve behind any wall panel and you'll find the ship's genuine structural framework,
01:39 all designed in CAD software right down to the individual bolts and weld lines.
01:43 You'll also find miles of pipes, cables and conduits that are all fully simulated
01:48 and critical to the function of the ship's systems.
01:52 For example, turning off these breakers will kill power to the bridge, causing the lights
01:56 and consoles to genuinely stop receiving the simulated electrical current from their attached
02:00 cables.
02:01 If you pay attention to the readout when the breakers are turned back on, you can see the
02:05 electrical draw increases as expected.
02:08 This means the location where your ship takes damage naturally becomes really important.
02:13 Because that could make the difference between losing a few lights, or losing your entire
02:17 FTL drive.
02:19 As you can imagine, if you're playing as an engineer you'll certainly have a lot to be
02:22 getting on with, but we intend for every role aboard the ship to be approached with the
02:26 same amount of depth and attention to detail.
02:30 Speaking of jobs to do, we're planning to include 8 basic roles to begin with, from
02:34 the captain to a simple passenger who's merely tagging along for the ride.
02:38 Each department aboard the ship will have a rolling task list, and both players and
02:42 the MVC crew alike will work through those tasks to keep the ship up and running smoothly.
02:47 The tasks themselves won't be arbitrary though, they'll be generated on the fly depending
02:51 on the ship's actual needs.
02:53 Taking engineering as an example again, if a component is damaged, then a task will be
02:57 generated for that specific component to be investigated.
03:01 A player or an MPC then picks up that task on a first-come-first-served basis and then
03:06 works to resolve the issue.
03:09 Don't worry if you have no interest in engineering though, the MPC crew members will actually
03:13 be fully capable of running any of the ship's departments entirely on their own.
03:17 If you just want to be a pilot, or you just want to sit in command, then you don't need
03:21 to worry about what's happening outside of your chosen role.
03:23 In fact, and I happen to think this is really cool, if you choose to play as a passenger
03:28 then you actually won't have any jobs to do at all.
03:31 Instead an MPC captain will take control of the ship.
03:34 There could be a massive firefight happening right outside the window while you're just
03:38 sat there in the bar sipping your favourite space beverage.
03:40 You can just be like "eh, not my problem, crew can deal with that".
03:44 The MPC crew members also play a big part in making the ship feel more lived in, with
03:49 each of them having their own lives aboard the ship.
03:51 They'll have their own crew quarters, their own shift patterns, they'll eat, drink and
03:55 even use the bathroom if they need to.
03:57 You won't need to worry about micromanaging them though, they'll just happily get on with
04:00 it without the player having to get involved.
04:03 We're hoping players will form a strong attachment to their new home among the stars, so we're
04:07 including many customisation options right out of the box.
04:11 You can customise your ship's name and registry number, and this updates in various places
04:15 around the ship.
04:17 You can change the interior decor, like the default lighting hues, or the materials used
04:22 on the floors and walls.
04:24 You can customise the colours of the UI panels to match your chosen theme.
04:28 And you can even enable ship-wide seasonal decorations depending on the time of year.
04:33 We'll be expanding what's possible with this over time, but cosmetic options such as these
04:37 will always be free and included as part of the base experience.
04:42 The ship's interior will also be highly interactive, with every button on every panel performing
04:46 some form of tangible action.
04:48 I actually find it quite annoying in games when you're surrounded by buttons or switches
04:52 that just don't do anything, so in our game, every single button will serve a practical
04:57 purpose.
04:58 There will also be hundreds of physical items that you can pick up and interact with, and
05:02 they will remain where you left them thanks to our object permanence system.
05:06 That means if you find a cool-looking alien trinket on your travels, then you can put
05:10 it literally anywhere on your ship and it will just stay there, continuing to look cool
05:14 until you decide otherwise.
05:16 We want players to really feel like they're living and working aboard a huge vessel in
05:20 deep space, so there'll be plenty to do aboard the ship while you're out exploring the cosmos.
05:26 And speaking of exploring, that brings us nicely onto the subject of the galaxy itself.
05:30 Just like the ship, the galaxy is also being built as realistically as possible, using
05:35 real astrophysics and a true 1-to-1 scale.
05:38 We can't explore the real Milky Way, so we want our simulated version to be the next
05:42 best thing, with a realistic physical structure and scientifically accurate galactic regions.
05:49 Every system you visit should be scientifically plausible and packed with everything you would
05:52 expect to find in any star system, from star grazing comets to an array of Kuiper belt
05:57 style objects.
05:58 We'll also have black holes, protoplanetary disks, magnetars, nebulae, and even naturally
06:03 forming wormholes.
06:05 I'm actually really excited about the wormholes, because with them being entirely procedural,
06:10 even I won't know where they are, or where they lead to.
06:12 We're all exploring the same shared galaxy, so I'm looking forward to seeing some community
06:17 map making projects.
06:20 Our simulated Milky Way is also going to be packed with life, with procedurally generated
06:24 alien cultures scattered throughout the entire galaxy.
06:27 If a planet or moon is capable of supporting liquid water, then it will run further calculations
06:32 to generate life on its surface, and also in space if the culture there is advanced
06:36 enough.
06:38 Depending on how old the planet is, its life could be anything from simple bacteria to
06:42 a highly advanced spacefaring culture with motivations far beyond human understanding.
06:48 Alien cultures will also have a wide array of procedural attributes that will shape their
06:51 reaction to your presence.
06:53 They could be pacifistic space hippies or bloodthirsty psychopaths that just want to
06:57 watch the galaxy burn.
06:58 We'll also be procedurally generating their political structure, their history, and many
07:03 other details to make each new culture you encounter different from the last.
07:07 And that last point is actually very important, because with a game that focuses entirely
07:12 on exploration as its main hook, diversity of content is critical to maintain the joy
07:17 of discovery.
07:18 We're taking depth of content very seriously, and depending on how well we're funded, our
07:23 intention is to create a team of developers whose job it will be to focus 100% on just
07:27 creating new content for the galaxy.
07:30 I will not personally consider our job complete until every single star system generates something
07:35 new and interesting to discover.
07:37 So how do we actually get out there and find this content?
07:40 Well most of the time you'll navigate the galaxy by first scanning the stars in their
07:44 local facility, and then select the target of interest to send to the helm station.
07:49 Alternatively you can just point the ship in any random direction you like, and then
07:54 spin up the FTL drive to see what you might stumble across.
07:57 Our galaxy is a continuous, borderless, three-dimensional environment.
08:01 And that's another important point actually, because if you pay attention to the stars
08:05 outside of the window, you'll see that they are actually all drifting past in real time.
08:10 This means we are genuinely traversing galactic space.
08:14 So we can change direction whilst we're at FTL, or drop to sublight engines anywhere,
08:18 at any time.
08:20 Having an entirely physicalised galactic space like this opens the door to numerous possibilities.
08:26 We could have a stranded alien vessel out here looking for assistance, or rogue planets
08:30 lurking in the darkness between stars.
08:32 It also means that multiple forms of FTL travel will be easy to implement in the future, from
08:37 Alcubierre drives to hyperspace or jump gates.
08:40 In fact, different alien races will get around using different techniques, and you'll eventually
08:45 be able to retrofit your ship with their technology, so you can travel the galaxy in the same way
08:49 that they do.
08:51 So hopefully that gives you some idea of what it is we're building here.
08:55 There is of course a lot more I could go into, like the multiplayer, VR, planetary landings,
09:00 or even our planned D&D-style Game Master mode for roleplayers.
09:04 But Claire, my co-director, and more importantly, wife, has insisted that I keep this brief.
09:09 So the most important thing to take away from this video is that this is a space exploration
09:14 game, designed and built by someone who has spent tens of thousands of hours exploring
09:19 in all the other big space sims over the years.
09:22 This is in every way our dream project, and we're definitely not stopping until it's done.
09:27 I'll close by saying a huge thank you again for taking the time to check out Starship
09:31 Simulator, and I'll see you guys out there exploring the stars.
09:35 [BLANK_AUDIO]