StarShipper

-----STARSHIPPER-----

How to Play:

You are a starship captain, exploring the galaxy for big bucks, from your suspiciously retro-aesthetic mainframe quantputer. Do things by clicking on links (underlined text): For more info, click the quantputer link MANUAL + read the text display. 

To these ends you explore interesting (and uninteresting) stellar systems, buying and selling goods at marketplaces which stock goods at varying $, engaging in encounters with other vessels which may involve harrowing combat, mining metals, and plodding along the network of hyperlanes or the immense isolated voids between stars.

Inhabited planets may also have StarPorts, where you may repair, refuel or swap out ship components. There are a few other landmark types which may be discovered by exploring. Some inhabited planets also host contacts, who may offer quests which can be undertaken for rewards.

The game is currently a playable prototype, so some actions may not work smoothly, and it is quite unbalanced. Improvements to be implemented.

Technical Information: 

StarShipper is an open-world, procedurally-generated, text-based space exploration trading game. The galaxy is seeded with a pseudorandom number generator, so that using the same seed means an identical and replicable game start. Saving and loading the game state involves a very simple implementation of JSON import/export files. Planets are visually generated using algorithms incorporating different interpretations of simplex noise functions, and rotated in game with mathematical transformations. Planet names and contact names are generated from a corpus of science-fiction sounding names, which are broken into parts and rearranged in an application of Markov chains. Contact profiles are randomly generated from 10 different layers of pixel art components and recoloured dynamically, enabling a ridiculously high number of unique face combinations.

All code, art, and music by Nicholas Foo.