Celeste Soueid

Astraeus

Summary

• Goal: Kenshi-like squad based colony RPG.
• Languages: C#
• Tech Stack: Unity Engine, UnityAsync
• Notable Achievement: Directed boid movement
• Status: Archived

Completed Features

• Basic finite state machine based AI.
• Waypoint directed boid movement for groups.
• Modular construction of items through in-game UI.
• Medical system based on injuries, conditions, and data-defined body parts.
• Data based content loading through JSON.

Description

Astraeus is a squad based sci-fi RPG inspired heavily by Kenshi. The game has a heavy focus on independence, technological progress, and tactical combat.

A more in-depth look into Astraeus, my processes, and the challenges encountered can be found hosted here.

Challenges

Astraeus was a huge project in terms of scope that presented an almost endless list of individual challenges ranging from purely programmatic to design - both in terms of gameplay and UX. The largest challenge with Astraeus was to keep moving forward as the project gained complexity, but also to keep the code maintainable and legible as systems often need to be revisited or reworked to integrate with newer feature additions or to update the code with new knowledge. It was also a challenge to manage scope creep, especially given my limited experience during this project, as well as to reconcile the original design with changing circumstances and realisations.

Future considerations

Astraeus was a conceptually fleshed out game with interesting ideas and systems. Its huge scope makes it an impractical project to finish at this stage, though I would enjoy 'finishing' (ie. rebuilding) it one day.

Media