At a high level, Triverse resembles an actor model where independent actors send messages to each other using a message bus. They have no shared state, making them suitable for parallel processing. Actors are reactive in that they are triggered only by incoming messages. Some actors contain game state. These actors are finite state machines fully determined by the sequence of input messages they receive, and their only output is messages sent to other actors.
Triverse gives the player control of a drone made of triangle parts moving on a hex grid. Low-level gameplay resembles a grid-based bullet hell roguelike, where the player dodges incoming projectiles while looking for vantage points to fire back from. [ Longer video ] A few parts are key for this gameplay: Thrusters give drones the capability to move. Movement options are visualized as a light shadow indicating where the drone can move within one turn.
Triverse uses a simple text format for triangle grids to allow hand editing and inspection. Almost everything within the game, from drones to projectiles to terrain, is a grid composed of cells, and players can define their own grids and store them as blueprints. Blueprints are simple by design, allowing the text grid representation to capture all information about them. Other metadata might be useful, such as turret group definitions or a forward direction designation, but I’m hoping to generate reasonable defaults and avoid complicating the format.
Designing and building units is a core mechanic of Triverse, so it needs to be streamlined and fun. Among games in general, there are two basic ways to implement player building controls: Immediate: This way is akin to direct actions, where the player immediately builds or digs blocks by sending actions directly to the simulation. Games like Captain Forever, Terraria, and Minecraft make this a core mechanic. This approach is simple, but it can be tedious for larger construction projects and requires an actual inventory on hand to build.
Triverse is a 2D triangle-grid-based game where players build drones from scavenged or manufactured parts, leading their fleet to explore and survive in a procedurally-generated world. The project is an experiment combining these elements: Player-designed units Simultaneous turns RTS-style orders Triangle grids Procedural world Grid-based physics Early prototyping An early prototype (circa 2012) featured fully real-time, top-down shooter gameplay in continuous space, implemented with C# and Unity. Inspired by Subspace, movement had momentum and a feeling of mass, and the player could push or crush other objects like asteroids or enemy ships.