Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Atlas

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Logo for the game Atlas

My friend Souren Eriksen and I (Ian Freeman-Lee) have been working on a creating a video game since late summer ’08. Even though we were working on it during summer, at that point we were just doing design and concept work and have only started working on the meat of it starting this school year. The type of game we’re making is called a side-scrolling action platformer in the biz (a mouthful, I know). In non-jargon this means the game is 2d, you fight things, solve puzzles and run and jump through the in-game space.........


We’re making the game in Flash. Some of you may have seen or tried some Flash games on the web, but this is nothing like most of the Flash games out there. For one it doesn’t run in a browser and it’s also quite ambitious. Once finished, it will look a lot more like something you would buy for a game console or the PC.

The game’s name right now is Atlas, though that may change at some point. Here’s the game’s setting.


Our story takes place inside a near future, state of the art government research facility built into an asteroid in far space (specifically in the Oort Cloud, look it up :-)). The facility was built to house many high security and experimental research divisions, including terra forming, AI research, teleportation and others. Thirteen years after the facility is completed, an extremely advanced AI named Atlas is created to oversee and control the facility. The AI is ultimately too advanced and is able to increase its own intelligence over time, unbeknownst to those in the facility. After 10 years of operation, it has increased it’s intelligence to over 30 times that of the human brain. Over the next 3 years it begins to integrate itself with every aspect of the facility, bypassing security systems meant to stop it from gaining complete control. After fully integrating itself, Atlas abruptly shuts off all communications to and from the facility, completely separating it from Earth.


After realizing that the facility has been cut off from Earth, the people in the facility begin to panic. The facility is built to supply a minimum of supplies to those inside, but not enough to live comfortably. Earth had periodically sent shipments of supplies to the facility, but with communications cut off, it would be extremely difficult to accurately locate the facility, meaning no more shipments were likely to come. None of the people in the facility know exactly what happened, and arguing breaks out. Eventually two distinct sides form, one saying that the reason the facility failed was due to their technology not being advanced enough, and the other saying that the facility relied too heavily on AI and that AI should be boycotted altogether. Unable to come to an agreement, the sides go their separate ways and form two factions, both living inside a different part of the facility.


Atlas is not a killer AI, it’s just such a different entity from a human that its actions seem extremely confusing and its intentions are not clear. After shutting down communications it turns the facility more or less into its sandbox, constantly manipulating everything in the facility, sometimes for better sometimes for worse.


When Earth realizes that the facility has gone rogue, they begin to assemble a military force to retake it. It takes them 2 years to get everything ready for launch. Due to time dilation in space travel, around 70 years will have passed on the facility by the time the military reaches it.


You play as one of several test subjects in a research project trying to create super soldiers. The project was abandoned when Atlas isolated the facility and all the test subjects were put into stasis. The game starts with your character being mysteriously released from stasis, only weeks before the military finally arrives. To find out more you’ll just have to play once we’re done. ;)


The game is coming along slowly but steadily. Neither Souren nor I have made anything this complex before and we have to learn practically everything. We’ll be showing a working prototype at our graduation presentations.


Additional graphics for Atlas

1 comment:

Karen said...

Please note the "read entire post!" link. This post is truncated due to its length.