I’ve been doing some research lately, playing other space games, and trading games, trying to refresh my memory of how other people have done it and get some good ideas. I’ve noticed something interesting in my playing, most of the games haven’t given me the same sense of presence that I always got from Wing Commander: Privateer. I was 12 or 13 when I picked up Privateer, and it was amazing. A whole galaxy full of interesting planets to visit, pirates to fight, and missions to perform. I remember how strong the sense of presence was, each ship had a detailed cockpit, you could look out the side windows or backwards and see the door that lead to the rest of your ship. Getting a new ship was awesome not just because it would have heavier armor, more cargo room or more weapons racks, but also because it gave you a new cockpit, and I relished the brief bit of exploration as I got accustomed to the new interior.
The planets also felt like they had a real presence. When you landed on one you would see the spaceport where your ship had landed. From there you would have to click on a door that would take you into the base proper. From there you could click on different doors to move through the base and perform tasks, like trading merchandise, upgrading and repairing equipment, purchasing new ships, getting missions, and other stuff. Having to click through the different areas of the base gave each base a unique feel. The agricultural planet felt way different from the mining bases, which felt different from the space stations. You were doing the same tasks at all of the different bases, but they felt like they were genuinely different places.
Most of the games I’ve been playing in research just present a menu of options when you arrive at a base. You pull into the outpost, or land on the planet and you see an image depicting the location, but all of the interactions are carried out through a menu, and it really seems to affect my sense of immersion, and how much the locations feel like a real place.
It’s certainly more expensive to create the additional art to represent the different areas of a location, but you could probably get away with recycling the art. If I remember correctly a lot of the planets in Privateer used the same art for the merchandise room, and the ship upgrade rooms. Recycling would help, but it would still demand a larger art budget. But I think it can be well worth it, presenting the locations as different areas that the player has to move through really enhances the feeling of the location being a real place. It’s something that I plan on putting in the Space Game I’m working on, we’ll see if it works as well as I think it should.