What is 2D Space MMO?

It's multi-player mayhem of the wire-frame variety. 2D Space MMO is fast paced, massively multi-player, team-based, 2d arcade action shooter with a player generated universe, inspired by the original arcade game Asteroids. 

Quotes from players of the prototypes:

"It's like Battlestar Galactica with triangles!"

"That was great, this is what the internet was created for."

"Ok, I didn't expect much at first, but that was awesome. Great work."

Play the existing prototype here

Right now the game is an enjoyable prototype, with one simple level. I want to open it up to the players to allow them to actually shape the game in a direct and tangible way by creating their own levels. The next stage of development means that players will be able to:

• Fully customise the design of their level, including properties like material deadliness, shape, size, colour and bounciness 
• Customise backgrounds and lay down waves of enemies to challenge players 
• Insert trigger volumes to affect things like gravity, maximum speed, scale of objects, brightness of the screen 
• Create monstrous AI bosses with fully customisable logic 
• Set and design timed puzzles with associated leader-boards to throw down the gauntlet to other players to beat the high score 
• Publish and share their levels with the community
• Play and rate other people's levels

All of this will be made possible by the logic brick system. Inspired by Little Big Planet's 'create mode', this system will allow players to design the actual underlying logic of the level right inside the game itself without ever having to type a line of code. Primitive logic brick parts like counters, timers, emitters, events, triggers and volumes can all be connected up visually to create systems with limitless complexity which define how the level actually plays.

Having personally worked on the PSP version of Little Big Planet during my time at Sony Computer Entertainment, I was in awe at the amount of creative freedom given directly to the game designers by these new tools at their disposal. In no time, designers were creating logic gates from moving parts and building systems so complex that they would be prohibitive to have been created in the usual, bespoke game-development manner. It's this level of creative freedom that I want to bring to the players of 2D Space MMO.

Who are you?

My name is Paul Firth, I'm from Cambridge in the UK and I've been working on mmoAsteroids for 6 months now as the sole developer.

Prior to 2D Space MMO, I set up my company Wildbunny and started a popular game development blog. You might have read some of my articles if you frequent the user-generated news site reddit.com, particularly the /gamedev and /programming subreddits. My most popular article is Physics Engines for Dummies, which has over 148,000 page-views.

Prior to that I spent 10 years in the console game-development industry, where I worked on titles like Little Big Planet PSP and Heavenly Sword. See full bio.

I've always held technical roles like 'physics engine programmer', or 'rendering engine lead' which set me in good stead for tackling the challenges which 2D Space MMO throws at me.

Why Kickstarter?

2D Space MMO has been entirely self funded from the beginning, but I need the power of Kickstarter to allow me to take the game from an amusing prototype to the next level.

It's amazing how much difference a professional artist can make to the look of a game, which is why I'd want to work with one to better stylise the visuals. I'd also like to consult with a game designer about the finer points of the game and Kickstarter will allow me to do both of these. Because I've worked in the industry for so long I have a lot of really good contacts so finding talented people to work with won't present a problem.

The planned project length is 6 months. The funding allocation breaks down like this: 

• Full-time development overhead = £12000 
• Hiring an artist on part time contract = £5000 
• Consulting with a professional game designer = £2000 
• Server hosting and bandwidth costs = £5400 
• Sub-total = £24,400 

• Kickstarter 5% fee = £1220 
• Credit card fees 5% = £1220 
• Reward fulfilment 30% = £7000 
• Grand total £35,000

Preliminary clothing designs

Here are some preliminary designs for the t-shirt and hoodie, final product may vary.