Welcome, A New Project Emerges

Greetings!

A very brief introduction. My name is Nick, but on the internet I’m generally known as Ventare. I’ve worked in 3d and graphics oriented applications for a bit over 20 years. I fell in love with programming in general from quite the early age, and since college I’ve focused a great deal on software architecture and what I sometimes call ergonomic development; removing the pain of developing complex software through architectural design. I might talk about that a bit sometime.

But really, this is a dev blog about building a game. So let’s talk about that.

The Game — Project Ilu

The not-yet-conclusively named Ilu Project is a game about exploring and understanding a hostile environment into which the player is thrown, damaged, with minimal resources. The player is not the only entity doing so, however, and forging a relationship with this other entity, one way or another, will be the key to becoming strong enough to survive, grow, and return home.

What is it?

• A 2d top-down perspective world, where the player is a vessel that interacts with all aspects of its surroundings.

• The world is alive; The game is built around a simulation heavy core, so learning how the physics of the world works, and how it is arrayed against you, will be essential to survival. Every entity in the world changes, moves, flows, and interacts with the rest of the world in some ways that resemble real world physics, and some that.. don’t.

• As you explore your vessel can develop in novel ways:

  • You can restructure your vessel’s components at any time, though it’ll have to rebuild itself out of something, so maybe don’t take apart your engines unless you can rebuild them again quickly.

  • Vessel components evolve on their own in several ways, depending on their environment and stresses. Sometimes they will evolve to improve in obvious ways, but sometimes a component will make a jump into something novel, and powerful.

  • Through investigating the world, you may come across components that you can reproduce on your own.

    • (Really, the entire world is built up of components; its the core primitive element of the simulation, so if you can scan it, you can reproduce it, but I’m not sure it’s going to be too useful to scan random rocks and debris to build your vessel out of. But who knows, maybe slapping garbage on your ride is a good look.)

  • The core, the brain, the nucleus of your vessel keeps track of how to build components from raw materials. As long as the core survives, and materials are available, the vessel can be reconstructed, though maybe with a bit more scrap and little less style.

• But, the world is hostile. You’ll need to develop to explore anywhere beyond where your vessel finds itself at the start.

• And if you are utterly destroyed? Well, then you start over, but you start over with all your summed knowledge and component blueprints. Yes, this is a rogue-lite. Destruction is educational!

• This is a Player-and-NPC vs Environment simulation game. There’s an entity out there in the same situation as you, but with utterly different fundamental mechanics. Work together, if you can figure out how. Or blast it, because I know some of you are going to do that, and see how that works out for you.

  • There is no bad guy, no antagonist, no malicious intelligence. There’s just an indifferent, destructive, and hostile environment to survive, and ultimately, master.

Okay, that’s enough bullet points.

How is it?

The game is being built for Steam on Windows only (initially), using almost entirely C# with minimal but essential libraries only. I’ve spent enough time with Unity and Unreal engines professionally recently; I’m taking the engine in my own hands. We’ll get something unique for our efforts. It certainly won’t look like a game made in Unity or Unreal!

(The libraries in question are Silk.NET for windowing, input, and interop with DirectX, Aether.Physics2D, a C# 2d physics system, and FMod for audio. A few more minor C# libraries to assist with image loading and whatnot, but that’s it for the core game).

But time permitting, there is a second major ‘how’ to broach. The wild evolutionary nature of the game’s systems means that I need an NPC brain that can keep up with it. The goal is to use reinforcement machine learning to build the control brain for the major NPC entity (and maybe… something else…), including updating its network as you play. Its a lofty goal, and it might slip, but that’s the target!

When is it?

This is a sort of experiment; I have limited funding to deliver this, which means I am cutting and cutting and cutting away precious features. I’m not even including multiplayer to start! I built multiuser systems and libraries as my full time job for more than a decade so I know how, but I also know its… more time than I can afford.

The game needs to be playable and fun by October 2026, in time for various indie game competitions and events, or it probably won’t happen. (Unless other sources of funding make themselves evident along the way of course!)

Where is it?

In-game, the setting is not grounded in a real world location. It is ‘space’, but also not. Its dense and lively and full of chemistry and life in the way that space is decidedly not. Is it a primordial ocean? A petri dish? A hollow gas giant in the primordial universe? Maybe the player will learn more as they go, but it’s intentionally vague in many ways.

In reality, it’ll be on Steam. Yar.

Why is it?

You ever play those falling sand games where the different pixels interact and emerge into novel and fun patterns, but then want to do something with the creation afterwards but had nothing left to do?

You ever play Noita and just die immediately but then you figure out a little bit how it actually works, then you feel like a little god for a bit before you promptly explode again?

You ever finish building a complex contraption in Minecraft using redstone, and want to take it for a spin somewhere but kinda can’t, because while Minecraft is awesome you can’t build a ship and fly it into space, and if you do that anyway you don’t get much for the effort. That is to say… do you want to have a reason to build something awesome, then watch it be awesome, and feel awesome for it?

You ever think there could be a good Star Trek inspired game, where science, communication, understanding, and compassion are the best answers to the game’s challenges? But like Star Trek, every now and then you just gotta fire the phasers at something anyway, cause its fun?

You ever play FTL and just want to go a bit further, beyond the limits the game necessarily has set up? Get a bit stronger, a bit smarter? And when you do, have some reason to have done so?

Well, I do. I want to build that game. So I am.

And…

And I want to do it with your help. Come 2026 I’ll be writing here as I develop the game. I’m intending on livestreaming development to some extent; immediate player feedback is awesome and underappreciated. When that happens, it’ll be a bit of development, a bit of play, probably a lecture or two on development related topics, and probably quite a bit of professing my unabashed opinions about software and game design.

It’ll be fun. See you then.

Oh right, I missed one earlier:

Who is it?

-Ventare

redTOASTstudios