Frontier

Frontier is a new project in the works here at Black Castle. It is a single player (offline) game inspired in part by the game Elite. The game is a space trading and exploring game where you are the captain of a ship and you can visit various planets and space stations to buy and sell goods, earn money by taking on passengers, or if you are more evil you can attack other ships and become a pirate.

The basic engine of the game will be free of any database and all content will by dynamically generated at run time through a complex series of mathematical algorithms. As you explore space you are actually exploring mathematical patterns inherit in various number systems. Because each sector is given two numbers (an X and Y coordinate) these numbers, along with the stardate can be used to generate content not randomly but in a complex way that may appear random.

For example, wormholes (without giving away too much) are based on prime numbers, this gives the effect of wormholes being more common closer to the galactic center at sector (0,0). The galactic center contains a super-massive black hole which will destroy your ship should you be foolish enough to try to enter it.

This is not a game for people with short attention spans. To succeed as a captain you will need to get out some graphing paper, a pencil, maybe a calculator, and a log book (ya that's right I'm talking about real old school actual physical paper and pencils). You can then start to map space, record various prices, factions, border lines, locations of wormholes and planets and space stations, and so forth.
Although it is perfectly within our ability to add devices in the game to automate this stuff, it detracts from the fun of the adventure.

In addition to the basic engine the game will have quest "packs" which can be installed and will give you a sequence of quests that come together as a single story. Each quest pack will be called an "Episode". You are free to follow the linear quest lines in these episodes or explore the virtually infinite possibilies of space on your own and ignore the quests (or a mixture of both).

The game is still very early in development stages but we will post updates and YouTube videos of recent developments.
Keep an eye on our YouTube games channel for demos of the game.