In space games everyone can hear you scream

My science teacher once told us that Star Wars was silly because sound doesn’t travel through space. He was right about the science, but a silent Star Wars would be more silly than the one we got. Why is it that whenever the enterprise meets an alien ship they are always the same way up? The crew on each ship don’t share the same language, have never met each other and yet they seem to have a pre-agreement to which way is up which itself is a tricky concept in space. The real reason that they are always the right way up is that it would look silly otherwise, and wouldn’t match viewer’s expectations.



Space combat and manoeuvring in most sci-fi games is wrong, but for good reason. You can think about playing a game like a simple cycle. You make some come kind of input, move a stick, press a button, do something stupid in front of a kinect. This input is read by the game and the game’s internal model updates, this could be mario jumping, a racing car accelerating or firing a bullet in call of duty. What ever way the designer decided to model the physics and behaviour of the things in the game happens. This code runs and causes some kind of feedback, sound, visual or rumbling. Then you the player see, feel or hear this feedback and use your own internal model and ideas about how the game works and makes an input. If space games modelled space flight and combat realistically the model in the game would be, in most cases, wildly different to the model in your head. You would get frustrated, think the controls in the game don’t work stop playing and go back to watching cat videos.

The thing is I actually think realistic space combat is an interesting thing to think about. There are lots of articles you can find which discuss what space combat would be like if it happened. Here I’m going to talk about what I think it would be like, and how this is the way we want our upcoming game, Slingshot, to feel.



Star Trek has lots of artificial fake gravity, but it’s missing the real stuff. All space flight is governed by orbital mechanics which results in some weird rules. Lets say you are in low orbit around the Earth and you want to get to the moon. The best way to do this is to point your ship in the direction of the orbit and burn your engines. This means you’re not facing the place you want to get to, which understandably is weird to most people.

This means space warfare might be more like sailing ship naval warfare than dog fighting. Then the direction of the wind had a massive impact on a battle and was an invisible force to fight against, Sid Meier’s pirates does a pretty good job of creating an experience like this. Watch the video below to see how much the wind dictates the series of events. To win you really have to think about how to use the wind to your advantage.



Imagine this on a much larger scale orbiting around a planet and I think you are getting towards what space combat would feel like. In Slingshot you will be flying around solar systems which full Newtonian physics models. Planets orbit a star and you have to use the gravity and your engines to get around. Slingshot is a two dimensional game viewed from above, much like Pirates, to make manoeuvring decisions easier to make.



Not only would the ships themselves be effected by orbital mechanics but also the projectiles. Lets for now dismiss the idea of laser weapons and assume you’re going to use big projectiles to try and break through the hull of an enemy ship. The projectiles you fire will be orbiting and as soon as you fire them you’ve lost control; hitting your enemy is going to need some planning. This is just like the kind of thing which was done in world war 2 submarine combat. A submarine’s weapons officer would have to calculate a torpedo firing solution after stalking a prey. In both cases the smallest hull breach could be fatal. If you want a good taste of submarine combat check out the Silent Hunter series.



In Slingshot all the projectiles and item drops are effected by the gravity. This means you are going to have to build a good sense of how things move in the environment. It is possible to literally shoot yourself in the back if you are not careful.



Similarities between submarine and space combat doesn’t stop at the weapons, you are inside a tin can keeping out impending death. As you loose health in Slingshot you’ll start to hear creaks and cracking, I’m hoping this will add some tension. I want to try and make you feel claustrophobic playing the game, like you would feel in a submarine. Since the view is from above the only way I can see to do this is through the sound. The creaks and cracking, the sound when you are hit by an asteroid or projectile, and eventually the sound of your own breath. Sound which, by the way, will only be from things inside or hitting your ship, just like my science teacher would have wanted.

Slingshot is a rougelike ‘like’ space shooter with realistic orbital mechanics, developed for HTML5 using Phaser. You can play the game here To keep up to date follow me @DrSeanWalton and Barry @Half_Hit_Points on twitter.