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Randomization of Layout

The original idea for Breach of Space included randomized "dungeon" rooms. While the current story of Breach of Space would not make sense with this randomized layout, it could provide interesting results when coupled with task types, locations, and so on.

Previous Concept Statements

In Breach of Space the player is an employee on a newly minted colony who's job is to use their staff members, which are robots, to complete certain tasks. The player can click on a staff member and click on a task for that staff member to (attempt to) complete. This continues until the "shift" is over. When your shift is over the number of tasks and resources that you gained on your shift shows up. If your performance meets the standards put forth by the level, the player is able to move onto the next shift.
In Breach of Space, fight back against your planet's colonization from a company, increase the company's operating cost by avoiding detection by robots, all while breaking everything you can.

"Classes"

Our staff members might inevitably have different skills, but at one point this was to be more involved. Each type of staff member, be it Janitor or Mechanical Engineer or even Securities Officer, would excel in one field and flounder in another. These pros & cons would help and hinder each character as they interact with different problems in the game world.

Old POV- Five Nights at Freddy's

One of our old competitors for our game was Five Nights at Freddy's. This was one of our competitors because of the POV that we were using in our old prototypes. The main player's old POV was reminiscent of Five Nights at Freddy's in terms of using the camera to move between different rooms.

Differences between Breach of Space and Five Nights at Freddy’s camera mechanic:

In Breach of Space you use a camera in order to see what tasks have to be done in a certain room. When you see that a certain task needs to be done in a room you move a character to go complete that task. In Five Night’s at Freddy’s you use a camera in order to see where an animatronic is so you can protect yourself from being captured.
In Breach of Space you can utilize the cameras for an unlimited amount of time. However, in Five Night’s at Freddy’s you have a certain amount of power/time that you can use the cameras.

WorkSpace

Above is a screenshot of the players in-game WorkSpace UI. For our prototype, we discussed focusing on functionality over style. The WorkSpace UI is responsible for effectively navigating the player through their daily workflow. By having a recognizable layout, contrasting color scheme, and glowing selection outlines we are simplifying the players interactions in WorkSpace. Each department tab will have an identical layout and a different color palette which will allow for simple UI mental mapping.

Mini Games

For our old prototypes we incorporated mini games into our game. The mini games in our game required the player to use their keyboard to either smash buttons, alternate between different keys, hold down a certain key, or remember a certain sequence. These mini games were placed onto tasks and they showed up at certain times when the robot is doing a task. Mini games were placed into our games as something else the player can do other than clicking on a robot and pointing it to a certain task to do. Here is what one of the mini games looked like.

OLD MVPs

Four different rooms, each with at least one camera. - Since the point-of-view of the player is through their office computers, less than one room with one camera would make this part of the game unnecessary.
Screens depicting these rooms. - Switching between screens is part of what makes the time management & problem resolution fun & interesting.
A short interaction / minigame for the player to do. - While just clicking on an obstacle to resolve it was enough for our first prototype, these minigames provide more for the player to do in the game world.

User Experience (Game Design 2)

Once the player clicks on a screen, the interface will show up relative to that department.
If the player clicks on their WorkSpace computer, they will see
- Updates from their boss (the questline for the game)
- Updates from staffers (jobs & problems that pop up in the world, in addition to flavor text and narrative progression)
- The stability of the colony & the overall productivity of the staff (the current status of the game world)
When a minigame is started, the player will see
- The controls required for the minigame
- An in-fiction description of what they are doing
- A gameplay description of the minigame
- Their current progress on this minigame
It is possible that, with the help of automation through upgrades, the player will be able to make decisions of how this automation plays out, such as
- Positioning higher ranking robots to command others.
- Purchasing upgrades & (re)allocating resources / workers.

User Experience (Workshop 1: Before Merge/MVP)

Once the player starts the game there will be a screen that tells them how many tasks they must complete and how many resources there are.
After passing the messages from their boss scenes, the player will start their shift. Once they player starts their shift they will see:
- The rooms that they have to complete a certain number of tasks in (each level adds one more room than the previous level)
- A certain number of robots that they get to control (usually one per room)
- The tasks that your robot are able to complete
- A timer that will represent how much time they have left on their shift
- The number of tasks that they completed and the number of resources that they have
- An upgrade shop where they will be able to purchase upgrades that will help them on their shift
  - Player can purchase upgrades by using the resources that they collected on their shift
When the player clicks on a task for the robot to do they will see:
- A progress bar that shows much long the task is
  - This bar will show up as red as first but as the robot keeps working on a task it'll keeping turning green
- The robot doing an animation depending on what type of task they're doing
- When the robot is done the tasks counter goes up by 1 and depending on the task their resource counter will also go up by 1
It is possible that, with the help of automation through upgrades, the player will be able to make decisions of how this automation plays out, such as
- Positioning higher ranking robots to command others.
- Purchasing upgrades & (re)allocating resources / workers.

When the player's shift ends:
- If they win the level they will see:
  - A screen saying that they successfully completed the level
  - The number of tasks that they completed and how many resources they collected
  - They will be sent to the next level
- If they lose the level they will see:
  - A screen saying that they lost
  - After this they will either go back to the main screen or redo the level (depends on their choice)

BOS Home Page before the merge with Office Hijinks

Old Game Loops

Problem Cycle

Problem occurs (Computer Glitch, Alien Attack, Atmospheric Leak...) -->

Player chooses whether or not to fix problem -->

Ignore? Room's total health is reduced --> OR Address? Room's health is maintained -->

Problem occurs....

Note: The way damage works is a little complex. A room will, for example, have 100 health. The room might have 5 problem nodes. The problems nodes will be randomly activated in a tick based timer. They will have a percentage of damage that they do, and all 5 nodes will always equal to 100%. For example for one day cycle the nodes could be:
Node 1: 5%
2: 60%
3: 20%
4: 10%
5: 15%
The problems will take down the station's health on a timer, and only take down health equal to their damage value. For example if node 3 becomes active, it will (over the course of let's say 30 seconds) take down 20% of the room's overall health. Which will eventually result in the room (full health 100) having only 80 health.
The player can then fix these issues right away or later, but after a time (if the problem has taken out all of it's health capacity and has sat unaddressed extensively), the player will be unable to restore the entire health of the room. So if node 3 becomes active and sits long enough to reduce the room's health to 80, when the player tries to restore it, it is possible it will only restore the room's full health to 98 instead of 100, therefore incentivizing the player to fix these issues quickly.

Previous World of Breach of Space

World

Breach of Space takes place on a freshly minted space colony where the player is tasked with managing the colony and making it fully operational before the colony's resources run out. However, soon the player finds out that not everything is as it seems and strange events begin occurring on the station such as operational errors, glitches in the computational systems, and random mechanical errors.

By playing through the game, the player will eventually find out (based on their decisions) that there is an alternate dimension with the exact same colony, however the colony in the alternate dimension is an alien colony and they had a major disaster occur which has led them to take resources from the player's dimension in order to save their own station.

Multiple Dimensions
Space Colony with Minimal Resources
Corporate
Interdimensional Alien Threat
Expendable, but Important (Loss Reduction)

Technology

The technology of Breach of Space is much more advanced than our technology today, however it has gone backwards in its design, favoring simplistic 70's industrial aesthetics. The technology appears bulky and rudimentary, but is in fact hyper advanced. The colony favors technology that is low-tech for the century but is high-tech for our standards. They prefer this type of tech due to its simplicity to fix when compared to other more highly advanced technology that might be used closer to earth.

Varying Levels of Tech
Classes Based on Galactic Geographical Location

Politics and Civilization

Breach of Space is governed by a conglomerate of corporations and government bodies that have gathered together to create a loose federation. This environment has created a situation where there is a lot of conflicting bureaucratic regulation. The player will primarily feel this through their supervisors who are profit driven and corporate in cultural nature.

Corporate
Profit Driven
Federation
Ethical Considerations Superseded by Profit

Previous Technical Document

How Breach of Space (technically) works...

A timer begins when the Scene is fully loaded in.
When the player clicks, a RayCast is performed in hopes of finding a screen.
- A screen here refers to an object with a RenderTexture attached to it. This RenderTexture is being fed information from one of the many Cameras in a Scene.
Once a screen is selected, the Cinemachine Camera will choose a position based on which screen is selected.
If the player clicks again, a RayCast is performed from the RenderTexture, through the Camera in the scene, and onto whatever object(s) it hits first.
If this RayCast hits a Staff Member, that Staff Member becomes the currently selected Staff Member, and the player can direct this Staff Member until another is selected or they back out of the screen.
- These Staff Member GameObjects are our R.O.B.I.T. robots.
- If the Ray hits multiple objects, but none of them are a Staff Member GameObject, the Ray continues for some distance in case the Staff Member GameObject is hidden behind another object.
- If there is already a currently selected Staff Member, this new Staff Member replaces the older one.
If the RayCast hits another object and a Staff Member is currently selected, that Staff Member is directed to the x & y coordinates of the RayCast's out hit on the NavMesh the Staff Member is currently attached to.
- If this object has a Job Handler and/or Problem Handler attached to it, then the Staff Member will begin working on that Job or Problem once they are close to it.
- If this object is an Item, then the Item will affect the Staff Member in one way or another once that Staff Member collides with the Item.
- If this object is anything else, the Staff Member will simply walk to that position on the NavMesh and await further instruction.
Once a Job or Problem is instantiated into the world, a Staff Member may walk to it and begin working on it.
- Once in range, the player will be prompted to complete a short minigame.
- These minigames use the W, A, S, & D keys, and range in difficulty and behavior dependent either on the Job ScriptableObject currently in use by the Job Handler of this GameObject or its Problem Handler.
- Once the correct inputs are pressed, the Job or Problem is removed from the list necessary to complete to advance to the next Scene. The corresponding amount of Credits or some form of Resource is added and/or subtracted from the necessary integer as well.
When time runs out, the player is evaluated by the number of Jobs or Problems completed, the speed at which they did so, the number of Credits or Resources gained, or some combination. If the player meets a certain threshold, the game progresses to the next Scene.

Technical Questions & Risks

How many screens can the game render at one time?
How many screens can keep the player's attention?
How many crew members can work at one time?
How many problems can a player cognitively handle at once?

Chaos Bar

As a gremlin of the space station, disrupting the robots and their work is what you want to do most. The player will be shown a meter that will fill up gradually overtime depending on the amount of sabotages the player performs successfully. This will fill up regardless of what the sabotage is and will be the most prevalent thing the player sees on their screen.

Without this, the player won't know how much destruction they are supposed to cause. Therefore, the bar acts as a tool of guidance for the player's day-to-day gameplay.

During Gameplay

FOV - The player won't want to get caught by the robots. The player has a radial dial fill-up above their head that indicates if they can be seen or not. Depending on how close they are to being seen, the dial will change and get more intense the closer you are to being seen. If the player is seen by one of the robots with the dial filed all the way, the game over screen appears.

Instant Sabotage - For now, the player, has a button on their screen that says "instant" for when they are ready to sabotage. When an object is approached that can be sabotaged, the option to tamper the object will become available. Once this task is done successfully, the "instant" button will go away and a resulting particle effect will come out of the sabotaged object.

Excluded

Timer - this isn't referring to the time of day, but a timer for the sabotages. Would have been less effective in the game than instant sabotage because the player would have to wait to see what happens. Instant feedback for the player to visually see is more gratifying and straightforward.

Instant Sabotage

Instant Sabotage Button (Move to Archives)

Previous Screen Flow Mockup

Start Screen

This is our current and temporary home screen for our game. On this home screen, you must click on the button that says press enter to begin, to start a new game.

Game Over

This is our current end screen. The player will see this when they are seen by one of the robots. They will have the option to return to the base and try again or quit to the main menu.

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