Hovercraft Game

This was an early experiment in my game development journey, created while I was learning Unreal Engine 4. At the time, I wasn’t entirely sure what I wanted to build, but I spent about three months in early 2017 developing this concept.

The idea was heavily inspired by Freelancer (2000), featuring ship customization, an open world, space combat against pirates, trading, and mission-based gameplay. I also drew from Forsaken 64, particularly its 6DoF flight mechanics and immersive, hostile world design—though, unlike its striking visuals, the box art left something to be desired.

Additionally, the project incorporated elements reminiscent of The Matrix, blending hovercrafts and menacing AI with the classic late-’90s fear that intelligent machines might one day turn against us.

One of my first attempts in this project was designing an equipment UI. While I didn’t get very far, the core idea was a modular system where players could swap out parts—such as engines, power cores, and weapon pods—to modify their hovercraft’s performance. Each chassis had compatibility limitations, encouraging distinct playstyles. Additionally, weapon pods featured sub-slots for added complexity.

I built a basic drag-and-drop interface and experimented with generating a proxy version of the ship. The system would take a screenshot of the configured loadout and display it in the UI—or possibly even render it as a real-time camera feed.

In my mind the game would be open world. Large highway tunnels, populated by friendly cargo freighters, defenders, and so forth. Team Human. All traveling between the shielded strongholds of on this planet.

If we’re digging into world building, this is a desolate planet with with a deep crust full of caves, and no atmosphere (except what humans made). Deep down in the rock, is an ancient, hostile AI of unknown origin. It’s trapped down there. The planet was a prison designed to hold this AI, which was made a long time before humans arrived. When they did, they accidently triggered the defense systems, an array of autonimous weapons satellites in orbit. If anyone tries to go up to the surface and take off, they auto-fire and destroy them. So no one has been able to leave for generations, and they can’t be rescued. (A number of my storylines are build on a concept of total isolation from a larger society. Curious.)

Thankfully the AI can’t get out of its barrier, but it can send out drones. Those drones don’t do much on their own, but if they can establish relays back to they AI they become hostile. I think in one version of the plot the drones were made by humans, but taken over by the AI, so now they don’t us drone robots anymore.

I think part of the reason I chose not to pursue this project further was that it was heavily reliant on my ability to make complex and functional AI flight pathing. A thing I have no idea how to do, and probably still don’t. These floaty fellows did ok like this, but try leading them through and obstacle course and they will just run straight into a wall.

I did like the way they bobbed up and down as they moved though. That was really cool.

I think I made the right choice in setting this down, because the alternative was way beyond my scope. The issue is that I always thinking the next idea will be more manageable and it always becomes more complex.

There was something here though.

I was able to open the project files to grab a few screenshots and poke around in the code a bit. I can tell I had no idea what I was doing when I made this. Most of what is here was borrowed from tutorials that were not ideal solutions and some major misunderstanding about the best practices.

You would gather scrap metal, fight the robot drones, sell the broken bits of salvage, maybe find a good components, or weapon, you could add on to your ship in the process.

In my musing I imagined that the player could clear a passageway through the drones, and cleanse a trade route between two strongholds, allowing you to progress but also enabling npc traders to start generating on that passageway. However, if the drones where given time, they would return and start rebuilding their pylons, and little factories, until they have recovered their forces and would become hostile again. While they were still in building mode they could be ignored, but the player would have a harder time clearing them if left unchecked.

I was fairly sure I could design a system that worked with level loading that could calculated the previous population against the elapsed time since last entering that zone, and regenerate the structures based on that scale. If I had a way of contagiously passing an infected zone into a cleared one, I could have a front line and safe zones. I wanted a living world.