This article originally appeared in Dev.Mag Issue 27, released in November 2008

SpaceHack is one of two Game.Dev DreamBuildPlay 2008 entries. It eventually placed among the top 20 finalists in the competition. The following is a discourse by one of the game's two creators about the creation process and the story behind the game.

"SpaceHack is a Hack-and-Slash, Rogue-like top down shooter. In space."

I have lost count of the number of times I have uttered that phrase in the past few weeks. Add the number of permutations (like adding SHMUP or mentioning Bullet-Hell if the person I'm talking to looks like a gamer) and I'm surprised I still feel enthusiastic about the game at all. I always forget to emphasise the random generation of everything aspect…

But, hand-in-hand with most of those explanations have come the smiles of people playing our game for the first time. Exclamations of surprise, "oh cool"s at the enemy shapes the generators create, screams of triumph and defeat. All of those blend together into one simple message: People are having fun with this; they're enjoying something we feel isn't done yet, so we have to be on the right path here.

Along with that enjoyment comes the interest. People take notice when your indie game runs on an Xbox 360. They take even more notice when you drop in choice phrases like "infinitely replayable" and "randomly generated story". SpaceHack has opened a lot of doors locally, doors that I plan to keep wide open to the rest of the stuff that will emerge from Game.Dev. SpaceHack and Ultimate Quest are but the first of many. But I'm supposed to be talking about our game, so I'll reign in the big picture stuff and start again.

SpaceHack began as two things: A racing game and random ship generator for a grandiose space opera in the vein of Starcontrol 2. I'll look at the racing game first because it's the least intuitive.

At some stage late in my university career (so we're heading back to the scary days of late 2004 here, folks) I had an idea for a 2D racing game with a different control scheme: Instead of having a player steer a car via discrete full left/right and complete brake/accelerate binary key-presses (I feel that a controller's analogue options make driving games much better), why not have a player control a car's orientation on the road absolutely via the mouse? That would be an analogue turning system, providing much more control. If the player kept smoothly dragging the mouse in a direction, they'd corner accurately and responsively. If they jerked the mouse right or left quickly, the car would go into a drift and behave differently, leading to gameplay possibilities via the controls. The idea was to have angles that the car would "let go" of the road on, so drifting and spinning would be very important parts of the game.

I started prototyping the idea and quickly got a system going where the player's car would be stationary on the screen and the entire map would rotate around the car according to the motions of the mouse. I ran into issues with the car physics though and my impetus quickly ran dry. Sarcastically I added a shooting capability and a few arbitrary targets and filed the prototype away as yet another of those rainy day projects that could take some work when the inspiration to do something new was lacking. I revisited it a few times over the next few months, adding a star-field for grins and at one point spending an enjoyable few hours coding Robotech-style missiles just to see if I could.

Everyone liked the missiles. That went into the book for later.