Hi after playing for a while I came to the conclusion that Gratuitous Space Battles is a really good gratuitous space battle simulator but it it is lacking in something, that is a storyline.
Now I know one of the main objectives of the game is to focus on the battles and not the story but even the gameboy advance game Advance Wars which is basically a turn based battle game had a story to go with it.
Now I don’t think a massive epic storyline with pages of text or hours of scenes is in line with this game, to me the storyline would be more like Monty python in space(wiki it if you are outside the uk for that reference). Hell read the manual its full of comedy it would be great to have a funny story to go with the game.
Now I know away to add a story to the game without adding a ton of work or doing any massive changes to the game itself and it is as follows.
Add a story to the game in the style of a comic with voice acting. No animation other than some fades and overlays.
It is basically this.
At the main menu change the battle button to Campaign.
When they click on this the missions screen comes up but change it to campaign instead of missions but keep the list of buttons for the missions.
Add more buttons for the scenes between the battles that when clicked reshow that scene.
Each scene shows a bit of the story and emplanes the battle following with hints(more like jokes) about what to expect in the battle.
At the end of the scene is a press any key to continue and when pressed you are moved to the next battle.
At the end of the battle add another button to continue with the storyline as well as statistics and go to HQ.
That’s it, simply add some comic style cut scenes between the battles.
O yea before i go on one thing to really add excitement to the game is the first time you play the battle…do not show the enemy fleet or any spacial conditions till it has been played once before. Still show the pilot limit and cost total though. This adds excitement to playing for the first time as you do not know what to expect but after you have seen the battle and any conditions of the battle field they can be shown later on.
Now for those that does not think still screens with voice overs would work well do the following go to youtube.com/user/Omahdon#p/u this is youtube channel of a fan made adoption of some of the vgcats comics look at some of the most recent ones and see the quality of the voice overs and how they made still comics into movies this is what I mean by the cut scenes.
Whoo that was long but hopefully worth it.
I hope the idea is considered as I think with a bit of work a great and funny story can be added to the game btw I do know this is a one man team and you have limited time to make the game never mind add an entirely new part of the game but you should consider commissioning an artist and people to do the voice over, hell think of commissioning the guy who does vg cats to do the senes for you in his style I mean he is a web comic author they will do anything for money…anything O_o
I still have a few more ideas on how to get this to work and ill post them if your interested but otherwise thanks for reading this idea.
Heh anyhow keep up the good work
-Jayson