In the last post I talked about how I created the cave in Fissure, and referred to it as an “infinite sandwich”, because it consists of two layers that extend as far as the real number system will take them. Fantastic, isn’t it? Who wouldn’t want an infinite space to play in?

The developer who has to fill it, for one.

I knew from the start that I wanted to set Fissure in a cave. (The title is kind of a giveaway.) Once I had the setting, I had to figure out what I wanted to do in it, and that’s when the problems started. An early demo featured a swarm of glowing spheres boiling out of the depths to attack the player. I toyed with that for a week and put it away, mostly because it didn’t suit my approach to gaming.

See, I like stories in games. I’m aware there’s some difference of opinion among gamers on that topic. I have nothing against non-story games, and how a game plays is often more essential than its story to get me into the moment. But if there’s no story at all, I always feel like something’s missing. I need a reason. So it’s natural that I’d want to write a game with a story.

So Fissure’s gameplay had to be story-driven. I tossed together a basic scenario. I don’t see many games that let you fly around freely in space, so I wanted that element. How to make it work with a cave? Okay, how about a cave in deep space? Good. What are you doing there? Battling monsters? Why? Are you a professional monster-fighter in deep space? What are the hours like? Do you get insurance?

I try hard not to be such a dedicated anal-retentive in my personal life. But in this game, I wanted real-world concerns to drive the story. I had to concoct something that made sense, albiet in a futuristic sci-fi world.

I came up with Sarah Singham, deep-space salvage operator, and Fissure Base, which exploded. Why? Well, that’s part of the story. Maybe that is the story. Once I had that, I returned to the project. As it was my first game, I wanted to keep the gameplay as simple as possible: fly around and collect salvage to unlock the story. Finishing the thing was more important than making it shine.

As I wrote the gameplay code, infinity kept looking over my shoulder.

It is possible to tell a story in an infinite universe. Writers do it all the time. All you have to do is draw a boundary around the story. Everything outside this line isn’t part of my story, and everything inside it is. Trouble is, every boundary I created felt artificial.

I created a wall of rock around the action, then wondered how the hell Sarah got into the cave in the first place. A teleport? If she’s got a teleport, why the hell does she have to physically go to each bit of salvage? Why can’t she just beam the stuff aboard?

I removed the wall of rock.

Inspired by Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, I tried a soft boundary—a virtual wall. Travel outside the action, and Sarah would remark, I’m going too far outside pickup range. I’d better turn back. I tested this on its own, then with a hard boundary, where you couldn’t actually travel outside the action and would just crash into empty space. Neither one really worked for me.

In the end, I went with the softest boundary of all. If you travel too far outside the action, then nothing will happen to you. Your EM dectector will tell you where you need to go. It’s your choice to go there, and it’s your choice to come back to where the action is. I suspect most players will choose to come back.

Infinity is fun to contemplate, but it’s fucking boring to play in.