Archive:CisLunarFreighter/Detailed requirements analysis

An overview of major requirements: What do we and the users want from a/the game?

1. Entertainment -- should be fun.

• Hands on ship control against fairly realistic g fields is fun
• Dodging debris and asteroids is fun
• Blasting asteroids to mine for valuable ore or artifacts is fun
• Working together as a team to accomplish some giant task is fun.
• Communicating with online buddies

2. Social -- Interaction with other people via

• chat -- most mud environments allow this
• email -- useful or not?
• game consequences -- makes the game more interesting

Loads delivered begin to pile up or generate demand for missions. Player or others may undertake new missions.

3. Educational - Exposure to some science, engineering, and operations concepts

Links to applicable background reading of various levels

Internal math and reading requirements

• Math practice - Examples

Loading of feul and cargo mass vs. destination decisions in math assistance screen demonstrating use of spreadsheets in load balancing calculations with easy reference and reading showing sample problem solutions to control the center of mass. Java applet with sliders to allow easy selection for within specification loading.

MalFunction might occasionally require mission abort or manual calculations.

Misfortune (hijacked to Saturn by pirates) might require decisions about how much cargo to abandon or redistribute manually as feul.

• Reading around the web
• Use of open source tools for modding
• Software design and coding techniques