FreeOrion

I wish you luck Kurt, remember the KISS principle so you down swamp yourself with design features. I would encourage you to post your design plans on our forums when your done or nearly done with them. We are always looking for interesting and stimulating new ideas. Oh and dont get descouraged, everyone here wishes they could be the omnipotent designer of their own game!

Impaler wrote:I wish you luck Kurt, remember the KISS principle so you down swamp yourself with design features. I would encourage you to post your design plans on our forums when your done or nearly done with them. We are always looking for interesting and stimulating new ideas. Oh and dont get descouraged, everyone here wishes they could be the omnipotent designer of their own game!

Neh, not everyone... I rather like the approach we are taking here.

Daveybaby wrote:
But creating one all on your own is a silly idea. Only a complete idiot or a raving egomaniac (or maybe a combination of the two) would attempt such a thing.

Well, Mensa didn't seem to think I was a complete idiot when they sent me my membership card. "Raving egomaniac" has a certain ring to it; I've never been called that before. Interesting.

Impaler wrote:I wish you luck Kurt, remember the KISS principle so you down swamp yourself with design features. I would encourage you to post your design plans on our forums when your done or nearly done with them. We are always looking for interesting and stimulating new ideas. Oh and dont get descouraged, everyone here wishes they could be the omnipotent designer of their own game!

I agree with the KISS principle 100%! Thanks for this reminder. As for posting my ideas on these forums . . . hmmm. I have to say that I'm a little worried about that idea. If all my game's best features appear in FO, some gamers might decide not to buy my game; because they could get those features for free.

Maybe a better way would be to post some features, while leaving others alone. That way, I'd be making a contribution to the FO community, but not so much of a contribution that no one would need to buy my game!

KurtGodel7 wrote: As for posting my ideas on these forums . . . hmmm. I have to say that I'm a little worried about that idea. If all my game's best features appear in FO, some gamers might decide not to buy my game; because they could get those features for free.

Don't take it the wrong way (i don't try to offend you), but that more an dream of yours! I don't say it's impossible, but rather unlikely. At least that's my experience.

KurtGodel7 wrote:Well, Mensa didn't seem to think I was a complete idiot when they sent me my membership card. "Raving egomaniac" has a certain ring to it; I've never been called that before. Interesting.

Dont take that personally - it was an attempt at humour. Click the link in my sig and you'll see why.

I've been to your cow project website before, and I like it. I didn't realize that you were the guy putting that together. Now that I know who you are, I see the humor in your post.

I think another reason why there used to be so many new genres back in the video game heyday that was the late 80's and early 90's is because it was relatively easy for a single programmer, or a small group of programmers, to create a game on a small budget. For example: Space quest 1. It was state-of-the-art and top of the line when it was first produced. Other examples are populous or the first two Star Controls.

However as games progress they become more polished and require more time and effort in the art department as the technological limitations are lifted. Back in the late 80's you had a choice between the AD-LIB, the amiga mod console or the Roland MT-32, and your graphics were EGA if not early VGA graphics at 320 x 200.

I think a reson why we don't see as many new "genre breaking games" coming out these days is that to produce a game with all this artwork and whatnot requires more money than their earlier predecessors. So for a software company exec to decide between A: A risky Genre-breaking game that could sell well... or be a financial flop... (such as Battlezone) or B: A first person shooter that will likely bring X amount of dollars, they'll choose B.

guiguibaah wrote:I think another reason why there used to be so many new genres back in the video game heyday that was the late 80's and early 90's is because it was relatively easy for a single programmer, or a small group of programmers, to create a game on a small budget. For example: Space quest 1. It was state-of-the-art and top of the line when it was first produced. Other examples are populous or the first two Star Controls.

However as games progress they become more polished and require more time and effort in the art department as the technological limitations are lifted. Back in the late 80's you had a choice between the AD-LIB, the amiga mod console or the Roland MT-32, and your graphics were EGA if not early VGA graphics at 320 x 200.

I think a reson why we don't see as many new "genre breaking games" coming out these days is that to produce a game with all this artwork and whatnot requires more money than their earlier predecessors. So for a software company exec to decide between A: A risky Genre-breaking game that could sell well... or be a financial flop... (such as Battlezone) or B: A first person shooter that will likely bring X amount of dollars, they'll choose B.

I agree with this post. What I find discouraging is that the corporate types will look at the MoO3 project, they'll see that the team tried to do something new, and they'll see that it didn't particularly work. They might conclude that letting developers try new genres is too risky, and that they should stick to the tried-and-true three letter games (FPS, RPG, RTS).

KurtGodel7 wrote: I agree with this post. What I find discouraging is that the corporate types will look at the MoO3 project, they'll see that the team tried to do something new, and they'll see that it didn't particularly work. They might conclude that letting developers try new genres is too risky, and that they should stick to the tried-and-true three letter games (FPS, RPG, RTS).

That's not entirely true. As I know, they were cut short. The Developers planed much more and had to left imported things out.

Heh, they werent exactly cut short - they overran by more than a year but still hadnt finished half the stuff they had originally planned to implement.

noelte wrote:

KurtGodel7 wrote: I agree with this post. What I find discouraging is that the corporate types will look at the MoO3 project, they'll see that the team tried to do something new, and they'll see that it didn't particularly work. They might conclude that letting developers try new genres is too risky, and that they should stick to the tried-and-true three letter games (FPS, RPG, RTS).

That's not entirely true. As I know, they were cut short. The Developers planed much more and had to left imported things out.

I've paid close attention to the MoO3 proect. Alan Emrich talked about having rules simple enough that you could keep them in your head. But I saw someone on those discussion boards post an example of some of those rules, and they may have been the most complicated rules I've ever seen. The game, from what I understand, was becoming a Byzantine nightmare; a labyrinthine series of rules and equations almost impossible to understand. At that point, the project should have been scrapped completely, and started again from scratch. Instead, they chose to attempt to hammer away at the excess complexity; to simplify the game to the point where it would become playable.

The result was a game that still had too much complexity, yet lacked compelling features.

noelte wrote:

KurtGodel7 wrote: I agree with this post. What I find discouraging is that the corporate types will look at the MoO3 project, they'll see that the team tried to do something new, and they'll see that it didn't particularly work. They might conclude that letting developers try new genres is too risky, and that they should stick to the tried-and-true three letter games (FPS, RPG, RTS).

That's not entirely true. As I know, they were cut short. The Developers planed much more and had to left imported things out.

I've paid close attention to the MoO3 proect. Alan Emrich talked about having rules simple enough that you could keep them in your head. But I saw someone on those discussion boards post an example of some of those rules, and they may have been the most complicated rules I've ever seen. The game, from what I understand, was becoming a Byzantine nightmare; a labyrinthine series of rules and equations almost impossible to understand. At that point, the project should have been scrapped completely, and started again from scratch. Instead, after getting rid of Emrich, they chose to attempt to hammer away at the excess complexity; to simplify the game to the point where it would become playable.

The result was a game that still had too much complexity, yet lacked compelling features.

I think the Key is to make shure that every bit of Complexity in the game serves a purpose. That of alowing the player to make an INTERESTING DESISION. To be interesting a desicion needs to be clearly for some overall strategy and to be atleast moderatly influential on the course of the game. Anything that dosent support that goal is baggage.

I beleive it was either Aquitaine, Powercrazy or Geoff who said that if there is a function in the game that the player does not understand how to work it, or in what relation that function has with other gameplay values, they will consider that function to be a game bug and get frustrated.

Moo3 had quite a few of these functions. You could tweak value A and value B all you wanted, but you had no clue as to what they did in the game... the out of the blue function C would start to change but you didn't know why. That made the whole thing very frustrating.