Looking for good graphics people

Talk about anything and everything related or unrelated to the FreeOrion project, especially Strategy Games.

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KurtGodel7
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Looking for good graphics people

#1 Post by KurtGodel7 »

I'm in the midst of creating a 4x space strategy game, and I need a few good graphics people. The game is intended to have as much of the discipline of MoO1 as possible, while having depth and richness not found even in MoO2.

Disicipline:
- Each planet will have slider bars instead of a MoO2-like planetary build queue.
- Ship building will be done using a global build queue to avoid having to visit each of your planets each time you upgrade a ship design.
- Spying will be less tedious than in MoO2/MoO3.

Depth and Richness:
- You will build buildings that have empire-wide effects.
- Engineering (as distinct from research). I don't want to go into too much depth here, but this will add an extra element to this game!
- Piracy. Allocate ships to steal the fruits of someone else's research treaties, engineering treaties, defensive spying treaties, and trade agreements. Indicate the desired dispersion level. High dispersion will allow you to steal more, but will leave you more vulnerable to anti-piracy efforts.
- There will be strong differences between capital ships and standard ships.
- The 16 species will be divided into four color-coded groups. While most tech items will be available to everyone, the blue tech items will be available only to the blue color-coded species; the green items only to green species, etc. Each of the four groups will have entirely different planetary preferences.

If anyone's interested in doing the artwork for the tech items, engineering items, main map, or species, please PM me or post a link to your art.

Obiwan
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#2 Post by Obiwan »

All this is happening here. Not wanting to put you off any. Just I can only afford time for one free game project, And I have trouble keeping up with this. Dont want to jump ship now thats FreeOrion is getting up out of the water and sailing along so well.

Tyreth
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#3 Post by Tyreth »

I'm not really happy with you trying to poach talent from here, but I'll leave this thread for now. This sort of thing belongs in the rant and rave forum because it is not FO related.

Your efforts may be better directed to aiding FreeOrion and making your vision into a modification of our code, rather than starting another project from scratch.

P.S. - I hate sliders :wink:

noelte
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#4 Post by noelte »

@KurtGodel7, i don't think you will have much luck to get our talent. Most people haven't that much time and fo is well on it's way. But anyway, how far has your project developed?
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KurtGodel7
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#5 Post by KurtGodel7 »

Tyreth wrote:I'm not really happy with you trying to poach talent from here, but I'll leave this thread for now. This sort of thing belongs in the rant and rave forum because it is not FO related.

Your efforts may be better directed to aiding FreeOrion and making your vision into a modification of our code, rather than starting another project from scratch.

P.S. - I hate sliders :wink:
In my mind, the biggest competitor to my game is the sense of disillusionment many gamers felt after they experienced MoO3. Any game which will give people a sense of hope for the 4x genre--including Free Orion--is good for the genre as a whole. The gamers I've talked to want more than one good 4x space strategy game, so there is room for us both.

As far as poaching talent goes, I didn't come here to ask people to break commitments they've made to Free Orion. To be honest, I don't want commitments from people in the habit of breaking them. But if someone with good alien pictures became aware of Free Orion after the decision had been made to go in a different direction, this person could contribute to my game without affecting the Free Orion project. Or maybe there have been 50 worthy concepts for alien species, and the Free Orion project group decided that only 20 different species would appear in the game.

Overall, I think it's good for the 4x genre for no one company or game to have the dominance and ubiquity of Microsoft. A variety of good 4x games will appeal to more gamers than any one game standing alone could do. Some gamers hate MoO1 while loving MoO2; others are the opposite. How could one game alone give both groups everything they want? MoO3 tried to be all things to all people, and, ah, well . . . enough said.

KurtGodel7
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#6 Post by KurtGodel7 »

noelte wrote:@KurtGodel7, i don't think you will have much luck to get our talent. Most people haven't that much time and fo is well on it's way. But anyway, how far has your project developed?
In answer to your question, there is a programmer who has created a generic engine upon which the game will run. The programmer will begin work on using the engine to run this particular game once I pass the spec to him. How far along is the spec? It's probaby between 50% - 75% complete. I'm trying to keep all the aspects of this game in my head at once; because a change in one part of the game has implications for all the rest. Once he begins coding, I don't want to have him go back and change some basic element of the game. A graphics person has agreed to do the ships and buildings, and I've already seen some good ship art from him.

noelte
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#7 Post by noelte »

You along design the game??? My experience is that you need more that just one man to do a good design. But as i understand there is nothing to see yet!?
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KurtGodel7
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#8 Post by KurtGodel7 »

noelte wrote:You along design the game??? My experience is that you need more that just one man to do a good design. But as i understand there is nothing to see yet!?
The advantage to having just one person doing the design is that nothing gets decided by consensus or committee. One unifying vision can permeate the whole.

When I read about the MoO3 design process, it sounded to me like they tried to use a committee process; and it clearly didn't work. MoO3 clearly lacks a unifying vision of any kind. FreeOrion seems to have a more disciplined approach to the design process than the MoO3 crew did; and maybe FO will turn out to be an example of how the group design process should work.

But in general I'm skeptical of the group design process's ability to produce something new. Compare the video game industry as it existed in the 1980s to the industry as it is today. Back in the 1980s, it seemed like a new genre of video games would appear practically every month. Today's video game industry is dominated by a few large categories: FPS, role playing games, sim games, and a few others. Of the genres I just mentioned, all were in existence by the mid-1990s: Sim City, Wolfenstein, some role playing game whose name I don't remember (for the Apple IIe!).

Compare this dearth of new genres in the recent years with the explosion of creative talent back in the '80s. Donkey Kong was an early running and jumping game; which led to Mario Brothers and later to Super Mario Brothers. Pac Man was a maze game. Space Invaders represents a genre of video games, as do Centipede, Vanguard, Dig Dug, Frogger, and countless others. These games were designed by very small (often solo) teams; as compared to the large teams we see today.

Maybe the reason for this is that in today's group-centric environment, it's not enough for an individual to have a creative vision. This individual must communicate this vision to the group in a compelling fashion. The vision faces fierce competition in the form of the status quo. The status quo is known, it is relatively safe, it is clearly communicated to everyone in the group in the form of existing video games which the group is already familiar with. The innovator's vision faces an uphill battle against this status quo. So uphill, in fact, that no new genre of video game has appeared since 1995 (at least, not that I'm aware of).

Obiwan
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#9 Post by Obiwan »

Space empire building games are a known genre. Nothing new there.

To my understanding the FreeOrion team arent aiming at something completely innovative and new.
Rather a good game with as many of the best bits of Moo1,2,3 and other stratagy games as can be reasonably included.

Ran Taro
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#10 Post by Ran Taro »

noelte wrote:You along design the game??? My experience is that you need more that just one man to do a good design. But as i understand there is nothing to see yet!?
Didn't they guy who made Space Empires I - IV (Aaron Hall) basically design and code the whole thing himself?

That's a pretty good game.

KurtGodel7
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#11 Post by KurtGodel7 »

Obiwan wrote:Space empire building games are a known genre. Nothing new there.

To my understanding the FreeOrion team arent aiming at something completely innovative and new.
Rather a good game with as many of the best bits of Moo1,2,3 and other stratagy games as can be reasonably included.
Fair enough. But there are two schools of thought about how to build a 4x space strategy game. One school--which I am a member of--says that you need to exclude Civ's influence from the genre. To me, MoO2 declined from MoO1 whenever it drew inspiration from Civ. Examples include the planetary micromanagement adopted from Civ's city micromanagement; the replacement of slider bars with individual person icons, and the division of said icons into farmers, workers, and scientists. Where MoO2 was at its best was when it built on what MoO1 had started. These choices include MoO2's increase of the number of allowed ship specials by a factor of 3, its race customization, its adoption of modification options for beam weapons and missles, and its increase in the number of relevant characteristics that planets had.

So my question is this: do the people designing FO have a similar anti-Civ philosophy, or is the group more of a mix between the anti-Civ school and the pro-Civ school?

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Zanzibar
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#12 Post by Zanzibar »

Probably a mix. Civ had it's good points as well as it's bad. Other TBS games also had good points and bad. Hopefully we are taking what is good about the TBS genre and refining it into a space 4x game.
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KurtGodel7
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#13 Post by KurtGodel7 »

Zanzibar wrote:Probably a mix. Civ had it's good points as well as it's bad. Other TBS games also had good points and bad. Hopefully we are taking what is good about the TBS genre and refining it into a space 4x game.
True, but one person's great feature is another person's annoyance. That's why the MoO1/MoO2 debate is as lively as it is; and that's why this market needs more than one 4x game.

Daveybaby
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#14 Post by Daveybaby »

KurtGodel7 wrote:True, but one person's great feature is another person's annoyance. That's why the MoO1/MoO2 debate is as lively as it is; and that's why this market needs more than one 4x game.
True Dat.

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.
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utilae
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#15 Post by utilae »

The advantage of making a game on your own, is that the game will be how you want it. If a group was making a game, the best decision might not necesarily be made, as the best decision in this case is always a compromise.

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