Race Creation Guide

[Moriarty]

I would suggest that all submitted races have at least the following explanations (most of these are nabbed from 'impalers' races ):

Introduction - A nice short intro to the race.

Homeworld - Type of homeworld (planet, or sun, or asteroid, or maybe even deep space), and some gritty (get it? hehe) details about it.

A reason for leaving the home planet - An important one this. If there is no reason to leave, they wouldn't leave, and thus wouldn't be involved in the game. Excuses generally range from "xenophobic nut-cases", through to "ardent explorers".

Physical description - Make it as convoluted as you like.

Social Structure - How the little critters behave toward each other. Are they all equal, or is there a big-boss critter at the top, and a bunch of slaves that do it's bidding?

History - This allows people to get a 'feel' for the race. The deeper the better. As this is an open-source game, it has an advantage over commercial games in that a very-deep & rich history can be created with no cost (courtesy of the partipants enthusiasm).

Race Attributes - Some general ideas as to what the race is good & bad at within the game (manufacturing, research, etc). Try to keep it balanced.



Any of the race creation 'pros' have any other suggestions/tips on how to go about creating a race?

<Stickied by the Fish>

[utilae]

Fair enough.

Though are we all creating new threads now, I'd like some official person to declare that we can (I don't want to get in trouble, he he ).

[Impaler]

Thats generaly the formate i have been following, thanks for your enthusiasm. Though I feel most of the races need more history and for thouse histories to be tied into our official back story. Races generaly Fall into 2 catagories when it comes to history. Race that made first contact Before the Fall of Orion and thouse that made first contact after the fall and thus never witnessed the glory and downfall of the greatest civalization of all. If a race did whitness the Fall of Orion then their reaction to it would be a major part of their History and it would realy "set the tone" for the races relationships with and opinions of others.

[Tyreth]

Fair enough.

Though are we all creating new threads now, I'd like some official person to declare that we can (I don't want to get in trouble, he he ).

Here's the policy, still the same

http://freeorion.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=109
Edit by Ablaze: The above link is to the old policy. The new policy can be found here.

I like the template you provided moriarty, it's a good guideline - though I wouldn't necessarily encourage twisted physical descriptions

[Moriarty]

tyreth: Having read impalers physical descriptions, "twisted" is the only word i could think of

[Tyreth]

tyreth: Having read impalers physical descriptions, "twisted" is the only word i could think of

I'm refering to you saying the more twisted the better - that is not necessarily so

I'm certainly not excluding twisted races, but think that it is not necessary to encourage.

[Moriarty]

got rid of the "twisted" bit for u....

[Ablaze]

I would like to clarify a couple of points:

All the races in freeorion will be original. For instance, there will be no race of shape shifters named the Darlocks. We will also not be implementing races based on novels or television. That isn’t to say that you can’t derive inspiration from those sources, but try to be original.

You should also keep in mind that it is highly unlikely that your race will behave very differently from any other race. In all probability there will be a single tech tree that all races share and roughly the same game playing rules, so I suggest you avoid making a race of two dimensional deep space dwellers who use psychic emanations as currency. You’re certainly welcome to write any specific rules you want into a race’s description, but chances are that when it comes to implementation they will fall by the wayside.

[flameoriginal]

Have any decisions been made regarding how a race will be defined, in game-mechanical terms? If they are to be defined by a set of race abilities, have those abilities or other criteria been set in stone?

If not, would it not be better to decide on these defining criteria first before detailing races & their histories? That way, forum members can invent race-ability 'skill-sets' with interesting strategic potential, that can then be shaped & moulded into races on the forum.

I feel a bottom-up approach might save a lot of time & energy on the forum here.

I would also be nice to know that customisable races will be creatable in FreeOrion, just as in Moo2. That feature took the game to a whole new level.

F.O.

[Geoff the Medio]

Have any decisions been made regarding how a race will be defined, in game-mechanical terms?

Races are scheduled for v0.8. So not really... though I do recall some mention of races not being to radically different from eachother in terms of game mechanics. What the does / doesn't mean specifically, I'm not sure.

[flameoriginal]

Roger that.

There just seems to be a lot of activity at the Top-Down end of design by forum members, before any real bottom-up decisions have been made at bedrock level.

I'll hold out and see what happens as we approach version 8...

Other than the space-combat tactical engine, what are the other priorities right now?

[Geoff the Medio]

Other than the space-combat tactical engine, what are the other priorities right now?

This isn't really the right forum, so don't reply at length, but:

For design: the ship design system, though that depends on the ship combat system quite a bit and hasn't been discussed as much.

Otherwise: Getting v0.31 coded and released. There's a lot of UI and backend improvements that need to get done, and content to use that backend stuff needs to be written. There's also a lot of art and UI design that isn't getting the attention it needs.

[marhawkman]

Have any decisions been made regarding how a race will be defined, in game-mechanical terms?

Races are scheduled for v0.8. So not really... though I do recall some mention of races not being to radically different from eachother in terms of game mechanics. What the does / doesn't mean specifically, I'm not sure.

I think it means they don't want to have to code every single race individually. Maybe have a few bit of code that are unique to certain races, but stuff like the "alternate reality" races in Stars! would either get left for later or skipped entirely.

[SowerCleaver]

[quote]A reason for leaving the home planet - An important one this. If there is no reason to leave, they wouldn't leave, and thus wouldn't be involved in the game. Excuses generally range from "xenophobic nut-cases", through to "ardent explorers". [/quote]

I'm not sure whether there really is a specific reason for a spacefaring race to leave the home planet - why wouldn't they? They reach out to other stars because

1. they can
2. home planet cannot sustain the increasing population (however slowly it increases), its mineral resources, etc.
3. it increases the chance that their race would survive disaster (supernova, meteor collision, genocidal war)

"xenophobic nut-cases" or "ardent explorers" sound like race personality, not a reason to leave the home planet.