Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: WS-Thunder on June 02, 2002, 07:29:05 pm
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Ok, Sonic Storm Productions seems to have a lack of members and interest in it's projects. I would like to figure out what would attract more people to help out with projects other than money. I can't pay members at the time. This is mostly a modding and level design team at the moment for variouse games. However, we are interested in possibly developing a completely new title eventually and we will offer royalties if it sells.
So to start off, I need to know what would interest people. What kind of games would people like to see? They can't be a sequal to another game. What aspects and parts of the game would you like to see most? Multiplayer or singleplayer?
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One word: Privateer
(online multiplayer stuff like freelancer too)
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Now you KNOW you're not gonna get any single best answer, yeah?
Hyperrealistic strats with a degree of moddability. See E2150/TMP and Homeworld.
That or a nice, powerful fighter/strat engine with lots of detailing in controls and options.
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Ooh!!! I wrote down a bunch of ideas I had for next-gen RTS features while I was in army reserves - lemme find them. :)
I had been bugged by the lack of realism in the unit capabilities of many modern and semi-modern RTS titles all around the board. As an example, in your typical RTS, the basic infantry unit, a machine gunner, has his machine gun and that's it. But in reality, as a basic infantry soldier I would carry around not only my gun, but 3-4 granades as well. The whole C&C concept of a "grenadier" is flawed.
Same thing with tanks - all tanks have at the very least a main cannon and a machine gun for soft targets. I have yet to see that implemented in any RTS - tanks are in general ineffective against infantry: WTF?
Ok, I'm gonna go hunt up my notes. :D
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Originally posted by sandwich
I had been bugged by the lack of realism in the unit capabilities of many modern and semi-modern RTS titles all around the board. As an example, in your typical RTS, the basic infantry unit, a machine gunner, has his machine gun and that's it. But in reality, as a basic infantry soldier I would carry around not only my gun, but 3-4 granades as well. The whole C&C concept of a "grenadier" is flawed.
Amen, but with that you'd need the AI code to make use of it - perhaps settings for each infantry unit/man saying "close combat", "long range" and so on so that the infantry/unit man in question will utilise the best weapon available for the role you set for him/them. Setting each individual man with one primary and one secondary weapon would be annoying to say the least - they should have intelligence enough to do that themselves... same as tanks - they should use cannon for static/armor units and guns for infanty/soft targets...
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Well you do get troops with MM-1s. Still want i want to see is a single player RPG where you can do all the things they do in MMORPGs.
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Rainbow 6: Raven Sheild
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you can actually do the whole close/long range thing w/ c&c tib sun. I found a proggy called 'sun edit' that I used to make new units, and I added the disk thrower weapon with a shorter range to the basic infantry man. It was actually quite cool.
Anyways, my addition to a next-gen RTS would be a scripting language that you could apply to a group of units. Similar coding to c/c++. I really wish for that...
scripting language might look like this:
if(current_unit->weapon.type == versitile)
{
move_unit(group_center - 5, group_center);
}
that would be to tell the versitile units to go to the x-5 of the group.
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RTS is a good route to go down, and make sure players can make their own in depth missions, look at how long freespace has lasted due to FRED.
If you are making a RTS, then make sure it has fast pace, shouldnt feel too easy, and has good atmosphere, ie. has a lot of background info about how you got to where you are now, how the war started etc, it allows players to find more depth in the game.
pete
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I want a PC port of Escape Velocity. LOTS of people want this.
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EV? Oh, Bob no.
At least, not unless something was done so that you didn't have to spend about five hours flying a little shuttle freighter around so that you could play the five hours of actual plot, and then be left with nothing to do but trade more Medical Supplies, raid more transports, and conquer a few dozen planets for kicks. Could be a great game, if you didn't run out of things to do almost instantly.
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'Course, RTS might not be the best way to go, because if you do one, the only way to really make it interesting IS to spend a lot of time making it detailed and hyperrealistic. You'll never attract the Westwood crowd, and you'll never be able to make a fancy enough engine in time to pick up the special-effects nuts, so you'll have to be spending a lot of time making things as advanced as possible, to go for that relatively small market who digs things like I-War and E2150.
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Bah - I can't find my naote - I recently cleaned my room, and now I can't find anything...
Anyways, here's a few of the ideas that I remembered, mainly centered around improvements to the various units:
Infantry: as I said before, they should be more versatile than depicted in RTS games - think along the lines of what you do as an infantry in C&C Renegade multiplayer, with the multiple weapons, etc.
Also, institute a command structure. Not sure how drastically it would affect gameplay, but something like being able to assign X amount of soldiers to a sgt/lt/captain/whatever. Said group X would by default have a balanced mix of standard infantry, snipers, anti-tank patrols, etc. Perhaps even a single construction order (one button click) would automatically begin cronstruction/training such a group. Orders would be given to the commander, who would lead his men.
Grenades and infatry-portable machine guns should not be able to damage any tank or vehicle of equivalent armor, period. The only infantry-operatable weapons that have any affect on tanks today are certain types of grenade launcher ammunition, bazookas/RPGs and AT mines.
As I said before, tanks are far more effective against infantry than they are made out to be in games. Your standard MBT usually has a main cannon, parallel heavy or medium machine gun, one or two independant medium machine guns, 60mm mortar, and smoke/phosphor grenade launcher thingys. No amount of assaault-rifle-equipped infantry is going to do anything more than scratch the paint on an MBT.
APC's are usually fairly accurate, although the M-113's firepower is quite larger than usually depicted, with a HMG and 2 MMG's as standard.
Artillery...hehehe. Have your heard of the US Army's latest development, the Crusader (http://www.army-technology.com/projects/crusader/)? Basically, it fires rounds via computer control at a single target in successively shallower angles, which causes them all to land more or less simultaneously. Basicallt, the barrage firepower of an artillery battery from a single barrel.
All armoured vehicles should have (at least) 2 different modes: one with hatches closed, and another with them open. With them closed, the crew is fully protected from non-AT fire. but cannot operate some of the weaponry from the inside. With hatches open, the vehicle can bring its full firepower to bear, but the crew is more vulnerable.
Accuracy - it should be based not only on the weapon beinf fired, but on the range and target type as well. For example, a tank shell can easily hit a stationary tank from kilometers away, but a humn target would be another matter entirely, due to the aiming mechanisim. Artillery would be much more accurate against buildings than vehicles. And infantry should have a very significant accuracy change as range to target closes.
That's all I can think of at 4am without going into too much detail... hopefully more to come. :)
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In Sid Meier's Civil War games (look what I did!) (http://www.3dap.com/hlp/hosted/ntv/images/victory.jpg) I know they use basic military structure at the time - An army might have 3 divisions, a division might have 3 or 5 brigades, a brigade might have 2-6 regiments of anywhere between 90 and 700 men.
You can move the brigades around with their brigade commanders, or you can move them independently. All the commanders effect the skill and morale of their troops, as well.
Unfortunately, the game's interface is pretty cumbersome, but it has some neat concepts.
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I like games without any linear plot and missions. Games where you can go freelance; where you can explore, trade and kill at your own convenience.
One of the best games I have ever played (belive it or not) is a freeware game named Noctis, where you can explore a entire galaxy at will, and go to any of over 30,000,000,000+ stars, all with planets you can land on and explore.
The fact that you can also send in your contribution to the weekly starmap also aids in creating the best space-exploration game ever.
Freelance-games are the best. Period.:nod:
Stargazer.
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Alliegence mixed with Privateer and make it a mmpog.
So you can travel right across a sector visiting hundreds of different outposts and raiding ships then you can use tachyon gates to get to other sectors. The gate network could be used to gradually expand the game. Give it some Tachyon style teams that you could join (IE enlist in the army or a trader guild or both). Some alien races to be part of and have a few game admins controlling each race, then mods (and sufficiently ranked players) controlling fleet and guild missions/orders with a different, RTS interface (like Alliegence tried to do). That way you'd have hundreds of real pilots under your command who could disobey you, sell secrets and turn renegade at any moment as well as having to worry about rogue commanders playing bounty hunter with their renegade fleet of destroyers.
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Originally posted by an0n
Some alien races to be part of and have a few game admins controlling each race, then mods (and sufficiently ranked players) controlling fleet and guild missions/orders with a different, RTS interface (like Alliegence tried to do). That way you'd have hundreds of real pilots under your command who could disobey you, sell secrets and turn renegade at any moment as well as having to worry about rogue commanders playing bounty hunter with their renegade fleet of destroyers.
Now that I like! :yes2: :yes:
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Aw, geez. Massively multiplayer games? What's the attraction of playing against a few hundred punk kids who do almost nothing but spout message phrases like "I is ein l33t haXor, U suk!", get all their 700 loser friends online to team up on any lone gamers, and rush? Multiplayer's one thing- sure beats any AI, and you can sorta pick and chose your opponents, but massively multiplayer games end up sucking after the first week, when the game versions of the trolls find it.
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Yeah that's why you'd have a nice admin faction that could patrol the space-ways and beat the living **** out of any punk-ass troll gangs. Or you just charge $0.50 a month and the rejects would be too lazy to go through the payment process.
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That could work but keep in mind that the admin would have to keep a set of rules for themselves/be completely objective/role play really well to make it work as a good fun game for everyone else. The minute they abuse the rules, power-game or anything else it begins to turn sour since others come/go because of whats happening and it all turns a little bad. Especially if the admin have friends who join up and use the admin for favours or whatever... that destroys games in my experience.
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You just restrict the uber-admin fleets to unclaimed systems and don't let them build more ships. That way, troll groups would become cornered in occupied systems and be crushed by other factions. They might even have to organize and become an integral part of the universe. And by the time all the admin ships had been wiped out, other factions would be of sufficient size and power to deal with troll threats.
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The main reason I don't like MMORPGs is the monthly-pay thing; if they can find a way to keep things running without constantly charging people, it may not be such a bad idea.
I personally really like games that can be classified as "cross-genre," sort of like Battlezone, Deus Ex and a few others. There are not too many of those out there. ;)
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Yeah, I really like Alliegence and Jumpgate was a nice way to waste a few hours but there's no way I'm paying $10-$20 a month to play an online game. But charging some crappy fee like $1 a month means that it keeps out all the pirated-copy, waste of space, riff-raff while getting some income with which to maintain and improve the game and it's servers.
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Thanks for all the input. Keep it comeing though. Thanks to you guys and some info a friend sent me, we (might have something going), we are currently going to be checking into it. Massivly multiplayer games and sci-fi games is probably most likely the area were heading into. We may develope something else when we get professional in say five or six years. Right now, were looking for feasable ideas. The easiest game is probably a multiplayer game where people make the choices and keep the storyline alive. We have even canceled two older projects for these ones and we have taken off the release date we had on the Wraith Trilogy: Phantom Spectre'.
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Charging rent on a game is a bad trip, and you sure as hell won't get any fans that way. The trolls won't pay for it, but neither will anyone else. That, and it's not the best format for strategy- excellent for shooters or something like EV (which actually synthesized characters to keep it interesting, though it had no MP), but no good if you wanna think or do anything complicated, because you'll simply get obliterated by the first twit you run across, who'll realize that if you build 5000000000000000000000 of the second most powerful unit, you can almost always win. Which means that anyone who hopes to stand a chance in the game will start doing that, too, and soon nobody's having fun, they're just holding mouse-clicking contests. I can think of specific examples of this, but I'm sure you can supply your own if you play strats so it's unnecessary. It's too bad, really, because AIs almost invariably suck in strats, so you're really left with no way to play the game.
Actually, a MM Escape Velocity-type game (with some significant improvements) could be quite good. I know I'd buy it, and that's saying something.
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Originally posted by WS-Thunder
We have even canceled two older projects for these ones and we have taken off the release date we had on the Wraith Trilogy: Phantom Spectre'.
This is a good thing? :wtf: :nervous:
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Actually, it should be a good thing. Why?
Reasons for canceling or postponeing older projects...
1. Two were constructed for Descent 3. The Descent 3 community is full of people who hate change. Every attempted mod from any other group includeing one of my former projects was rejected. Orbital Designe Studios was also trying to develope Descent 4 that failed because of legal issues with Volition and Outrage. The whole community spent several weeks bashing Orbital in the forums because of something they had NO control over. They were constructing the game not expecting to make a dime, yet they were bashed. I see no reason to waste my preciouse time on something that will be bashed no matter how hard I work. I don't owe the Descent 3 community anything.
2. Wraith Trilogy has been ignored by the Freespace community so I can't gain any new members. Everyone is either not interested or too buisy with other projects. Fulgrymm and I are the only ones currently working on it.
3. We are looking more at becomeing a seriouse game company. Not just a mod and level design team. We need to make way for things that will improve our possible company.
As for chargeing money for multipayer. This is one of the major issues we will be looking into Stryke. I hate it when I walk into a store, see a game and begin to drool, and take it home to discover that it is multiplayer only and it charges $10.00 a month after I spent $60 on the game. I hope to find a free service to go through.
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Hrmm... Thunder maybe you and I should talk on ICQ, I've had experience with Crytek Studios and some actual game developing.
I have been trying to work on a next-gen space sim project for quite some time, but between what Crytek wanted and never finding the resources to do it myself...
Well I'll want to talk. (Shrike knows probably what I'm talkin' about *cough Republic* )
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Hey Ace, well being that there aren't any final decisions yet, sure. :) My icq is: 109559293
I show up under another alias on icq but I am the same:)
We are only starting at the moment, but hopefully we can draw more people in once we get something good going.
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I have done alot of research into game design, and would be happy to help you guys, and not want anything in return except for the product itself.
Oh, just to show you guys a really 1337 methoud of creating a MMORTS is shattered galaxy. I am currently addicted to this game, and am trying to figure out how it all works by watching it verrry closely...
www.sgalaxy.com
heres the url, just make a free trial char and goof around with it, it is excelent excecution of the concept, but there are alot of flaws that could be fixed better. One of the big complaints is that Nexon ignores the players, so it would be rather easy to come in and grab the market. I know that there are at least 1,000 people on.
My only complaint about it is its charge. They charge 9.95 USD a month, and I think it should be 5 USD because of the game quality.
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Hell, I get something I can put on my rather (extremely) spotty resume, I don't even need the end result!:D
Yeah, right. Anyway- another thing to think of is the fact that the whole "massively multiplayer" thing is saturated by hugeass companies with hugeass dev budgets. I mean, you'd have trouble enough coming up with a main server for the thing, forget one that can handle the stresses most of these games get, and as the latest temporary fad you'll probably get (at best) bought out, and at worst just not make any money at all.
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Good point Stryke.
I had been contimplateing this very thought myself. One thing I was thinking about is the fact that many people play games such as Quake 3. They are intirely based on multiplayer. My thought is this, take the Quake 3 engine and develope a flying-shooter style game with it. Then, we set it up with an ip search like most games have. Then, we have another mode. You could select to have some sort of programmed tag on your IP address. Then when you do a regular search, open games with IP tags on them would show up while others didn't. We could also possibly program the game so that the IP would remain hidden to the other players. This is just an idea. I'm not sure if it would work or not. I figured I would discuss this with other members of the team when I get a team
By the way, Ace, you still need to contact me! :P