Author Topic: Flying RTS concept  (Read 5077 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline Unknown Target

  • Get off my lawn!
  • 212
  • Push.Pull?
I put this together last night...I was hoping for some feedback? Would anyone be interested in something like this?
I posted on ModDB and got some pretty positive feedback.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDD0TlcZSMY

 

Offline Pred the Penguin

  • 210
  • muahahaha...
    • Minecraft
    • EaWPR
So kind of like Steambirds 'cept in 3d with AI controlled flight paths?

 

Offline Unknown Target

  • Get off my lawn!
  • 212
  • Push.Pull?
Yea, actually, quite a bit like that. :) Though I'm talking with someone now, and we're looking at an I-go, you-go turn based system, instead of the I-go, you-go, real time, repeat. In the former it'd be a bit more like chess. Which do you think would work well?

 

Offline StarSlayer

  • 211
  • Men Kaeshi Do
    • Steam
Yea, actually, quite a bit like that. :) Though I'm talking with someone now, and we're looking at an I-go, you-go turn based system, instead of the I-go, you-go, real time, repeat. In the former it'd be a bit more like chess. Which do you think would work well?

There are some tabletop systems for playing turn based dogfights.  We've used them for a couple games at work and they're pretty fun.  It might be worth taking a look at some of those rule sets to get some ideas. 
“Think lightly of yourself and deeply of the world”

 

Offline Unknown Target

  • Get off my lawn!
  • 212
  • Push.Pull?
I played Crimson Skies ages ago, that's the only one I know of; do you have any others?

 

Offline Nohiki

  • 28
  • Graf von Kaffeetrinken
    • Minecraft
    • Skype
    • Steam
Blah, turn based :(
:::ALSO PROUD VASUDAN RIGHTS SUPPORTER:::

 

Offline Unknown Target

  • Get off my lawn!
  • 212
  • Push.Pull?
Haha well with the level of micro I'm going for, I don't know if it's possible to do it another way; you're going to be giving flight maneuvers to 5 or so aircraft at a time; unless it's like Nexus: The Jupiter Incident, which was mostly just you watching ships pound away at each other and not really doing much. :\

  

Offline StarSlayer

  • 211
  • Men Kaeshi Do
    • Steam
We were using a heavily modified version of Aerodrome, I'm not the resident tabletop expert at work so I'm not quite sure what the available systems are.  I'm under the impression there are rulesets available for the various eras, WWI, WWII, the jet age.  We stayed with WWI for the games we played and it was pretty fun.
“Think lightly of yourself and deeply of the world”

 
You might want to try looking at AirWar: 1918 and AirWar: C21, but I have no experience of either.

Also there's a list on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_wargaming

BTW I'm interested in where you're going with this. :D How will shooting be handled? Will it be just down to careful maneuvering and timing on the player's part, or are you leaving that to be partly or wholly determined by a statistic or AI?

EDIT: AirWarSoc blog might be worth looking at too. Perhaps you could get some input from their Yahoo group.
« Last Edit: July 08, 2011, 03:09:15 pm by lostllama »

 

Offline Unknown Target

  • Get off my lawn!
  • 212
  • Push.Pull?
With the shooting, the easiest way off the top of my head would be to maneuver the enemy aircraft within range of a firing cone in front of your aircraft; if they're in that cone then the AI can make the minute adjustments necessary to hit the target. I want to eventually put in a pilot skill level that determines whether or not they hit, how fast they recover from unusual attitudes, etc.

 
That sounds like a good approach.

As well as giving players a "freehand" means of plotting the flightpath you could perhaps include preset maneuvers like loops, split-Ss, stall turns, etc. that can be activated when required, and perhaps modified by the player to suit the situation. You could perhaps put limits on the use of such special maneuvers by having them depend on the plane's speed, inertia, altitude, angle of attack, and other relevent factors (having such preset maneuvers might be a good way to introduce the abilities and limits of the aircraft to new players). The use of airbrakes and flaps to modify the flightpath could be another thing to implement too.
« Last Edit: July 08, 2011, 04:33:59 pm by lostllama »

 

Offline Unknown Target

  • Get off my lawn!
  • 212
  • Push.Pull?
Hey, I know there's a lot of coders on this forum...would anyone want to work on a project like this? I'd like to think of it ending up as sort of an open modding platform at the end, like Freespace. In the initial installment, I'd like to put a special emphasis on getting good physics simulation, especially fluid flow approximation. I would like to initially try accomplishing this approximation by starting with a Newtonian physics model, and then adjusting the velocity values to simulate a fluid with a variable viscosity, and a planet with variable gravity, adjustable via a user-friendly interface.

These physics would be a core of the flight dynamic simulation when controlling these aircraft from the third person.

 

Offline Davros

  • 29
I think you should look at total air war especially the startegy parts (awacs controller)

 

Offline Unknown Target

  • Get off my lawn!
  • 212
  • Push.Pull?
Sounds like an interesting addition.

So does anyone want to code or know any coders?

 

Offline BloodEagle

  • 210
  • Bleeding Paradox!
    • Steam
Before you start looking for programmers, you should probably build a fairly comprehensive design document. 

Making a game like that from scratch (assuming, since I know of no open-source/free/low-cost engines designed for something like that) is no small task.  And if you don't know how you want it to work, then you'll end up either frustrating the programmers or giving them too much influence over the final product.

-----

As for the concept itself, I saw something similar done in a 2D flash game on Kongregate, and the main problem I found with it was the jarring disconnect between planning and action.  So that's something you'll want to figure out early on.

 

Offline Flipside

  • əp!sd!l£
  • 212
One quick word of advice though, be careful how much of your ideas you share outside of development, for two reasons:

1 : If it is truly a unique and innovative idea, the less people that know about it before any kind of IP is claimed the better, there are many stories of people with good ideas being a bit too open with them and losing out in the long run thanks to less scrupulous individuals.

2 : If someone else comes up with a similar idea by sheer chance, you'll always be left with questions, like that guy in the UK who claimed George Lucas stole the idea for the Jedi off of him (despite the fact that the Jedi themselves were actually a mixture of stuff like the Knights of the Round Table, and unashamedly so).

 

Offline Unknown Target

  • Get off my lawn!
  • 212
  • Push.Pull?
I don't really have an issue with #1 so much; I've had a ton of good ideas that other people have brought to market. If someone ends up making something like this before me, eh, I can still make my thing. :) I'm not big on copyrights and secrecy of ideas; I'm operating on the idea that the more good, fun, or original ideas, the better. :)

#2: Eh, that stuff always happens. Zeppelin airship cruises? Thought of that ages ago; some company in California ended up doing it/trying to do it; though it was different from my conception.

BloodEagle; what sort of stuff should I put in a document? And what do you mean by a jarring disconnect?

I'd like to leave it as open as possible for the person doing hte coding. I want to start with the basic functionality of what I described in the video and regarding the flight dynamics in a post earlier in this thread, but I'm hoping they'll bring in some of their own ideas to fill in places where I might have been too vague.
« Last Edit: July 10, 2011, 02:43:48 am by Unknown Target »

 

Offline BloodEagle

  • 210
  • Bleeding Paradox!
    • Steam
For the document, what you put into it really depends on what kind of designer you are.  There are numerous types of design documents.  Some people like to have every last detail planned out from the start, and others like to keep things very vague.  Both methods have their strengths, and weaknesses.

Since it sounds like you're going for a proof-of-concept, and not a finished product, you don't need to plan for things like game elements and game progression.

At the least, though, you should cover:
-Razor / Focus statement(s)
-Engine considerations
-Controls
-Game Mechanics
-AI considerations

----------

As for the disconnect: You don't have direct control in that type of game.

It can get incredibly tiresome planning actions in advance, and then watching the action take place.  How long it takes for the disconnect to start grating on you depends on the ratio of planning to watching, number of possible actions, polish, and (most importantly) the audience.

I have little patience for it, myself, though I imagine most people would handle it better than I do.

 

Offline Unknown Target

  • Get off my lawn!
  • 212
  • Push.Pull?
Razor/Focus statements?

 

Offline StarSlayer

  • 211
  • Men Kaeshi Do
    • Steam
Think of it like the intro paragraph of an essay, where you layout exactly what you're going to cover in project.  I'm generalizing it heavily but it should convey the gist.  Really, if you have questions on how to put together a Design Document, I'm fairly certain there are plenty of tutorials and such on the web. 
“Think lightly of yourself and deeply of the world”