[WS-Thunder]

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?

[an0n]

One word: Privateer

(online multiplayer stuff like freelancer too)

[Stryke 9]

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.

[Sandwich]

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.

[Fineus]

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...

[Zeronet]

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.

[CODEDOG ND]

Rainbow 6:  Raven Sheild

[Anaz]

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:

Code: [Select]


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.

[beatspete]

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

[ZylonBane]

I want a PC port of Escape Velocity. LOTS of people want this.

[Stryke 9]

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.

[Stryke 9]

'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.

[Sandwich]

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? 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.

[Alikchi]

In Sid Meier's Civil War games (look what I did!) 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.

[Stargazer_2098]

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.


Stargazer.

[an0n]

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.

[Sandwich]

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!

[Stryke 9]

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.

[an0n]

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.

[Fineus]

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.