View Full Version : Game Ideas Wanted: Isocity
ShadowMaster
18-11-2010, 03:41 PM
Here is a post one of my team members wrote, unfortunately, he can't start threads yet so I'm posting it for him:
Yes, yet another indie game dev thread - consider yourselves warned.
This may seem like a tl;dr so we would be most grateful if you manage
to make it through the storm of words and so much as signal that you
have done so - responses are an added bonus in this sense ;]
Before I describe the game itself, allow me to make clear my reasons
for posting: we are looking for feedback and ideas on the game only.
With the greatest care allow me to explain that we probably understand
the difficulty of starting a project, how so many fail initially,
that over-ambition is a killer and so on. That which we don't yet, we
will learn the hard way :P
Now onto the game, for those familiar with the Sierra series of city
building type games, I needn't say much more. For those not, you
really ought to be: Zeus, Poseidon, Pharaoh, Emperor Rise of the
Middle Kingdom and friends. The basic notion is that you are put in
charge of developing a city. However, this must not be confused with
the Sim City-esque genre of games where your role is more akin to
mayor. Here, you're the grand architect, responsible for placing
houses, stockpiles, farms, trade and so on and simultaneously given
control over what type of produce your farms, well, produce in which
seasons, where your wealthy live, how much and what it is you export
and import and so on. Along with these fine- grained control
mechanisms, you are provided with the standard set of interactional
capabilities: tax, water and so on. To preempt the inevitable,
however, we have stipulated a little test for all these mechanisms: If
something is complex or difficult to manipulate effectively, it should
not hamper initial playthroughs or make impossible a fun experience.
That is, if something is complicated, it must be non-essential to core
game-play.
In lieu of the above, we intend to introduce (in a relative sense)
some kind of deity system that imposes certain demands on the player
(such as temples, sacrifices, production quotas and so on) with
rewards and or punishments as appropriate. However, due to the fact
that we have yet to choose a theme for the game (hint hint), this
may be replaced by nobles, shaman, nosy neighbours or any other
system that allows for the same challenge-reward-punishment cycle in
general. Such systems will also feature more predominantly in the
late game, to avoid the possibility of a zero-player game arising.
This, as you might imagine, is a topic of great concern, that is, we
need some kind of way to make the late game continually challenging
and interesting - aside from the above simple cycle, and natural
disasters and other seemingly random and apparently obstructive
events.
At this point, you would be forgiven for thinking that we only have
the vaguest of notions as to what would be included in this game.
However, the ground work has very much been lain by superb titles in
this genre already and it is a simple matter to replicate their
mechanics. This is not of interest, what is under consideration at
the moment are those 'special touches' that the game will have in
order to make it unique and fun in its own right - as opposed to being
fun simply by virtue of it belonging to a fun genre or some such.
To this end, we are toying with the following ideas: allowing players
to manage multiple cities simultaneously, implementing a world map and
adding a risk-like meta-game, natural disasters that really are,
irrigation hoo-haa systems with floodgates and pumps for the farms,
and armies. The army facet in particular is a difficult one to
integrate. Our concern is that it will distract from the core of
game-play and, as such, we have opted for a minimalistic
implementation. There will be only some small number of fundamental
unit types (shock, range, cavalry spring to mind). As for their use,
we have narrowed down the possibilities to the following three general
concepts: Give the player control over what the army ought to target
in an opposing city/defend in their home city (mills, farms, houses
&c), Give the player even less control by simply allowing them to
control the military presence (attack, defend, besiege, relieve,
patrol), give the player nearly no control at all - simply point an
army at a city and press "GO".
As far as implementation specific details go, we will be doing this
whole project in the wonderful language of love I mean Lua. We
are, however, going to be using the power of love for rendering, and
back-end stuff (the 2D engine). Note here that, while typing this, I
had to exercise extreme physical restraint to prevent filling this
post with terrible puns on love.
We're a fairly reasonable bunch, us devvers, so we immediately
realised that 3D was out, and for that matter, so was shiny 2D. In
fact, we opted for an isometric game with nice 'n chunky pixel art
instead. Completely unrelated to this design ... should we say choice,
the tentative name for this project is:
Isocity - coming to a city isometrically similar to yours
To give you a better idea of the type of graphics we are aiming for consider:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/71/Pixelart-tv-iso-2.png
Basically crisp isometric art, since it's easy to create and looks good.
Anyhow, thanks in advance for any help.
FyreWolfe
19-11-2010, 10:07 AM
Cool! I just love playing those games. Have you ever played the Ceasar series of games? I've been playing since the very first one.
Here is a theme idea.
A Space City!
Expand your colony and fight with other colonies and aliens and such. Mine moons and asteroids and space junk and stuff... Should make for an interesting and hopefully unique experience.
dislekcia
19-11-2010, 01:23 PM
I really don't understand what the OP is about. Are you working on this personally Shadowmaster, or are you re-posting a request from somewhere else? Is this a request for ideas for settings to play in?
BlackShipsFillt
19-11-2010, 04:34 PM
I think these games usually get sold more on the theme of the game than the mechanics... So while I like the idea of multiple cities and armies a lot, as you said, these are difficult to develop mechanics and will either detract from the core of the game or add a lot of time to your development.
The biggest problem with the army/diplomacy thing is that, while all the other mechanics in these games involve a lot of clever simulation, the army/diplomacy decisions usually have very predictable effects... If you do include military options don't forget to simulate ALL the other nations, their attitudes towards you, the long term effects of war (both economical and diplomatic), the positive effects of military jobs, the psychological effects, the effects of the trade in military supplies etc.
I would suggest focus on the theme and mechanics that make the theme interesting. If it is a war-city sim then focus on that, however if it is a tropical island sim focus on the island.
My suggestion for theme would be: Alien Overlords. Take control of a population of puny humans, make them build stuff to earn prestige, and fatten them up to feeed your spawnlings. Attract other aliens to settle (and enrich you) with your bountiful supply of healthy human minions. Suppress uprisings, mind control via advertising, earn space monies through victories in death sports, McBurger feeding frenzies, that kind of thing. Win the humans over with your benevolentness, control their minds with propaganda, or crush them with your clenched alien claw.
That's a theme that appeals to me, it's not very mainstream.
I too like space cities, I think there are Space City sims available, but there is always room for innovation (and fighting other colonies would be awesome if you can pull off some army/military simulation)
ShadowMaster
20-11-2010, 01:43 AM
I really don't understand what the OP is about. Are you working on this personally Shadowmaster, or are you re-posting a request from somewhere else? Is this a request for ideas for settings to play in?
Sorry, I should have been more clear. Basically we are a team of 3 people: me, Hiato and Balkrah.
And we posted this thread to get ideas, like features you always wish Sierra city builders had (i.e. set walker path) or other general ideas. But mostly we posted this to get ideas for themes to focus our thoughts on mechanisms and such.
With regard to the space theme suggestions, thanks. I already have a few interesting ideas and I'll talk to other members of the team to see what ideas they have. Then, hopefully, at the latest by Sunday I'll post them to see what you think and if you have suggestions for refinements.
read this 4 times before cropping my suggestions to something coherent. Ok, so I just want to begin saying that I loved Pharoah, and the related titles but what really stood out was the lack of multiplayer. Just on the thought of armies it would add great replayability if you had a multiplayer mode, where battles could be automated but you aimed to be the first to get to some strength, that would complete the game for me. Other than that, it all will come down to balance, if you balance well it will all fall into place if you ask me.
BlackShipsFillt
20-11-2010, 10:06 PM
Are your cities intended to look like eBoy illustrations then... seems that's the direction you're pushing it :http://www.wreckom.org/blog/wp-content/pics/eboy01.gif
EyeBall
20-11-2010, 11:01 PM
imo isometric is to simple for any standard desktop computer so I am suggesting to make it a cell phone game, you can get android stuff to make it if you want.
imo isometric is to simple for any standard desktop computer
FarmVille?
FrontierVille?
Many other computer games that are still loved today are isometric...
BlackShipsFillt
21-11-2010, 05:36 PM
But isometric pixel-art is a fairly tough medium to pull off in 2010... The average person is going to be fairly well aquainted with it because of all the eBoy's and the farmvilles. Basically your game has to look at least as good/detailed as farmville or have a very unique twist on retro (like what minecraft did), or you may as well not bother because it is going to appear like a poor knockoff.
From my experience I would say that isometric pixel art is not at all "easy", it is much much more unforgiving than most other styles (because it has to be pixel perfect), but it can be supremely awesome when done right.
ShadowMaster
21-11-2010, 08:15 PM
So, as promised, some ideas we came up with in regards to putting the genre in space:
Firstly, we now have better computers, so we can have bigger maps.
Transport management is important in the city builder series. So a possibility is warp bays, which are basically 2 warehouses with mirrored contents that can be some distance apart. We can also possibly have different road quality levels with differing carrying capacities.
Since this is based in space there will be spaceships flying through the (for the lack of a better word) "air". They will need management in order to prevent collisions. A low tier solution is to build "air" control towers which manage ships, but as you grow the towers could get overwhelmed, meaning ships will either slow down or crash. Another way you could control ships is by designating one ways, no fly zones etc. However, this difficult approach could likely only be needed in resource collection areas. Additionally craft could reduce desirability of areas.
Force fields to contain an artificial atmosphere. If people are not under a force field then they will have to wear space suits (or not go out at all), so to deter not placing force fields, we can give a speed penalty to spacesuits (possibly a time and thus distance limit too) making walkers with space suits walk more slowly. However, if a force field falls, the people without space suits under it die and if they were carrying resources those get lost too. So people may not initially trust your abilities to keep the shields up and thus will continue wearing space suits (now without the time limit, but still limited speed). Over time, people's confidence can increase and only people who need a suit will wear one. Some interesting things you can build include suiting stations (for people who need to cross from a shielded area into space) so they can wear a suit only part of the way, air refill stations to replenish suit capacity. But we also need some mechanism to deter force fields possibly some expensive resource and I'm not so sure what to do about that. You could also possibly have a system where oxygen erodes buildings, which requires some type of upkeep.
Research, you could need to build wealthy academies which will attract students, profs and researchers to your colony. They can then perform research for special structures, abilities, mechanisms, etc. The researchers and so on form part of your nobles, so they'll have special requirements which you'll need to attract them. Additionally, you could need academies to train scientists needed to run certain buildings.
Power generation, there could be various ways to generate power for force fields, etc. It could depend on some type of phenomena (eg. solar flares -> flux plants, not all colonies have stars with large flares, those that do are pummelled by radiation and suffer temperature swings, which would put a strain on force fields). You could also have non-renewable power sources which need to extracted/mined/traded.
Additionally some buildings(and higher level dwellings) could require power/water, which will need some type of infrastructure, this could be like Ceaser III's water distribution.
Resource collection in general, for example: melt ice to get water, collide elements into heavier metals or other local things a colony could choose to exploit. This can then be used for trade.
Politics, you can join alliances/unions or just become trade partners with other colonies. This can have benefits like protection, tourism. Some alliances and unions could have certain restrictions and laws (eg ban stemcell research) and if you fail to adhere to them there might be consequences like fines, sanctions, being expelled or even being attacked. If you become powerful enough you could possibly start your own alliance.
On to deities in space, in order to keep people restful you could require some communication facilities so people can speak to relatives on other colonies. Other than that maybe an immortal space lizard you have to appease?
Space pirates. The smaller you are the less they are interested in you, but the more prosperous you become the more likely they are to attack, lay siege, block trade routes, jam communications (which means people can't talk to families, you can't talk to allies, etc) and so on. This could provide more fun (http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/Fun) in the late game as you'll have to keep your city attractive and functioning to keep your population up, but you'll also have to defend against the pirates.
On the note of graphics. We are indeed aiming for an eBoy style, since odds are I'm going to end up doing the graphics and it seems like the only thing I'll be able to muster. But if we develop far enough we could try to get a dedicated artist.
EyeBall
22-11-2010, 09:11 PM
Edg3, seroiusly, those games dont use the full potential of any standard computer.
About thinking 2D is easyer than 3D:
10-17 yeas ago I used to do "per-pixel" art, and its way more difficult and takes longer than modelling, for example the animation and set creation takes "alot" longer!!.
you tend to think if the output is 2D its simple to create, thats not the way it is in practice.
This is comming from experience not observation, at this point I think its better that you dont end up shooting yourself in the foot and getting a poor result.
****Remember, todays 3D engines come packed with alot of time saving extra features that are impossible in 2D!!!
In fact, more recent 2D games used rendered 3D models and animations!
3D is for f-in sure more difficult for the processor!, but your not a computer!
Edg3, seroiusly, those games dont use the full potential of any standard computer.
About thinking 2D is easyer than 3D:
10-17 yeas ago I used to do "per-pixel" art, and its way more difficult and takes longer than modelling, for example the animation and set creation takes "alot" longer!!.
you tend to think if the output is 2D its simple to create, thats not the way it is in practice.
This is comming from experience not observation, at this point I think its better that you dont end up shooting yourself in the foot and getting a poor result.
****Remember, todays 3D engines come packed with alot of time saving extra features that are impossible in 2D!!!
In fact, more recent 2D games used rendered 3D models and animations!
3D is for f-in sure more difficult for the processor!, but your not a computer!
Anyone else completely lost here???
So, as promised, some ideas we came up with in regards to putting the genre in space:
[LIST]
Force fields to contain an artificial atmosphere. If people are not under a force field then they will have to wear space suits (or not go out at all), so to deter not placing force fields, we can give a speed penalty to spacesuits (possibly a time and thus distance limit too) making walkers with space suits walk more slowly. However, if a force field falls, the people without space suits under it die and if they were carrying resources those get lost too. So people may not initially trust your abilities to keep the shields up and thus will continue wearing space suits (now without the time limit, but still limited speed). Over time, people's confidence can increase and only people who need a suit will wear one. Some interesting things you can build include suiting stations (for people who need to cross from a shielded area into space) so they can wear a suit only part of the way, air refill stations to replenish suit capacity. But we also need some mechanism to deter force fields possibly some expensive resource and I'm not so sure what to do about that. You could also possibly have a system where oxygen erodes buildings, which requires some type of upkeep.
Power generation, there could be various ways to generate power for force fields, etc. It could depend on some type of phenomena (eg. solar flares -> flux plants, not all colonies have stars with large flares, those that do are pummelled by radiation and suffer temperature swings, which would put a strain on force fields). You could also have non-renewable power sources which need to extracted/mined/traded.
Additionally some buildings(and higher level dwellings) could require power/water, which will need some type of infrastructure, this could be like Ceaser III's water distribution.
I thought a bit longer on this post then I did the first, but I promised you I would post soon, so here goes. For me it makes logical sense for the first two items to be linked. In my mind force-fields are a luxury, so they shouldnt have too many large impacts on the player when they are placed (ie. there can be no random failures of the dome). Essentially (by todays physics) the dome would be some sort of plasma force field (Im just assuming that you are following the usual or at least theoretically obtainable mechanics for the game) which would then require a large amount of power to maintain, and an equally large amount for it to repair itself over time, so when a natural disaster occurs (next paragraph I will explain in more detail) you can either put on an alert to get people to wear their suits, or you can hope the force field holds against whatever is happening. The next thing with using plasma is that you can have it destroy unwanted objects up to a certain size, which once again ties into the natural disasters, but then for bigger objects you can look at say a "missile defence" system, where you upgrade your force field to have a missile installment to take out bigger objects.
The next thing, which I will just touch on is natural disasters, essentially the games you were talking about as your examples had natural disasters but (unless I missed it) you havent said you are going to have any? But I dont see why not! In Pharoah it was in Egypt, so you had drought, plagues (of illness), locust swarms, all designed to make the player have to work at their civilisation, the same could be applied to space where you have years where your magma generators cant get enough magma from a planet core to power the city alone, or where one or more of your inhabitants gets a common cold (which in space is deadly, dum dum duuuuum) and it starts an epidemic, or finally what ties into the previous paragraph having meteor showers. Sometimes small ones that are insignificant and the fields can destroy the meteors, other times ones that can punch holes in the fields. This makes the force fields necesary as even a small meteor can kill a person, but they arent the most secure system of defence (and they arent truly a defence for that matter), so you have to check your forecast and decide whether or not you want them. Now you will note I said you check your forecast, it is a commonly known fact that some people devote their time to gazing into deep dark space, so I think if you want to know what meteor showers are headed your way, you can have up to a years warning that there is a small/big shower on the way, then you can plan accordingly.
Now my suggestions on what I read were based partly on gut feel, and partly on keeping up with the previous games that were along this vein. You dont have to include anything I say, except for one thing, dont punish the player too much for the force fields if they dont give that much of a reward.
tl;dr? Dont punish the player too much.
Edg3, seroiusly, those games dont use the full potential of any standard computer.
About thinking 2D is easyer than 3D:
10-17 yeas ago I used to do "per-pixel" art, and its way more difficult and takes longer than modelling, for example the animation and set creation takes "alot" longer!!.
you tend to think if the output is 2D its simple to create, thats not the way it is in practice.
This is comming from experience not observation, at this point I think its better that you dont end up shooting yourself in the foot and getting a poor result.
****Remember, todays 3D engines come packed with alot of time saving extra features that are impossible in 2D!!!
In fact, more recent 2D games used rendered 3D models and animations!
3D is for f-in sure more difficult for the processor!, but your not a computer!
Granted, I was just pointing out that these days (like in the past), people dont sell games on graphics alone, or simplicity thereof (think Minecraft aswell as the others I posted), but rather a fun mechanic, and ShadowMaster I know if very thorough in design and implementation (which I know from working with him before) so even if the art turns out to be terrible, it can be replaced.
2D art can take as much time as 3D art, but from a game engine perspective it is usually a lot easier to do 2D then it is for 3D (this I know from practice), in a 2D world I can build things fairly quickly these days, if I were to translate that into 3D I could do it, but it is a whole new ballpark in terms of the code you have to write. As for animation, I cant really put any views down on that as so far the main animation I have done in games is rotating of the 2D images.
Im pretty sure ShadowMaster and the friends he is working with have taken into consideration the amount of work involved in making the game isometric 2D, and that they weighed it against the work for simple 2D, and any/all form/s of 3D, so the end product wont come down to an issue of the art involved.
That being said, 2D games can be just as CPU/GPU intensive (for instance, when adding post processing), and thats not even by doing ridiculous things, for instance with Vector Vacuum if I didnt put in code to limit the redraw and update rate, it locked up a core of my CPU. It was smooth, but not ideal, then after limiting the updates and frames when you got to over 1000 bullet instances in the game you could visibly see the game starting to lag, and it was just bad code on my part (2 for loops as opposed to 1).
tl;dr? I think I understand what you want to point out, but it comes down to what the developers feel they can handle, even if the style is "too simple" or requires a lot of work for the art.
BlackShipsFillt
23-11-2010, 04:01 PM
I imagine Shadowmaster's preference for 2D is largely because Shadowmaster-and-friends have the tools and skills to create 2D graphics at their disposal and 3D graphics would require outsourcing (which could add all kinds of problems).
@Shadowmaster... You probably disagree with me here, but I think imposing extra difficulty through mechanics like you outlined for Space Pirates is not "fun".
Space pirates. The smaller you are the less they are interested in you, but the more prosperous you become the more likely they are to attack, lay siege, block trade routes, jam communications (which means people can't talk to families, you can't talk to allies, etc) and so on. This could provide more fun (http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/Fun) in the late game as you'll have to keep your city attractive and functioning to keep your population up, but you'll also have to defend against the pirates.
I may be reading too far into it, but the Space Pirates mechanics you described sound like superimposed random events based on a difficulty curve that demand specific countermeasures or in the absence of countermeasures retard or even regress the player's progress.
That is not how Dwarven Fortress operates... (If I'm coming off as argumentative I will just shut up now, maybe I am totally misreading you). But this quote I have included above really scares me. What you have described above is not a deep simulation with dangerous chaotic events, but an artificially imposed difficulty curve. This Space Pirates Activity is just one specific set of mechanics, and it is maybe unfair to extrapolate from that because by itself these Space Pirates will not ruin or even seriously harm the game, but as a design approach to a simulation game it really makes me worry about the game's outcome.
The trick to a great simulation (I believe) is creating interesting consequences to the player's actions. Sometimes those consequences are losing (and this happens a lot in Dwarven Fortress), but what is key is that they are interesting.
For example: Building a cannon and therefore defending against a medium size Space Pirate attack is not an interesting consequence, it is a direct consequence. Or alternatively not building the shield and then losing 50 population due to Pirates is also not an interesting consequence, it is also direct.
However, for instance, if you defend against Pirates early on and so they take longer to mass their forces later because they are poorer then that is more interesting: because it is an indirect result of building the cannon. This works so long as the Pirates are simulated and there is some way of getting information about them.
Or better yet, if you attack an enemy city and by doing so remove some of their defenses, and so Pirates attack them and the Pirates get rich and buy better ships and so when they attack you they are much more powerful. That would be at least 2 degrees removed, but if the player could get feedback about the Pirates they would see it unfolding.
Another: by building the cannon the Pirates turn away and attack one of your neighbours.
At the very least defeating Space Pirates should give the player a reward and possibly give the defenders pirate fighting experience... a Lose/Neutral mechanic that cannot ever be turned into a resource is always going to be a net unfun experience.
Anyway... I don't know if this is running counter to your design philosophy, if so I don't mean to be critical, I just really love the simulation in simulation games and I am not nearly as fond of the hard rules with rigid outcomes (because if I wanted that I would play Starcraft instead).
Sorry to rant, I hope what I have said is at least a little bit helpful.
Hiato
23-11-2010, 09:38 PM
First, let me reassure you that your response was not argumentative, or annoying in the least - in fact, this is the very reason we decided to post here in the first place. Feedback, constructive criticism, whatever you want to call it - that's what we want and that's what you gave.
Now onto the matter at hand. Admittedly, when I originally proposed space pirates I thought of it as merely another manifestation of the challenge-reward-punish cycle, and as such it was to have very little impact on the depth of play or the outcome of successful cities. However, this was in direct conflict with my inner dwarf. I'm an avid DF player (though, only on my third fortress thus far - four years and one forgotten beast and still counting!) and when it came to originally laying down some ideas for the isocity, I wanted one thing: depth. However, we adopted a stance that ruled out most of the 'deep' ideas (that whole "if something is complicated, it must be non-essential to core game-play." thing).
Now, reading what you suggested, and knowing how much it would add to the game, I think there is no way around space-pirates (and the late-game stuff in general) but to implement this and the associated systems (as I was hinting at: neighbours, trades, embargos, alliances, treaties and co.). I must say, I really like the notion of 'degrees of seperation' between action and consequence - it will undoubtedly govern future idea development.
Thanks for forcing us to consider making our game that much more awesome ;]
Hiato
BlackShipsFillt
23-11-2010, 11:11 PM
Sweet!
I know this kind of thing (like making Space Pirates into systems, not just events) can make game development very complicated very quickly... I think the trick is lots and lots of design preparation (obviously) and hierarchical structures...
I read a article by Herman Tulleken (of Game.Dev) once that I won't ever forget : http://code-spot.co.za/2009/04/09/cellular-automata-for-simulation-in-games/ The article is not about simulating Space Pirates, or outer space civilisations, but it applies... ie: with hierarchies the code can remain simple and manageable and the results will be way more interesting.
What you don't want is to have 5 fleets of Space Pirates out there and they all accidentally attack you at once... If you have a Space Pirates manager above the fleets of Space Pirates doing a little bit of coordination then you can get much more realistic and balanced results (because Space Pirates would be territorial and that is hard to achieve when simulating each pirate but easy if there is a hierarchy).
I don't know how revolutionary hierarchical structures are (they are kind of standard object-orientation practice)... but when I came across the concept, suddenly, in my mind, simulation games seemed much easier to approach.
Another notion that I think is real genius that really applies here is : Make everything a resource.
I know this is very much the principle behind games like Minecraft, Spelunky and Desktop Dungeons, and this principle certainly can make a good simulation game great. Obviously some things are going to be net negative effects... Space Pirates are probably more dangerous than they are useful, but being able to use adversity to your advantage really pulls the player into the world. So even something simple like experience from defeating Pirates could help... But if it can be more interactive then maybe players can trade with Pirates to sell Black Market goods, or hire Pirates to conduct raids, or offer protection/extortion to their neighbours for defending against Pirates, stealing from Pirates (by not paying them for Black Market goods) and that these actions affect the Pirate's prosperity and attitude and future actions.
(I don't actually like diplomacy / trade menus in these games, because I feel they encourage direct/simple interactions, but certain interactions can only be achieved through special menus) (the thing about a menu is that it exists outside of the main simulation... eg: in order to build a conference hall (which maybe gives the player better interstellar relations) the player has to consider a complicated system: space constraints, power constraints, population, jobs etc. But to call up a neighbour and offer them 1000 space moneys is instant and direct, and while there may be lasting effects they too are fairly direct and are fairly disconnected from your city simulation... I would say that building embassies, special alien hotels that cater to alien customs and establishing trade routes are far more interesting methods of diplomacy (provided the trading allows for lots of choices). However some things are just good for flavour... hiring raids on a opponent doesn't affect your city simulation in a very complex way, but the results are desirable to the player and with a little bit of Space Pirate simulation there could be interesting long term ramifications... Although I'd personally like to do away with menu interactions altogether, some sort of dialogue diplomacy is very standard in these games)
And of course importantly the player needs to always be able to see the effects of their actions... Even if it is just news reports about Pirates, because a simulation that is running in the dark won't produce events that different to random ones. And any information the player receives will help the player make better future decisions (which is a joy in simulation games).
These are just ideas, you only need enough complexity to make it feel like there is lasting meaning to the player's choices (at least more than just a binary success/fail meaning), and even a little bit of simulation could achieve that.
I know a lot of what I am saying are things that are bread and butter to simulation games... but I get carried away.
BlackShipsFillt
24-11-2010, 12:20 AM
Oooh Oooh!
Could I also suggest electricity relays like in Gene Wars : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNoIEvdYObo
I have been longing for a game to once again incorporate relaying electricy into base building... This is pretty standard in city sims I just have a soft spot for 90s Bullfrog games and I love the psuedo-science flavour of Gene Wars.
(Gene Wars also had forcefields and some cool tech later in the game)
Chippit
24-11-2010, 09:23 AM
Man, I thought I was the only one who played that game. Bullfrog's other games all got eclipsed by DK, Theme Hospital and Syndicate, really. Good tiemz.
dislekcia
24-11-2010, 05:52 PM
Crab-o-frogs FTW.
Hiato
26-11-2010, 01:09 PM
Progress report for the third week
Coding:
Revision 156 (ATOP)
Development has been occurring at a frantic pace, with ShadowMaster
whipping up ninety percent of a gui framework. We have tooltips (which
animate!), menus, containers, components, hierarchies, properties
(visibility/enabled...), layout managers and the lot. Currently, we
are working on a reliable hotkey system w/ combos and themes for the
various components. A lot has also been done wrt. mouse handling, we
have in place tracking, clicking of all sorts, a cursor framework,
entry and exit detection and so on. On this front, we are doing well.
Game planning:
Very little has been happening, understandably so. Currently, we have
a collection of seven documents related to design, each filled with
ideas and mechanics, but we have yet to collate them. However, with
ShadowMaster focused on the gui side of the engine, Balkrah finishing
up exams and my preoccupation with learning Lua afresh, and general
procrastination, this is an understandable situation.
State of the development:
O.K.
Forthcoming:
VAC! No, seriously. Both ShadowMaster and myself are leaving for our
holidays in the near foreseeable future, which will leave things up to
Balkrah - who will likely want a holiday of his own - until we are all
back and working again.
BlackShipsFillt
26-11-2010, 08:42 PM
Oh Noetry! http://www.toothpastefordinner.com/022005/bad-poetry.gif
But I wanna play Sim-Retro-Space-City-VS-The-Space-Pirates now! :P
dont let the tech get in the way ;) playability > usability at this stage. Its easier to work on something you can really play
ShadowMaster
27-11-2010, 01:17 AM
Unfortunately, we need a GUI system in order to create the game, but I should get the GUI to a stage by Saturday night (hopefully earlier) so that people can start making the game.
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