Oh yes, the "new side project". I'm reluctant to call this a new one because I don't lack for existing, unfinished ones, but at least I've done more stewing on this notion than many others. The story begins with a text mode DOS game I found on a BBS a looooong time ago called "Space Risk" (I was 17, so...20yrs back?). This was a turn-based, space conquest joint, where players rotated behind the keyboard. It was harder to find folks to play this sort of thing back then and required a solid afternoon to play, but I managed to a few times and the experience got under my skin.
Space Risk's rules were pretty basic, as follows:
- The playfield is a chunk of space of fixed size with a bunch of inahbited star systems (planets).
- Planets may be owned by a player or unconquered.
- Planets have an automatic, turn-based ship production capacity.
- Once conquered, that capacity becomes the conqueror's.
- Attacks are launched from conquered planets.
- Combat among fleets/planets relied on simple arithmetic (more ships won), with randomness in close fights.
- Victory requires conquering the enemy home world.
- And, the best parts for me:
- Fleets take turns to reach destinations (relative to distance traveled).
- Fleets have a modest, maximum attack distance (creating a geography, with choke/jumping-off points).
- Enemy fleets in transit are invisible to the other player.
These last features, it turned out, were what stuck with me because of the chaos transit lag introduced.
The rest of the game was pleasant because it was approachable, but that fact made for memorable tension. When attacking, you never knew if there were enemy fleets on the way, about to pounce on vulnerable holdings, nor if apparently ripe targets would still be so by the time your assets reached them. The game's only faults were the turn-by-turn dynamic itself and its scale, with only 26 planets (yes, A-Z). Remember this was text mode DOS, however, so at least that made for a clean, single-screen playing field.
Anyway, once I'd had a chance to poke at this for a few months, I thought to make my own version (in C -- Borland TurboC 1.5, IIRC). These were some of the enhancements I added straight away:
- The playfield and planet count increased to two-letter (wowwww...) planets and something like a 100x100 grid. This was too large for a normal screen and didn't "zoom out" well, in text, so I made the map center-able on planets.
- I upped the number of possible players to 4, including some spacing logic for generated home worlds.
- Conquered planets could automatically forward produced/arrived ships to others, creating supply lines (same max distance as attacks).
- Imperial headquarters could be moved to other conquered planets within a certain distance, each turn, removing fixed homeworlds to offer players more defensive control.
- Conquered planets could be destroyed with enough ships in orbit (and the loss of those ships), allowing players to alter the geography.
- Since supply lines and more planets made for absurdly large fleets early in the game, I created "raiders" to randomly attack planets, costing ships and sometimes reverting or destroying planets (breaking supply lines).
- With (now) dozens of battles and raider attacks each turn, I concocted efficient summary screens for results and status presented between turns (same turn dynamic, BTW -- players rotating in front of the keyboard).
This made things a little more interesting, and the few strategy nerd-friends I talked into playing my version thought it didn't suck too bad (not as many PC strategy game nerds back then, mind you). I developed this a little further, then began a port to hi-res VGA graphics and a heap-based memory model (what?! global, 100x100 integer arrays for the map? My God, man...) when I got a newer machine, but never finished it once overseas travel and college hit me like a ton of bricks.
Two things I took away from this experience were the value of credible entropy in gameplay and some of the give-and-take required when scaling a simpler concept in different directions. In this example, time lag and fleet invisibility induced a believable lack of situational awareness and control, almost like a well-shuffled deck of cards. On the other hand, before I created raiders and planet destruction to erode supply lines, combat became disjointed because it was too easy to concentrate force at jumping off points near enemy space.
Lastly, ever since then I've been bugged by one, last detail.
This example of time lag is an effective "fog of war" effect, but how about the rest of the strategic picture? In this universe, are all communications instant while anything with mass takes time to move around? That's nice, but what if this was like the age before trans-oceanic cables, when water-type vessels were the only means of getting news from overseas (that other big, spatial divide in our history)? How would one act when the entire disposition of fleets and remote worlds (i.e., the whole map) is delayed, relative to the distances involved?
I want to see what that's like, in a continuous, multiplayer, stream of consciousness (near real-time) setting, and I think I know how to do it :)
- Location:Home
- Mood:
satisfied
Profile
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
kata_kita- kata_kita
- Kata Kita on SLProfiles (NSFW)
Comments
In between that and Neverwinter Nights or Freeciv.org were the BBS door games (oh and D&D and Warhammer, but yeah). The game you are describing sounds like LoTR or BRE, and after a brief rest these game types are alive and well on the Web. Some even claim to run a port of the LoRD engine, like this one: http://www.improbableisland.com/ running on the CC licenses LoGD engine ...
If there is a lesson in all this, it may be that really clever game design can survive, in niches, for a long long time.
Maybe I should propose a paper about the similarities and differences between the door games and today's "casual gaming" marketing fad... *** Better paid pundit have already gone on at length about how the scaling up of art requirements for 'modern' graphics intensive games has all but finished off independent game dev. As counter argument I present Introversion Co UK and their catalog available on Steam ... more proof (DefCon) that a really good idea can make a great game .. and graphics are not as important.
Edited at 2009-01-02 07:26 am (UTC)
Brings to mind TradeWars and some others, since it's effectively a network of planets, but there are elements of those which I don't want to duplicate.
And, yes, totally! It's a bit like fiction or movies, isn't it?
Basic game concepts -- like stories -- are few and recognizable, even if not by name. But, never fear, as you said -- the best games transcend their presentation, even if they have to wait a while to be stuffed in the right framework.
The good news, I suppose, is the tools and expertise for game content is much more widespread -- every company with any presence has at least one graphic designer, and the software is everywhere.
Also, anything innovative can now get a big boost from word-of-mouth on the Internet rather than fluffing box makers.
I'm after a web-based platform, in part to address both of those concerns. I want the experience to be relatively low key, so strong art might even work against me, and server-based, so I only have to pay a colo provider and Google :)
I'm not really after the same experience, however. Though Civ is almost too esoteric, the main difference is it's vision of unit communication and and the turn-based gameplay.
I'm after something continuous -- where gameplay spans weeks or never stops, the player logging in once/twice a day (or just watching email/RSS) to check messages and dispatch orders, with occasional, longer spells at critical junctures.
As I suggested above, as well, I want the entire map to be lagged according to distances from a player's centers of power, so they have to cope with a new kind of uncertainty. The ruleset will have to be very compact to make that manageable, as well.