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"Free State" game would simulate 2050 New Hampshire

Started by Dave Ridley, July 30, 2012, 07:38 AM NHFT

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d.hughes

#30
DadaOrwell, what about a splash page?  Something that describes the scenario and allows the player to pick a side (INH or NEU).
(There is no immediate need.  Just a future design task.)  It might be fun to kick around some ideas. 

We could glean something from your wonderful descriptions above.

d.hughes

Quote from: DadaOrwell on August 16, 2012, 01:01 PM NHFT
However seeing buildings underneath the drones...is a low priority at this point.

Agree!  The playing field looks all green, sort of like treetops or grass.  I snarfed the "material" from a Unity example.
Right now the field is small, however, the player's horizon may be smaller than the whole field in the actual game.  In that case, it would be helpful to put some landmarks on an otherwise nondescript field. 

Forget the pictures.  I can put some gray rectangular objects on the field.  (And maybe some roads.)  Their only purpose is to give the players a frame of reference.

Dave Ridley

#32
splash page sounds fun.   as for size of the whole playing field , i like the idea of it being roughly 10 times as wide as what the player can immediately see.  and i guess roughly 10 times as tall.  that would mean 100x as many square "feet" i guess.   the beams that the player fires should probably reach perhaps 50 percent further than what she can see.  that would enable probing fire and sniping of enemy concentrations....  This would create a new element to the game with no real effort on our part. 

Helio

I'm interested.

I found this thread title in a sidebar on freekeene while reading about the recent jury nullification of the guy growing pot.  Been a while since I was on here.

I moved to New Hampshire back in May.  Writing games with liberty themes is the kind of activism I want to engage in.  I came to NH with the intent to start a game or software company.

I'm working in Nashua for a business intelligence software company that specializes in the dental insurance industry at the moment.  I've also tinkered with Unity in the past, but I am certainly no expert on the subject.  I would be interested in meeting up to discuss the project sometime. 

Some observations on your initial game idea:
1) You need graphics people more than coders for this kind of game.  The heavy lifting is already done for you in Unity.  There are alot of coding prefabs that can be purchased on the Unity store to expedite the coding process.  But you will need a small army of graphics people to create all the models, animation rigs, textures, and environments. 

2). Your idea is very large in scope.  I would recommend focusing on the tiniest possible marketable feature set that can be accomplished by a small team to get it done within one year.  You'll probably have to jettison most of your ideas to achieve this.   But great games grow over time.

Your detailed brainstorm is much more realistic but it doesn't sound interesting.

Which best describes your mindset; making any game at all that promotes liberty, or making a specific game (like your first brainstorm?).

Dave Ridley

Just saw this Helio... sorry for the slow response...  stand by for proper response.

Dave Ridley

OK thanks for reaching out, Helio....  Now: are you saying you think you would *not* have the capablity to implement, by yourself, the stripped down prototype listed at http://nhunderground.com/forum/index.php?topic=24297.msg344291#msg344291 ?

If you can't, then what if you stripped out all the elements that are hard to do and just made a stripped down version of the stripped down version?



Helio

The stripped down version is practical, from a purely single player perspective initially.  Coding the drone controls, movement, and collision detection is all very simple.

Making it multiplayer could be a lot of work because instead of handling all that on the client, all of it needs to be calculated on a server if it is an mmo.  Which means infrastructure costs.

Now, you could just take the route of distributing the game and allowing players to host their own servers, but your original vision was an mmo. 

Also, you will need map code and terrain graphics.  You'll need people for the graphics.  Graphics is the time consuming part whether you go 2d or 3d unless you decide to cut out animations.

I'm also wondering about the meta-game.  That is, what is the point of these drone matches?  Does winning a match have some impact on a larger conflict?

My recommendations are to start a free state game developer group to see what resources, skillsets, talents, and ideas are available and then come up with a workable project that everyone can work on. 


Dave Ridley

OK I think I like your thinking hel...  What if we did this as a course of action:

1) You make the one player version, avoiding any "graphics" entanglements however you think best.  Cutting out animations seems okay to me for a prototype.  I think.
2) At first opportunity, we make it so people can host it on their own servers as a multiplayer.
3) Meta game concepts/goals/carryover/semi-persistence.... these *are* very important to me but not necessarily important enough to force them into the prototype.  I could start working up a metagame concept for us to implement early on?   Or maybe you have a metagame idea?   The simple thing would just be having a long term tally of wins and losses for the INH and NEU teams... The slightly more complicated thing would be to score each game and have THAT carry over.  Maybe we could say the faster a team wins the higher its score...that would give the losing team something to fight for even when defeat is inevitable. 

The goal of this course of action is to get more people interested in the game because they are playing the prototype....from there we could hope to get folks on board as helpers toward our next steps.

I want to monetize the game at the earliest practical moment so we can evolve this past "idea man + volunteers" stage.  i want to take it to more of a  proprieter + contractors stage.   but we probably won't be able to focus on that much until we have a primitive game and players.  at least the intitial prototype concept will be unique; that should help.  lord knows i've searched the world for a game that plays like this prototype. 

Helio

I'm about to leave for 3 weeks to get married but when I get back I can start to devote some time to the prototype. 
When I get back, how about we meet up at a tavern for a couple rounds and hash out a draft design document?

1. I can do filler art, but hate to because that is time not spent coding. (I did the header and icons for dailyanarchist.com)
2. it would be much easier to allow players to host their own servers.  Writing infrastructure code and paying for the hosting and hardware can be very expensive.
3. Maybe we could just do a simple game like this to earn some capital to launch other projects.  I've got two liberty oriented game concepts that I want to do one day when I've got the resources to do it.  And yes, contracting is the way to go.  Especially if they'll work for bitcoin.

I really think gamers are a ripe audience for the liberty message.  With fiction, one can wrap an idea that would normally be automatically rejected out of hand into an unfamiliar setting and story and it will be accepted and internalized.

Dave Ridley


Congrats Hel !   How about getting together around Oct 20 then , what part of the state are you in?  email me via ridleyreport.com if you need to contact me non publicly about any of our discussion.  I like most of it to happen here in the open but not your snail mail address or what not!

>> 1. I can do filler art, but hate to because that is time not spent coding. (I did the header and icons for dailyanarchist.com) >>
   -  Hope all art can be off the shelf public domain stuff to start with, if that's possible.
   
>> 2. it would be much easier to allow players to host their own servers.  Writing infrastructure code and paying for the hosting and hardware can be very expensive.>>
Ditto.


>>3. Maybe we could just do a simple game like this to earn some capital to launch other projects.  I've got two liberty oriented game concepts that I want to do one day when I've got the resources to do it.>>

Well like your meta game, this proto game is just one battle in a larger war.  as in... I want it to help create its descendents.  But to be connected with them.  I really am aiming at that game I described in the vids and in the early part of this thread.  A game this simple, just one player + player servers.... how would something so basic get monetized enough to fund something?   I was thinking we'd use this as a springboard to obtain players and volunteers, who could then take us to something monetaizable.  But if you know a way to get to monetization faster I'm all ears....


Helio

I'm in Nashua.  Got to NH back in May.  Best decision I've ever made!

Monetizing is the trick. I really like strategy games like Civilization, Total War series, Victoria,  Crusader Kings, etc.  I would really like to explore the idea of defense enterprises in a game environment.  I don't really think that has been done before outside of the mercenary idea of Jagged Alliance.  Even linear story line games like Half Life, Doom, Call of Duty, set in a liberty oriented plotline could garner huge favor with gamers, in my humble opinion. 

So, The first game we make probably wouldn't make any money. But it would help us gain the expertise and attract more talent to create a game that could generate some revenue.  So yeah, let's do something that can be achieved, like simple drone warfare.

oh and d.hughes, you have the right mentality.  I learned software development from master software developers, not college.  Apprenticeship and self-teaching is a more effective way to learn from my experience.

Dave Ridley

I'm envisioning we build on the prototype, i.e. add to it, rather than starting a new game after it's functional.  Are we on the same page on that?   Maybe I'm putting the cart before the horse to ask.

I've played Civ 1 and Rome Total War, none of the others.  Did like both. Do like the idea of incorporating elements from both.

To get the defense agency type game play going hopefully we can just provide players the realistic environment in which to form the agencies.. or not form them... as they wish.

Could we get together during this event on Oct 20:

http://porccalendar.com/?events=shire-bitcoin-meetup&stamp=1350844200


Dave Ridley

Dada congratulate helio on presumed successful honeymoon...  still interested in this project?

Dave Ridley

Another idea I had for this was that the future NH might have a mind-blowingly different approach to housing and transport.  The two in fact would mix in some case. Some people would live in walking houses and neighborhoods would be mobile and/or temporary.  Transport would not be so one-dimensional as it is now...with people travelling off into the woods in luxury; or flying of course.  In the game this walking house concept could play out in the sense of INH players receiving such a house when they join, using it to store stuff, arming it up , sending it off to hide itself while conducting quasiguerrilla missions by jetpack.   A war that is literally underground would develop as people begin hiding their armed houses beneath the earth and NEU forces develop new technology to look more efficiently into the ground.   

Helio

QuoteDada congratulate helio on presumed successful honeymoon...  still interested in this project?

Hey thanks!

Sorry, I've been out of pocket because of work.  While I was away on honeymoon, the project halted so I've been playing catch up.  Yes I'm still interested in getting something going.  I'm hoping to have more free time after our product goes live this friday (Nov 30th, 2012).  Let's plan to get together and talk it over.  I'm free most weekends after the 30th (I hope!)

You are in Manch?  I'm in Nashua right off of exit 1.