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chrispie
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Manchester UK
Oct 2000
time: 05:14
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I was thinking about a concept for a game (based somewhat on the MOO3 stuff I was reading) and I realised it might be possible to apply it to GGS (subject to heavy flaming for me lol).
Anyway, you as the player are in fact the force of a nation, sort of the will and driving force of that nation. You don't directly play the leader, but the nation has a leader, several leaders infact.
Because the game (typically) is played over long periods of time, real leaders which grow old and die could be incorperated, and one part of your job could be to manage these leaders.
You could choose an overall leader, i.e dictator, president etc. And also leaders to run specific parts of the emipre, finances, resources etc. Maybe even a leader or more per region (though that would probably prove excessive).
I see leaders have having 2 roles really, the main role is to simply give bonuses in their area, depending on the type of leader you choose - so if you chose a defensive military leader, you'd get bonuses when defending. The second role of a leader is to help run the nation when you're not around, and this is the interesting bit I think...
It's already been said that for long term games, when the player is offline, the AI would need to run the country - well this would give a player to kind of direct his nation whilst he is not around, by choosing a specific kind of leader for each area, he could expect the continious running of his country in a way that follows that leaders attributes.
So, for example - if you told your military leader to play it cautious, and you were invaded, he might only try to reduce his loses, and simply play for time - holding off the enemy. But if you tell him to be aggressive, he might role in the big guns in an attempt to rid your nation of the enemy, but wouldn't go on the offensive (that's your job  )
Other leaders I invisige include the Resource Leader, who manages resources (so might liase with the Trade Leader if your foundries are running low on coal) or may indeed look for ways to increase production when it's needed.
I think they'd be around 8-10 leaders for you to manage, each growing old and dying of course - but being automatically replaced when they die to save you the problem of being offline, and losing all military control.
You could of course replace a leader at any time, but that would reduce
effeciency - making it difficult to constantly change leaders.
The overall leader, dictator, president or whoever would be there as a guiding power, bringing bonuses depending on his/her character and skills.
IMHO this leader thing covers 2 obvious problems;
1. Who you are, as you can now live forever!
2. Helping players to manage their empires in the way of their choice when they're offline.
ideas, complaints, insults etc. please 
[This message has been edited by chrispie (edited April 17, 2001).]
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chrispie
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Manchester UK
Oct 2000
time: 05:14
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Hmm, Elmo I think you've completely missed the point of my post here.
The Leaders are not there to run your nation, when you're playing they do nothing to run it, you run it. I wanted to give them a reason to exist whilst you are playing, and that reason is to provide bonuses in certain areas or to carry out simple mundane tasks.
And it's not just a 'name' for the AI when you're offline, not at all. The idea is to split the AI into regions, run by leaders - who you the player can define, as appose to one big AI which just plods along doing little when you're offline.
Let's face it, the majority of players (except maybe the obsessive ) are going to not be playing more often than they are in a long term game, but they still want some kind of system they can use to give their empire a direction during their offline time, and maybe even some ability to react to arising situations - which could otherwise greatly damage your nation or take it in a direction you don't want.
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ElmoTheElk
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Leiden, The Netherlands
Jul 2000
time: 06:14
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Well, if you put it that way...  No, I undestand now, and agree with you. I escpacialy like the region-different part. So that you can set the future of each region independantly of each other..
Altough personally, I like games played in 1, 2 or 3 pieces more than very long term games, with relatively long offline percentages. I hope it's possible to save a game after 5 hours of play, then all the players quit, and later, when all the players are online again, they continue where they were. As an extra option of course...
Elmo
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VetLegion
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I agree with crispie here, leaders + bonuses = good thing. (and I like moo3 stuff too, going to get it when it is made)
Similar thing is in Europa Universalis, you are not a force/will, but a person behind the throne, and the leaders change, each bringing his own bonuses to various areas.
as for an online game ... I dont know. The design should take into consideration then that military actions such as conquering an entire empire would need 5-7 days of real time (or more), and that it would take 3-4 hours to conquer a city. That is because no matter how smart AI is, it is still dumb, and would harm the player too much if he went to sleep and got invaded while in sleep
if game is online (lasting), and there is AI, I think pace of the game has to go down in some areas. (note: I am not really comfortable with online vision of the game yet, so that is the source of my worries)
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The Joker
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Copenhagen, Denmark
Aug 1999
time: 06:14
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I pretty much agree with you, Chris.
Leaders (including commanders of your armies) would be fun to manage. I also think that in some cases a leader could be so good that he would become ambitious, wanting to take control of your civ. I do, however, think that leader should be chosen from a pool of potentials. I also think that although you could play as a guiding force like in MOO3, you should not control everything. The people must have their own will, and you can only guide that.
About the mp game, I agree Elmo that a feature where you can save a mp game would be great.
But for the larger mmp games (which is where I see the true potential of GGS) I think using clans as Korn suggested, and otherwise play either a year a day, or simply online games where a year might take 10 minutes, in which case you would simply go online, pick a civ, play it for some hours/years and then leave it to someone else.
------------------
"All that monsters fear is the day."
- Kashmir
GGS Website
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S. Kroeze
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the Hague, the Netherlands, Old Europe
Dec 1999
time: 05:14
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About the clan idea of Korn and this "new" idea of leaders:
I think those leaders resemble the 'characters' which at the time weren't very popular. I liked the idea of characters, but I think they are not essential to the game, so they can wait. They are more like 'frosting' than 'cake'. First things first!
I liked Korn's clan idea, yet to make it truly interesting I think it would be essential to have two levels of conflict in the game:
- Governments/civilizations try to expand and become the dominant Empire in the world or region
- Within each civilization ruled as a clan, all players compete with one another to become the dominant power/clan within that Empire/civilization
During a Revolution or Civil War an Empire ruled as a clan could possibly split in several independent kingdoms.
When the delay in the dissemination of commands/information would be used -which unfortunately only Amjayee seemed to like- this clan structure could help to guard against some of its drawbacks: the central government could reside in Madrid, while a viceroy residing in Lima, Mexico or Manila -and probably better informed- could make most decisions about local politics. Yet what would happen when a viceroy would declare himself independent? Perhaps he could even misinform the central government for some time about local conditions, e.g. keeping silent about local disturbances, military setbacks etc...
Sincere regards,
S.Kroeze
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I like the idea of "Leaders" (which are pretty much a mix between advisors and characters discussed earlier) in the sense that they are a neat way of partitioning the AI. What I don't like, however, is bonuses based on the leader you choose. That's just one way of making the AI cheat, unless the leaders are a mandatory feature. Neither option appeals to me because I want both to have an honest game (i.e. it's the player's intelligence that matters, not the character's) and I want to reserve the right to micromanage when it seems necessary or fun.
Actually, I never really thought of it as a problem that the player is not a concrete person. Or that the advisors/generals/governors would be immortal. I can easily think of them as abstractions of the real things, so that "general" for example would be more of title than an actual person.
In a multiplayer game, these leaders/advisors will inevitably have great importance. Good AI is not an easy thing to have, so we'll have to think of something else. I believe that at first phases, the viceroy AI will consist of several sub-AIs like governors, generals, and ministers, just like chrispie suggested. The player could set some of their properties individually, for example a general on the western front could be ordered to mobilize whereas the one on the eastern front could be more cautious. Later, when the game becomes more mature, a more advanced scripting could be added ("if neighbour attacks, build more airplanes and retaliate until enemy withdraws from region X"). After that, perhaps an AI that could actually be trusted.
Besides AI, the clans and agreements on playing times are two other ways of dealing with long off-line periods. If there are something like 5-10 players, all from the same time zone, it is not inconceivable that they want the game running only a certain part of the day. Most likely the server in this case would be a responsiblity of one of the players, and 24/7 uptime may not even be possible (after all, it's running on Windows...). So yes, I agree with Elmo that there should definitely be lots of options to set the active playing times, maybe even a chance to automatically hold the game when no human players are around.
About clans, my views differ slightly from S.Kroeze's:
quote:
Originally posted by S. Kroeze
I liked Korn's clan idea, yet to make it truly interesting I think it would be essential to have two levels of conflict in the game:
- Governments/civilizations try to expand and become the dominant Empire in the world or region
- Within each civilization ruled as a clan, all players compete with one another to become the dominant power/clan within that Empire/civilization
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What I have in mind for clans is something quite different. Players within a clan would, in my vision, always be in the same boat so to speak and whatever conflicts will be between clan members would be their private matter. In fact, I don't even think these clans should have a representation inside the game world, so a civ controlled by a clan would be equivalent of a civ controlled by a single player or an AI. In other words, clans would be nothing more than a way for several people to play a single civ, thus avoiding the usage of dumb AI or simply giving the players a chance to tackle the complexity of their civs.
Two-level conflict should be part of the game, but instead of using clans to do that we could implement it by having a sophisticated diplomacy rules. Civilizations should be able to form pacts and alliances very flexibly, perhaps even to a degree of forming some sort of shared government structures. This way, each civ would fight to increase their power within an alliance, and the alliance itself would have some permanent goals as well. I believe that this would not only be a nice feature to have, but something we definitely need: no civ should survive all by itself.
"Leland"
Last edited by on 24-05-2001 at 05:33
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Actually, I think that backing up the game data every turn is a must. If the server crashes, that way people can keep playing without losing anything but the time needed to restart the server side. As a side note relating to saving games, I think that everytime a player logs in he will have to download all his civ's data, whereas after every turn only changes are being sent. So, nothing except maybe some UI settings or diplomatic messages are stored on the client side.
I think that a loooong time ago in the design doc thread i listed different types of games, based factors like clans/no clans, closed/open and off-line/on-line. All combinations should be possible, at least in this phase of design we should not be too discriminatory. But, you raise a good question with clan memebrs logging in at the same time. Maybe the creator of the clan could choose whether there can be several simultaneous logins at the same time or only one? Also, I think that the creator could choose the form of the clan from several options:
1. All members, including the creator, are equal and can give any orders to any elements of their civ. If a given order conflicts with another, the player would be notified but there would be nothing to stop him from erasing the old order and replacing with his own. This kind of clan would work best when all the members are trustworthy and good team players.
2. One member (the creator) is a leader, and others are equal. The leader can kick people out of the clan if necessary. The orders given by the leader cannot be erased, but the leader could erase or replace any orders given by others. The players would still have to be relatively trustworthy not to obstruct each others play, but at least now there is a central authority who could kick people out and solve any possible differences.
3. Members are given responsibilities, i.e. orders are categorized so that certain types of orders can only be given by certain members. So one member would handle the military, another one the politics and a third one resource management. Or, every member could have their own region to command. This could work best when players want to concentrate only on certain aspects of the game. There could still be a leader who would have the right to override any orders he sees fit.
4. Any combination of the above. Several leaders, a hierachy or leaders and sub-leaders, each responsibility area having it's own leader, the creator and the leader being different people, dynamic changes to the clan structure... the possibilities are endless!
All of these options should be just for the convenience of the players, and I think that in clan formation there should not be any strict rules. Clans are just a tool tackling the 24/7 multiplayer games and to allow sophisticated player cooperation, in my opinion.
"Leland"
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Hmm... to me the both the design and the programming aspects are still taking their baby steps. Having discussed this with the programmers, it seems that a realistic goal for us is to have the software framework (that is, a non-functional core to which we plug in the actual game-related code) ready by fall, not much sooner. So, it is not just a matter of pulling up our sleeves and starting to code the models, there are a lot of technical issues that need to be solved/programmed first. Anyone interested in participating may use the sourceforge mailing list, I'll try to keep the Apolyton board fully design-oriented.
On the other hand, I don't see what makes you think our design documents would be anywhere near ready. Sure, they will change once we implement stuff, but to me it seems that there are a lot of questions that can and need to be answered before the programming phase. What we have now is
1. pretty good general design doc (almost finished )
2. some informal talk about turn order
3. a draft of population model
4. quite good economy model, but it's probably going to have to be revised due to it's age
5. disease model, pretty much in the same state as econ model
6. lots of unformulated great ideas, which we need to write down
This really isn't much, in my opinion. We really need to have more or less extensive documentation, otherwise we can never be sure what the other designers are thinking, let alone attract new members who can't understand an iota of our ramblings. Besides, there won't be much programming results for a while so now is the perfect time to work on the design stuff and at least get the general guidelines of the core models clarified.
"Leland"
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Yes, of course we have the UI ... I was talking about design documentation. And you're right in pointing out that I may be a little bit too design-oriented myself. But by no means was my intention to say that we should stop programming... on the contrary. We need programming more than ever now, because if we don't have the framework to build upon it's going to be very difficult to start writing demos on the models and ideas we have now. The way I see it, once we get the basic software technicalities worked out we will immediately go on to implementing the models and seeing how they run. With or without design docs.
However, It seems very likely that it will take some time before the framework is ready. So, I see no reason for the non-programmers to just sit back and wait, there are a lot of holes on design front that could be worked on.
There are basicly three different kinds of design: one that's written down in a document, one that's in someone head, and one that manifests itself as a computer program. The shortness of the list on my previous post was supposed to emphasize that we do not have much of the first variety. We also don't yet have the people/time to write demos (on the models, I mean... UI and client/server code are the core of the software, but not the heart of the game), and the ideas between different people vary a lot (the turn order hassle should prove it). I don't think everything has to be first written in a document before being programmed, that would be nuts. But I do think that we cannot just stop writing models, because they also act as means of communication between designers, programmers and eventually the players.
Aww heck, I just like writing designs as much as I like writing code (maybe even more so, because I get to program at work anyway). So don't trust anything I say! This is a voluntary endeavour, everybody does whatever they feel is most useful, or whatever they enjoy doing. Even if the game would flop, I'd still consider myself a richer person upon having had a chance to discuss with this group of excellent people. I know I'm boring the hell out of you all, but I'm hoping that at least occasionally my contributions would be useful in our final goal: the working game.
"Leland"
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Nath
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About leaders: I think it would be better if the player just controlled the bonuses directly, i.e. 'make this region militaristic'. Having leaders would mean, for a nation with an average of 20 regions throughout the game, a few thousand leaders.
Each leader would be in power for about 20 turns, and therefore on average a leader is being born and dying in one region every turn. Keeping track of 8000 units seems like micromanagement.
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Darkstar
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Huntsville, AL, USA
May 1999
time: 23:14
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UGH!
Leaders? Hate them. Hate hate hate hate. And they are going to come and go every 5 to 35 turns? YUCK! Huge turn off.
I hate "leaders" in MoO2. Heroes in Mom were ok. But "Leaders"? Suck suck suck! Civ3 is using "leaders". Is that why you want them? Civ3 is screwing up. Most leaders wouldn't survive a 4 turns in the earlier part of the games.
At 1 turn = 1 year... most leaders are only going to last 5 to 35 turns... then they are done and dead. Now, I have to worry about which new one to pick to maximize my bonuses? No way! Out goes THAT game. Stack pushing, tile micro-management, and leader management. So, you want to make a game you don't even want to play? Why not just go and enhance Tick Tack Toe?
Leaders? YUCK! Adding more micromanagement. That's counter to your design goals, isn't it? In any MP game, he or she that micromanages the best will always win in a resource utilization game... which is what GGS is currently. Therefore, you are REQUIRING your players to automatically MICROMANAGE leaders. Hey, number crunching is easy for a computer, so it can always know to choose Patton over Smith. Simple bonus comparison. Which means you are forcing the Single Player to MICROMANAGE leaders as well.
Hey, I told you to watch your toes. That's how you guys are currently coming across here in the forum to this village idiot.
Leland, you are correct. Analysis Paralysis is always a danger. But I think it's time for a big meeting of the minds before you go waste your time coding on something. There are plenty of projects that would welcome you. I say that to you because it seems to me that aside from making a game you guys aren't even going to want to play YOURSELF... you guys are also pulling in different directions.
Either this is a SP/MP game... or it's a MMP game. What you need to do and implement is different between the two. In a MMP game... you don't need leaders and a whole heck of the other stuff. AI is meaningless as they are just victims in an MMP game... raw resources easy for the first taker. It's the humans and the humans only that you need to worry over.
Here's how to do your cabal...
*The founder is automatically the leader. S/He starts off supremo.
* Each person that joins the cabal, gets the next spot, and becomes low man on the totem pole. They are automatically assigned as "reporting" to the previous person that joined.
* Peer Presedence: Whenever a person is promoted to a level, they are automatically assigned peer precendence order of (maximum peer precendence order+1).
* All players in a cabal have a internal determined presendence order. Whenever new player joins, they get assigned the new number of people in their cabal. The game engine recalculates the internal presendence order number based on the command tree of the cabal each turn before resolving orders, to update who gets final precendence.
You can't countermand a superiors orders... Ever. Why? It's your design... even the MMP game uses a turn sequence of: Order/Player Interaction phase, resolution. Therefore, your CLIENTS won't know that a clan member told that army to advance to the mountain range unless they TALK... So they'll order it to retreat back to the city and go into mobile defense/patrol and intercept mode. That's why you have the chain of command... so the computer can RESOLVE what order takes precedent.
Now, the fun parts...
* Any superior can PROMOTE/DEMOTE someone in their chain of command up as many levels as they like, with a maximum raise of up to directly reporting to the promoter, or down as far they like (so long as they are assigned to work for SOMEONE in his chain of command). So the leader (Player 1) can promote Player 55 to directly report to Player 1 directly. Or demote Player 2 to report to Player 55 directly.
* Any superior can rearrange "precendence" (considered seniority or peer ranking) between his direct underlings. Player 1 promotes Player 3 to directly report to him, and then can change Player 3's orders to take precedence over player 2's orders.
* When Founder/Player 1 is eliminated, Presendence Superior (the player under Player 1 whose orders can only be superceeded by Player 1) in his chain immediately takes over (in effect, becoming Leader/Player 1). Should no other players exist, the cabal is gone/eliminated. Although I suppose you could option to make it AI... a target for the vultures.
Now, you have your cabal (or clan) system. The only thing to be decided is:
* HOW to know a player is eliminated. Everyone bumps up in the chain, with the newly promoted link set (those reporting to the eliminated player) added in peer presendence order to their new commander's "node".
* HOW to detemerine what stays loyal to a player when they leave the cabal, but not the game. Options include: They get only what they had when they "joined". (For allowing other clan members/minor clans to join others), nothing, or everything under their control. Or something in between. (Say, being able to set this in a contract that the game enforces... 10% of all units, facilities, land/regions, whatever. And be able to choose the mix.) Maybe the bonus is purely in trade goods and trade money. (This allows Mercenary Players.)
* WHETHER to allow a democratic system so as to have "votes" on who gets to be number 1, or stay number 1. Sub Issue: Whether everyone has equal weight, or their number of votes is weighted. If weighted, what mechanism is used.
* WHAT kind of alliancing/membership to allow. For instance... if Cabal "Utopians" are a signifacant faction, can the Cabal "WarHaters" become fully ranked/commanded members of "Utopians" due to a Cabal Alliance? Would the WarHaters just be absorded into "Utopians" or are they their own minor sect within it, so that Player 1 of "WarHaters" is still in charge of his chain and their assests? Being "WarHaters", they'd still couldn't tell "WarHater" assests to overstep their superiors, but when handling "Utopian" Command Objects/assets, they could be assigned a higher order precedence their their actual "WarHaters" precedence! Fun fun... Dual/Multiple membership always opens interesting doors. Of course, in this example, just as the Player 1 of Utopians can assign the Utopian precendence order that all Utopian command objects prioritize their orders by including the WarHaters, Player 1 of WarHaters could also choose the order of precedence for WarHater command objects to precendence orders from the Utopians. And when the Aliiance breaks, all precendence in the other cabal is lost, so WarHater assets no longer accept orders from Utopians, and Utopian assets no longer accept orders from WarHaters.
Damn... this sounds FUN! Who needs a world empire builder? Make a nice, simple galactic empire game, and go.  But I digress. It would be fun, I think, in any system.
Last edited by Darkstar on 03-07-2001 at 03:26
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Darkstar
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Huntsville, AL, USA
May 1999
time: 23:14
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Tsk Tsk Tsk. It's a FREE forum, Chris. I don't HATE what I see. I am presenting a POINT OF VIEW. Actually, when talking design, I will present a POINT OF VIEW I don't actually believe... In TEAM efforts (and last I looked, this was a core team which offered temp teaming with any who had a thought), I find it best to debate about design and TEAM MEMBERS point of views.
Chris, you shouldn't take any posts, suggestions, or comments I make about the IDEAS here as attacks on the posters. Not in this forum. I freely admit that I am the newest village idiot here (I can't claim to be the ONLY village idiot, as I don't know even know if someone else used to be the village idiot ). I am still finding out about you, your team, and your ideas.
I do this in real life when doing Design. But I warn my newest team members and co-workers that it's not about them or their worth. I employ odd ways at times to Analyze and Understand a project, what it is about, and why it is the way it is.
However, if you are going to get this upset about little VISITOR like me making actual comments about your project, how are you ever going to handle a real stream of curious users and OTHER PROGRAMMERS? Programmers, as a general guide, aren't very polite. It's quite common for them to think that your way is the dumbest way in their world, and their way is the only way. (I am always open to options, thanks to years of experience, but I don't always SOUND like I am. I know that.) Speaking of which... Do you program, Chris? Professionally? Plan too? Managers and Customers That Pay You will often tell you how STUPID, INANE, and otherwise VERY INSULTINGLY explain how WRONG your app, project, direction, and what not is wrong. Best to not get so mad when you hear it. Team members and visitors should even be WORSE about picking on it. They just might be more polite in their phrasing, at times at least.
If you think my POV is just wrong. Fine. Maybe you would like to say WHY? At least that way it would be put out into the forum again. People FORGET, Chris. Even when it's written down in their notepad of project truths. Repeating it for your TEAM is not a bad thing, as long as it's not EVERY post.
I'll be sticking around for a bit, Chris. Please feel free to educate me why my posts are garbage or wrong for your project. I welcome it. That is what I want to know about. The GGS project, where it's at, why it's there, where it's going, and why. I've already read through your design docs, and a good bit else on the web site as well as here. But there is much to go, and much to understand.
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Darkstar
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Huntsville, AL, USA
May 1999
time: 23:14
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Chrispie, don't worry about it. I certainly wasn't as cool and level headed in my response as I should have been. You caught me off guard, and I apologize for that. I will TRY to not be so arrogant in my future posting, but at this point, I doubt I'll succeed. In other places and even in other forum here (such as OT), I might try to be purposely insulting. But not here.
Now that we have an understanding, feel free to flame me. I can understand. I'm a bit free with the flamer myself. But when talking about this intriguing project that you and the other members of GGS team have put together, I certainly won't mean to insult you. Maybe tease you a little, or get you fired up JUST enough to respond. Humm... with my natural forum style, even toned down, that should probably be WAY over the top. So let me make my apologies to you and everyone else before hand. I certainly don't think your baby is ugly. I just wonder why you dressed it like that.
It's not like I know better... but I truly do know that in person, I SOUND like I do. Face to face, I warn my coworkers and team mates about that when we first start working together. And I also tend to say... as far as I know, as I understand, I think this is how it is/goes/works, and a few other phrases now and then when I know that I don't know, but I think they've forgotten. This being the Net, I figure everyone knows not to believe a word anyone else says. All those people so full of themselves are just EVERYWHERE, aren't they Chrispie? Even if they don't know it or mean it. 
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VetLegion
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LOL
yep, chrispie is our most active programmer. That is going to change though (evil laugh) when I have more time 
Yes Darkstar, this is a free forum, and noone will kick you out. As chrispie said, most folks here are coolheaded and wont flame you either (we have two finns on board, does it get any cooler than that? )
Though, if I wanted to be picky, there are issues to flame in most of your posts. But it is not about flame wars. It is about constructive criticism. And adding ideas to make a good project.
Dont get insulted. I havent said you suck or anything, just that you have a "angry" style of writing. Caps are considered shouting on usenet for example, and underlining or italicising is for emphasizing.
reason why it is not smart to get excited about any feature in the game is exactly that - we are open for suggestions, corrections, and even rewriting of whole models, if it can be presented in a reasonable way.
One of the grat things here is, as Leland said that it is voluntary project. No strict obligations, no strict hierarchy, no deadlines 
Also, it is not necessary that you read all the documents, meeting logs and such before you start shooting your ideas. They are wellcome
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VetLegion
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quote:
Angry? My style? Never heard it called that. |
I really dont mean to lecture. You probably go back longer then me in computer usage too. Yeah, all the ASCII, brackets, **s _underlines_ and stuff are a little art to itself
quote:
I think a MMP game with clans would be GREAT FUN. But I don't think you need to go into most of the other ideas that have been presented here to make it, nor for it to be fun.
The difference between a MMP and SP/MP game is what is the focus of the game. At least, as I see it. But that would be very important design consideration. What is fun in SP is not so fun in MMP. What is fun in MMP isn't even available in SP, and not very available in MP (dealing with other people, making alliances and deals, stomping on the enemy, etc). |
I agree completely. My personal opinion goes more in favour of 20-30 players max, but you may read Jokers oppinion on more. We still cooperate really good on goverment and other stuff. That is when he is not on an exotic cruise or something, which is pretty rarely the case
Is your ICQ working? I am online for a bit more and if you are too, drop in on IRC.
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The Joker
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Copenhagen, Denmark
Aug 1999
time: 06:14
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I don't particularly like the tone around here (especially not Vet's last remark ). Please, everybody, remember, that the point of discussing things is achieving the great synergy effect, so we together can achieve much better sollutions than any of us could have done alone.
SP/MP/MMP:
We have been over this before. What I believe we are going to do is first focus on MP. SP is not really an issue, since I KNOW that we can not create an AI worth playing against, and even less so compared to a human player.
First we will propably do what Vet suggested - 20-30 people. This is by no means unrealistic, so it's a good start. But further into development having more (many more) players would indeed be something gameplay would benefit from. Personally I think 100 players in one game would be magnificant. Having more players enhances one of the funniest elements in any strategy game - that is, if the game engine allows it - diplomacy. But more players will never be squeezed in if it means compromising the other key goals that we have - the great historical accuracy and the complexity of the game algorithms. These have a higher priority than more players.
But with modern computers and the great amount of self governance the game should provide many players should not be impossible.
Leaders:
I am not sure here. I think that in normal games Darkstar is propably right. Changing leaders 100s of times through one game, by just picking the best all the time would not work. So in the normal games perhabs leaders will not be of any good. But sometimes they could be pretty cool to have. Playing a WW2 scenario would be really spicy with leaders.
But then again leaders is really not anywhere near a big issue. It is not something that we will work on implementing any time soon, and it is not something that makes or breaks a game. It is, as S. Kroeze said some time ago, extra frosting on the cake. So using a great deal of effort on it at this point is not very constructive, nor useful.
I will try to put together some simple region/economy/ressource model the following days. One that can be programmed. It is required for any of the other elements of the game to work.
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ElmoTheElk
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Leiden, The Netherlands
Jul 2000
time: 06:14
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 Very heated discussion here! My computer is finally repeared and I also formatted it completely, but I am back to business. ANd then this...
It seems to have cooled down a bit already but I agree with some of my teammembers here. Well forget about it, we need complaints, other toughts and disagreements as much as we need help...
SP/MP/MMP
WHY? I though we decide to make it MP first. And try to implent SP afterwards. So that means we focus on about 20-30 player. Not MMP. Even if we ever decite to make a MMP game, GGS won't be it. We reduce micromanagment, but our models are designed toward MP, not MMP. Or at least that's what I thought....
AI
Well, let's just focus on the game algorithms used in MP. We may need some AI in that already. Serious single player AI is very difficult, I agree, but not impossible. It even might be fun to some of our programmers! (I am planning to learn some AI on collage too later on next year. Very interested in it.) And because it's hard, we don't neccisery have to forget it..
LEADERS
Hum. I don't like leaders as repesented here. Not about the fact that leaders only stay for some turns though. It's more that I think we don't have to give automated functions a name. Bonusses in a region are cool, or might be at least, but we can have them without 'leaders', right?
Some quotes to end with:
quote:
I will try to put together some simple region/economy/ressource model the following days. One that can be programmed. It is required for any of the other elements of the game to work |
Cool That would be really great.
quote:
strict obligations, no strict hierarchy, no deadlines |
Yep, definatly. That a really big aspect to begin with within our team. So yelling at each other is queit useless. You guys better program the map thingy.
quote:
I've already read through your design docs, and a good bit else on the web site as well as here. But there is much to go, and much to understand |
That's just why we can tell you anything at your service. WE also have to dig trough our memories when we start about something new, like tech...
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The Joker
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Copenhagen, Denmark
Aug 1999
time: 06:14
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MP:
I don't think 20 players are MMP. MMP is 100 players or much more. 20 players is just MP. There is no reason why making a game for 20 players should be harder than making one for 7.
Both MMP and SP will be harder, and are only maybes so far. But I still think making an AI that is fun (has it ever been done in a TBS?) is harder than creating MMP support.
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18-04-2001 00:01
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