Complete, utterly hypothetical...

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Complete, utterly hypothetical...

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I've been bored these last few months and I've been making little headway with my 3D modeling work and programming. So I've decided to combine them both and throw myself into the unity3D engine for some game development. Couple with that an interest to see a BOTF2 game actually finished, and well... utterly hypothetically, what would you like to see in a BOTF2 game? And I don’t just mean what we've seen already, where sequel games have prettied up graphics a bit, added a few new details but generally kept the same game play and style pretty much alone. What would you really like to see in a sequel game?

Honestly, I've been tossing up doing a BOTF2 game in my free time since about early 2007 (I was bedridden for 12 months and had nothing but time) but I was daunted by having to code an entire engine from scratch, something that using unity means I wouldn't have to, so I’ve had some basics in my head for a sequel game for a long time (And I can easily convert to another "non proprietary" IP later on if I want to sell my work. Just like BOTE.

I've been throwing down a few ideas, and been merging concepts from later games that have really worked well, and I was kinda curious how they'd come over in the UTTERLY HYPOTHETICAL chance that I make any headway in unity and start to develop a proper game either by myself or with some friends.

Now, what I've figured out so far (remember, theoretical) is this:

It'd be modable, and that's fairly easy in unity, I'm thinking Armada style modding for tech trees, race stats, planets/star system details, ships, tech, etc. My goal would be to make it as easy for myself (or anyone for that matter) to add anything with fairly simple ease. All models and the like would be in Maya formats because unity rocks Maya and 3ds native, not some stupid proprietary format like BOTF currently does.

Game play wise, I haven't decided how many MP clients to have right now, I would assume that it'd be set to a max of the number of base races I'd be willing to build. Although since I'm willing to build all the races as listed further down, it could be as many as 8 and more if I include observers.

I haven't decided whether to keep BOTF style turn based combat or adopt a more Star Wars: Empire at War style (This is more fun and hands on, but could be more difficult with hundreds of ships). However, I will be adopting a concept from Armada for individual ship stats, so sensors, life supports, weapons, engines and shields can be damaged independently, crew killed, etc...

That brings me to resources, at the moment I haven't decided how I'd be doing them utterly. Crew would be a yes, Dilithium would be a minable resource, not like BOTF1, I probably will forgo metal at the moment and just use credits or production point to buy ships, we don’t want this to be too complicated. But I would like to implement fuel, but I think I'll hold off on that for a while and use the BOTF1 style movement restrictions until I’m happy with it. This would introduce a mechanic of combat fatigue in wars, damaged ships with fewer crew take longer to repair, some ships may need to be abandoned in a fleet is being held up from cripple ships, repair ships and troop transports would be much more useful resupplying ships on the front. Science will also be a "minable" resource from space anomalies and objects. Crew would also allow for combat to involve capturing enemy ships and either repurposing them for your fleet, "selling" them for science points, ransoming them to other races or the like. Food would probably also be a resource, so you can have worlds dedicated entirly to farming or entirely to production and send resources between them.

As for science, it'll be tech tree based rather than pool based (I'll probably regret it if I do implement it), with each block divided into Eras, (22nd century, 23rd century, 24th century, Slipstream, Temporal). The Slipstream Era would cover EU tech obviously and the Temporal Era would cover what little tech we've seen from the 28th, 29th and 31st Centuries. Though I may ignore temporal and just finish at slipstream.

Another thing I want to use is heroes, a concept from Star Wars Rebellion. Where you have the potential for officers to appear on planets (if certain conditions are met) that can provide boosts to a ship, starbase or planet when they're assigned there. So you may have a Tactical hero who on a starship would boost tactics, an engineering hero would boost repairs and defenses, etc... With heroes gaining XP as well. There'd also be a chance to introduce named heroes, famous characters from various races that have appeared over the series too. I'd also want to introduce the concept of a Flagship, one ship that's nominated as a command ship for the empire, it demoralizes enemies when it's in a battle or near a planet and if lost in combat can demoralize the owner. But that's just a pipe dream for now, along with heroes.

Ground combat would be pretty much the same, drop troop’s transports, and overcome defense values of a system to seize it, because I don’t want to code a ground combat battle system particularly since Trek never does ground battles well and I do not want to invent any. But taking a planet would take more than 1 turn, you'd deploy your troops and it'd take a certain amount of time based on ground resistance to take hold of a system from an enemy. Giving an enemy time to countermeasure. This would prevent stacks of doom with their instacaps from BOTF1.

Territory would be influence based; players would be able to "claim" sectors adjacent to their borders even if there's no influence there up until an enemy places something _with_ influence, then it'll either become disputed or just flip over. Sort of like a culture flip from Civilization. Territory would be determined by a few things (I don’t want to do a culture like mechanic, that's just crazy), probably though it’ll be based on population / distance from population + starbases and the like. The ability to create neutral zones between warring nations is important to (This'll add tactically to game play as neutral zones can prevent an enemy player from attacking from their own borders on the same turn as declaring war.)

Starbases can be built on planets or in space. There'll be 3 types, Ground base (resupply, repair boost, ground defense bonus and crew recruitment bonus) starbase (resupply, repair boost, space defense bonus and sensor range boost), and spacedock (resupply, repair, starship construction boost).

Homeworlds can be either planets, starbase OR ships, with each nation able to declare a "capital" planet for their empire. There's a major morale loss if a capital is lost, but a capital can be moved at a cost anywhere else. (So say if Earth was to fall to the Klingons, if they moved their capital to Vulcan or Berengaria, the morale lose wouldn’t be so high as if Earth was still their capital). Ships and Bases as capitals would be more for future implementation, so say a Unicomplex for the Borg, or a Voth city ship or something.

The main races I want to make are: Federation, Klingon, Romulan, Cardassian, Ferengi, Dominion, and Borg. Each will truly be based on their traits, the Borg will be a major empire but an NPC except in a specific game type, they'll start in the most obscure part of a spawned galaxy, and build like other nations mostly, but their play style will be radically different. They'd also have a starbase homeworld instead of a planetary one. I also want to introduce a leader style like Fleet Ops and Civ where you pick a leader for your empire that'll give you stats. So for instance Admiral Necheyev may give you an intelligence boost, but you may suffer military penalties. Or Grand Nagus Rom may fortify your morale but you could lose a percentage of your credit income.

Minor empires (NPCs that expand) would be races like the Xindi, Devore, Tzenkethi. Basically any race that's been shown to have a substantial military presence but not important enough o be considered a serious threat in any series.

Minor races would have homeworlds only.

With races, they will ALL have unique stats; I'd like to include every trek race ever mentioned, as well as the more important ones from the EU books. Hell, maybe even the Caeliar.

There'll be random events, the same old affair, but they'll also include anomalies, science events, etc. Borg won’t be a random event anymore. I'd love to introduce random science events too, like the "Unity Device" or a "subspace anomaly" that'll give you bonuses to science and research. This will include spreadable plagues that can hit ships, bases and planets.

In regards to the Borg, they'll be uniquely coded; they'll have a "resistance quotient" for each race and weapon. Each time a weapon is used the quotient goes up and the weapon will do less damage overtime which will eventually bottom out. These will be tied to tech so new tech will be needed to survive. The race resistance quotient will be used for diplomacy so the more a race destroys Borg ships the higher the quotient and the bigger a response from the Borg is incurred, the quotient goes down based on the number of ships and worlds a player loses to the Borg, so the threat drops. Theoretically, this way if you piss off the Borg enough you could end up with dozens of ships attacking your empire simultaneously in a "Destiny-Borg Invasion" kind of way.

The game will still have the "old" style game rules. So you'll be able to pick a galaxy size and type, I'm making it dynamic so you could pick an elliptical 1000x1000 game grid if you wanted to. However, it will have civ style victory condition options instead:

Military: control 75% of the galaxy
Vendetta: Destroy your two arch enemies
Diplomacy: Have a majority control over "space UN" (lol, will figure that out later, probably Khitomer Accords Alliance or something)
Science: reach the slipstream era and be the first to send a special slipstream prototype explorer to another galaxy.

Game types would be:
Standard: BOTF with victory conditions
King of the hill: One player is the Borg and in a permanent state of war, every other race is allied and one of the two must win. (This may be human VS all NPCs) though.
Destiny: you have a set number of turns before the Borg invade every NPC, build up your defenses and find a way to stop them before your homeworld is destroyed.
Capture the Flag: capture, retrieve and hold the Omega particle once discovering it somewhere in the galaxy
Minor Leagues: Play as a minor empire and survive against the NPC major empires.

I want to overhaul diplomacy so it isn’t the shite BOTF has, more Civ like so you can trade resources back and forth like dilithium, ships and planets/territories and tech. Cede specific sectors, sign the "Borg entreaty" pact, etc... Trade routes will be in game but I can’t decide if I want them ship based, BOTF1 based or just like Civ where they're "just there".
I would love to make a campaign mode too. I have been considering basing them off Armada 1 and Armada 2 (I could reuse voice clips and the campaigns are compatible with large scale game play. I would probably also make a few more campaigns based on the EU, such as the Klingon-Cardassian war, the Earth Alliance-Romulan war and others. They’d be scripted and period specific. (I don’t know if I’ll hard code them or make the missions scriptable like A1/2 however.

Also, I'm not sure how colony operations would work. I don't really like the "drag population onto sliders" approach for food and whatnot, but I can't think of any better implementation myself at the moment.

So yea, obviously I've put a lot of thought in on this over the last few years. Nothing's ironed out cause, well I’m just a gamer not a game dev, so I write what I like. And again, it's utterly hypothetical because I have the attention span of a baked potato and can barely sit still on the same project for more than a week. I guess I wrote this down just for my piece of mind more than anything else. If anyone has any ideas what else they'd like to see in a true BOTF sequel, feel free to mention it.

PS: Proper unity, not unity web player!
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Re: Complete, utterly hypothetical...

Post by count23 »

Oh, just to show I'm not kidding or just pie-in-the-skying this. I'm currently working in Unity on building a dynamically generated Hex-Grid for gameplay. Once I can get that down, i'll be testing "object" movements and then giving hex tiles specific features like... nebula, or stars, or black holes. I'll eventually build art and assets (If I still have the energy and i make progress on a game core). So i'm not soliciting anything from anyone except for ideas of what kind of features could be in a potential sequel.
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Re: Complete, utterly hypothetical...

Post by Flocke »

Friday April the 13, yeah, good choise for announcements like that :mrgreen:
Hey, welcome back to afc count23. Looking at your post history you've been last here two years ago. :)

Well, to your plans, your "utterly hypothetical plans", it's always great to see people willing to spent their time on such an ambitious project, especially when it's about botf.
But you make some very common faults, and the project is doomed right from the start with an attitude like this:
count23 wrote:And again, it's utterly hypothetical because I have the attention span of a baked potato and can barely sit still on the same project for more than a week.
Furthermore when you call yourself "a gamer, not a game dev", I wonder on your expertise.
Let me tell, what you set up as a plan requires an immense amount of time, endurance, and great knowledge on what you do.
And you just began with a simple hex grid project and already needed two years for a basic, still very hypothetical concept you say. And you don't seem to have approached a project near as huge ever before.
So your project is a learning-project and nothing else.

Don't get me wrong, I find such learning-projects great and the best way to learn on programming, but don't make yourself illusions on this but take it as exactly that, a learning-project. I'm not a fan of unity, but for a beginner's game development project it's probably no bad choise, and the engine also has it's advantages, specially for slight browser based MMO games.
When one time you got far enough to make more of it, that's great, but shrink and split your project plans to much smaller pieces and more realistic goals. Believe me, that's far better. ;)

So underestimating work and overestimating abilities and capabilities are the first main faults, but I always struggle at them again, too. :lol:

Next fault is, or seems to be, to barely having looked at what others did or do to see whether there's a project to join, profit from or to distinct from and how.
You mentioned BotE, what's about Supremacy? Talking of Unity I'm sure you like to program in C# and they'd be really pleased to get some support on this. That project is several years ahead of your concept stage but still far off from being completed and open for new ideas.
Furthermore, in case you're interested to learn some on low level programming and more professional C++ programming, you might also be interested to join on improving good old botf.
Think about and take a look at what's going on. :)

Nonetheless, one in positive you have, you spent time to think on concept before starting to program. Most people just start and end up in a mess of ideas with no plan.

Have a good weekend and hopefully not that a bad friday 13, cheers! :D
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Re: Complete, utterly hypothetical...

Post by count23 »

Wasn't friday 13 when i Posted it (GMT+10 :P ). Thanks for the welcome, been lurking here for a long time these last few years.

Just to clarify, in regards to "gamer not game dev" bit, by this i mean, I don't professionally do game development. I have in fact got about 10 years software development experience on the enterprise level for C/C++, C#, Java, Javascript, Cobol, Pascal, Assembly, Q and Visual Basic (Not vb.net though) as well as a swath of scripting languages for web development. I've build games over the years and other software too, but not quite on the scale that I've chosen here.

Yes, I've seens supremacy and am quite impressed with the work they've put in with their job so far, but unfortunantly as i said before (Or I think I did), I think that it's better off using an existing engine like unity over building one from scratch because it would save a substantial amount of time since most of the componants are there you just need to assemble them (I was going to use the analogy of having an orchestra and just need to write hte music, but that's just has hard, hehe). I deliberatly chose not to approach either project because I frankly dont like the game style they're making (That was the "carbon copy" reference in my first post), I want something that's more dynamic, futurisitic and takes advantage of the 13 years of Game development in TBS and 4X games since 1999.

What I've written up were just ideas i had running around for the project, It is being done in stages "for the lolz" to get myself familiar wtih unity packages in particular. The first step I'm dong is building a hex based tile grid (not using a pre-built package) as well as familiarize myself with game object and mesh manipulations in the scripting level with unity. I actuall have a few projects that I'm building with the goal of being able to merge the results together which would basically provide functionality for a basic game like BOTF.

1. Build a hex tile grid and move an object around on it, along with adding "terrain" that would affect pathfinding
2. Build a working Solar system that'll calculate position of stars (binary, trinary, non standard orbit) and planets based on a txt or XML file.
3. Build a real time combat simulator between two objects
4. Create a network interaction to allow more then two objects to be controlled by players across a network.

Most of hte coding back end for a game like this is pretty much just logic based, it's not that it's hard, it just takes time to write up. Plus, working out math. And as i said, I've been doing this project for years, so I've got a good indication on a project design level of how it'd all stack together. But you are right, I've not approached a project on quite this scale, on a game deve level before, Enterprise level yes but that requires a completely different take on things (Naturally) so it would be a big-one.

Having said that, by throwing it out there as "utterly hypothetical" I just didnt want to get people's hopes up that the project was a definite go until I had a good handle on the new functions of unity and made real headway. The last thing anyone wants is to see an ambitiour project announcement and get annoyed/upset or abusive when they discovered that it's not going ahead.
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Re: Complete, utterly hypothetical...

Post by Flocke »

count23 wrote:I have in fact got about 10 years software development experience on the enterprise level for C/C++, C#, Java, Javascript, Cobol, Pascal, Assembly, Q and Visual Basic (Not vb.net though) as well as a swath of scripting languages for web development. I've build games over the years and other software too, but not quite on the scale that I've chosen here.
Cool, that's a good range of languages, what's your favorite?
I love to program in C++(11) using MinGW and CodeBlocks, but learned to value C# and VisualStudio for Windows based .NET WPF Applications, too.
I've not as much enterprise experience, but spent much of my free time to learn on game development and programming.
Experience includes boost, QT, wxWidgets, Ogre3D, CEGUI, toLua++, CMake, assembly and inline assembly, and some Java ofc too. Further I learned on web development using XHTML/HTML5, AJAX (JavaScript/Dom/XML) and PHP.

I agree Unity3D probably offers a good base for rapid game development as you don't have to care on the engine much.
What I dislike is, you also are kinda restricted cause the engine is closed source and license limited as long you don't wanna pay alot. No option for me.
Furthermore it doesn't have Linux support. Ask QuasarDonkey, another programmer on here, games with no linux support suck! :lol:
I prefer to have free choise on combining multiple libraries and advance them when needed, that's why I went for Ogre3D when replacing the botf render engine.

Another often used complete game engine is CrystalSpace. In case that engine is more attractive to you, you might try to contact Xordan. He showed up on here last year willing to start an own botf successor project, too, and gained professional game development experiences with his job.
Sadly we've not heared much of him anymore, think he went for a different project when he found noone was willing or had time to join on his project. :roll:
Maybe we also scared him when all ran after him to get him involved in one of the running projects.
count23 wrote:Yes, I've seens supremacy and am quite impressed with the work they've put in with their job so far, but unfortunantly as i said before (Or I think I did), I think that it's better off using an existing engine like unity over building one from scratch
That makes no sense. Supremacy already has a working engine and as I told is far ahead in terms of game logic so you'd have much more work starting a new project.
Edit: You probably meant the missing 3D combat, maybe a bit tricky to adapt one or even render the map with 3D effects, but I guess with XNA or an adapted 3rd party engine it would do and they wanted to adapt xna anyhow. I didn't look into this.
count23 wrote:I deliberatly chose not to approach either project because I frankly dont like the game style they're making (That was the "carbon copy" reference in my first post), I want something that's more dynamic, futurisitic and takes advantage of the 13 years of Game development in TBS and 4X games since 1999.
Well that makes more sense, but you still should contact them to see whether your ideas can be linked together as you'll always have to make compromises even if you start a new project.
But I get from this statement you'd not be much interested in advancing good old botf, even with all the latest findings and abilities to replace functionality part by part while keeping it a complete running game. Well yes I can understand the temptation of starting something complete new.
count23 wrote:What I've written up were just ideas i had running around for the project, It is being done in stages "for the lolz" to get myself familiar wtih unity packages in particular. The first step I'm dong is building a hex based tile grid (not using a pre-built package) as well as familiarize myself with game object and mesh manipulations in the scripting level with unity. I actuall have a few projects that I'm building with the goal of being able to merge the results together which would basically provide functionality for a basic game like BOTF.
Yeah, sounds great, will like to follow you up on your progress. :D
count23 wrote:Most of hte coding back end for a game like this is pretty much just logic based, it's not that it's hard, it just takes time to write up. Plus, working out math. And as i said, I've been doing this project for years, so I've got a good indication on a project design level of how it'd all stack together. But you are right, I've not approached a project on quite this scale, on a game deve level before, Enterprise level yes but that requires a completely different take on things (Naturally) so it would be a big-one.
Work comes with details, trust me. Set up a time-plan and you'll see each point will take longer than expected, specially when you begin to think on details. And when you don't work in company on this, there's also the one big trouble maker named "real life", yeah that is. :P
But I wish you good chance and much fun, the last is probably most important. ;)
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Re: Complete, utterly hypothetical...

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Flocke wrote:
count23 wrote:I have in fact got about 10 years software development experience on the enterprise level for C/C++, C#, Java, Javascript, Cobol, Pascal, Assembly, Q and Visual Basic (Not vb.net though) as well as a swath of scripting languages for web development. I've build games over the years and other software too, but not quite on the scale that I've chosen here.
Cool, that's a good range of languages, what's your favorite?
I love to program in C++(11) using MinGW and CodeBlocks, but learned to value C# and VisualStudio for Windows based .NET WPF Applications, too.
I've not as much enterprise experience, but spent much of my free time to learn on game development and programming.
Experience includes boost, QT, wxWidgets, Ogre3D, CEGUI, toLua++, CMake, assembly and inline assembly, and some Java ofc too. Further I learned on web development using XHTML/HTML5, AJAX (JavaScript/Dom/XML) and PHP.
Personally? my most fondly remembered language was QBASIC, being 7 or 8 years old on an old 386 DEC laptop writing programs to run in Windows 3.11. So that'll always be first in my heart :)

These days though, probably more along the lines of Java and C#, they're more OO friendly and I do like not having to manually garbage collect. Chock that up to being lazy :P
Flocke wrote:I agree Unity3D probably offers a good base for rapid game development as you don't have to care on the engine much.
What I dislike is, you also are kinda restricted cause the engine is closed source and license limited as long you don't wanna pay alot. No option for me.
Furthermore it doesn't have Linux support. Ask QuasarDonkey, another programmer on here, games with no linux support suck! :lol:
I prefer to have free choise on combining multiple libraries and advance them when needed, that's why I went for Ogre3D when replacing the botf render engine.
True enough on the Linux issue, but that's really personal preference. I'm not a big linux user, I've programmed for command line in unix and that's about it. But it's my understanding that apart from Unity being ported to a variety of linux flavours, Unity programs work quite well under WINE anyway. But my primary effort here is Windows (And I guess Mac since Unity is W/Mac friendly).
Flocke wrote:Another often used complete game engine is CrystalSpace. In case that engine is more attractive to you, you might try to contact Xordan. He showed up on here last year willing to start an own botf successor project, too, and gained professional game development experiences with his job.
Sadly we've not heared much of him anymore, think he went for a different project when he found noone was willing or had time to join on his project. :roll:
Maybe we also scared him when all ran after him to get him involved in one of the running projects.
I'm teaching myself Unity primarily for future mobile app development since it's the software of choice for most web and mobile game devs these days, gotta use the tools that the market wants if you want the jobs.

I did see the thread by Xordan, I kinda wondered what he had planned with his project, I guess maybe if i do proceed with mine, it'll drag him out of hiding hopefully :)
Flocke wrote: That makes no sense. Supremacy already has a working engine and as I told is far ahead in terms of game logic so you'd have much more work starting a new project.
Edit: You probably meant the missing 3D combat, maybe a bit tricky to adapt one or even render the map with 3D effects, but I guess with XNA or an adapted 3rd party engine it would do and they wanted to adapt xna anyhow. I didn't look into this.
3D was only part of it, but again, if you recall my first post, I'm teaching myself unity, so diving into someone else's engine and project does defeat the purpose. I'm using BOTF as "inspiration" in unity, I didnt actually say I was going to make a full on BOTF game, only that i'd like to given time and experience with the engine. BOTF is the result of my learnings, but NOT my goal, if you get my understanding.
Flocke wrote:Well that makes more sense, but you still should contact them to see whether your ideas can be linked together as you'll always have to make compromises even if you start a new project.
But I get from this statement you'd not be much interested in advancing good old botf, even with all the latest findings and abilities to replace functionality part by part while keeping it a complete running game. Well yes I can understand the temptation of starting something complete new.
True, I did contact mstrobel back in '09 before I lost interest in the project (back when they still had botf2.armadafleetcommand.com's forums, but as I said, I just didnt really find much of what they were doing was compatible with my concepts, so i just shelved the project as a pipe dream.
Flocke wrote:Work comes with details, trust me. Set up a time-plan and you'll see each point will take longer than expected, specially when you begin to think on details. And when you don't work in company on this, there's also the one big trouble maker named "real life", yeah that is. :P
But I wish you good chance and much fun, the last is probably most important. ;)
thanks :)

I'm still after ideas though, if nothing else and my project falls flat on it's arse, someone else may take the ideas and build a proper project. Besides, when I'm coding and teaching myself the ins and outs of the engine, knowing what kind of gameplay elements people would like does guide me towards specific functions and elements to learn.
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Re: Complete, utterly hypothetical...

Post by thunderchero »

As for Ideas, I have seen many of the remake projects come and go over the years. While some are on going projects they have very low support. :cry:

So I suggest keep it as close to the original as possible. while making improvements.

The biggest improvement you could make is to AI.

You also said you want to make you version modable great, but keep in mind your first release does not need to be a mod. So keep it basic, the 5 majors (but expandable for more races). Make it easy on yourself and use the current GUI. The 1024 version has lots of room to add many wanted options (more build list, more systems, ect). Although I would change the file base to png or something (any thing is better than tga)

So I say create a complete rewrite of code but keep game play the same as before. (Keep your current player base interested).

Also never forget that this should be a multi player game.

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Re: Complete, utterly hypothetical...

Post by Flocke »

Now that is cleared, yes, let's talk on ideas. :D

First, concentrate on aspects that help to learn on the engine and try to make it a playable if short game before loosing interest eventually.
So to say, forget about AI or make it a real plain simple one. AI development has nothing to do with Unity3D.
Discard minors, only implement plain diplomatics like botf has, forget about espionage and special events and such.
No Heroes, Flagships, Capital ships or Homeworlds for now, that you can test later but often harms the gameplay rather than improving it.
No ground combat as you said, but would like abilities to block a system and conquering it shouldn't be done in one turn if it's a big one.
No manual ship design or special/individual ship components but give 'em some general stats that do benefit from research.
Also do not design for multiple races, one common one is enough for the beginning.

I like the idea of having to collect ressources, which came up for botf lately, too. But don't overdo it like BotE. Choose two or three ressources, having different advantages but take care that starting conditions keep balanced when generating the map (or it's not too much of a disadvantage starting in a bad position).
I'd not go for fuel as it's a potential trouble maker in terms of gameplay.
People and experience doesn't seem to be a good choise either.
Like TC told, target on multiplayer games.

Rather than instant colonizing a system I'd find it great when it's more taken like an outpost that requires support for a while.
That way your "homeworlds" also have more of importance. And systems shouldn't have a simple max population set but grow should decrease when it's getting crowded. That way you also can handle colonies as places to settle people from existent worlds by some kind of trade line connections, if you want.

Further, try to implement some good but fast & simple 3D combat, what style is up to you. That part is probably most interesting with Unity3D.
And, rather than to implement a special system development view, add some easy to handle system control functionality to the map view directly.

And don't spent too much time on collecting ideas, there already are enough topics on this and they mostly just complicate things and take your time. Lateron you still can extend the game on need. :)
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count23
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Re: Complete, utterly hypothetical...

Post by count23 »

thunderchero wrote:As for Ideas, I have seen many of the remake projects come and go over the years. While some are on going projects they have very low support. :cry:
Yea, i've been playing BOTF since 1999 and i've seen alot rise and fall, that's why I made it clear that this was a learning project for myself adn no one should ever have any expectations of seenig it properly finished. :P
thunderchero wrote:So I suggest keep it as close to the original as possible. while making improvements.
It's a fair suggestion, I've been using the original BOTF as a reference, trying to build functions in unity that emulate the functions and gameplay style that was original present in BOTF while expanding it further for my own purposes.
thunderchero wrote:The biggest improvement you could make is to AI.
Oh, dear god yes. And not just make it more difficult by giving it build time buffs and cost decreases. We all know how halfassed the AI in BOTF was, all you need is 2 minutes and a book on AI algorithms to understand how much better it could have been made off the shelf.
thunderchero wrote:You also said you want to make you version modable great, but keep in mind your first release does not need to be a mod. So keep it basic, the 5 majors (but expandable for more races). Make it easy on yourself and use the current GUI. The 1024 version has lots of room to add many wanted options (more build list, more systems, ect). Although I would change the file base to png or something (any thing is better than tga)
Whatever GUI i was building was going to be built straight up in unity for simple debugging and navigation, if the project ever advances to a "I wanna really build and finish this game" then I'd be using a proper GUI.
thunderchero wrote:Also never forget that this should be a multi player game.
Everything I'm building is from the mutliplayer level BACK to single player, It's easier to code mutliplayer content and then hand the functions off to an AI then build a game as SP first and try to code a multiplayer element afterwards. While MP isn't a major feature in mobile games, it is a major one on Windows and MAC OSX.
Flocke wrote:Now that is cleared, yes, let's talk on ideas. :D

First, concentrate on aspects that help to learn on the engine and try to make it a playable if short game before loosing interest eventually.
So to say, forget about AI or make it a real plain simple one. AI development has nothing to do with Unity3D.
True.
Flocke wrote:Discard minors, only implement plain diplomatics like botf has, forget about espionage and special events and such.
No Heroes, Flagships, Capital ships or Homeworlds for now, that you can test later but often harms the gameplay rather than improving it.
No manual ship design or special/individual ship components but give 'em some general stats that do benefit from research.
Also do not design for multiple races, one common one is enough for the beginning.
These would be modifications of base functions like building ships, or planets, so they would naturally come after a base game is built.
Flocke wrote:No ground combat as you said, but would like abilities to block a system and conquering it shouldn't be done in one turn if it's a big one.
Something I was planning to implement actually :) Attack value V defence value would result in multi turn tug of wars If i can figure out how to imlpement it appropriately.
Flocke wrote:I like the idea of having to collect ressources, which came up for botf lately, too. But don't overdo it like BotE. Choose two or three ressources, having different advantages but take care that starting conditions keep balanced when generating the map (or it's not too much of a disadvantage starting in a bad position).
Agreed, that's something that'll be worked on later though. resources would probably not be implenented right away, although resource handling is a big aspect of game development. So I would probably be implementing this at an earlier stage. I still believe that it's better to have consumable resources only (ie: Dilithium, Crew) because it means that you can stockpile for a war effort and crank out a fleet fast rather then be stuck at a few a turn.
Flocke wrote:I'd not go for fuel as it's a potential trouble maker in terms of gameplay.
People and experience doesn't seem to be a good choise either.
Fair enough, somewhat dissapointing though, I would have liked a good fuel mechanic in game.
Flocke wrote:Rather than instant colonizing a system I'd find it great when it's more taken like an outpost that requires support for a while.
That way your "homeworlds" also have more of importance. And systems shouldn't have a simple max population set but grow should decrease when it's getting crowded. That way you also can handle colonies as places to settle people from existent worlds by some kind of trade line connections, if you want.
Yea, I was thinking of more of a civilization style planetary growth process then a fixed cap. In regards to other planets and colonies, I was looking at implementing terraforming levels based on reserach experience, your planets can have additional terraforming to boost their population levels as you tech up (so, these would be the civ equivilant of hospitals and aqueducts, I suppose, but in trek lit they'd be colonies moving from underground, to pressure domes to open air terraforming i suppose).
Flocke wrote:Further, try to implement some good but fast & simple 3D combat, what style is up to you. That part is probably most interesting with Unity3D.
As surprisingly easy, checkout "Unity3d RTS" on youtube, it's actually strange trying to make unity act turn based, it keeps wanting everything in real time! :)
Flocke wrote: And, rather than to implement a special system development view, add some easy to handle system control functionality to the map view directly.
I was actually thinking about that, Not sure what I have planned yet, but there would still be a full system view, then a lite system view for quick access (right click to show current production queue or something like that)
Flocke wrote:And don't spent too much time on collecting ideas, there already are enough topics on this and they mostly just complicate things and take your time. Lateron you still can extend the game on need. :)
Nawww,, but my ideas are the best ones yet ! :P jks.

At the moment I've just finished building a dynamically sized he-based game grid, I'm working on basic pathfinding for objects on a grid (terrain) and grid selection at the moment. I'm hoping to have that finished and a youtube grid going for a few days.

I have been thinking abuot terrain specifically, and I've been comparing space terrain to ground objects, I think I could pull of some really sweet mutli-sector proceedurally generated nebulas too, ones that increase density the further in you go that would reduce sensor range, weapon effectiveness or speed the further in you travel. Looks like fun.
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KennethOfBorg
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Re: Complete, utterly hypothetical...

Post by KennethOfBorg »

I have been building ships and stations as well as animating game video for Birth of the Federation II, Star Trek Supremacy. It is in an alpha stage and coded in C#. I have not worked on the game code but want to use Unity to build a combat engine for the game. It sounds like you have a much better background for that than I do. The project is at http://www.botf2.star-trek-games.com/se ... d=newposts if you want to check it out. The alpha can be downloaded http://www.startreksupremacy.com
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