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Let's Make us some Games!

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Mizraim:
Mizraim, sounds like Civilization. :D -JavaJones (October 15, 2006, 05:44 PM)
--- End quote ---

I was thinking the same thing when I started to discribe the idea, however I wanted to get more into the fighting aspect, "the old clang you're dead, clang I'm dead lose a troop from Civ" isn't what I wanted at all. :) Great game though.

I wanted more of a Diablo 2 / Titan Quest type fighting game style, maybe even more. I still have a lot to learn about coding so I will have to work with what I have.

JavaJones:
Ah, interesting concept. I like it. So basically Diablo-ish with an RTS twist? I'm sure that's been done, but it sounds like a cool gameplay dynamic, especially if the two aspects are reasonably well balanced. Of course the issue with mixing genres is always that fans of one may not necessarily be fans of another, so although they may enjoy half of the game, the other half may piss them off. Which is why I've always wanted to have basic AI in games to take care of unwanted aspects for people *optionally*. So in your proposed game for example, let's say someone doesn't really care about the Civ aspects and just wants to do the adventuring Diablo parts. When it comes time to do their Civ stuff they can just say "auto-roll" or "let the computer do it" (or even set this as a consistent setting for every turn or whatever) and then the computer does a reasonable (if not exceptional) job and they get to go fight some more. Obviously if anyone wants to master the game they have to get good at both parts, but the *option* of playing either or both is really great.

- Oshyan

Mizraim:
Well spoken, I can see that some of the hack and slashers may not want to hang back and build the kingdom back up while the architects of the group may want to do just that, I am thinking more in the Multiplayer setting of course, and that would be a major flaw in a single player mode, unless you were able to specify beforehand the gameplay type you preferred and were given the means to perform the opposite of your choice. So just as you said, this is something I have thougth of.  :Thmbsup:

JavaJones:
Adding multiplayer makes it a lot more feasible and cool, from a gameplay standpoint. The only major issues then are mostly technical - working out the multiplayer and whatnot. Doing a game like the one you mention in simple Flash probably wouldn't be too hard, at least to get a good start on it. But once you start getting into multiplayer I think it'd become rather more difficult. On the plus side of that however the "dungeon explorers" (diablo style) could be doing their thing pretty independently, not even necessarily interacting with other players, while the "kingdom masters" (civ style) would be turn-based, so simple message passing could be used to update the view of each client. Not bad as far as difficulty of programming I would think. But once you got into semi-realtime and if you wanted for example the hack-and-slashers to be able to work with each other or whatever, then you'd probably want to go to a dedicated client of some kind (stand-alone), or a very sophisticated browser component (I *have* seen stuff of that level of sophistication).

The only other thing to deal with then is making sure you have a good balance of player types. What if most people want to play hack-and-slash? Are there enough missions for them? Missions must be generated by the civ-style players, so if they're not doing enough battles, then there may not be. You'd have to spawn/allow AI players both to get more missions for the diablo players and to ensure enough opponents for the civ players. Counting on there always being enough players at either level would be a mistake. Also what if one player or another doesn't finish their game/turn? You have to have a cut-off point where the AI takes over. Presumably the diablo players would have to complete a dungeon/battle for the civ player to see a battle conclusion screen (or they die and the civ player sees a failure) - but what if the diablo player disconnects or just idles in the dungeon without completing? You have to be able to take it over with AI. To reduce load it'd probably just be a dice roll based on a few simple factors (how well the diablo player has done so far in the dungeon perhaps).

Oh wait, one more thing. :D There's the social element of it too. Not so much pairing people up with other people who are friends, but at the least you need a mechanism to regulate and distribute players to each other, since the civ and diablo players are complementary and basically a team. So how do you determine who gets the best fighter in the game? Does he get to pick who he plays with? Probably. But then you get a fairly small elite who will probably dominate the game together, so you have to deal with that. Making assignment more random would solve that, and to some degree the diablo players might not care since they get to keep fighting almost no matter what, but it would probably still be annoying for people not to be able to choose teammates. If you made games somewhat short, so no one could gain a long-term upper hand, that might solve some of the problems.

Anyway, lots to think about. Game design is fun. :D

- Oshyan

Deozaan:
So who has experience with Flash enough to be able to organize something so that it will be modular and easily expandible?

I've been using Flash for many years now but I've never become familiar with things like multiplayer or modular expansion. I suspect it has to do something with OOP classes (which I'm still trying to figure out) but I'm not sure.

And if we were to get started on this project, what is one of the areas we should work on first?

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