SpaceSimCentral

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cKAS4WdWteZ10w7hurw0Lf0O5OSrmF5atUo3ct6ITgg/edit?hl=en_US&authkey=CIya8dEB&pli=1that is the paper showing the goals and design plans for a prersonally made, indie project of mine. ima be honest. i know next to nothing of 3d modeling or game coding. but by god am i going to try. this game idea has been brewing in my head for quite a while, it wasnt till Beyond Protocol went under and become open source did i consider trying to make a game based off of it. well, three months later, ive realized the product i want to make is quite a bit different from the original, so yeah... long term goal is to get this up.the basic game synopsis, or atleast what im trying to get going, is a heavily customizable MMO(if i can pull off MMO) RTS, in space. resources would be divied up into 5 level of quality per item, and spread out over star systems. better resources would be toward the center of the universe (every solar system is an environment, and every planet has its own environment) to help bring combat more into play. i think the real hook would be the level of strategy i want to bring in. im not calling it star tactics for no reason. using a technique i call tethering, your civilizations will send supplies thru visible routes, destroy the routes, ruin there supplies, starve em out. im including ammo and fuel into the game, ammo to prevent steam rolling, and fuel to prevent over extending empires. destroying supply routes can easily stall out and kill an army. its an aspect i dont see in games often enough. fleets will be based on fleet points, big ships will take up more points (say a destroyer or dreadnought would eat 10-15 points while a small cruiser would be 1-4 points and fighter groups of 10-20 only costing a point). if the code is light enough, im hoping to allow 50-100 points of units in an environment per player, 25 or so if the game code is too intensive. i personally hope that the main hook of the game is its deep level of strategy and customization of units. units are designable from engines, generators, electronics (stat buffers/debuffers and radars) sheilds, weaponry and armor, on a chosen hull. I believe ive come up with a setup that will be extremely interesting to work with. the main issue i see so far with my designs, is game balance, it apears that the level of customization i want to allow will be subject to overpowering and require nerfing at points, that will be at beta though, and thats at least a long arse time away. id suggest reading the lower parts of the paper too see the interesting stuff on unit design and map setup. most of the uper paperwork is from back when i was working on just a modding project for BP. so yeah, heres hoping on it lol. feedback on the concept is appreciated.

Looks like you have spent a good amount of time thinking about Star Tactics.I have never played Beyond Protocol so I am not sure how that gameplay was compared to what your describing now. An MMO is a huge step, why go that route why don't you try to make a solid SP/MP game? I thought there was an effort right now to bring Beyond Protocol online on free servers? I was just thinking with you having no 3d modeling or programming experience this effort might be very daunting Looks like Beyond Protocol was mainly a planet based game so what you have described in your plan sounds good. And from what I have seen in videos you would be changing some of the functionality around for the better and make the strategy better.

DarkOne wrote:
Looks like you have spent a good amount of time thinking about Star Tactics.I have never played Beyond Protocol so I am not sure how that gameplay was compared to what your describing now. An MMO is a huge step, why go that route why don't you try to make a solid SP/MP game? I thought there was an effort right now to bring Beyond Protocol online on free servers? I was just thinking with you having no 3d modeling or programming experience this effort might be very daunting Looks like Beyond Protocol was mainly a planet based game so what you have described in your plan sounds good. And from what I have seen in videos you would be changing some of the functionality around for the better and make the strategy better.
Beyond protocol stagnated. plain and simple. it was a great start, but i think it could be even better. the attempt at open sourcing hasnt gone anywhere. we arent allowed to charge for server costs, because of a unique license that makes DSE (the company owners) able to pull back everyones rights to use it. so.. if say someone rewrites the game faulty code, and poor balancing, and it becomes capable of producing revenue, they would be allowed to under its terms, take back the open source code, and start back up the game using what you created. in other words, yank our chains. id rather not take that risk. besides, what ive created is way too far away from the original. the "skeleton" is the same, universe and planets (then again, what good sifi game doesnt have that?). perhaps the only thing that really similar is ship creation, but i noticed star drive and a few other games are also trying to increase ship design creativity by using block based setups.i would write up the entire game as a system test game, 1 player, 4 player then full MMO, but unfortunately that would require me rewriting the entire game engine every time. and yeah, an MMO infrastructures game requires alot of extra fields in computer science derivativory from my java based game direction (what im currently learning in order to make this) such as designing a client and server side architecture . however, i really do hate having to redo my work, and having to write up an entire game 3-4 times would drive me a bit mad, but i would if necessary. my first task is to test the ship designer code, make shure the designing of weaponry, and the assembly of ships is all working correctly, however that will require me writting up some of the engine source code... eh one step at a time.ps, star tactics is too "sounds like a cheap and game spammy kinda deal" the sort of stuff id just pass over if i was looking around for a game. i know im one guy and that i prolly cant make something look "howly crap" awesome, but im going to try to give it a polished look. first rule of marketing, make your product look polished and presentable. ive seen alot of people pass over a game cuz of shitty graphics. while that is stupid, you have to consider your audience... and one of the things i noted bp didnt do, but should have, was provide baseline ships for starting players, preconstructs that where unlocked when you got to the tech level you needed to be to use them. i also want players to be able to dynamically construct ships with resources on hand, for example, say you have a ship that uses lvl 5 tech on all of it, but you are missing lvl 5 radar material on your planet instead, a pop up will show up, saying your missing material, and ask if you want to substitute, continue down the line until you can begin producing the ship (a part that is lvl 5 uses less hull, so you may encounter an error if replacements are too big, though it may be possible just to subtract the lost space from armor). its the little things that can make it better you know? i dont want a player who doesnt enjoy designing to have to if they dont want to.some things that where never in BP that i want to add: salvaging and refitting, loot drops from kills, stat buffing and debuffing, Fleets with generals (and resultant stat boosts), class bonuses, a flash-programing-like overview map with useful (tradeable) info on it, a scoreboard & battle tracker , tradable ship designs (another large pet peeve, two parts with exact same stats couldnt be substituted on deisgns, so if a guild part supplier went down, you had to redesign the whole thing). anyway... yeah... back to writting and reading java for dummies.....