SportsDino
02-24-2009, 09:03 PM
I want to get into indie game development as a hobby, as much to understand the product/business development process as to satisfy my own boyhood dreams of creating games.
So I'm at a bit of a crossroads and would like some outside opinions.
What would you personally be more likely to download as a free demo and seriously consider buying if it played very well?
- An RPG
vs
- A Strategy Game (Military-Economics based)
Given that both will have low-level graphics at best(likely top down 2D tile-sprite graphics), and will not be coming out of a giant studio. Also the major emphasis of development will be on artificial intelligence, so color your opinion slightly with the genre you think a good AI has more room to grow.
More detailed proposal for each...
RPG:
Single player game, with potential multiplayer coop.
Large world in constant flux, instead of fixed locations and dungeons the majority of content is procedurally generated using a new sim engine. Villages grow to towns, towns to castles, and the game is designed to play over generations of characters instead of the typical avatar adventuring in a world of set design.
Deep character creation using a model somewhat similar to Elder Scrolls in that most development is through using the skills (the practice makes perfect style of leveling).
Setting is standard fantasy fare, medieval period with your dragons, orcs, magic and what not. Can play from multiple character races, the 'generation' aspect of the game allows cross-breeding and base stats are based off an underlying genetics system (i.e. you cross a human and a orc you get some sort of half orc with physical features and stats dependent on genetic combinations of paired chromosomes).
The major artificial intelligence project is to make a living world, so agents will form communities, make war against each other, interact with the player as just another character and as much as possible the agents will proceed as if played by role-playing actors. So knights will try to slay dragons and rescue damsels, dark wizards will try to take over the world, and peasants may become kings. This agent system, besides actively controlling the characters, is also responsible for most of the world's growth... towns or nations form because agents are seeking to expand their wealth/families and migrate to new areas, build shops, build cities, and try to implement various strategies.
Gameplay is from the perspective of an avatar, and progresses in the standard first person style (you explore the world, you acquire stuff, you have adventures or settle down and acquire property). You can start the game at various stages of the world's development, and may play for the span on one character's life, or choose to continue playing as a descendant of your character upon his death (you can choose either a direct living descendant or fast sim a few generations into the future). The game is mostly sandbox, with a set amount of material to be released into the game world over a period of generations... there is no fixed time limit on that spread though, so the entire content of the game could play out in ten generations, or if progress is pretty slow in that instance of the game world could strech on for a couple dozen. Inevitably though the amount of new stuff that can be discovered will run out.
There is no fixed end game, however scripted agents will be injected into the game to help spur events in the game world (such as a character designed for pure evil, or an assassin to send an empire into disarray). An ongoing campaign mode might be added to the game through these scripted agents/events to provide optional game worlds with a backbone plot (although the material may change randomly around that skeleton of history). The 'difficulty' options of the game are to change natural resource distribution, quantity of aggressive monsters in the game, average aggression level of agents, and multiplier rates for the rate that skills advance or discoveries occur. These affect player characters and agents both, and will be arranged in a rough order of which options make the game world easier to live in, and which make it harder.
Strategy:
Single or multiplayer competitive.
Gameplay is from the perspective of various leadership ranks in a military hierarchy from leading a small band to commanding an empire. Depending on the selected game mode, you are pitted against multiple opponents and may win the game by achieving various victory conditions similiar to Civilization. You have deep command over military matters, and some limited economic options, but unlike most strategy games the focus is moved as far away from production management as possible. You can influence the distribution of resources, but the emphasis is on how you make use of the units and equipment and less on how efficiently you can setup your war factories.
Designed and randomly generated maps. Medieval era setting in a non-fantasy world. Modes range from single set battles to a campaign scenario (these can be narrowly focused, or free for alls). The timeframe is not set for typical empire-building, the scenarios last a specific amount of time in the range of weeks to a couple years. Some continuous campaigns have sequential scenarios where the results of your last mission carry over to have some influence on the next mission.
The game worlds are established at the start of the scenario, there are towns/villages/castles and what not, as well as various natural features, interconnecting roads, and so on. For the extent of the game the world is alive, civilians attempt to live out their simplified patterns (go to work, go home cycle)... if the various economic units under your region are not interfered with they will operate at maximum efficiency. However, if your city is besieged and being slammed by catapults, you will see production suffer or grind to a halt. The timeframe is such that you cannot really direct new construction, although you can stress production of various equipment over others, retool existing workshops (with time) or construct defences/repair damage.
The only characters of interest in the game are players and officers. Civilian management is simplified to a simple tax/request mechanism and prediction tools to indicate when or whether those requests can be fulfilled. So instead of creating a swordsmith and manually recruiting x soldiers, you set up a request for x soldiers to be recruited with y equipment at z location, and they are gathered automatically by the economy and drift into place as they become available. The army and equipment gathering therefore does not really add to the manual workflow of the game all that much, and quick use of preferences or even simple scripts will let you avoid spending too much time on building your forces.
The major aspect of the gameplay is commanding battles, which technically the scenario is one large constant battle that just happens to occur in a world that is perfectly fine operating in peace time. You have unit level control through the issuing of orders, but you do not manually place troops. Instead you specify points on the map to form up and formations to use. If you have officers available you can assign units more complex orders and scripts, also the officer will use his own skills to predict the best strategy in any situation unless you have a countermanding order. Units without officer influence are only capable of rougher orders and are less imaginative to changing situations (i.e. you need to babysit them more).
In low level command scenarios (you command a small force) there is usually some combat based objective. In higher level scenarios you do not have to fight in all of them and will have diplomacy options available, however the emphasis is not on empire building, if you want peaceful victory it is through maintaining the defense of your territory and allowing the civilian economy to flourish (mostly out of your control, although you could tax it into oblivion with military demands). The entire 'world' is the battle map, and it can encompass the territory of a small country, so you may have simultaneous battlefronts at any point in time as well as lulls and stalemates. In larger maps supply lines and protecting civilian assets are the crucial factor in logistics, not 'building so and so in x quantity'. Strategies such as ambushes, destroying production facilities, blockades, sieges and so on have a much greater emphasis than in other games where the ability to win a stand up fight determines victory.
The artificial intelligence project will be invested in making computer opponents (and underling officers) that are capable of interesting and adaptive strategies to make the combat aspect of the game interesting. Also the automated economy and supply mechanisms will be driven by an AI as well (for instance, if you raid a village and start burning it the villagers will flee and may either take up jobs in other cities, become beggars and drain other cities, they may join you, or you may slaughter them all just to be safe... but some reactions will be made for each little simling to keep that underlying game economy world chugging in amusing fashion).
Successful AI would be one that manages to catch you off guard once in a while, for instance feinting as if to attack your Maginot line style fortifications and then sneaking a small force around the end to cut all your supply lines and force you to spend resources defending the open territory. Also I'd like the AI to respond realistically, some crazy generals will rather commit suicide than deal, but many will save their troops (and themselves) by surrendering when it makes sense to. Or using diplomacy to hold off war so they can keep their country alive, or deal with another threat.
Okay, so thats a lot of blabbing, curious for what the folks would vote as the game they would be most curious to see. Feel free to elaborate or ask questions, and of course this project is probably a year or two out there before it will see the light of day.
So I'm at a bit of a crossroads and would like some outside opinions.
What would you personally be more likely to download as a free demo and seriously consider buying if it played very well?
- An RPG
vs
- A Strategy Game (Military-Economics based)
Given that both will have low-level graphics at best(likely top down 2D tile-sprite graphics), and will not be coming out of a giant studio. Also the major emphasis of development will be on artificial intelligence, so color your opinion slightly with the genre you think a good AI has more room to grow.
More detailed proposal for each...
RPG:
Single player game, with potential multiplayer coop.
Large world in constant flux, instead of fixed locations and dungeons the majority of content is procedurally generated using a new sim engine. Villages grow to towns, towns to castles, and the game is designed to play over generations of characters instead of the typical avatar adventuring in a world of set design.
Deep character creation using a model somewhat similar to Elder Scrolls in that most development is through using the skills (the practice makes perfect style of leveling).
Setting is standard fantasy fare, medieval period with your dragons, orcs, magic and what not. Can play from multiple character races, the 'generation' aspect of the game allows cross-breeding and base stats are based off an underlying genetics system (i.e. you cross a human and a orc you get some sort of half orc with physical features and stats dependent on genetic combinations of paired chromosomes).
The major artificial intelligence project is to make a living world, so agents will form communities, make war against each other, interact with the player as just another character and as much as possible the agents will proceed as if played by role-playing actors. So knights will try to slay dragons and rescue damsels, dark wizards will try to take over the world, and peasants may become kings. This agent system, besides actively controlling the characters, is also responsible for most of the world's growth... towns or nations form because agents are seeking to expand their wealth/families and migrate to new areas, build shops, build cities, and try to implement various strategies.
Gameplay is from the perspective of an avatar, and progresses in the standard first person style (you explore the world, you acquire stuff, you have adventures or settle down and acquire property). You can start the game at various stages of the world's development, and may play for the span on one character's life, or choose to continue playing as a descendant of your character upon his death (you can choose either a direct living descendant or fast sim a few generations into the future). The game is mostly sandbox, with a set amount of material to be released into the game world over a period of generations... there is no fixed time limit on that spread though, so the entire content of the game could play out in ten generations, or if progress is pretty slow in that instance of the game world could strech on for a couple dozen. Inevitably though the amount of new stuff that can be discovered will run out.
There is no fixed end game, however scripted agents will be injected into the game to help spur events in the game world (such as a character designed for pure evil, or an assassin to send an empire into disarray). An ongoing campaign mode might be added to the game through these scripted agents/events to provide optional game worlds with a backbone plot (although the material may change randomly around that skeleton of history). The 'difficulty' options of the game are to change natural resource distribution, quantity of aggressive monsters in the game, average aggression level of agents, and multiplier rates for the rate that skills advance or discoveries occur. These affect player characters and agents both, and will be arranged in a rough order of which options make the game world easier to live in, and which make it harder.
Strategy:
Single or multiplayer competitive.
Gameplay is from the perspective of various leadership ranks in a military hierarchy from leading a small band to commanding an empire. Depending on the selected game mode, you are pitted against multiple opponents and may win the game by achieving various victory conditions similiar to Civilization. You have deep command over military matters, and some limited economic options, but unlike most strategy games the focus is moved as far away from production management as possible. You can influence the distribution of resources, but the emphasis is on how you make use of the units and equipment and less on how efficiently you can setup your war factories.
Designed and randomly generated maps. Medieval era setting in a non-fantasy world. Modes range from single set battles to a campaign scenario (these can be narrowly focused, or free for alls). The timeframe is not set for typical empire-building, the scenarios last a specific amount of time in the range of weeks to a couple years. Some continuous campaigns have sequential scenarios where the results of your last mission carry over to have some influence on the next mission.
The game worlds are established at the start of the scenario, there are towns/villages/castles and what not, as well as various natural features, interconnecting roads, and so on. For the extent of the game the world is alive, civilians attempt to live out their simplified patterns (go to work, go home cycle)... if the various economic units under your region are not interfered with they will operate at maximum efficiency. However, if your city is besieged and being slammed by catapults, you will see production suffer or grind to a halt. The timeframe is such that you cannot really direct new construction, although you can stress production of various equipment over others, retool existing workshops (with time) or construct defences/repair damage.
The only characters of interest in the game are players and officers. Civilian management is simplified to a simple tax/request mechanism and prediction tools to indicate when or whether those requests can be fulfilled. So instead of creating a swordsmith and manually recruiting x soldiers, you set up a request for x soldiers to be recruited with y equipment at z location, and they are gathered automatically by the economy and drift into place as they become available. The army and equipment gathering therefore does not really add to the manual workflow of the game all that much, and quick use of preferences or even simple scripts will let you avoid spending too much time on building your forces.
The major aspect of the gameplay is commanding battles, which technically the scenario is one large constant battle that just happens to occur in a world that is perfectly fine operating in peace time. You have unit level control through the issuing of orders, but you do not manually place troops. Instead you specify points on the map to form up and formations to use. If you have officers available you can assign units more complex orders and scripts, also the officer will use his own skills to predict the best strategy in any situation unless you have a countermanding order. Units without officer influence are only capable of rougher orders and are less imaginative to changing situations (i.e. you need to babysit them more).
In low level command scenarios (you command a small force) there is usually some combat based objective. In higher level scenarios you do not have to fight in all of them and will have diplomacy options available, however the emphasis is not on empire building, if you want peaceful victory it is through maintaining the defense of your territory and allowing the civilian economy to flourish (mostly out of your control, although you could tax it into oblivion with military demands). The entire 'world' is the battle map, and it can encompass the territory of a small country, so you may have simultaneous battlefronts at any point in time as well as lulls and stalemates. In larger maps supply lines and protecting civilian assets are the crucial factor in logistics, not 'building so and so in x quantity'. Strategies such as ambushes, destroying production facilities, blockades, sieges and so on have a much greater emphasis than in other games where the ability to win a stand up fight determines victory.
The artificial intelligence project will be invested in making computer opponents (and underling officers) that are capable of interesting and adaptive strategies to make the combat aspect of the game interesting. Also the automated economy and supply mechanisms will be driven by an AI as well (for instance, if you raid a village and start burning it the villagers will flee and may either take up jobs in other cities, become beggars and drain other cities, they may join you, or you may slaughter them all just to be safe... but some reactions will be made for each little simling to keep that underlying game economy world chugging in amusing fashion).
Successful AI would be one that manages to catch you off guard once in a while, for instance feinting as if to attack your Maginot line style fortifications and then sneaking a small force around the end to cut all your supply lines and force you to spend resources defending the open territory. Also I'd like the AI to respond realistically, some crazy generals will rather commit suicide than deal, but many will save their troops (and themselves) by surrendering when it makes sense to. Or using diplomacy to hold off war so they can keep their country alive, or deal with another threat.
Okay, so thats a lot of blabbing, curious for what the folks would vote as the game they would be most curious to see. Feel free to elaborate or ask questions, and of course this project is probably a year or two out there before it will see the light of day.