so my medieval fps rts survival game....

Its coming along great. I was wondering what halls thoughts are. I need a HDMI monitor before I can record anything cool but I'll tell you what its about.

A king granted land.
Random items and monsters and buildings.
Building economy buildings like mines to gather materials.
Progress up economy ladder.
Huge world to wage war on.

 

FPS and RTS? How is that mechanic working?

 

It's asymmetric play.

Pretty much, you have one player who acts as "The Commander" of their faction, who is the RTS player. They set objectives for the FPS players, and as the FPS players achieve objectives, resources are generated. The Commander can then create structures, or confer upgrades on the FPS players.

This has been done before, but I forget what the game was.

 

Fine, it doesn't feel like an RTS on the ground and its a bit more of a survival game when I started, open world all that jazz. Its more like, imagine mine crafts system of gathering each stone? Well instead the player builds stone mines or lumber camps to produce for you. NPCs cutting logs and mining and S***. Its pretty cool now but needs more work. The planning is the hard part. Does a black powder pistol and steam powered carriage sound lame?

 

Let me try and explain better. My head is foggy. Damn vodka. OK,

Player spawns randomly in world.

Explore and search for items and gather basic materials.

Build first farm or food source generator.

Build houses. These will make villagers. You will need materials you have found or harvested so far in the game. Wood mostly.

Start building camps for materials, to build them you need food, materials and villagers.

Then the fun starts when you can build barracks. The NPC soldiers will defend the area and you can pick then up like items and move them.


This process continues up in complexity until you can build an entire castle. At which point you will become the target of giants or dragons or what have you. Progressively mind you, I have ways of making your village come under attack by mobs as you progress in the game.

 

I see. Makes sense in my head now. Kind of reminds me of Orcs Must Die, which was a similar concept. Basically a Tower defence game build in 3D in first person. The game play wasn't that much different from a regular tower defence. You build towers, they kill enemies, you get cash, you build more towers. But it did give an amazing sense of urgency when you were watching a horde of orcs run towards you, rather then towards some abstract crystal on the map you looked down on like a god.

So the idea sounds cool. Unfortunately at the moment you don't have much more then an idea. I'd suggest getting a prototype up and running quickly, even if it is just with cubes. The idea has a lot of potential, but execution will be the key.

 

Actually I do have a fully functional prototype. All that's left is planning out the rest if the crafting and building requirements. I want to buy a few more animated characters also and take my time in the terrain. I would post a video but I'm waiting to get an HDMI monitor. Just got a new video card for a tower I have. Didn't realize I would need an HDMI monitor. My laptop can't run fraps or anything and a game build at the same time.

 

Prototype does not mean 'video'. Can we see you MVP. A webplayer is the ideal way to do this.

 

I'm trying to get everything polished before I do a web player demo or video trailer. What is MVP? I havent my own domain yet what would be a good way to host a web player? Never messed with it.

 

MVP is an acronym for 'Minimally Viable Product'. The point of a MVP is not to be polished, but to show the gameplay systems, to get feedback on the game. Is something confusing? We can let you know. Is something satisfying, and a generally good idea? We can also let you know. In fact, there's a great thread series in this very forum that is the perfect place to post such a WIP, where you're more or less ensured to get helpful feedback.

As far as webplayers go, A good, 'unhosted' approach that I've seen people use a lot, is to have a public DropBox folder that they put their .unity file and the HTML file that serves it up (and, I would further argue this is one of the correct uses of DropBox in small-scale game development, but I'll get back on that soapbox another time.)

 

Interesting, well give me about a week. I'm going to be out of town and I need to finish tweaking the pet system before I show anyone what I have done so far.

 

You are among friends and developers here. Most of us can see past the lack of polish on a prototype. Five minutes of webplayer game play will give you far more useful feedback then pages of design docs.

I'm actually kind of excited to see this.

 

Thank you so Much. I'm just worried and idk really know how to do this... I know that someone can download a web player demo and open its core files in unity. It brothers me. Anyone can do what I did but anyone can also copy it before I have the chance to make it truly public. Or am I wrong? Idk?

 

I, do not have the money this week for A new monitor. When I show this game, I want it to be nice. Way past cubes for demos. I just want it to be nice when I show it to the public. F*** cubes.

 

Also I have some other questions. Thank you so far to anyone who had given me input. It is so welcome. Steam cars? Is that cool? I made it medievL but I can do so much more... is that fun? Or neat? I don't even play games.

 

What makes those games fun is how they handle progression. Think early game, middle game, late game tech and all of the various ways to approach them.

Maybe mining over time begins to yield better ores as the miners dig deeper. The progression there would be maybe stone, iron, obsidian, diamond, etc etc. Maybe another form of progression would be hide armor & bone tools from hunting animals, and then the bone tools can be used to hunt bigger animals. If you add in NPC trading with other groups, then just about anything your players want to do can be a viable means of both survival and progression

You could go for steam power plants and technology that is powered by air pressure like pneumatics. But I was only able to think of that because of pneumaticcraft, haha. They have steam powered drones with basic programmable functions xD

Pneumatics feels like a believable medieval tech if they can store and transfer the pressurized air. Then your progression in projectile weapons could be something like...

bows that use sticks -> bows that use arrows made from bones -> bows that use arrows made from metals -> flintlock pistols -> flintlock rifles -> breach loaded rifles -> pneumatic rifles that can fire metal bits -> pneumatic shotgun that releases large bursts of pressurized air, fatal in close range

If you can make that idea modular somehow, people could make air pressure powered sniper rifles lol.

 

Very good points thank you. I already have a way of making the player HAVE to build better mines for better ores. I also liked the idea of a hot air balloon early on.(Or steam) I haven't tried it yet though. The car so far is fun, you need wood, spokes or wheels, one of those benches you seen in church to sit on. A furnace, water, two lanturns (headlights lol) some metal poles and gears. Right now the car is some S*** pro builder thing I made with some wood texture. It functions but its ugly. One more thing on my huge frickin list.

You can't get poles or gears until you can have an engineers guild. So its a harder to get too item. The car that is.

 

Oh one last thing I have a barracks that cranks out skeletons. . I was gonna make it a necromancer guild. Player will need to hunt the world for demonic trinkets in the crafting components to build it.

 

I'm significantly more interested in playing this game at some point. Maybe you could make it a general purpose bestiary and different ingredients make it produce different mobs?

A familiar mechanic that isn't too burdensome so long as the earlier tiers are still fun to get & use

 

Worried someone will steal your idea? With hundreds of new games everyday, The truth is that nobody cares about your game idea. Instead of protecting your baby, consider focusing on becoming a better designer and building a better game. And for that, you need feedback.

The Feedback Friday threads start new EVERY friday (they're stickied in the Game Design forum). Treat them as the mini-deadlines that they are.

How to deploy? I sometimes use web deployments on my web server, and sometimes, I actually release it to Android. Everyone does it different, though a PLAYABLE GAME TRUMPS ALL.

"Will they like it?" This is the wrong question. This is the wrong business for people with fragile egos. In truth, your game probably sucks - even Jenova Chen, Will Wright, and Jonathan Blow iterate through HUNDREDS of crappy ideas. It's part of the process and it's REALLY hard to get good feedback. Friends will tell you, 'It's okay', and family will go, 'Oh, that's neat', and real players won't say anything because they don't even download it. Here, in the design forum, you might at least get some constructive feedback that helps you 1) improve your game and 2) become a better designer. It's the safest community you're likely to find.

Good luck,
Gigi

 

Thanks I take all that into consideration. I would like to polish up this area I have made for a trailer. Its not the full world. The full world is 6kx6k but I'm only making enough for a trailer ATM. I'm not really worried if people will like it, I was just wondering if steam cars and powder pistols sounded silly in a mideival game.

 

I will try and hurry and get a webdemo going for you yall. I had a lil breakthrough earlier that I want to fiddle with. NPC stuff. No spoilers

 

It's typically called steam punk, and it's quite an acceptable genre. There is also a very dedicated fan base.

 

Do you think without the dark ages that Medieval people could have figured out pneumatics?

 

Steam and pneumatics are normally later then medieval. Steam requires a high availability of steel and coal, normally associated with the industrial revolution.

Pneumatics are even later, withou a reliable supply of compressed air pneumatics make no sense. Compressed air relies on turbines. Early turbines were steam powered. In fact today most of our electricity is still produced by some form of steam turbine. You also need good steel for compressed air.

For an alternate history bringing steam earlier you would need a believable alternative heat source. And a believable material strong enough to hold steam.

Thermodynamics helps for highly efficient steam production. But one could argue thermodynamics lagged behind the steam engine. If steam is used, the science will follow.

 

Oh that's the science of it. The OP is working with a medieval setting; replace coals with fire elementals, steel with mythril, and compressed air with wind-elemental ethereal flows, and you'll be fine.

That, and balancing the humours. One must always remember to balance the humours.

 

I was going to say or you could use magic. Any narrative that allows suspension of disbelief will work.

In my day job I'm a chemical engineer, so science and scientific accuracy can get a bit out of hand in my games. Especially steam and boilers. Steam is still a very much useful technology.

 

The dream dies

The dream lives!

2 yes : 1 no. The dream survives.

@radar089 given that steam could be extraordinarily useful for torturing purposes and your game's set in a medieval era, I think you should definitely go for it lol.

 

Yeah I think steam isn't too far of a stretch. Like, mine craft is the most popular game ever and lots of stuff inmevraft doesn't make sense. i always thought it was funny how nuclear submarines and trains use the energy to heat water and make steam... I'm going to continue with this project but the next one I think will be along the same lines as far as function goes. Fps RTS ya know. It really doesn't feel like an RTS when you play. But the next game I wanted to be about building a colony on another planet. I need to figure out two things tonight. How you make objects appear n an animation,
And how to make buildings only placeable in certain areas. (Mines should be near m mountains or something you know) sorry for the bad typos I'm on a very crappy phone.

 

And it would suck being tortured with steam. Or anything I guess lol. Maby I am calling it an RTS when its not? Idk... you do make buildings that produce resources, and buildings that make soldiers, so I guess it sorta is? Hmmm....

 

Coal was in general use in England during the middle ages, at least in London. It was used for cooking etc. There was a steam engine produced by an ancient Greek that was suppressed by the Roman Emperor at the time, not sure which, possibly Vespasian. Damascus steel produced around the 8th or 9th century that was used to make the Ulfberht swords (supposedly) so sought after by the Vikings. It was extremely high quality steel, though obviously not up to the standards of modern times and only made in small amounts. Although it has to be said that the Romans made a form of permanent concrete that has not been bettered to date, hence various Roman buildings are still around after almost 2,000 years, then of course there is the Antikythera device which is rather advanced for the time. Then the discovery of one of Archimedes books in Istanbul at the start of the last century suggest that had he survive the fall of Syracuse the modern world would look very different. My point being that one really can do what one wants in a game because if history teaches us anything it's that we know so little about the ancient world and the people then were just as capable of creating technology as now so if you want to have steam powered devices, so long as it is consistent with the world view in the game, there is nothing to stop you having steam driven devices.

 

@sicga123 would you be surprised if the concrete formula had been found / rediscovered, but deemed less profitable than the hazards our current concrete can fall victim to?

 

Yes I agree there are many secrets of the ancient world. And I do think we use crap mortar now compared to back in the day. Funny we got on this subject I actually work for a masonry company. I think the idea the powers that be had was that S*** mortar will need to be replaced thus ensuring future clients. Also I think y'all should watch the documentary Sirius and thrive. Things in this world are not as they should be. Did you know foasilea aren't white, they are painted with lead because they are radioactive. And id you look at the earths crust in layers their is evicence of a thermonuclear war. Not to mention vimanas. Yes I'm an ancient alien believer. The evidence is like a brick wall.

 

In that you can dash your brains out on it?

Ancient aliens makes a compelling game narrative. I'll believe it as a historical narrative the day you produce a Roman wrist watch. Or any other complex technology for the time.

 

No, I wouldn't be at all surprised.

 

Well the Antikythera device is fairly complex and is believed to be some kind of clock. That's sitting in a museum. Then there are Baghdad batteries and the Romans did debase the denarius by silver plating. Can't say I'm much given to conspiracy theories and the belief in alien visitors though, and all the ancient technology found so far definitely came from here and not Alpha Centauri.

 

I like that they produced a mathematic formula that relates the position of all ancient structures with magnetic fields around the world. It's the first solid thing I've overheard on that show while my mom watches it in the other room that wasn't pure speculation. It's pretty big of a show like that to give you nothing but numbers that can't be argued with, unless the numbers themselves are totally wrong lol.

Hopefully ISIS doesn't get to it. I saw a recording of them smashing artifacts in a museum. Not sure what they think is going to happen from doing that, release a few genies from the ancient lamps? Or is that too above their intelligence?

You read stuff like that throughout US history for people designing efficient cars & engines.

A lot of our technology appears to be designed this way.

Haha who would have thought that 1 comment would blow this topic right off the rails

 

I can produce a mathematical formula that links all of your posts in a coherent fashion. Doesn't mean there is an actual linkage.

I get sceptical of maths on TV. Especially math or science that seems different from what most real live scientists I know and have worked with believe.

I also get sceptical of the idea of a giant conspiracy to keep technologies down, like great concrete or super efficient hydrogen cars. A great way to make a profit is to get the jump on your competition with superior technology. If it exists, and is viable, someone will market it and make a fortune.

 

@Tomnnn - the Antikythera device is in a museum in Athens. Not much chance of it being touched by ISIS. Almost everything has a built in failure state nowadays, not just games.

 

@sicga123 that's reassuring.

@BoredMormon it was just nice for once that there appeared to be more than the usual, "We can't do it, so people in xxxx BC couldn't do it... aliens!"

I am skeptical of that, I'm a looney!

Nothing creates jobs or generates revenue like tragedy. I don't like conspiracy theories at all because I don't consider this species intelligent enough to actually pull them off, but I also despise the greed. If enough money is involved, I can see potential for anything. What's going to generate the most revenue, a monopoly on concrete because there's 1 single superior method, or companies fighting over who has the best & building structures that eventually fail?

Not that I have any reason to suspect that it actually happens, just seems like the kind of thing the scum of our kind might do

Now let's talk about fracking. Anyone see those recent videos of locals challenging fracking representatives to drink some frack water? haha. They should, and then they should drop dead

 

Uh... game design? Back on track, or we can move it to general discussion.
Gigi

 

@Gigiwoo mm that'll be tough. Maybe...

Does anyone think medieval people would be capable of some form of fracking?

 

The Romans didn't hide how to make permanent concrete it just got lost over time. The Collosus of Rhodes was a real statue, however, the maker did not have the knowledge we now have and didn't reinforce it with rods or allow for earth movement. Technologies have been suppressed often. In the case of the steam engine it was no doubt seen as a potential source of trouble after all the Roman empire ran on slaves, and most roads and aqueducts were often built by the legions.

The last Empress Dowager of China allowed railroads to be built but insisted the carriages were drawn by horses so as not to disturb the ancestors. There are many reasons why technolgy does not get adapted absolutely none have anything to do with conspiracies. The Industrial revolution happened in England for a number of reasons but the English being particularly intelligent was not one of them. It is likely Europe became pre-eminent because of all the turmoil and the competition. China was unified and whenj the Emperor gave an order it was followed. Columbus tried to get his voyager to India financed by numerous royal houses before the Spanish financed it. Around the same time the great fleet of China was mothballed because there was a shift in power.

None of it is about conspiracy theories at all, it is all about the dynamics of human relations and the shifting of perspectives. No conspiracy theories, no aliens. So even if one wanted to keep a game design grounded in reality and have steam in a medieval world it is feasible in an alternate timeline idea. It is fairly easy to do when one has an understanding of our own factual history as far as that can be determined.

Even from a world design point of view. Why were cannons developed in China and then again in Europe and why not by nations in the middle east? Because to build a cannon one has to know how to make a foundry large enough to make large bells. Bells were a feature of an early chinese period prior to the warring states. A rulers prestige was determined by how ornate and large cast bronze bells could be. (I may have got the period mixed up as I'm just recalling this from stuff read long ago). Europe being Christian, made large church bells. It was that knowledge that allowed an Hungarian to build a cannon large enough to break the Walls of Byzantium.

That knowledge can play into creating an RPG world and especially if one wants to support the idea of an alternate timeline were the Greeks had steam.

 

Since we're looking for a Game Design angle in this thread, and people keep bringing up historical knowledge because Game Design is about fifty miles to the southeast, let's talk something else: research.

I think the OP's "Ancient Aliens" idea, while considered by many outlandish in day-to-day life, is a perfect premise for fictional media, particularly games. A Roman Cold-Fusion Reactor made out of Cylonean ice-9? It can work. There's other ideas that either already exist, or that you could just make up on the fly, but you get the picture. In fact, it can pull double-duty of validating the game's premise and validating the existence of your game mechanics.

However, where research comes into play is making sure the idea makes enough sense to suspend the audience's disbelief. A Cold Fusion reactor made of ice is ridiculous. A Cold Fusion reactor made of alien technology that just happens to resemble Roman architectural styles in a work that's already established Rome was influenced by aliens, on the other hand, silently poses a question to the player: "Just how involved were the aliens in the founding of Rome?"

 

Ancient aliens in the OP? Must of missed that, I thought that was the derailment. Anyway it's been done successfully before as a game premise. Assassins Creed anyone? A well done version of "history is not what you think it was" can be very engaging.

If you haven't played it one of the central ideas is that history is a battle between the assassins and Templars for control over alien artifacts of intense power. From Adam and Eve to the crusades to Tesla vs Edison to modern corporations.

 

@BoredMormon maybe OP changes with each focus. There OP is defined as "Original Post [regarding subject x]" where x is ancient aliens.

You're talking about Day 1: Garry's Incident, right?

 

I'm sure everyone one wouldlike soem thing more substantial then ancient aliens. And to to clear I was not speakingabout the histoy channel show. Did you know the great pyramid complex of Giza and its surrounding buildings are the blueprint for a CPU from veiwd above? Why do we have to cut ancient structures into prices to move them with modern day cranes? In ukrain I believe there is a concrete slab that dwars the pad.for launching the space shuttle. But let's get back to the game. Hot air balloon or zeplin? Its a toss up ATM

 

Sorry S*** phone in S*** location. The documentary Sirius will change your life.

 

You could offer both to have some progression for air vehicles. Hot air balloon sounds easier to achieve and less useful than a zeplin.

 

Boom!

Gigi