so my medieval fps rts survival game....

Sirius will show you all of the working zero point energy machines we hav right now, dozens of them have been made. But then the inventors "die from a sudden heart attack" or "suicide". You can't step on big oils toes.

I was thinking hot air balloon, zeplin later. Part of the trailer I want the viewers to see the player dropping some sort of explosives from it down onto mobs. I know they had ancient grenades and molotove cocktail type weapons.

 

Haha well molotovs have existed since (and probably before) alcohol. And alcohol has existed for quite some time because humanity's #1 priority is getting wasted.

<evil>

Spoiler: wut

Ah, big oil. It used to bother me, but then I realized that if such a trend continues in which the middle class become poor and the rich get richer, then the future will be filled with only the rich. And then they'll be the only ones around to be dying slowly and suffering from the air they can't breath. I'm humble enough to make the sacrifice of my own quality of life to ensure the suffering and extinction of them all :3

</evil>

Back on topic, is steam the most advanced technology that will be available to your players? What's the most advanced machine it can be used for? How will you have them believably generate steam without having access to electricity?

 

Steam comes first, and has no dependence on electricity. However if you leave a civilisation with steam for a couple hundred years they will start making electricity.

 

That's exactly what I was getting at. I can see my wording is unclear xD But I meant, how believable is it to have a civilization that is using steam power but will not have access to electricity - as in not inventing it along the way. I feel like since the game is medieval, you want to keep electricity out... but if you include steam, people will think.. steam generators!?

Also, my blood lust has settled. I won my battle with Sprint this evening. Sorry for any disturbing content posted in the last 24 hours.

 

• So, if I stop at steam that's fine. We are all deep thinking this, the consumer will not. I hope lol.. but yes, steam and black powder were as far as I wanted to go with it. If I dont, I'll have to make everything g up to today's current technology.... ugh. I'm not even sure if I want to keep the "magic" in the game.

 

Considering you can make electricity with potatoes or lemons I'm not sure if steam acctually has to come first. It just depends on your level of understanding.

 

And its not big oil alone, its an elite group of super rich who will save a select few as laborors. This has been the plan for a long time. To be honest a huge population decrease is what this planet needs. Ever hear about the Georgia guide stones?

 

You can definitely include a local alchemist always running around with lemons and potatoes shouting "There must be an easier way!!"

 

Lol imagine a world that instead of solar had huge potatoe power banks....

 

Ever tried to light a city with potatoes? Sure electricity had existed for years as a parlour trick with silk. And lightening has been around forever.

But a generator sufficient to actually drive anything doesn't become practical until steam, or at the very least some highly geared wind or water wheels. Or magic.

I'm not going to engage you on the low population ideas, except to indicate we disagree strongly on the idea.

 

100% green energy sounds nice. And mobile devices could be charged with potato packs! We'd have cars that were 90% potato and the rest electrical circuits and wheels. Sounds like a nice life. And since we'd be growing our power supply, the excess could be fed to the homeless when the power demands had been met.

Do amish locations count? Their electrical need is 0 and their electrical potential from growing potatoes and lemons is likely greater than 0

 

If everyone in the city grew their owne potatoes and monitored the consumption of energy they would be fine. But that level of responsibility is asking a lot out of the mindless hordes of sheeple we call population.

 

What's the alternative? Government sanctioned potatoes? I don't know if that sentence came out correctly, but damn, it sounds hilarious.

Just tell the sheeple that potatoes prevent terrorism.

 

I was going to write a response about how impossible this was, and give you the number of potatoes per person you would require. Then I though "hey, this is for a work of fiction, if The Matrix can get away with calling itself science fiction, then so should his guy"

 

Its hard to tell tone through text but I was joking about potatoe banks yall. But not About how irresponsible we have been as a civilization. I think a family would probably need a few acres of potatoes to even power A computer idk lol.

 

@BoredMormon , @radar089 why speculate when we have science?

http://www.movoto.com/blog/novelty-real-estate/power-your-house-with-potatoes/

 

Well, not that guys science. I hate to disparage on such a noble effort, debunking potato powered houses is a brilliant cause. But he's got it massively wrong. For a start the power doesn't come from the potato itself. It comes from the zinc + copper galvanic cell. You can do the same thing with salt water.

 

i agree with boredmormon on that one, also i guess he is calculating in the cost of buying the potatoes vs growing them. im making more progress atm, been going through a move and getting a storage unit, and raising my son on my own, very little free time. if anyone wanted to know, im acctually using the asset "UnitZ" and some custom scripts i wrote a few months ago for another project. thinking about going ahead and buying some knights just need to choose... im no animator thats for sure. i could model a knight easy enough but i havnt delved into animation very much. i have been teaching myself as much as i can.

"It would only take 258 potatoes to power your entire house for an hour."

haha, it would "only take" 258 tatoes.....

 

@radar089 no disagreement here, @BoredMormon and I are actually simply keeping your post on the front page

 

Phooey. This is game design. Anything half decent stays on the front page.

I'm mostly interested in seeing the implementation of FPS + RTS. I would play this even if it did involve gathering potatoes to power my steam rifles.

After all, I spent a fair bit of time playing a game about monkeys fighting balloons with ninja stars and sniper rifles.

 

Don't you mean especially if it involved that? haha

Who hasn't killed a few hours on bloonsTD? Great concept. Too bad he didn't choose a cooler theme, but eh, it's fun to play.

 

"POTATO WARS!" screams to be a game, right? In a made-up universe (which is ALL games), it's all make-believe. I imagine something like:

"You wouldn't recognize the world. The Century Wars had left Earth a scarred remnant of what it was. Genetic mutations, nanobot swarms, and worst of all, the Mutant Potatoes! Endless fields of self-replicating, hyper-growth spuds, fueled with a mindless rage. With your new formula, it's up to you to harness their energy, and save mankind!"

It starts all serious, and then goes Crazy goofy (like the new intro URF video for LoL). 2D, top-down, RTS. Cartoon graphics. Silly puns, goofy missions, rediculous plots. PVE, with end-game PvP. Go!

Gigi

 

Check out Natural Selection 2. It started as an HL1 mod with one RTS commander and FPS units.
http://store.steampowered.com/app/4920/

 

"Spudder" is a 0.25 second stun on a 0.5 second cooldown. Seriously.

 

See this is why I don't know how to classify this game. I say its an RTS because you can move your soldiers around the map, but its more like, you equip them and then drop them in a new spot. And you can build buildings any place. Thinking of a catchy name in driving me nuuuuuuts.

 

Heh, the more I think about it, the more it starts to remind me of this game. There's no first person view last I checked, but the gameplay is like a free roaming RTS where you can recruit more soldiers and build structures in random places.

 

I wonder if this idea can garner enough attention for a crowd funding campaign. I have no illusions of making millions. But anything is better then nothing. Trying to come up with a good name so I can go ahead and purchase a domain.

 

Is it? Successful crowd funding requires 100s or 1000s of hours of investment, including videos, juicy art, and amassing an online presence. And, as most crowd-funding fails, it's hard to justify that those hours were well spent. You may consider this Gamasutra article.

Gigi

 

I have been reading articals since kickstarter And ingogo came out. I'm willing to out in all the effort and I have been discussing a commission with a deviant art artist for some banner and logo work.

 

A lucky break my family owns a screen printing press

 

I mean the idea its self, and I'm bummed I just upgraded to 5 and my miner animation is F***ed.

 

Move your miner into a brothel, problem solved?

Heh, language.

 

Should I mention playable prototype again? Especially if your key selling point is unique gameplay.

 

im working on the playable prototype, been so busy at work. found a buddy from college who did allot of video editing stuff.

 

What makes SMALL so powerful? If you are too busy to put together even a basic prototype in 3 weeks, consider how many decades it will take to invest 1000s of hours. Time is a bigger enemy than skill and creativity combined.

Gigi

 

Unless you're a lobster and or jellyfish. Then you got time out the knees.

 

"Jellyfish" and "knees" ... not often seen in the same sentence .
Gigi

 

The Egyptians were playing with Crookes tubes long before the Medieval age.
Dendera Light

 

Aliens!!

The future is not ready for me.

 

Oh my god, this forum sometimes... I swear...

Anyway, I actually had spent a lot of time thinking about a similar style game. Are you going to go for a Macro style game like Dwarf Fortress, or more like an arena style game?

If you're going for macro, a random quest generator is a must.

If an arena, multiplayer.

 

I think the idea has been in everyone's head since War Craft: Orcs versus Humans.

The idea of a game that simulates being an actual commander on the ground instead of fling above the battle felid in a satellite is appealing. A roman general couldn't just scroll up and see how his troops were doing, he had to move himself, or wait for reports, or listen for the trumpet signals. He would also often have to fight himself.

Dune 1 tried to simulate this. A lot of the game ended up being just waiting for your troops to arrive at distant battle fields. Or watching in horror as troops marched to certain death on a front so far away you couldn't change their orders on time.

One big challenge I see to making this successful is AI. Your sub commanders and individual units need to be far more capable then in your average modern RTS if you expect them to micromanage themselves

 

The easy answer to that is to simply have the troops being commanded by the player being the ones that determine the battle. Say one oversees the disposition of the enemy troops then places one's own army then place the commander piece and the troops covered within that area including reserves would be the battle. This might sound stupid but would still require strategic placement of the army to meet with a plan, then good use of tactics in the situation to win the game. If it was a co-op multiplayer this would be done all along the line. It would need some tweaking.

 

I don't wanna say a downer but I think I have seen similar game play parts from another game. Rise and Fall: Civilizations at War. Link : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rise_and_Fall:_Civilizations_at_War It has all the interesting combat parts without the mining.

 

Well guys sorry I have been absent. Worktakes me all over the place. Sometimes no WiFi. So I am at a point now that all I can do is build buildings and work on the terrain and enemy's. Been purchasing some assets here and there. But I have a problem. I have only dabbled in c#. The asset UnitZ is the core of my project. Well I didn't realize it until yesterday but if I place a building, and the exit and load the game again, the buildings that are placed are gone. Player position and inventory save but not buildings. I have been trying to reach the creator or UnitZ to ask him if he can incorporate that, I'm even willing to pay, but he takes a week or more to respond it drives me nuts. If he says no, do y'all have any tips on commissioning a programmer? I have never done that before and have no clue where to start.

 

Are you planning to invest thousands of $$$? If so, there are hundreds of places to find contract programmers, including companies like Iron Belly Studios (Props to Ryan and crew!). If not, then you're in the exact opposite of my situation.

I'm a coder, not an artist. In the beginning, I tried cobbling together some friends (other professionals). I figured, "HEY! Help a brother out." It worked, for a few weeks, until after a while, they had other stuff to do. Things kept coming up. And, before long, it was just me. After moping for a couple weeks, I just figured it out. I got Inkscape, Paint.Net, and a lot of help from my wife. I paid for a few assets, and did the rest myself.

I recommend instead of looking for other programmers, that you consider the adage, "Use what you've got". You might not have the programming chops to build a full-up 3D game, anymore than I had the art skills for it. So, consider scaling down to something smaller. Build a 2D game, and learn to code as much as is needed to get the job done. Cause, you could to cobble together a random internet collaboration, though to be honest, the graveyard of those failed attempts stretches as far as the internet.

TL;DR - Welcome to the DO IT YOURSELF CLUB. Games are hard.

Gigi

 

Actually everything is working fine except for the building persistence. i would say in functionality, it is at 90%. not counting bugs, and i have only encountered 2 so far and i know what to fix in his scripts. i was thinking maby 400$ sounded fair to fix the building persistence issue, but that was before he emailed me back a few hours ago. he said that update is coming in a week or two. considering he has updated UnitZ allot and responds back to me im ok with waiting, he is probobly busy. but im not trying to gather a team over the internet for handouts. i will commission or do it myself. i have been in the do it yourself club for some time now. tutorials have been my life for the past year and a half. blender was my first goal to learn, but truthfully i find allot of models and animated characters on the asset store im fine with purchasing. i spent about 130$ on some characters for the original game idea a few days ago, and that idea isnt out the window either. im sticking with the same game framework as before but im switching the theme to "founding a colony". an untouched earth like planet with factions fighting for control of the resources. i just finished my "drop pod" ai spawner i think its pretty neat. oh and yall i picked up a video card for my tower not to long ago. should have some video and a webplayer demo up soon to show you. this laptop chugs. i gotta delve into this ai attack script and try and get muzzle flash or partical effect going for the ai when it attacks. like i said im no coder, but i can get by if i really try. things like arrays and persistence are out of my depth atm.

 

a little screen shot of what i have been fiddling with tonight. that trooper i got from arteria3d for 10$, i have had the fps arms and gun for months. anyways he will run around and shoot at anything with the "enemy" tag. its pretty funny. i have a spawner you can drop, it drops a hologram target rectical like thing on the ground and a big cube that is very high in the air out of the players sight range is slaved to the spawner object. the cube has a rigid body so when you drop the spawner the cube comes slamming down from "orbit" and a few seconds later my troopers start to spawn. i see a nice looking drop pod on the asset store but for 45$ i could whip up my own in blender. i need to work on the in game ui soon. and i know the grass is terrible and way too big, im just doing tests atm.

 

ehhh, not like dwarf fortress. but its not like arena games either. its huge open world, and you can craft things, place buildings, spawn things, drive things, etc. drop objects that spawn soldiers, place mines that generate materials for crafting. its a weird mesh of skyrims gameplay style and minecrafts, but not voxel. and i just decided the other day to switch from dark ages to sci-fi. i always loved tribes 2, entropia universe, etc.. i dont think rts fits in the game description the more i think about it. i mean you can build buildings that produce troops, and resources, and you can spawn troops wherever you want as long as you have the materials to craft said spawners. sooo, maby it is like an rts? fps/rts? makes my brain hurt thinking about it.

 

i get time off, allot of time off. i travel and work for awhile and then i come home for x amount of time. just depends. and my goal here, is a "polished prototype" for a game play trailer, to use for a crowd funding campaign. hey, all i can do is fail and learn from that. it wont deter me. if hitting a wall in learning was going to make me give up i would have said screw unity a long time ago. i have survived deployment, sickness, brutal medical exams, an addict ex wife, and much more. this is fun to me compared to all that mess.

 

soon my friend. i know i have kept you all waiting.