quote:

---

Original post by Anonymous Poster
the only way to make the player feel the war is to make it a fps, and that basically elimiates any strategic gameplay. you could have the player start of in tactical, fps gameplay, and then get promoted, and move on to rts gameplay, and then maybe to politcal gameplay! in the case of a mmorpg, you could declare war on iraq! and bomb a buttload of iraqes. and u would know that there are a bunch of real players goin, damnit bush! or damnit saddam! or splat!!

---

Here''s a couple of ways to make strategic level of play very human:

1. Having to order a Commander whom you''ve built up a good relation with to make a "last stand" to defend an area....essentially dooming him and his men to die.

2. Being ordered to an area in which there is high "Partisan" resistance....and your Commander telling you that his troops are being fired on by teeange kids.

3. Coming across a small town that''s been massacred by pro-Government forces, or zealot Partisan bands.

Just a few ideas how to get even a strategic scale side of things show the horrors of war.

I can''t fathom why you''d want to make a realistic wargame when you yourself admit war is horrible, and in fact you seem to be interested in portraying this aspect of it in the game. Seems kinda dumb to me... aren''t games supposed to be fun? I don''t know what exactly you have planned so don''t take this as an insult, but I am not a fan of ultra-realism or even nonrealistic wargames.

The fact remains that humans do like to group together in defeat of an enemy, and there''s no reason to be ashamed of it or pretend you don''t have that urge. We all know the real-life wars that go on are horrible because they''re human vs human and very few, if any, of those being killed actually deserve to die. But we still crave conflict, which is 99% the reason why these wars happen.

~CGameProgrammer( );
DevImg.net - Post screenshots, comment on others.
Town 3D Engine - A city-rendering 3D engine. Download the demo.

quote:

---

Original post by CGameProgrammer
I can''t fathom why you''d want to make a realistic wargame when you yourself admit war is horrible, and in fact you seem to be interested in portraying this aspect of it in the game. Seems kinda dumb to me... aren''t games supposed to be fun? I don''t know what exactly you have planned so don''t take this as an insult, but I am not a fan of ultra-realism or even nonrealistic wargames.

---

Watch Stanley Kubrick''s Full Metal Jacket .

CGameProgrammer-
Robert E. Lee once said, "It is a good thing war is so terrible, otherwise we should grow too fond of it".

I also think constantly bandying about the word "fun" as the immediate goal of games is very limiting. I think it''s better to think in the terms "interactive experience" instead of "game", and instead of "fun" thinking of how to make the player "feel better about something". Even replacing "fun" with "entertainment" is to restrictive, since ultimately what we want out of something like a game (or in life in general) is to feel better about something in our lives.

Perhaps after playing the game you''ll feel wiser. Perhaps by playing the game you''ll feel a little more educated. Perhaps you''ll gain a greater appreciation for human life or the diffuculty that soldiers go through. To me, "fun" is actually a very frivolous concept. Yes, it''s nice and necessary to have fun, but games can and should grow beyond this limited concept.

So I want to make a game which in many ways is like a movie. And I presume many people enjoy movies that at their core are sad. Why watch a movie that is sad? Because good movies which are sad help teach us concepts or help us understand certain things. Look at Braveheart....the good guy gets tortured and disembowled at the end (and in real life, he was castrated the day before). So how come everyone loves the movie? How come Platoon was such a popular movie, even though one of the good guys gets fragged by a friendly trooper, and the other good guy goes home practically crazy?

Sorry if I sound harsh....but it never ceases to amaze me that people see games merely as "fun". To me, sticking to that level of design is the same as comic book writers thinking that comics should only be about caped crusaders battling evil villains in black and white terms. We as designers have to progress beyond that level of conceptual design

It seems that the abstraction of war is the greatest problem. Let''s list a few criteria for a "realistic" war environment (all generalised form real events)

* A personal hate develops between the soldiers on each side (on a news clip of the soldiers in Iraq, the leader said "If you see anyone- let ''em fuckin'' ''ave it!") and will start to act irrationally. See Vietnam.

* War is expensive and has serious economic consequences. America is unlikely to ever be able to repay the national debt form the cold war.

* Irrelevant politics, turf wars and ego batles, cloud the real issues. The chaos means all plans are messy compromises. War is most likely in unstable regions where extreme regimes are needed. This implies a fragile human environment, but at the same time fierce patriotic determination.

* Battles are not won in minutes. It makes good sense to dig yourself in as deep as possible and exhaust your enemy.

* When a clever commanding officer uses an unorthadox risky plan and annihilates the enemy, it is a cause for celebration. We rarely, if ever, get to see the suffering on the other side.

* The enemy is underestimated. Every. Single. Time. For reasons of popular politics, people plan for a best-case-scenareo.

* Most people in charge are selfish, narrow-minded hipocrites, liars and cheats.

Can YOU include this kind of material in a game?

********


A Problem Worthy of Attack
Proves It''s Worth by Fighting Back

quote:

---

Original post by walkingcarcass
* A personal hate develops between the soldiers on each side (on a news clip of the soldiers in Iraq, the leader said "If you see anyone- let 'em fuckin' 'ave it!") and will start to act irrationally. See Vietnam.

---

My game background has several different "factions" with differing cultures and motivations. The possibility of the populace hating each other is there....and indeed, cultural issues are at the heart of raison d'etre of the war.

quote:

---

* War is expensive and has serious economic consequences. America is unlikely to ever be able to repay the national debt form the cold war.

---

I'm not sure I'll get too much into the economic impact of things...even the player will only have an abstracted form of a "War Machine" in which supplies and other logistical needs are met.

quote:

---

* Irrelevant politics, turf wars and ego batles, cloud the real issues. The chaos means all plans are messy compromises. War is most likely in unstable regions where extreme regimes are needed. This implies a fragile human environment, but at the same time fierce patriotic determination.

---

There are going to be some mission choices in which the player is ordered to do some questionable things. I'm not sure yet if I want to branch the storyline (since this is going to be a pivotal choice). But let's just say that the player is going to have to make a tough moral choice. If he choses one path, it will essentially lead to a civil war with some portions of the military (and military orders) flocking to his side. If he follows the orders, then the player himself has to live with the notion that he did something potentially bad. I don't want to give away too much of my storyline just yet for fear of introducing too many spoilers. My game design will be open sourced (eventually) but the storyline is all mine Let me just say, there's no clear cut good guy or bad guy as is the case with WWII or "Us vs. the Terrorist" games. The player's personal actions are mainly what decide the "correctness" of action in a world where choices are often limited.

quote:

---

* Battles are not won in minutes. It makes good sense to dig yourself in as deep as possible and exhaust your enemy.

---

That's a viable strategy, except that one side is usually the defender and the other the attacker. In this case one of the major factions (the NEC who is the most powerful faction in the game) has a beef with several smaller factions (collectively called Freezones). Eerily similar to what's going on now, claims of security and self-defense as well as prohibited technology is used as the basis for starting a war. So, the big boys are essentially the aggressors fighting an offensive war.

quote:

---

* When a clever commanding officer uses an unorthadox risky plan and annihilates the enemy, it is a cause for celebration. We rarely, if ever, get to see the suffering on the other side.

---

As an American, you always see the depiction of D-day as this extremely harrowing and valiant fight to fight inch by inch up the beach to take out the Germans, and we celebrate the heroics and courage of the American forces at Omaha and Utah beach. And yet, I wonder how it must have felt to be a german, and see as far as the eye could see a sea filled with warships...streaming wave after wave of troops.

That's why in my game, I want the possibility of the player getting reports of burnt out villages, and homeless civilians so that he doesn't forget that in the end, the enemy is a human too, and not just a target.

quote:

---

* The enemy is underestimated. Every. Single. Time. For reasons of popular politics, people plan for a best-case-scenareo.

---

I wanted the single player game to be forced to play on the underdog's side, so actually, in this case you have to be careful not to overestimate your enemy. Of the Freezones, they are outnumbered about 4-1, and that only because a part of the NEC broke off in a Civil War to help fight for the Freezones. Several other parties have remained "neutral", but even if they allied themselves, the Freezones would still be seriously outnumbered.

[quotes]
* Most people in charge are selfish, narrow-minded hipocrites, liars and cheats.

In my game, there are two kinds of officials at the top. The aggressive "my way is the right way" who only looks out for the best interests of their faction. The other kind are the misguided, the ones who believe that their side can do no wrong, simply because...well, they are on that side. Both factions are afflicted with these kind of people. It's up to the player to do the best he can, and make choices that he feels either A) support his country or B) supports the people. Often, country's wishes and people's wishes don't coincide, so tough choices have to be made.




[edited by - dauntless on March 28, 2003 2:58:52 PM]

what i like about the close combat genre is that each soldier has a name, gets medals, etc...


If each guy had a name, rank, could be promoted that would be a + in the humanity of the game

For example, if Prvt Jim Bob was alive in x,y,and z conflict, reached the rank of sergeant, has his own squad, but gets killed eventually it has a much more emotional impact than just ordering some guy to stand in front of an enemy machine gun


edit: and about that games being fun thing; games dont necessarily have to be fun, they must be immersive.

You may not be saying "WEEEEEEEE This is fun!" but you should be immersed in the gameworld, feeling what Pvt Jim Bob is feeling, caring for him and his squad ... it should try to make you think rather than humor you , though games of other genres may differ

[edited by - MrPoopypants on March 30, 2003 5:44:35 PM]

I think it is a mistake to try to make an RTS realistic enough to show the horrors of war. This is becuase from the High Commanders point of view (Commander in chief, chief of Army staff etc.) it''s not horrible! Infact, if anything, lack of realism in an RTS comes from the fact that you are giving the commander too much information.

In reality as far as he''s concerned, his troops are just resources to be used to destroy his enemy. True he might have one or two personal friends in danger but it''s much more likely that his close colleagues will be sitting with him around the map on the table a few hundred miles (or lightyears) behind the frontline, with zero risk of getting any blood on thier shiny boots!

However, the things that do bother them are things like losing track of where some of thier troops are, wondering whether the first squad was able to secure the bridge or whether thier supply wagons are driving straight into a trap (of course this is now reduced with all the GPS positioning and what not, but even now lack of info still causes friendly fire incidents)

In an RTS anything any of your soldiers knows is instantly and directly beamed into your mind (sort of a Vulcan mind meld thingy) so a lot of the tension and risk (from the commanders point of view) is missing.

If you intend to show the horrors and death aspect then a more FPS approach (eg. Medal of Honour) has to be taken.

Of course the promotion idea being discussed could also do that with the memory of the horrors experienced close up near the beginning of the game lingering in the players mind till the end ( even when he no longer has to face them squarely)

Hope I made sense typing in a rush

thelurch-
I see what your saying, and commanders do have to see their troops as assets rather than people if they want anything done. But that doesn''t mean they should forget that they are people. In my game, the player is going to start out with a small command and work his way up. This way he''ll get a better feel for what his troops do. Also, if I can include 1st or 3rd person perspective, I can let the player see some of the grim details of war which you can''t get from the traditional bird''s eye view of the battlefield.

Indeed, almost everything I''m trying to do in my game is let the player feel what it''s like to be a real live battlefield commander....not some detached remote God-like being who orders his troops simply by clicking on them and giving them an order. I want it to feel, sound, and act like the commander was a commander out on the field (albeit probably behind the front line....or REMF [Rear Echelon Mother $ucker] as they are sometimes known). I want the player to hear his position about to be overrun if he''s not careful. Imagine what technology will be like 100 years from now so that the commander can actually see what''s going on rather than see his troops represented as blips on a comtac screen.

That''s what I''m going to try to do. Just as a side note, even though my game is set in the future, I want the game engine open-ended enough so that it could do virtually any time period. Eventually, I''d like to create some mods for mid to late 1700''s (Queen Anne''s War, American Revolution), the early 1800''s (Napoleonic Wars), the mid 1800-early 1900''s (American Civil War, Crimean War, Boer War, Colonial Wars, 2nd and 3rd Franco Prussian Wars), the early 20th century (Boxer Rebellion, WWI) and maybe even ancient period. But I''m wary of doing ancients and WWII and beyond because they are overdone in the market. Basically there''s a kazillion ancients and WWII-modern RTS games, but virtually zero (mainstream) games of the ones I listed (the exception being the American Civil War). If I ever do ancients, I''m going to do it with as much historical accuracy as possible, rather than go the Age of Empires route, and probably restrict the sides (include all of the Pelopennisian city states [Athens, Sparts, Thebes] vs Persia, Rome vs. Carthage, Alexander vs. the world).

It never ceases to amaze how the game industry is so afraid to try to be creative. I think a lot of people would be interested in American Revolution War battles (at least americans and the english), and imagine a game where you could design your own armies? If you played Napoleonics, you wouldn''t be restricted to the big 4 (Austria, France, England, Russia) but you could have Prussian troops (and even other Germanic states like Westphalians, Saxons, Bavarians, etc), Italians, Polish, Hungarian or even Spanish troops supporting Napoleon''s brother. Why not even have a RTS game set out in the American expansion? You could have fights out west against Cochise, Sitting Bull, Chief Joseph, or even in the east like the Seminole Wars or the Blackhawk uprising. Maybe the game industry thinks history is boring (except WWII and the ACW) but its shortsightedness still never ceases to amaze me.

Whoa man. I''m sorry I didn''t get here earlier. I also want to create games like the one you have in mind, but I usually don''t post my ideas to such an extent because of fear that developers who can act upon these ideas more than me will steal them.

But since you broke the ice, here it goes.
Let me start by saying I respect your views expressed, especially in your last post, and your comment about the war-mod expansion. While I was just looking in the forums, I was thinking of posting my idea, but decided not to, because... you know. But my idea would have a been a non-generic series of game volumes that basically follow world history, in all different ways, but mostly socially and politically (Wars).
I think one important thing is that it NOT be and RTS game. If your aim is to make the player feel for other characters or to learn or truly experience the "aweful war" story, then it has to be First person. I noticed you said this was not possible to implement. It is. I''m not sure of your game preference, but you have to play Deus Ex. If you have, you will know that this game format makes the player feel like the character, in a vast world, almost where he''s alone, free to make decisions, which ultimately effect how people treat him and his destiny.
Uh. DX uses the UT engine and I know that that''s good engine for network/online play so that would help for multiplayer expansion.
You should also make no character image. This will be well-noted, I should hope. What I mean is that you never see the character like in other games... because YOU are the character. Even on Half-life, you never see your character in-game but he''s on the box, and can be seen third person... Your game therefore should have no character art model so that the player can feel more like he''s a part of that world.
If your game is a linear RTS, it will probably be fun to tell the war-story (if it''s good) but it won''t ahieve what you''re looking for, that is, a personal experience by witnessing the horrors and adventures of war, via game. I personally suggest you make it like Deus Ex and you have a Band of Brothers, like someone before me has suggested. This is a cliche but it looks even worse if you try to have several players, like in war, and you only have some dumb unresponsive bots running around, or you have a lot but the game is laggy as hell.
It has to be virtually non-linear like Deus Ex. It still tells your story, but the story even alters as an effect of what you do, who you meet, whoe you talk to, what you shoot, etc... it''svery fun. If you have not played Deus ex, do it, now. If you don''t want to buy it, tell me so I can explain all the good stuff about it that will most likely help you in designing your game.


-Deer

PS: This project of yours is very interesting and I would LOVE to get involved because I need to start building up my game-desiging portfolio, for the furture. Please email me, telling me who you work for (if you are not a freelancer), who you work with, what you personally are capable of (just designing, or programming?) etc. I knew I had your same games-mentality when you started talking about that mod thing and how you considered first person, which I propose the solution to.


Thanks