Flame me: I'm coding a MMO strategy game - seriously take a look

yellow5 · 2003-04-21T09:17:50

Before the flaming commences, let me just say that I''m not foolish enough to be taking on more than I can handle, even though I did state it is a MMOG. This started off as a senior project, and has now become a full-time personal project. I''m designing the game to play through a web browser, programmed with PHP and &#106avascript, with player information being stored in MySQL (would like to move it all over to a nice Flash front-end once completed). I''ve been developing it for the past three months now and have already established a very solid foundation. It''s basically a space empire builder, starting the players off with one lowly planet. I understand there are already several other web-based games out there based on this very concept, but I feel that my ideas and final quality of the game will be enough to draw players in. For most of these types of games it''s basically "research technology, explore, build military, conquer other player, move on." The point is to conquer the galaxy and the only way they offer the player to do this is through the "hack-and-slash" method. In my game I''m planning on implementing complex clan, trading, and diplomatic systems. Rather than make the point of the game to be to become the most powerful player/take over the galaxy, the point is to become Emperor of the Universe over the other players, and hold that position for as long as possible. For the diplomatic system I''ve taken a lot from the Dune series, half of the power in the empire is held by the emperor, the other half held by a federation of other lesser houses. Instead of "clans", the game will have "houses", run by the players. When a new player joins in, he''s automatically under protection from the federation of houses until he pledges allegiance to one of the player-run houses or reaches a certain power level. The idea with the houses is to hopefully have large-scale wars between the houses for political reasons, control of the throne, control for strategic resources, etc. If the player doesn''t want to fight others, or expand his domain, fine. He can simply build up his homeworld to increase his power, research the entire tech tree, and engage in diplomatic and trade alliances to increase his political power. The federation of lesser houses (players who are not the emperor, and meet a certain power rating requirement) have the ability to pass new laws, such as the empire''s tax rate, tax on certain resources, etc. They also control the empire''s fleet, determine its movements and actions. The players are all of the human species, yet there will be other races in the game (haven''t implemented them yet simply because of the large size of the task) that are AI or GM controlled, some hostile and some friendly. The federation controls the empire''s fleet, which ultimately helps to protect the players. So it should be pretty interesting, players making alliances for personal gain, houses fighting each other for political power and competing for the throne, yet having to work together at the same time to combat the alien species for the general protection of the empire. Like I said before, I''ve already gotten a very solid foundation programmed for the game. I''ve been very careful to make sure I don''t bite off more than I can chew, and haven''t been afraid to throw out ideas that were unrealistic. I''m just taking a break at the moment to flesh out the plot behind it, and polish up some of the game ideas. This is an extremely shortened (and probably confusing) description of the game, but any comments/suggestions welcome if I didn''t lose you :D

Game Design and Theory Game Design

Started by yellow5 April 17, 2003 02:41 AM

10 comments, last by yellow5 21 years, 9 months ago

easlern

134

April 17, 2003 05:59 PM

This is actually a very popular game format, and a lot of fun. I played an age of Utopia my sophomore year that went on for several months and it was addictive and very rewarding! swirve.com has a huge following with Utopia and Earth: 2025, which are both text- and forum-based PHP games w/ no animation. The best parts are you can play on any PC with a web browser, and there''s a LOT of diplomacy, since you''re dealing with other humans. So it''s both possible and popular.
Kudos and good luck!

Spoonbender

1,258

April 21, 2003 09:17 AM

Take a look at Utopia (Forgot the url. http://utopia.swirve.com maybe) or Planetarion http//www.planetarion.com
Might be able to grab a few ideas from those

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Life is like a grapefruit. It''s sort of orangy-yellow and dimpled on the outside, wet and squidgy in the middle. It''s got pips inside, too. Oh, and some people have half a one for breakfast

Flame me: I'm coding a MMO strategy game - seriously take a look

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Flame me: I'm coding a MMO strategy game - seriously take a look

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