quote:

---

Original post by Anonymous Poster
Um, when exactly will anyone on your team have time to code with all the field trips, studying, and learning to ride horses? And what producer is going to fund all this?

---

Your statements exemplify and underscore a common strategy which is essentially the antithesis of a well known maxim: if you can afford to do it over, then you can afford to it right the first time.

It goes without saying that a team needs to be unified and on the same page. Furthermore, the costs associated with wrangling with uninformed and unitiated developers exceeds the costs to properly train them. It''s no secret that although there are plenty of good programmers, they don''t know what the fuck they''re programming. The same goes for artists. I could cite examples of this over and over again.

quote:

---

Even if the team works for free, you''re talking about thousands in travel expenses alone. It costs us $1000 per week to send one guy out of town to stay in a frickin'' Motel 6 while he attends a training!

---

I could personally fund everything I mentioned for three people, and provide any and all necessary equipment. For the most part, most of the activities would be on a voluntary basis, with it understood that if one doesn''t want to participate, perhaps they are not really up to being on the team in the first place. Given that if it was me forking over the travel/equipment/lessons/whatever expenditures, yet asking the participants to participate during their offtime, I think a happy medium could be struck. Regarding the observation and study of horses, the study of firearms, reading, etc., I would deem it necessary, and consider money spent on that time to ultimately save costs in the end, for reasons stated earlier, that essentially being that in the end, those not doing such research would ultimately not produce the required product, and someone else would have to be hired in their place.

quote:

---

I''m all for realistic, well-researched games, but this is over the top, verging on gradiose.

---

Not hardly. The ideas and concepts are well in hand.

quote:

---

Original post by Voice Of Tango
I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing to take a lot of your influence from Western films. I myself am particularly partial to the Leone's Dollars Trilogy—they provide examples of great stories that aren't inextricably bound with the American West, but take advantage of the fact that the West's relatively lawless society makes it a great setting. I mean, A Fistful Of Dollars (as I'm sure you know) is a remake of the classic samurai movie Yojimbo. The films don't dig deep into the Western way of life, they merely use it as a backdrop. Obviously you would have to do some degree of research, so as to avoid clichés and make your world feel authentic.

---

I would be more inclined to take inspiration from movies such as Lonesome Dove or Open Range .



[edited by - bishop_pass on November 15, 2003 1:47:17 AM]

I saw Lonesome Dove a long while back and I remember it as a pretty good movie. I''ll take the time to see if I can grab it in book form. Anyway, did you have an informal site or such up regarding your project as someone had mentioned previously? I''d me interested to learn more about your goals, means etc. Cheers.

quote:

---

Original post by kordova
I saw Lonesome Dove a long while back and I remember it as a pretty good movie. I''ll take the time to see if I can grab it in book form. Anyway, did you have an informal site or such up regarding your project as someone had mentioned previously? I''d me interested to learn more about your goals, means etc. Cheers.

---

The site is now deleted/defunct. It was a forum where I and about five others were discussing creating such a game, and we had gone into quite some detail with regard to many aspects of the game. Iron Chef did some significant work with regard to firearms control, as well as general brawling. One thing I learned there, through that project, is how much time is spent wrangling with others about things. It seems like some of the individuals in that project were possibly fair to good programmers, but had really bad ideas, mostly due to a total lack of actual exposure to things related to the West, whether experienced in actuality, or absorbed through reading. Really, everyone needs to be on the same page, and needs exposure to a good dose of the real thing, as well as slightly more respected and deep material on the whole subject in the form of books.

Any writer, whether it be Laryy McMurtry or J. Frank Dobie or Thomas McGuane, is going to be a scholar and one who just soaks up that form of material before striving to write about it. The same goes for directors, producers and actors/actresses when it comes to cinema.

quote:

---

...taking the land from the indians...

---

Maybe Western-themed stuff has gone away because it results in the perpetuation terms that arose from ignorance.

...and they''re not American Indians or Amerindians, either, because those should be people of Indian descent (from India) or former-Indians who became citizens.

...of course, even the word America to mean "The United States of America" is silly, as both Canada and Mexico are technically part of America...

...and jackrabbits aren''t rabbits...
...and peanuts are neither peas nor nuts.

People are nuts, though, it seems.

quote:

---

Original post by BradDaBug
Westerns (the movies) used to be the big thing back in the day, and now they''re still around, but much more rare. But why haven''t there been any recent games that take place in the Old West? It seems like the setting would give plenty of opportunities for good gameplay. Gunfights, horses, stagecoaches, wide open spaces. Seems like the perfect setting to me. Why no games?

---

Probably because Western isn''t a good seller anymore and people are trying to make money out of selling games, not just create games to stay on shelves for the shear beauty of it.

---

[Cyberdrek | the last true sorcerer | Spirit Mage - mutedfaith.com][ Administrator & WebMaster GuLSE]

It only takes one good game to arouse interest in a genre. If bishop''s idea works out, then it''ll be a whole new way to make games. I''m sorry the old board isn''t still around. If you could have seen the pages and pages and pages of research and writing that he did on horses alone, you''d have an idea of his dedication. I had to bail on the project for academic reasons, and others faded away for reasons of their own, but there was a substantial amount of work done before the end. I wonder if that data is still around.

quote:

---

Original post by Iron Chef Carnage
It only takes one good game to arouse interest in a genre. If bishop''s idea works out, then it''ll be a whole new way to make games.

---

I definitely agree with that. I can''t help but feel during the increasingly rare stops in game stores (one every two months now if I''m "lucky") that there really hasn''t been any innovation in anything but hardware utilization in several years. But then I could be wrong.

quote:

---

Original post by Iron Chef Carnage
I''m sorry the old board isn''t still around. If you could have seen the pages and pages and pages of research and writing that he did on horses alone, you''d have an idea of his dedication.

---

I''m also sorry. I find BP''s ideas intriguing and his enthusiasm incredible.

quote:

---

Original post by Iron Chef Carnage
I had to bail on the project for academic reasons, and others faded away for reasons of their own, but there was a substantial amount of work done before the end. I wonder if that data is still around.

---

It''s sadly not uncommon for that to happen, though I also wonder if it is. Cheers.

I found this on one of my favorite sites - 3DGamers.com

http://www.nawar.com.pl/modules.php?name=Sections&op=viewarticle&artid=111

Gunfighter

Sorry, can't figure out how to post links..

[edited by - whirlwind on November 22, 2003 11:48:21 AM]

clicky

[edited by - kordova on November 22, 2003 1:09:47 PM]