quote: Original post by Oluseyi
Every Open Source that has succeeded has been announced when there was code to show. It may be extremely rudimentary, but there is no foundation upon which to contribute in the absence of code. I can''t think of any exemption to the rule, and if there was one it would probably have been started by someone with a reputation for successful projects.

I''m going to extend this and say that if you want to make a successful opensource game it has to be released in a playable form and people have to like the gameplay. Releasing a tech demo or an "engine" and hoping that people will finish the game for you will not work. The gameplay needs to be in place when you first post the project. Also, Opensource games tend to have a big problem getting decent artwork, which is something else to consider.

Sorry Ikd85 - I took things a li''l too personal in my thread. It was not so much a problem with your game, but just the game design community in general. I have too high of expectations, thinking that every, or at least most game designers will be like Chris Crawford, and then whn I come back to this forum after a couple of months of doing my own stuff, it''s like getting a slap in the face.

P.S. Really cool that you quoted the Mobb, they''er my favorite band.

Man, I feel what u sayin about the game design community as a whole and the problem with America. As far as this misunderstanding goes, I consider it squashed. I only wanna make this game as an experiment because I was always into the idea of computers being one day almost intelligent as us since I was 8. But anyways it's cool and if u wanna help on on the AI tip or some shit like that jus holla.

LKD/Myriad,
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[edited by - lkd85 on January 26, 2004 9:03:03 PM]

play black and white extensively and take notes on exactly how u figure the creature to be learning. it becomes apparant how they pulled it off for the creature to seem like it cares about you or hates you. you begin to almost feel it is a living real pet of yours. i''ve been up for nights worrying about my creatures well being far to many times. luckily i have broken myself of the black and white addiction, hehe. the way they did it was bound it to rules limited to its computer environment and abstracted it down to an animation level. its a pretty genious ai structure. taking notes on it would be your best bet for trying to model such a thing. its a good reference for good ai. just a suggestion.

Hi lkd85,

This idea of a totally open ended life simulation game happens upon many people, but unfortunately its such a big task that it would be impossible for just a handful of people. You''ve taken the first step and opened the idea up for comments and suggestions (and maybe you will open your sourceforge project up again).

I''ve also had a similar idea bouncing around for a while. In my opinion, if you want this project to be successful you must split it up, otherwise open source developers will have little interest in it. My suggestion would be to launch a project to create the framework for this simulation, and distribute it as a separate library. From there, game developers could use that framework to save time and model their own world on top of your simulation. You could then build the game you imagine using those tools.

Of course, building a life simulation, with interesting A.I., weather systems, economic models, social interactions, etc. would not only appeal to the game crowd. City planners could use it to find weak spots in their designs, scientists to perform simulations, and of course heavy-handed defence departments could check for terrorist targets. This is partly the reason I suggest splitting it up: if you did create a full blown simulation of this type, industries apart from entertainment would benefit greatly.

Anyway that''s my two cents, let me know what you think.

Andrew.

I''m not looking to join an Opensource team right now as I''ve got some personal projects (artistically) and I''m also still a student. Walk before you run, etc. My coding skills are comparable to a child who can write "See Spot run" right now, so I''m not about to join an team and not meet requirements.

However, The Sims was a great game and The Sims 2 will probably be a great game. I think that they really created a genre and that there are a LOT of design options in a life sim that The Sims has not explored.

I''m curious about how your game will play and have held off posting because I''m still waiting for that. If you are just looking for help then there is a forum just for that and Oluseyi gave what look to be great tips on how to get interest.

If you want to discuss your game design idea though, I''ll check the post again for updates.

Okay, let''s focus on design for a second.

Most people developing games designed to be played online by several participants (whether simple "multiplayer online" or "massively multiplayer online") don''t give enough consideration to communication and the potential for abuse and griefing. While its objectives are nothing like yours, I suggest reading the GamaSutra postmortem on Disney Online''s Toontown.

One of the techniques they used is a chat menu that restricts things that can be said to those the game designers envisioned as being necessary to fully communicate within the constraints of the objectives of the game. Some people would consider that restrictive, but experience would seem to indicate that the "totally-open, free-form" holy grail of game design will remain elusive for a while to come. Rather than using an actual text menu, though, you could use an iconography of sorts (I''m taking a class on visual culture, so bear with me ) - various icons, thought/speech bubble expressions, "voiceovers", postures, gestures and other non-textual, non-verbal indicators of meaning. The Sims uses this very effectively, as iNfuSeD pointed out. Beware, though: non-verbal communication is very much culture-specific. What means one thing to, say, North Americans, could mean something completely different to Austrians.

You could provide keyboard shortcuts to the various icons, etc.

The majority of our lives are spent in repetitious and mundane activities, which is why our games, novels and so forth tend to focus on the fantastic - from romances that transcend space and time to noble quests for honor and glory to heroic deeds that save the world from power-mad megalomaniacs. If you''re going to simulate daily life, you''re going to have to either elevate the drama in the every day - instead of just working at the office, have huge confrontations, office pools, intrigues, parties and so forth - or focus on certain activities over others. Note that we typically pay very little attention to our Sims who are at work in The Sims...

Good luck. Even if you didn''t take my advice about Open Source

quote: Original post by Impossible
...Opensource games tend to have a big problem getting decent artwork, which is something else to consider.

This isn''t that much of a problem, because Open Source audiences tend to be more tolerant of programmer art (they still play NetHack ffs!) If you have solid gameplay in place, artists will quickly start volunteering their skills because they get to see results almost immediately.

I''m sorry I haven''t posted anything new in the last few days, I''ve just been busy with recording. Anyway I appreciate people coming in with there ideas.

To Anonymus: The idea of a life sim being used as a game and for industry occured to me a few years ago. I actual forgot about it. But that is a excellent idea .

One of the main problems to overcome is how to make a robust AI engine to run each person in the situation and make it fast enough for scientific and gaming use. This game is gonna need hella optimized algorithms.

To Oluseyi: Hand gestures and other methods besides voice are definitely going to be needed. However I just don''t wanna up and "bite" so to speak. The thought balloons were a good(and funny) idea. For DITL we''ll probably need more body and facial expression(a lot of 3D animation is needed ).

To Dink: The only thing I''m doing right now is trying to get the design documents complete for this version. The only thing I have coded where some include files(with 1/4 complete file structs, etc...) and some simple macros. I don''t even know what libraries I''ll use: (SDL(or Allegro and AllegroGL), OpenGL, Audiere, OpenAL, HawkNL or OpenGL and ClanLib).

Also to Infused: I heard a lot about "Black & White" a year after "The Sims" came out and I still haven''t played it. If I''m not mistaking it had the same "God" concept as "The Sims".

quote: Original post by Oluseyi

quote: Original post by Impossible
...Opensource games tend to have a big problem getting decent artwork, which is something else to consider.

This isn''t that much of a problem, because Open Source audiences tend to be more tolerant of programmer art (they still play NetHack ffs!) If you have solid gameplay in place, artists will quickly start volunteering their skills because they get to see results almost immediately.

I agree with that. I was just saying that a lot of projects are short on artists (perhaps because of bad gameplay?) The Battle for Wesnoth seems to be progressing in exactly the same way you described.