The Thief has arrived! Welcome to Gamedev. This sounds like a neat project. And I like Berzerk''s idea, too. The funny thing is that each time I try to imagine these games, I see Harrison Ford sitting in the cockpit....

As far as The Thief''s idea is concerned, what wouldn''t corrupt a miserable human? A brief look at human literature reveals many, many methods which could be employed. The thing to remember is that it is not the entire human species which must be corrupted, but a mere handful of individuals. And individuals are corrupted each and every day for a whole lot of reasons.

I really like the idea of the Assppa... (um, what was that name again?) planning to use the humans as soldiers. But this is the sort of thing which even the Earth''s leaders should be unaware of, of course. They aren''t bad people, not evil really. They just made the mistake of trusting devious ambassadors from another planet....

I''m wondering whether it is necessary to have a fixed storyline in these games. The Thief''s project sounds like a good candidate for playing from all sides, as in Starcraft. And Berzerk''s game seems very much conducive to this sort of play.

Perhaps the five races could function in a Scissors, Paper, Stone fashion, in which each species has certain natural advantages over some, but weaknesses against others?

I''m also wondering about the option in Berzerk''s game which allows the player to control an area within friendly territory. What would this be like, exactly? Would the player be able to undermine the positions of his "friendly" rivals? Or would that be too different to include in the game?

These both sound like very interesting games, and I hope to hear more about them. Good luck, folks!


Jonathon

quote:

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"Mathematics are one of the fundamentaries of educationalizing our youths." -George W. Bush

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Hmmm......StarCraft, eh?

It would be pretty interesting to view the story from...say... the Xatharnags'' point of view. Maybe they discovered humans much earlier than the Apsaa(They could be the Roswell aliens) and they''ve been monitoring our technological advancement, but when they saw that the Apsaa decided to take control, they had no choice but to destroy us. The player could be one of the soldiers sent to destroy Earth space stations, but then switched sides because he felt sorry for the humans....

Or, the player could be one of the Thyaf stealth storm troopers who has been sent to infilatrate the Apsaa motherships and disable them...

Or the player is one of the Inkurians who is fighting the Apsaa for freedom(they were enslaved, remember?

Or he''s one of the Hrushgarian secret order who are guarding various strategic locations in the galaxy to at least slow down the Apsaa from mowing down everybody....

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Hey, this is starting to sound good! Thanks everybody!

TheThief

"I'm also wondering about the option in Berzerk's game which allows the player to control an area within friendly territory. What would this be like, exactly? Would the player be able to undermine the positions of his "friendly" rivals? Or would that be too different to include in the game?"

I look at fuedalism as the perfect example of government in the game. There is one very strong "kingdom" that forms the central government. This kingdom is not controlled by the players, in the begining at least. If the central government sees that some player is undermining positions of allied kingdoms, that government may form a millitary force and eliminate the threat. The central government doesn't care much for well being of each and every friendly kingdom, it only worries about its own security. So, it may happen that some particular kingdom has a crappy leader, who can't contribute much to the great conflict of empires. In that case, the central government may allow some other friendly kingdom to take over the weak kingdom. In the end the central government benifits since the strong leader has more territory now and is able to contribute more. On the other hand, the central government doesn't want any single kingdom to become too powerful, as that would threaten to overthrow the central government of the main kingdom. Diplomacy is going to be an interesting part of the game.

Edited by - berserk on August 2, 2001 10:23:00 PM

Hey The Theif. I'm pretty deep into a design along these lines and have been discussing a lot of ideas here on the board wrt gameplay.

The three pillars I'm going with are trade, combat, and stealth; shipbuilding and some crew management are also going to play some role.

What did you have in mind for what the player does? There are a lot of refinements and cool things you can do even if you do nothing but combat.


PS: Search the Design forum for "Wavinator" if you want to see a half billion posts on this subject (heh, I'm obsessed)

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Just waiting for the mothership...

Edited by - Wavinator on August 3, 2001 5:48:26 AM

I was originally inspired by Solar Winds, so I was thinking of the player just flying around, upgrading his spaceship, meeting( and sometimes fighting) people until a mission/goal develops. The goal will be different dpending on what race you start out as. After that, the game will get a lot more focused, and the player's tasks will be more story oriented.

I'm not yet sure of the look and feel of the game, but I want it to be mostly action with a bit of trading, ship management, and NPC interaction tossed in. Currently, I'm working on a 3D engine for it, and figuring out some of the details.

TheThief

Edited by - TheThief on August 3, 2001 2:58:39 PM

I''ll try to post my replies as I read your post

As for the space conundrum, I think it depends on how you define your interstellar space travel capacity. In other words, does the vessel physically go faster than the speed of light? If so, then you can encounter some relativistc effects.

Now that I''ve said that, there are some very interesting and bizarre things that quantum physics has discovered. First of all, for the most part, Einstein''s theory of relativity is falling apart at the seams from what I understand. In a laboratory exercise designed to prove the EPR (Einstein Podalsky Rosenburg) argument, Bell was able to determine that there was indeed SOMETHING that went faster than the speed of light. What this thing was is totally unknown however, for it was neither matter nor energy...thereby saving Einstein''s realitivity theory...at least by pure definition.

However, the mroe theoretical physicists ponder the universe, the more Einstein''s theories don''t seem to be holding water. In fact, the EPR argument was developed by Einstein because he couldn''t accept that "God doesn''t play dice with the universe".

So, when you really get down to it, if you are looking for a "realistic" or "plausible" explanation for FTL travel, then I''d suggest reading some laymen''s books on Theoretical physics. The classic is of course the Stephen Hawkings stuff, but there''s also good books by Alan Wolf, and a book called The Emperor''s New Mind. I think they are FAR more intriguing than any sci-fi book (even by the greats like Asimov, Clarke, Dick, or Herbert).

As for the Aliens, I think the key is "Alien". They shouldn''t be rubber suit men. In many ways, all you have to do is look at other cultures, make it a little more extreme, and you have a good basis for an Alien society. Think other cultures aren''t Alien? Well, the Pueblo indians have no words for our concepts likie "Coerce, negotiate, persuade" etc. Think about that for a moment. Imagine something as simple as taking away key parts of our vocabulary and imagine the effect it would have on a culture.

And speaking of culture, how would the Alien visitation effect humanity? Would it send us reeling in shock? Would it disrupt our economy? Would we go into xenophobia mode if the Aliens are icky looking bugs (that happen to have hearts of gold)? How we react to this monumental act is very overlooked in most sci-fi settings. Imagine for a second if you turned on the TV, and you saw on the news incontrovertible evidence of intelligent life that was here visiting us on Earth. How would you feel? Heck, how would you feel if you saw on TV that the face on Mars was indeed an artificial construct?

I''ll throw out another bite for you to digest....you mention a Galatic government, but how many people would realistically go along with something like this? Look at the UN, many see it as a straw tiger, and even then lots of Americans can''t stand the idea of doing something that the UN tells them to do. I find it highly ironic that for a country that holds democracy in the highest esteem, we thumb our noses when the democracy of the world tells us something we should be doing. So, how did the Galatic government come into being? Is there a "leader among equals" like the humans in the Federation of Planets for Star Trek? Or is it more like a confederacy like the United Nations on Earth today?

In a nutshell, I think most sci-fi stories don''t dig past the surface and are instead about the flash. The cool spaceships, the neat aliens, the tricked out guns, etc. I don''t think sci-fi settings really extrapolate what might happen and how it would change society. Just think for a second how different our lifestyle is now compared to 1976. Imagine what all of these things would do to the world in this timeframe. If you consider all of these things I think it will make for a far more immersive world and will make it far more unique.

Dauntless:
I definitely agree with you. I don''t think most Sci-Fi space stories even come close to being realistic. Star Trek really springs to mind. But then again, if I were to try and consider all of those factors, the game would stop being fun. That''s why I said at the beginning of my first post, that I want my game/story to be as realistic as possible without taking away the "fun" element. I don''t know enough about quantum physics to create something that would be possible in the future, so I''m just trying to think logically instead of thinking about what would be "cool".

Government.... I had trouble imagining that too, and I even thought of doing something like in "The Hitchhiker''s Guide to the Galaxy" where the leader of the entire galactic government is the person who imo thinks in the most abstract terms possible, and can''t make a coherent decision about anything that happens in the galaxy. This is the part that is neglected most in movies/tv shows and games. I realize that most people/aliens wouldn''t trust this government because the process of getting anything actually done is so complex(it has to go through the branch of each race) that it''s easy to sabotage it. But how else could it happen? Could these races REALLY co-exist without some kind of system to arrange treaties, territory, and whatever else?

I hope that when we make first contact, most people will act sane. I''m guessing that lots of religious groups will start to speak out, and some will resort to violence, but remember, the story occurs about 250 years after first contact...

Bug-looking aliens with hearts of gold....
That is a possibility, but why should we expect that we even come in contact with them? If these aliens breathe..say...methane, and the pressure on their homeworld is 3,000 times Earth''s, then, we couldn''t even be close enough to touch these things, much less hurt them. If rogue groups(of humans) start trying to kill the aliens, who says that they could be physically killed? What if they function like the Protoss from StarCraft(or the Borg), and there aren''t any individuals, just a collective hive mind that decides things, and the physical manifestations act on its decisions? Would it matter if we killed 5,10,100 of them?

Anyway, there''s tons of things I could think of to make it seem more believable. Anything specific you were wondering about?

TheThief

Nothing can move faster that light. nothing.

"The second problem is the most important. If mankind makes a spaceship capable of traveling 10 times the speed of light (9,460,800,000,000 km every 36 days), it will be able to get to Alpha Centauri(4.4 ly away) in 829 days or 2.2 YEARS. I hope you agree that this isn't practical. OK, fine, let's say we make a spaceship that can travel 100 times the speed of light. At this point, time starts to significantly change in respect to the spaceship. I don't know the formula, but the theory is that it will seem to the space travelers that they got to Alpha Centauri in 2 days, while the outside world will see the spaceship get there in the correct amount of time(8.2 days). This is for short distances too, what about distances of 10,000 light years or more?"

Let us rethink this. Well, since nothing can move faster than light - ever - we will have to reduce this speed. Let's say this craft will be able to travel at exactly 0.99% the speed of light. It will then take 22 years to travel to Alpha Centauri - at least in the eyes of the inhabitants of earth or alpha centauri. The actual time experienced by the travellers is: 22=x/sqrt(1-0.99^2) which equals 3.10 years. This means, the people on this starship will think it's been 3 years to trip from earth to alpha centauri. The rest of the world will however think they've travelled for 22 years. The wierd thing is that they only have aged 3.10 years, whilst the rest of the world have aged all 22 years. Relativity is wierd, i know.



-/john
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Edited by - parklife on August 6, 2001 1:48:31 PM

Yeah, that''s what I was trying to say, and that''s why an alternative has to be invented like the relay-travel that I was describing.

TheThief

One thing I find kinda frustrating about games of this nature are the lack of believable backstory that can be used to enhance the state of the game.

A common example is the "lone space trader" cliche. It seems that you could sell the idea if you made it higher up...corporate. After all, even in the year 2200, I would bet it''s going to be damn expensive for me to buy a merchant vessel. So now instead of the United Nations of Earth, you''d have the United Corporations of Earth...the UCE. [insert favorite backstory about how the UCE bailed out the UN one too many times]

"That''s cute and all but what''s it good for?"

Stepping up from a single person to an entity such as corporations and the UCE, you can weave in political situations and missions.

Bioweapons: Sure it''s on your tech tree but if you ever use, rather than just investigate, you could be listed as a rogue corporation.

Allied Forces: Members in good standing in the UCE could ban together to wipe out "rogue corporations".

Bioethics: Drones are cheaper than humans, but where does the UCE stand on the cloning of genetically crippled brains for insertion into drones whose only mission is to work in hazardous environments.

Membership: New corporations can''t become members of the UCE until they...

Priveleges: Membership has it''s priveleges...as a member, you''ll enjoy a 5% discount at all starports on ships, cargo, etc.

Responsibility: As a member of the UCE, you''re required to respond to distress calls of technically inferior nations within x parsecs of your territory. So if Bob is new and under attack, as a UCE member, you have to respond and aid Bob. This helps balance play and prevent predator/prey mentality.

Transport: You might be required to transport a dignitary from x to y to attend a conference, settle a dispute, etc. Hold him for too long and you look inept. Hold him for really long and you''ve taken a hostage.

Just rambling...