(This post is a duplicate excluding a help wanted request, sorry for the previous misdemeanor)

Im documenting a game, more for my personal creativity's sake than anything else, called clan. Its an RTS/FPS/sudo-RPG hybrid where combat is done in 'theaters', sections of the game universe where a fight is declaired. Outside of these theaters are civillian settlements and military camps, both following preatty generic forms. Ive gotten most of the data written down, but ive been hung up on two parts, technology and resources, for a while now. These are the two that im hoping will 'make' the game, as almost all other parts to the game follow a preatty basic form.

My question is, would anyone know of any secrets to designing these two portions of games?

For technology, im thinking of going the "mission released" method, whereas the player progresses and technology is released as the game rolls on, possibly mixed in with unit design. Any advice in this field would be helpful.

The other part, resources, i've managed to think out a little more. Im thinking of creating four base materials, Metal, Crystal, Liquid, and Gas, including a small/medium number of specific materials under each catagory. These materials are ment to be mixed and matched through trial and error, or a simulation system, eventually providing the player with the wanted outcome. What im having trouble with is creating the specific materials themselves. Im mostely having trouble with a system of naming them, and I can randomly select stats for the resources but I would like to get a system for that to if I can.

Thank you in advance for your advice

[Edited by - Arcand on September 13, 2010 5:36:23 PM]

I'm not an expert or anything, but I have a few ideas and example games for you that may help.

Tech. So your tech is cumulative, adding upon the previous as you progress, which is a bit different than most of the RTS games out there. You could add in conditions to obtain the tech such as raiding this settlement here will unlock X tech, or discovering this doodad in this hard-to-find corner of the map will unlock additional Y tech.

If you're going to do this, you'll probably want to make sure enemy difficulty per mission is automatically scaled to your tech ability each time you enter into a mission, so that if you miss an important tech or gain too many you won't be at a huge disadvantage/advantage. Basically have the enemy respond to your actions. Or you can make this purely optional, to which when you gain or miss a tech it won't have that big of an impact, but it's effects will be felt enough, being optional.

If tech is gained at a steady rate regardless, I don't see much problems implementing it. Are you going to have diverging branches in the tech? Then make sure your game covers that (basically the same as having multiple endings). Going stealth tech vs defense tech would yield different gameplay styles and thus probably different events/mission-types/storylines.

As for your resource combination mechanic, check this out:
http://www.playedonline.com/game/598506/doodle-god.html

On how to implement something like that, I'm afraid you're going to have to go through each combination condition, and spell out what the name is and stats will be like. Am I right to believe that this resource combination mechanic will not be played while you're doing your RTS-FPS-RPG stuff? That it will be in between missions that you do such a thing? If so, playing that would be fine, but if you're doing trial-and-error combos while doing an RTS-style mission it can get pretty difficult to play, I'd imagine.

An important question is: Is this a persistant Game or a non-persistant game?

In a persistant game, when a player stops playing, the game still continues (has persistance). Where as a non-persistant game, when a player stops playing, then every one else has to stop playing too (if multiplayer or the game just pauses/stops in single player games).

The reason for this is beacuse it makes a difference for technology and how resources are handled.

With games, technology (or any bonus) generally has a positive feedback effect. That is, when somone gets this bonus, it makes it easier for the player to get more bonuses. In most games, this is usually countered by makeing the enemies harder or other such ramping up of the game's difficulty.

In persistant games, this can cause problems as it can cause a "runaway leader" effect. In non persistant games, as they have definite end games, this is not a problem (and as the interactions in the game are more controled, it also makes it less of a problem).

The best counter to the runaway leader effect is to introduce a negative feedback effect into the loop. An easy example is upkeep/repairs: With this, the greater the technology level, the more effort (exponentially so) is requiered to keep hold of it. This means there will come a point where the effort to maintain the bonus the technology gives you will be greater than the effect of the technology itself.

Yes, if you think about it, it is really just a varient of the ramping up of the difficulty of games to counter the effect of the bonus. However, in this case, you are giving the player mosr of an option on how much difficulty they are willing to accept (or manage). The other thing is if the persistant game is a multiplayer game, then the player can build a support network and offload the costs of the maintaince of the technology to other players (in their clan). It will encourage players to build social relationships based on mutual benefit and co-operation.

It also allows player to get a temporary benefit by allowing them to save up the resources needed to maintain their technology and then once they aquire the tech, they can live off this saved resources for a while. This will allow the game to have crescendo moments as players spend their savings to go after big rewards, but then these will be followed by a Nadir point when they have to work to regain what they lost.

With resources, this too can different effects in persistant and non persistant games. In non persistant games, the resources are use as a potential reward system where the player get these resources and then can "spend" them to get the specific reward they want or to further their progress (which is a kind of reward).

In persistant games, resources have a similar effect to tech as when a player is given them, it provides a positive feedback to them being able to get more resources.

The difference comes in how you deal with this feedback effect, although both have a negative feedback effect that is needed. With resources, the feedback comes with how much they need to spend to get more resources. There could be storage costs, costs at removal (like a tax), equipment costs, and such, but what has to occur is that these costs increase exponentially.

Because all positive feedback effects cause an exponential increase in ability (either for tech or resources), then you need an equal or greater increase in the costs for increaseing them (the exact curve can be different, but at some point the increase in cost has to exceed the increase in benefit). This "break even point" is the point where most player will gravitate around although some will go higher and some will go lower.

If you create a really good system, there will be many break even points where different effects (like community support, etc) will allow players to push up to the next point. The other thing is that when these support effects are removed the players will have to fall back down to a lower break even point. This will create an effect in the game where the changing levels of co-operation between players will allow groups to gain advantages or loose them. Clans will have "golden periods" and will also have black periods which will depend on how they manage their clan, its members and it's holdings.

Quote:

An important question is: Is this a persistant Game or a non-persistant game?

Would modern day resources allow for amature mmo's? saying for a moment that I have a few thousand in the bank, would that be enough to generate a decent mmo? If this is true, creating this game as a persistant thing would bring a much different outcome of my notes, I have gone up to this point thinking that 90% of persistant games fail, not great of odds if you ask me.

Quote:

In persistant games, this can cause problems as it can cause a "runaway leader" effect. In non persistant games, as they have definite end games, this is not a problem (and as the interactions in the game are more controled, it also makes it less of a problem).

If clan was to become a persistant game, would creating a defined need for teamwork negate the runaway leader effect or would it create large "uber-groups"

Quote:

The best counter to the runaway leader effect is to introduce a negative feedback effect into the loop. An easy example is upkeep/repairs: With this, the greater the technology level, the more effort (exponentially so) is requiered to keep hold of it. This means there will come a point where the effort to maintain the bonus the technology gives you will be greater than the effect of the technology itself.

The setup I currently have in my notes is a slow release of information, IC being the remains of a fallen empire being located in the form of ruins, creating a technological advance (in a persistant universe this would be for all players). Im guessing in this respect your advice would gear towards implementing the new technology requiring some sort of expontially greater resource amount in relation to the previous technological release, balancing the size of the players "civilization" for lack of a better term, with the release of something more powerful? If so, it seems to me that this forms a good leveling system.

[Edited by - Arcand on September 14, 2010 11:31:05 AM]

Quote:

Would modern day resources allow for amature mmo's? saying for a moment that I have a few thousand in the bank, would that be enough to generate a decent mmo? If this is true, creating this game as a persistant thing would bring a much different outcome of my notes, I have gone up to this point thinking that 90% of persistant games fail, not great of odds if you ask me.

That figure would probably be similar for most single player games too. As the Mythbusters always say: "Failure is always an option." ;-)

But don't let this be something that stops you making the game, just know that nomatter what typoe you make, if you are going to develop a game, you don't invents what you can't afford to lose (but that goes with any investment).

I have created my own amature multiplayer world (it is not exacly a game, but I could have used it to create a game - and I did create a game of noughts and crosses :D ) by using a system called OpenSim. This cost me nothing but my time as all the software is open source (it is based on second life).

So with the tools now days, yes it is posible to make a multiplayer game fairly cheap, but it won't be able to compeat with the AAA titles like WoW oe Eve and otehrs (mine was made just as a place for friends and family to meet and muck around in).

What causes a lot of amature MMOs to fail is that they think they are going to be able to compete against the comercial MMOs. Comercial MMOs have a massive investment in hardware as this is necesary to operate such large scale MMOs. It is this overestimation of their abilities and understimetion of the difficulty and costs that cause them to fail.

If you are not willing to invest in serverfarms, you will not be able to compete against comercial MMOs. It is pretty hard to make MMOs without server farms. It can be done, but the number of players and the complexity of your world will be severly limited. But, it is possible to get by with smaller server farms of a few machines (but then there is still the housing and maintainance of them).

But MMOs don't have to be developed for comercial success. You could make them for personal achievement, for friends and family to enjoy (like me), artisitc reason, experimentatyion, and a whole host of other reasons.

I would suggest that if you have a limited budget and want to make an MMO, then aiming for a comercial success is probably the wrong way to approach it (you might still want to, but as you said it was an amature endevor and you only had a few thousand to spend, then comercial success is likely not what you are after).


If clan was to become a persistant game, would creating a defined need for teamwork negate the runaway leader effect or would it create large "uber-groups"
It would not address the runaway leader problem. At best, it would shift the problem from individuals to that of the clan.

The problem is with feedback loops. With a positive feedback loop, any change to a variable in that loop causes an amplification of that change, and that amplified change is also a change that gets amplified again and again and again.

It is this amplification effect that leads to an exponential increase and the runaway leader effect. Whether it is an individual, clan, or other entitiy, it will still be subject to this effect.

A Negative feedback loop is a lopp where any change is suppressed as it goes around the loop. This maks any increase damp down and return to an equilibrium.

There is an easy way to work out if a feedback loop is positive or negative: Each entity (or variable) can be represented by a node, and the effects that entity has on other entity can be represented as a line connecting the two entity. If the lnfe as an effect that increases the affected entity, then the link is positive. If is causes a decrease, then the link is negative.

What you do is then count the number of negative links in the loop, and if it is an even number of negative links, then the loop is a positive feedback loop. If the number of links is an odd number then the loop is a negative feedback loop.

What you will notice in games is that each entity can be part of multiple loops, and it can also be affected by and affect entities that are not part of a loop that involves that entity. These complications can make it harder to know precicley what will happen to an entity, but if you can get the loops sorted out, then it makes it much easier to manage the behaviours of these entities.

Quote:

The setup I currently have in my notes is a slow release of information, IC being the remains of a fallen empire being located in the form of ruins, creating a technological advance (in a persistant universe this would be for all players). Im guessing in this respect your advice would gear towards implementing the new technology requiring some sort of expontially greater resource amount in relation to the previous technological release, balancing the size of the players "civilization" for lack of a better term, with the release of something more powerful? If so, it seems to me that this forms a good leveling system.

Leveling systems were created to manage this exponential increase of power from the feedback loops. So, in a way, they have become intertwined and this is why it forms such a good combined system. But, it is by no means the only system or the best system (but it is a good system).

However, in a persistent game, this exponential increase in power presents a problem. As the game goes on, new players will be so outmatched by older players that it will discorage them from playing. What WoW did was to impliment level caps and ways to rapidly increase your level to prevent new players from feeling too weak compared to the higher level players, but these are only stop gap measures and they are running into the problem tht they have to constantly generate new content, and players very quickly clear the content they ahve provided.

In otherwords, they havne't solved it, but the amount of income they get from it is abel to compensate them for the costs of keeping up with the power rise of the players. It is by keeping the power level of the monster in balance with the power level of the players that WoW is able to prevent his problem form ruining the game, but it takes a lot of work and effort (and is why a lot of MMOs fail).

Eve Online actually was a cheap startup of an MMO (not a lot more than a few thousands - IIRC it was around 1 million or so) and they have used a different appraoch. they ahve used a kind of negative feedback loop to limit the power of players. Essentially player can only ahve one ship at a time, so the power of the ship is limited to the power of a single ship. Also if a player lose their ship, then everything they have spent on that ship is lost to them, this means that if a player spends all their money on a ship, and they then lose that ship, they have lost all their money and resources they put into getting that ship.

This setback effect is the negative feedback becasue the more a player has, the more of a target they become and thus the more likely they will end up fighting someone better than them.

The feedback loop is:
The more wealthy the player the more likely they are to be a target (positive).

The more of a target they are the more likely they will have to fight (positive).

The more they fight the more likely they are to fight someone better than them (positive)

IF they loose they loose their investment in their ship (negative).

As the total of the number of negative links is an odd number, the loop is a negative feedback and thus creates a self balancing system (but as there are other loops that are positive feedback loops, this does not mean the game as a whole is not a net positive feedback system).

A slow relesse of tech will mean a slower increase from the feedback loop, but it won't correct the problem.