Great Parasite Nerf Initiative

[x4000]

Yeah, i do not want to pressure you into making any official lore - In many ways this is more a poke at the community to see how much support there is for writing a backstory (i could contribute exploding spaceships!) ;p

I guess this is a chasm hardcore RPG players are bound to hit. I want to know more about a backstory, always. And not always is it well written, but sometimes (Fallout comes to mind) you can discover so many awesome interesting stories in the "lore" of that. ... ehm yeah

It's cool.

Since this has come up so much, though, and not just from you -- one reviewer commented on this -- I decided to turn this into a blog post to which I could just refer anyone who brings this up in the future, as someone inevitably will:  http://christophermpark.blogspot.com/2009/09/on-writing-for-games.html

[Revenantus]

Sounds good to me. In my own mind, I have a fairly fleshed out plot of the series of events leading up to the beginning of AI War, and I'm sure that most players do to a greater or lesser degree.

So, rather than taint your story with my own, I'll just provide eRe4s3r with contrived explanations for anything he feels is particularly inconsistent in the game.

[x4000]

I don't see it as tainting, per se, I just see it as beyond the scope of the atmosphere I'm trying to craft.  I'd never give names to different human factions, for instance, as I think that spoils it to a degree.  A lot of people pretend to be Ender, or part of Battlestar Gallactica, or something else that they just kind of create on the fly in their head.  My favorite 8-bit games were like that, too, and I think that's missing in modern games.  But by all means, fan fiction is welcome.

[Haagenti]

Sounds good to me. In my own mind, I have a fairly fleshed out plot of the series of events leading up to the beginning of AI War, and I'm sure that most players do to a greater or lesser degree.

I have just discovered that AI Wars is actually a follow-up of Sword of the Stars (see my other post at http://arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,1146.msg7435.html#msg7435)

[liq3]

Well i can see your points, seriously I just had to think about this a while and i think you both misunderstand why i ask for a lore/story instead of a short intro (Which for its purposes is well written, but its not in any sense a lore/story)

A Lore/Story:
- It gives the enemy a face, which makes the battle personal and not "just another AI"

The enemy is an AI that decided to cooperate, and currently appears to me trying to make humans extinct. Has a face to me.

- Giving the AI back story to the atrocities it committed will boost the will of the player to win

So far it's captured human settlements, and almost driven humanity to extinction.

- A lot of people really do wonder how it came to be that the situation we see at the start of the game came to pass

Are you talking about BEFORE the Civil War? If not, I'm pretty sure you know the answer to this.

- The oddest units can be easily included - they develop after the lore after all (the lore only goes up-to game start)
- Things like the Captive Humans can be interwoven as well

I'm sure you can make something up for these. ;]

What i strongly disagree with, is that Less is More when it comes to a Story/Lore. No Lore means the game has no higher purpose beyond playing it - No moral incentive, no good evil and evil etc.

AI War is not just a simple game - It is an epic rts - Epic enough to have 10+ Hours playtime - and that absolutely needs a lore. This is not Random RTS 531 where a skirmish takes 20 minutes

I hope that makes more sense.

Edit: And beside giving the enemy a face, it gives your units a face - Which means you care for them.

This makes me think back to the good old days where all we had was board games and card games. They never had any kind of story, but people still had plenty of fun with those (and still do).

Of course this is an optional thing for players. Some don't care, some would like it, some want.. I see no reason why not to satisfy each faction

There actually is one negative thing about official lore. Makes it harder for people to invent their own story.

[eRe4s3r]

Yeah.. Can't say i particularly care that much ;p Guess i am just spoiled because every other rts i played till now had a lore. Though it also had a Campaign

As for making something up.. thats a really sore point to bring up - I do 3d-design (thats where all my creativity goes) my creativity resources are depleted!

But x4000 has explained the reason and i get that..

Though i guess for now this is a nearly 0 issue because there is no campaign If there'd be a campaign (instead of procedural skirmishes) then it would look different and i could bring the killer arguments to bear ^^

[Echo35]

Yeah.. Can't say i particularly care that much ;p Guess i am just spoiled because every other rts i played till now had a lore. Though it also had a Campaign

As for making something up.. thats a really sore point to bring up - I do 3d-design (thats where all my creativity goes) my creativity resources are depleted!

But x4000 has explained the reason and i get that..

Though i guess for now this is a nearly 0 issue because there is no campaign If there'd be a campaign (instead of procedural skirmishes) then it would look different and i could bring the killer arguments to bear ^^

On that note, I honestly don't remember the last RTS or TBS I played that I even bothered with the Campaign. As far as I'm concerned, the Campaign is just there to teach you the game. I completely ignore them 99% of the time and just jump straight into Multiplayer and Skirmishes.

EDIT: Actually, now that I think of it, World in Conflict was the last one I played the campaign, because it was actually good. I don't even remember any other RTS campaigns.

[Tankor Smash]

Starcraft?

I freaking loved that game. I used to reread the game manuals over and over again just to read more of the story. Amazing campaign for that game. I actually played it more on the N64 at first too. It was my first RTS I'm pretty sure. Me and my buddy must've rented the same cartridge 4 or 5 times, then we eventually bought the same one a few months later. Then I bought the PC version and was unhappy that you could only use 12 units at once instead of 18, but surprised by the high res units.

[Echo35]

Starcraft?

I freaking loved that game. I used to reread the game manuals over and over again just to read more of the story. Amazing campaign for that game. I actually played it more on the N64 at first too. It was my first RTS I'm pretty sure. Me and my buddy must've rented the same cartridge 4 or 5 times, then we eventually bought the same one a few months later. Then I bought the PC version and was unhappy that you could only use 12 units at once instead of 18, but surprised by the high res units.

I played the Terran Campaign and some of the Zerg one and just gave up and went to BNet. It was too much like Warhammer 40K. So much of a blatant rip off I just quit in disgust.

[x4000]

I loved the Warcraft II campaign, and the one in the expansion.  Since then... uh, yeah, I don't think I've played any of the campaigns in the dozen plus RTSes I've played since.  Big part of the reason why AI War doesn't have that kind of campaign mode.

[Haagenti]

I mostly remember the cutscenes in StarCraft. They were absolutely amazing for their time.

The game didn't really strike me as very good, but I was in a small minority.

[x4000]

The game didn't really strike me as very good, but I was in a small minority.

I know what you mean.  At the time I felt the same way, I was busily playing Warcraft II and Age of Empires.  To this day I still have yet to actually see more than a video of Starcraft, though I know so many people who play it.  I don't have anything against the game, I just missed it in its prime and it's kind of too late to go back now.

Still, I know what a "zerg rush" and so forth are, simply because that game has infiltrated gaming culture to such a degree.

[Echo35]

I mostly remember the cutscenes in StarCraft. They were absolutely amazing for their time.

The game didn't really strike me as very good, but I was in a small minority.

Even to this day I don't understand why people think its such a good game. Just seemed so mid-range and uninteresting compared to the other games that were out there, though I will agree, the cut scenes were amazing for their time.

[Tankor Smash]

Remember the Science Center cut scene? Where they have to fend off the Hydralisks? That was crazy good. I watched it recently, and it's still pretty good, resolution though, not so much.

[Volatar]

I thought starcraft was crap back in the day. I still think its crap.