:) Has Arcen Ever Thought of Doing Something Like Space Rangers 2...?

[Teal_Blue]

Just saw an old video on YouTube and was very impressed, not with the graphics so much, for an old game, but the gameplay which really blew me away, it was really something special.  Just wondered if Chris and company had any thoughts of something, not space rangers 2 copy, but something that covered as much ground, conceptually speaking that is. 

-Teal

[tigersfan]

Well, personally, I think that starting out the the premise of "HEY! Lets do a game like this other game!" is a bad idea.

As for the future, there's a lot of things that can shape that, but at this time Arcen doesn't have any official plans for what's next. We'll obviously keep updating AI: War, and as long as things keep going as they are, AVWW will keep getting updated even more. We'll likely do another expansion or two of AI: War. And again, as long as things keep going well, we'd love to do an expansion (or more than one) for AVWW. But, no firm plans on any times for any of those yet, and no solid plans outside of that at this time.

[keith.lamothe]

One of my hobby projects is a space-rangers-2-like game   But commercializing such a thing would be difficult, I think.

[Cyborg]

One of my hobby projects is a space-rangers-2-like game   But commercializing such a thing would be difficult, I think.

Need a play tester?

[keith.lamothe]

One of my hobby projects is a space-rangers-2-like game   But commercializing such a thing would be difficult, I think.

Need a play tester?

It's not at that stage yet, but I very much appreciate the offer and will remember it.

One of the big questions I'm still puzzling out is how to handle the passage of game-time in network co-op.  The essentially turn-based combat is pretty critical in my opinion, but with people in different systems fighting, trading, doing text quests (I don't feel compelled to try to do the ground combat or blackhole arcade-style fights), etc... Either everyone does a lot of waiting or people are losing a lot of game time because they're trading or running scans on a planet while others are fighting, etc.

So either I ditch co-op (don't want to do that, the main things I see SR2 as lacking are more content, combat that doesn't consist mostly of kiting, and co-op), or I ditch the overall timing model (or just trivialize it, but that would largely mean ditching the "living galaxy" feel because stuff happens on that passage of time), or I find some way of making them play well together.

Right now my main thought is to have game-time pass gradually with real-time unless no one is doing anything (i.e. paused), and full support for auto-pausing at specified triggers so someone playing singleplayer (or very patient multiplayer) can still get the original feel.  But I haven't thought it all the way through.

[Cyborg]

One thing you could do is create instances out of certain battles so you could do the turn-based mechanics. Minecraft makes everyone agree on sleeping before advancing the clock any significant amount of time, and that seems to work well.

[LintMan]

So either I ditch co-op (don't want to do that, the main things I see SR2 as lacking are more content, combat that doesn't consist mostly of kiting, and co-op), or I ditch the overall timing model (or just trivialize it, but that would largely mean ditching the "living galaxy" feel because stuff happens on that passage of time), or I find some way of making them play well together.

It's been a long while since I played SR2, but IIRC, the timing basically just put pressure on you to keep pushing forward to the end game.   A "living galaxy" doesn't have to be a countdown timer to some end point; perhaps a set of dynamic simulated factions vying for territory, fighting, trading, etc over time give that sort of living galaxy feel without making time a big factor between what different players are doing.  For major galactic events/changes (ie: an invasion by some larger menace), you could key those to phase into the simulation based on specific missions or triggers, but they would only progress to a certain point until the next trigger is hit.  So in between the triggers, the dynamic factions give the galaxy a living feel, but the players would be free to spend as much time as they want, doing what they want, bewteen trigger missions.  And to provide incentive to progress, you can make the better technologies unlockable as the progress occurs.

And as far as a next game for Arcen somewhere down the line, I'd still love to see Arcen's take on the Tower Defnse genre.  I was pretty disappointed when you guys announced you weren't going to do that.  There's very few good ones, so I think there's still a market for them out there.

[keith.lamothe]

It's been a long while since I played SR2, but IIRC, the timing basically just put pressure on you to keep pushing forward to the end game.   A "living galaxy" doesn't have to be a countdown timer to some end point

I don't recall anything where you lost due to time passage; if the war vs the dominators was going poorly then yea, time was of the essence, but as long as the coalition didn't flat out lose it was fine (I never saw if they could fully lose).

Inflation was pretty killer if too much time passed, though   Kinda ironic that inflation was in some ways more of a threat to me than the antagonists...

So in between the triggers, the dynamic factions give the galaxy a living feel, but the players would be free to spend as much time as they want, doing what they want, bewteen trigger missions.

That has its place (for instance, things going off the rails once you take out one of the end-bosses), but isn't really what I'm looking for as a common way of gating things.  To a significant extent I like the idea that important things could happen without the player.  Like I said, commercialization could be problematic

And as far as a next game for Arcen somewhere down the line, I'd still love to see Arcen's take on the Tower Defnse genre.  I was pretty disappointed when you guys announced you weren't going to do that.  There's very few good ones, so I think there's still a market for them out there.

Yea, this is just one of the things I'm thinkering on, not at all an Arcen project

As for TD... Tidalis was kind of a burn on anything at-all-confusable-with-casual, you know?  AIW is likely to be as close as we really get to TD for at least a few years.  Personally I also wish I'd seen the "Tower Defense Tactical JRPG" idea of AVWW seen to fruition, as that's far more up my alley than anything that gets shot from the side, but can't do everything

[Cyborg]

The tower defense genre is oversaturated, just like match-three. Some of it is rather good, but you have to look for it because it exists as mods for various games.

We don't need more.

[KingIsaacLinksr]

The tower defense genre is oversaturated, just like match-three. Some of it is rather good, but you have to look for it because it exists as mods for various games.

We don't need more.

Oversaturated with crap imo.  (TD).  Out of all the PC titles I've come across, only 4 exist in my library and only 1 of those is a "traditional" TD.  I personally wish someone would do a good take on TD, aka Arcen, but I think AVWW will hold me over for the time being . 

King

[Cyborg]

Why don't we move this to off-topic? I would like to hear what tower defense ideas haven't been done that would somehow make it more worthwhile.

[Volatar]

How far can you really go with the TD concept? From my collection, you can play it straight, and polish it to a shine, like Defense Grid: The Awakening. You can do TD with heroes like Dungeon Defenders. Or you can invert it and make something like Anomaly Warzone Earth. (Which, I will note, I found completely devoid of fun.)

What else can you do?

[zespri]

How far can you really go with the TD concept? From my collection, you can play it straight, and polish it to a shine, like Defense Grid: The Awakening. You can do TD with heroes like Dungeon Defenders. Or you can invert it and make something like Anomaly Warzone Earth. (Which, I will note, I found completely devoid of fun.)

What else can you do?

Yep, that's the problem. I may be very primitive, but I do like TD as a genre, I enjoyed all of these: defence grid,  gemcraft, kingdom rush, vector TD, plants vs zombies, PixelJunk. I was naturally excited when it was announced that AVWW would have TD as a major element. But you are right, there is only so much you can do in a game like this, so innovation is required to do something worthy. But this is the thing with Arcen, they never repeat what others do, they always create something unique, so if Arcen were to do a TD title I'm sure I would not be disappointed.