Starport 28 huh? Hmmm.... Sounds Interesting....

[Professor Paul1290]

I'm sort of picturing some kind of Sci-Fi themed airport management game that's a bit like Dwarf Fortress meets Transport Tycoon.

You play has someone in charge of a Starport and you have to manage day-to-day operations, finances, and upgrades/growth. Maybe it simulates the travellers and staff running around and doing stuff and all sorts of stuff goes hilariously wrong.

Occasionally some drunk space bounty hunter goes on a rampage and wrecks the place or some important business man loses their luggage. 

[keith.lamothe]

and all sorts of stuff goes hilariously wrong.

That's what I'm hoping for, personally, but I don't know enough of what they've cooked up to know

[Rekka]

Pretty much always the case, right?   Let's see:

RTS/4Xish Strategy (AI War)
Puzzle (Tidalis)
Metroidvania (Valley 1) w/bonus simulation/citybuilding element
Contra-like (honestly, Valley 2) w/bonus TBS element
Top-down Adventure (Shattered Haven) w/horror themes
God game (Skyward Collapse)
Roguelite (Bionic Dues)


Aside from expansions, and to a very limited extent Valley 2, we have yet to repeat the same genre twice!

Indeed. I should have said "That's again a new kind for you guys". Well, now we have your pattern we can start to speculate on the genre of the next game after Starport 28...

[Teal_Blue]

i've been watching tycoon videos for the last hour, Airport Tycoon, Bus Driver Sim, etc... to see how they played out. The sim games looked very interesting, not all of them were silly, i mean like people getting run over with buses, or planes going out of control or whatever. But i think with sims it is the immersion of the play, the sheer amount of detail and building and routes, or passengers, or weather, or well, just the very large amount of details involved that is the draw.

I have an old copy of Airport Tycoon, and RollerCoaster Tycoon as well. The Bus Driver sim i don't have, but it does look interesting in all the different routes, the bus types and tasks, like passengers in city buses, tour buses, cross country... etc. So i think I'm going to try Steam or Gamestop or GOG and see if they have it.

   Looking forward to Starport 28 and hoping its the details you concentrate on.   

-Teal

p.s.   my opinion only... like always, just do what you think is best.  i'm just throwing my 2 cents around. 
sometimes unwanted. 

[Cyborg]

http://www.openttd.org/en/


This one is very popular. All the fun of tycoon games with the benefits of an open community.


It's free. By gamers for gamers.

[keith.lamothe]

Yea, OpenTTD is an incredible project.  I played the original game for hundreds of hours years ago.

From what I know of Starport28's design it bears very little resemblance to that, though I may be mistaken.

[eRe4s3r]

Sadly OpenTTD is suffering from the same problem as any open source community project. It doesn't have a clear direction and because of that, goes nowhere feature wise and that slowly to boot. The reality is that OpenTTD is only good if you dig deep and get one of the two mega unofficial patch packs. Otherwise you are missing so many features...

Also every time I start up OpenTTD I wish we had a proper framework for a 3D transport tycoon game. With insane simulation depth, but basic transport tycoon concepts in place. But supplemented by proper light and shadow, weather effects, better loading/unloading simulation. Proper (visualized) production cycles etc....

Ah.. if only

A sim game from Arcen sounds Interesting too.

[x4000]

Very interesting on OpenTTD, I'd not heard of that.

It's trying to do something much more complex and different from what Starport 28 does, but I love the variety that is possible in the sim genre.

[eRe4s3r]

Well I don't think OTTD is very complex in native ;p Complexity is only added by mods(grf's) and unofficial (code) patches.

If you make a SIM, then I hope you do make it MORE complex than OTTD is in native But complexity doesn't need to be upfront. As long as the simulation is deep enough behind the scenes, it can all be abstracted. And maybe it should.

You know.. The new sim city is bashed for good reasons but every time I play that I wish there was an TTD with that engine. 100% Agent based. Fully modeled production cycle - > 1 "agent" ore + 1"agent" coal = 1 metal agent. These agents sit in depot until they are loaded on trains, each cargo train car has a different setups for how agents are packed together, so 1 car loads maybe 8 agents as a pack. And they are unloaded as pack. Packing is a process that takes time and isn't instant, and switching between car and train requires identical load configurations. Or a repackaging method.....

It's just sad that Maxis/EA is not gonna do that. No money in it.

Thing is, the way Sim City 5 works right now, it would work far better as a TTD game than a Sim City game. How weird is that.

by the way, my current favorite patch pack is a russian one
http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=66892

####

I am intrigued by a sim game from Arcengames.. and when it is a space management sim game? all the more. After all, you guys make games that no one made before you And that's good. Even if not everything is for me, at least it's all unique!

[x4000]

We try!

[LaughingThesaurus]

One of these days, you're going to run out of unique genres to make games in. THEN what will you do?

[x4000]

Circle back around and start making completely new games in genres that we've already been in.  Valley 1 and 2 are kind of a good example of that in action, although they are probably closer together than I would ultimately want to do down the line with, say, another action sidescroller like that.

[relmz32]

This, like all of your games, sounds really great.

Basically, I have a lot of confidence with you guys, because you have a good track record with making good games, and giving them a fair (and sometimes way above and beyond ) amount of support post release.

[keith.lamothe]

We very much appreciate the confidence and support

[Misery]

One of these days, you're going to run out of unique genres to make games in. THEN what will you do?

Make a new genre.