Finances (Just Because I know People Will Ask)
So, yet another month -- whew. This is now our most expensive-to-make game except for Valley 1, and our most time-consuming-to-make game in terms of man-months by quite a margin.
Arcen just had a reasonable windfall what with the Steam Summer Sale and the Daily Deal for TLF. Between the two of those, that was more than a third of our income so far this year (it's been a slack year). This delay does raise the bar yet again on how much the game has to gross to break even, but that's frankly unavoidable at this point.
And I do think that we can really recoup this. Both TLF and AI War have exceeded the amount it will take to break even on this game, and I think this game will be notably more attractive to customers than TLF -- if we finish this up right. As for the total yearly income for the company, I think that the biggest blow would be releasing a substandard game rather than a delay of (sigh, yet another) another month.
5. This is definitely going to take us some time upfront here, because it's just such a big thing. The visual area and manipulation of this new board is going to take Keith until Tuesday, as one giant chunk of it. It's a whole other coordinate system, because these hexes are flat-topped and not in perspective, so the way you translate point to hex and hex to grid location is completely different from the main game view. Fun! I mocked this up with a perspective view in photoshop, and it just looked horrible, so here we are. It's definitely worth the time, but that's one thing that adds some upfront time to the new model. But there's plenty of other stuff, and while he's doing that I'll be writing up details, filling in data, and trying to figure out the most efficient path through the bulk of this, and then what pieces can be left until after an initial release of this (so that we can be playing with it in the beta while those last bits are added in). Certainly not every strategic/diplomatic option will be in day 1 of the first beta release of this, so I have to figure out which things need to be for testing purposes, and which can fall to the week or two after that.Haha, oh I doubt it was that bad. I mean, it could have been a certain PS2 RPG's skill chart. (http://img4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20090501140203/megamitensei/images/5/5e/DDS2MantraGrid.jpg) I love the game and still go cross-eyed when I look at this grid, and I doubt you're going anywhere near as crazy. EDIT: In-game version, just for comparison. (http://www.mobygames.com/images/shots/l/186497-shin-megami-tensei-digital-devil-saga-2-playstation-2-screenshot.jpg)
2. The similarity to boardgames is not lost on me at all. One of the earlier things that this made me think of is the separate scoring track for Princes of Florence. There are plenty of other games that use a similar thing, but that's just the one that popped into my head the most.Had to look up the game. I have a similiar game in term of scoring, I guess. Candamir, a Spin-Off of the popular Catan series. You play as a single setller dreaming of your own house with a wife, a small fortune, animals and so on. You had to trade and collect for resources, filling pieces on the score board. Interesting game.
4. Blue is a woman, by the way, but yeah she has a plenty of icons to do now, heh. At the moment it's something like 80 already on her list.Whoops, I'm really sorry about that! I'm very bad at guessing the gender of people on the internet ^^
6. Totally agreed on co-op victories being important. I felt the same emptiness when doing the space stuff myself. Ultimately part of that emptiness was because the game just let you turtle without anything bothering you, which is a problem in and of itself when you go for those sorts of special victories. So that's still something that will need some addressing anyhow, because that just never got fully satisfactorily implemented. But even in the best case with it being solo and a hard battle, having to cooperate with another AI is way better because that increases the interest of that scenario in a wide variety of ways. Most likely I'll just ditch all the special victories from the very first prototype version of this so that I can focus on the standard style victory first, and then swing back around to give each special victory some special love one at a time, top to bottom. The current build has a lot of half-implemented ones, which is no fun. ;)I mentioned it already here (https://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,16915.msg184371.html#msg184371) that Civ had an aweful way to integrate diplomacy and victory conditions (especially in Multiplayer). It didn't matetr what you and your neighbour thought of each other or if you are playing with your best friend and want to help each other, int he end all you could do was to doom the other player. "There can be only one!"
Hooray for most of this, with one caveat.
Combat is still not fun. There really is no strategic thinking to it other than either "have military buildings everywhere because saucers can pop up in any place" or "just spam military buildings next to a target race and get the first strike". The fiddly-ness of having to match interceptors to attacker types; the limitation to attacking only the next territory over, and quite generally the lack depth of the whole affair is really sub-par for a 4x.
Now, if you really don't want to have complexity above that of Risk, then that's probably enough, and diplomacy will be the focus of the game anyways. But for bellicose old me, the martial aspect of SBR is, so far, rather unexciting.
I'm concerned about these changes. It's not like I enjoy the way things are now, but diplomacy just doesn't look exciting. It's the forgotten x in 4X for a reason. Your diplomacy in the last Federation was actually really clever and probably the best I've ever seen done in a game. One of the best parts about that game is just firing it up and living through a game. Who knows what's going to happen? Nobody, and that's why you play.Although I don't see this as drastic as Cyborg, I definitely share his sentiment that the races, their background and artwork and the fact that the races developed a life of their own was the strongest part of TLF and thus should be as much front and center in this game as possible to tie in with TLFs success.
In what you listed, it sounds like relationships are going to be rather static between races instead of something you can manipulate. I'm not suggesting you remake the last Federation civilization style, but I would say, you should not feel bad about taking what was fun about diplomacy in that game.
So far, this is not a better game than the last Federation (and let's not compare to AI war). Combat, while not the focus, is wonky, it remains hard to use the technology tree after repeated reshuffling. The game still doesn't feel like it's playing with me. I feel like I'm very much alone on the planet.
My suggestion to you, and what will excite science-fiction fans and people who play your games, is to bring your planet to life in the best way possible. You have all of this lore, a great audience experience with the characters from the last federation, unique and captivating illustrations, they are the stars of your show (pun intended). If you don't use them appropriately, this will not sell. You will know when you are doing it right (especially with the diplomacy) when you get people talking about their experiences and the races themselves. That's what happened with the last Federation. People started talking about them like real characters and compare notes as to their personalities. People talk about ai war in a similar way. We have feelings about the characters in these games. But none of that exists in this game. You have to sell that.
(combat)
i. Part of the deal with the new diplomacy stuff in general is that I intend for there to be a bit of a "build-up" period where you declare battle and then have to give the other person time to get ready. Both the AI would be required to do that (like the holographic fading in), and you would as well. You could break this and do a blitz if you want, but it would probably cost you some effectiveness on your military due to them being rushed, and it would cost you goodwill with the planet and the international community, too. So whether you blitz or whether you attack in a more orderly fashion where the AI has time to respond becomes a major decision.
Since the release date has been pushed back to September you should probably change the description of this forum.
The page: https://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php
Lists it as:
"Stars Beyond Reach... This World Is Mine
Our upcoming 4x title (July 2015)."
Keeping that date could cause some confusion.
GOALS:
Tell me a story.
Make me compete with the other races.
Make me cooperate with the other races.
Form a structure for how I win.
GTFO and let me get back to playing. ;)
We try, anyhow. :)So, any news regarding your wip concept?
We try, anyhow. :)So, any news regarding your wip concept?
Did your recreational foray into graphics settings and unity upgrades have the desired effect ;D?