Mike (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} iaminyourhead) wrote,@ 2007-10-11 03:29:00 |
|
Development!
OK, so I've started development on my game. I figure I ought to put this bout of insomnia to work, right?
OK, so I've started development on my game. I figure I ought to put this bout of insomnia to work, right?
I've decided that I want to take all the things I love about other PBBGs (Persistant Browser-Based Games), and try my best to smoosh them up into one great big monster of awesome and win and god. So let's start with the games I love, and what I love about them.
KOL
1. Consistant Expansion. KOL is getting bigger and more complicated all the time. For a long time, there were updates every Tuesday, which added at least a little content, and sometimes added a whole frigging lot of content. I plan to update about every two weeks, adding at least a little to the game.
2. Referencial Geek Humor. KOL is made of this. My game? not so much. But I'll tip my hat every once in a while, because it amuses me to do so.
3. Minimalist Design. KOL uses stick figures and simplistic art to great effect. I'm mostly going to be using colored rectangles.
4. Imbedded Chat. KOL takes this a bit farther than I intend to. I'll have an imbedded chat room, with multiple channels, but I don't think I need /foodcourt, or /haiku
TORN CITY
1. Sequentially Revealed Content. TC opens up to new players very slowly. I plan to have Palma: Age of Expansion do the same thing.
2. Hidden EXP. TC gives you no indication how far you are from levelling up. Ever. It also has a few different levelling schemes. This keeps Hard Spades from being all optimal. Filthy Optimizers! If KOL's troubles with SuperSpades are any indication, I'll have to avoid encouraging them in any way.
3. Imbedded forums. No external PHP forums! those are icky! Sign up for one site. get the forums along with the site. You're good to go!
OK. That's good for a start. I want there to be a few other things as well. I want there to be the ability for a player or group of players to semi-permanantly change the face of the world. I want the world to be 99.999% unexplored, and explored in time by the players. I want technological and magical development to be dynamic and slow. And I want to be able to make money, without limiting non-donating players in ways that make them feel like they're playing a demo. So how to acheive all of these goals?
Well, first off, we want players to have a finite amount of things they can do per unit of time. I plan on allocating energy to the players 1 point per minute, with a maximum storage capability of 1500, or just over one day. This will allow me to limit the speed of game advancement. I can offer to permanantly double energy storage capacity for a donation, which also allows me to make money, and sacrifices very little in the way of limiting development.
For the Exploratory requirements, We release the players into a small city, located on a penninsula. the extent of the world they can currently see consists of the city itself, it's immediate surroundings, and an archipeligo just south of it. all of this is laid on a grid. travelling inside a city expends no NRG (Energy, for the remainder of this musing) but travel outside is energy intensive. 1000 NRG per grid cell to begin with (modified for heavy terrain if neccessary). Later, this will become cheaper, as technolgies and magics which speed travel are developed. Travel into an unexplored cell reveals the nature of that cell to the player that explored it. Players may also buy or sell exploration data at a cartographer's guild, which maintains a map comprised of all the exploration data that has been sold to it. Once a certain number of players (to be adjusted based on the total number of active players) has knowledge of a cell, it becomes common knowledge, and is added to every other player's map. The early expense of travel, coupled with a large enough world, ensures that exploration will take a decent amount of time to complete.
In this way, we can also delay the introduction of new content. Players perhaps will have to discover a specific location, or complete a specific even in order to "unlock" the next feature of the game for all players.
Next we have the Guild System. Players wishing to start a guild will choose from a number of focii, to include Magical Research of one of several branches, Technological research of one of several branches, Social Club, Construction, Cartography( Remember the cartography guild? I figure you can slow things down another few notches by allowing players to maintain several competing services), Mercenary Services, Arenas, and so on. Guild applications will have to include somewhere between 5-10 players, which will prevent a million little guilds popping up and being useless forever, and will be housed in a sort of Guild apartment complex, until they build their own Guild HQ. Guilds will have a fairly heavy upkeep, which will prevent old guilds which have become useless from hanging around forever.
Finally, we have research and development, both for the magic and tech research trees, and for urban sprawl. All of this, beyond a certain point, will be in the hands of players. All technology will be researched in guilds devoted to such, and such guilds will divide their research time between any number of the technological spheres. The same goes for Magic. The important difference between the two is this: once a tech prototype, or pure science development has been made, other guilds attempting to develop it will have a much easier time of it. This trend continues for each successive guild or individual who develops the new device or advancement. Magic, however, will not have such an advantage. The 1000th time a spell is researched is only marginally easier than the first time.
Construction of new buildings will be handled by Construction Guilds, which will compete for contracts in the same way that real construction contractors do. The ease and efficiency these contractors build with will be determined by the devices they own, as well as the engineering knowledge they possess. Initially, there will be an NPC guild for this function, as well as guilds for several other essential functions, until such a time as sufficient PC guilds for those functions are formed, at which point the NPC guilds will dissolve. At no point will technological or magical research be performed by NPC Guilds.
Eventually, the government will be handed off to Player characters. The goal is to have a game entirely run by the players, with only the framework to guide them.
INITIAL GOALS
1. Code a login/password registration with confirmation Email. Assure that data from such arrives in the appropriate table.
2. Code the necessary tables for character storage. Attributes, knowledge tables, inventory tables. property ownership, etc.
3. Set up external forum.
4. Code the framework for the tech and magic trees.
5. Code the city interface. The game can run without exploration, if necessary.
6. Implement Research, Social, Arena, Construction, Law Enforcement, and Merchant Guilds.
7. Set up game gaol for cheaters, spammers, trolls, and fucktards.
MID-RANGE GOALS
1. Design and code the world map interface. Implement Cartography, Supply, and Mercenary Guilds.
2. Implement Chat rooms.
3. Expand the tech/magic trees.
4. Implement internal forums. Do away with the external forums.
5. Probably realize there's something fundamentally wrong with some itegral part of the framework, and start over from scratch. (really, this is pretty realistic. Most new games hit a point where they have to reset. until that point. it's called OPEN BETA)
LONG-TERM GOALS
1. Assassinate the king, run a brief period of anarchy, then move into a democratic republic comprised of PCs.
2. Introduce, via exploration, other sentient races. Implement Diplomatic Guilds.
3. Polish the baby up to a fine sheen. Possibly commission artwork for various things.
4. Do the rock dance, Paul.
KOL
1. Consistant Expansion. KOL is getting bigger and more complicated all the time. For a long time, there were updates every Tuesday, which added at least a little content, and sometimes added a whole frigging lot of content. I plan to update about every two weeks, adding at least a little to the game.
2. Referencial Geek Humor. KOL is made of this. My game? not so much. But I'll tip my hat every once in a while, because it amuses me to do so.
3. Minimalist Design. KOL uses stick figures and simplistic art to great effect. I'm mostly going to be using colored rectangles.
4. Imbedded Chat. KOL takes this a bit farther than I intend to. I'll have an imbedded chat room, with multiple channels, but I don't think I need /foodcourt, or /haiku
TORN CITY
1. Sequentially Revealed Content. TC opens up to new players very slowly. I plan to have Palma: Age of Expansion do the same thing.
2. Hidden EXP. TC gives you no indication how far you are from levelling up. Ever. It also has a few different levelling schemes. This keeps Hard Spades from being all optimal. Filthy Optimizers! If KOL's troubles with SuperSpades are any indication, I'll have to avoid encouraging them in any way.
3. Imbedded forums. No external PHP forums! those are icky! Sign up for one site. get the forums along with the site. You're good to go!
OK. That's good for a start. I want there to be a few other things as well. I want there to be the ability for a player or group of players to semi-permanantly change the face of the world. I want the world to be 99.999% unexplored, and explored in time by the players. I want technological and magical development to be dynamic and slow. And I want to be able to make money, without limiting non-donating players in ways that make them feel like they're playing a demo. So how to acheive all of these goals?
Well, first off, we want players to have a finite amount of things they can do per unit of time. I plan on allocating energy to the players 1 point per minute, with a maximum storage capability of 1500, or just over one day. This will allow me to limit the speed of game advancement. I can offer to permanantly double energy storage capacity for a donation, which also allows me to make money, and sacrifices very little in the way of limiting development.
For the Exploratory requirements, We release the players into a small city, located on a penninsula. the extent of the world they can currently see consists of the city itself, it's immediate surroundings, and an archipeligo just south of it. all of this is laid on a grid. travelling inside a city expends no NRG (Energy, for the remainder of this musing) but travel outside is energy intensive. 1000 NRG per grid cell to begin with (modified for heavy terrain if neccessary). Later, this will become cheaper, as technolgies and magics which speed travel are developed. Travel into an unexplored cell reveals the nature of that cell to the player that explored it. Players may also buy or sell exploration data at a cartographer's guild, which maintains a map comprised of all the exploration data that has been sold to it. Once a certain number of players (to be adjusted based on the total number of active players) has knowledge of a cell, it becomes common knowledge, and is added to every other player's map. The early expense of travel, coupled with a large enough world, ensures that exploration will take a decent amount of time to complete.
In this way, we can also delay the introduction of new content. Players perhaps will have to discover a specific location, or complete a specific even in order to "unlock" the next feature of the game for all players.
Next we have the Guild System. Players wishing to start a guild will choose from a number of focii, to include Magical Research of one of several branches, Technological research of one of several branches, Social Club, Construction, Cartography( Remember the cartography guild? I figure you can slow things down another few notches by allowing players to maintain several competing services), Mercenary Services, Arenas, and so on. Guild applications will have to include somewhere between 5-10 players, which will prevent a million little guilds popping up and being useless forever, and will be housed in a sort of Guild apartment complex, until they build their own Guild HQ. Guilds will have a fairly heavy upkeep, which will prevent old guilds which have become useless from hanging around forever.
Finally, we have research and development, both for the magic and tech research trees, and for urban sprawl. All of this, beyond a certain point, will be in the hands of players. All technology will be researched in guilds devoted to such, and such guilds will divide their research time between any number of the technological spheres. The same goes for Magic. The important difference between the two is this: once a tech prototype, or pure science development has been made, other guilds attempting to develop it will have a much easier time of it. This trend continues for each successive guild or individual who develops the new device or advancement. Magic, however, will not have such an advantage. The 1000th time a spell is researched is only marginally easier than the first time.
Construction of new buildings will be handled by Construction Guilds, which will compete for contracts in the same way that real construction contractors do. The ease and efficiency these contractors build with will be determined by the devices they own, as well as the engineering knowledge they possess. Initially, there will be an NPC guild for this function, as well as guilds for several other essential functions, until such a time as sufficient PC guilds for those functions are formed, at which point the NPC guilds will dissolve. At no point will technological or magical research be performed by NPC Guilds.
Eventually, the government will be handed off to Player characters. The goal is to have a game entirely run by the players, with only the framework to guide them.
INITIAL GOALS
1. Code a login/password registration with confirmation Email. Assure that data from such arrives in the appropriate table.
2. Code the necessary tables for character storage. Attributes, knowledge tables, inventory tables. property ownership, etc.
3. Set up external forum.
4. Code the framework for the tech and magic trees.
5. Code the city interface. The game can run without exploration, if necessary.
6. Implement Research, Social, Arena, Construction, Law Enforcement, and Merchant Guilds.
7. Set up game gaol for cheaters, spammers, trolls, and fucktards.
MID-RANGE GOALS
1. Design and code the world map interface. Implement Cartography, Supply, and Mercenary Guilds.
2. Implement Chat rooms.
3. Expand the tech/magic trees.
4. Implement internal forums. Do away with the external forums.
5. Probably realize there's something fundamentally wrong with some itegral part of the framework, and start over from scratch. (really, this is pretty realistic. Most new games hit a point where they have to reset. until that point. it's called OPEN BETA)
LONG-TERM GOALS
1. Assassinate the king, run a brief period of anarchy, then move into a democratic republic comprised of PCs.
2. Introduce, via exploration, other sentient races. Implement Diplomatic Guilds.
3. Polish the baby up to a fine sheen. Possibly commission artwork for various things.
4. Do the rock dance, Paul.
