So if YOU could make a video game ANY video game... (RAR)

[Oskuro]

I still play bf1942, and love the hell out of it. I think it''s a shame the modern incarnations have shifted focus towards infantry / close vehicle combat, but that's what the audience wants, so what the hell.

But what I was meaning is more like having different games with different focus, and having them interface with each other minimallistically.

For example, a player on a destroyer would not need the game client to render land structures or vehicles, at least not with a high degree of detail, and the game clients taking place in those land structures wouldn't need to know much about the destroyer beyond a position icon, and the artillery barrage falling on them.

From my experience with bf1942 modding, the greatest limitation when implemeting such a varied game is interfacing the different game elements. For example, the Desert Combat mod always had trouble with jets, because the 1942 maps were too small, and a jet pilot doesn't really need to see ground units/buildings in detail.

I'm thinking this approach is what will eventually become the World of Tanks / World of Planes crossover gameplay they are planning.

[Vendetta]

I'm thinking this approach is what will eventually become the World of Tanks / World of Planes crossover gameplay they are planning.

There's not going to be a lot of crossover at all there, it's all going to be at the Clan Wars level, which is a totally different metagame not part of either client.


What you're thinking about is more like the way War Thunder appears to be trying to work, the ground combat takes place in one small corner of the map that you get if you spawn into a plane, but I'm not sure how well they're going to balance making tanks and planes equally useful for winning (considering they can't even balance fighters and bombers at the moment)

[StarSword]

I'd have Obsidian make a Knights of the Old Republic 3, and give them all the time they need to actually finish it so another Restoration Mod won't need to be made. Jesus christ, the writing in KOTOR 2 was great.

Damn straight, man.

[Oskuro]

There's not going to be a lot of crossover at all there ... What you're thinking about is more like the way War Thunder appears to be trying to work

Yeah, I'm not actually playing any of those, and had only heard about the cross-game merge in a review or something.

Thing is, balancing can be easier in such a framework since you only need to balance each individual game separately, and then look for ways to provide interaction that do not break said balance. For example, an infantry soldier could call an airstrike, which would make a mission marker show up for players on the flightsim client, but they wouldn't be able to directly strafe/bomb people on the ground, just do the airstrike mission and go back to dogfighting.

If I even finish my top-down shooter game engine I should try this concept.

[Korto]

I had this idea, and when I described it to a friend he put me onto Crusader Kings II, so there's some similarities. Anyway:

It's one of those massive on-line games all you young-un's play (and I don't).
Any new player may either chose to be independent, or a vassal of an established player.
The player is the ruler of a province. He's in charge of its economic development, growing its military, and all the things a ruler would expect to be in charge of. The province is randomly created on the outskirts of the current world if he's independent; or its a province an established player had under an AI vassal if he chose vassal.

After that, go for it. You can engage in diplomacy with other rulers, invade other provinces and take them over, trade, religion, etc.
You are actually represented by the head of your family, and that head gets married, has kids, grows old, etc, and when he dies you become the next guy in line (this is as CKII). So there's marriages, fostering out, educating your kids.
Also, you select underlings for different jobs. Spying, commanding armies, running cities, advising you about what the hell's going on around you. You get a spy report of the underling's abilities and personality, and you pick from that. Better hope the report was accurate, because it wasn't necessarily.
You command from a central point, and your orders go out. Your orders actually take time to arrive, and you can't change them instantaneously en-route. To change orders, you have to send a new set of orders, which take time to arrive.
Equally, information from a distance away takes time to reach you. If you just hear your outermost province got invaded, but that message took a month to reach you, then you were invaded a month ago. Any message you send is going to take a month to get there.
You can move around, and travel to hot-spots to fix this communications problem, although that means you're further away from other places.
You can also put AI underlings in charge of things, on their own recognizance. The general you send to run the war, the baron you put in charge of a conquered province (this is where those provinces come from for new players who choose "Vassal"). This eliminates the communications problem, at the problem of you losing micro-management.
Anyone who tries to keep micromanaging an increasingly large realm should find it gets rapidly too much to handle.
Wars would have to be kept simple tally-board affairs, like CKII, so AI can have a reasonable chance.

Time continually ticks on, perhaps at the speed of one year a day. While you're off-line, your AI steward runs the place.

[Simon_Jester]

Year-per-day progression would be too fast then; the starting characters' barrier to entry would be too high.

Hm. MMO version of Crusader Kings... that's actually a really good idea. Keeping track of message traffic could be tricky, but if it can be implemented it's awesome.

Several things we'd observe:

1) The established system of 'guilds' and 'clans' in MMOs as a whole would start to subvert the vassal/liege relationship structure.

2) Some 'guilds' would form a single territorial bloc with a defined feudal hierarchy, but this would create an interesting dynamic: to make room for more players, the guild must either conquer more territory, or subdivide its territory by delegating low-level functions to players (i.e., the guild of Freedonia has so many members that every regimental commander in its army is a human player)

3) It would be good to create a niche for "landless" people with no defined territory- the equivalent of medieval mercenary captains. This would allow more freedom of association, be more realistic, and provide a more diverse set of viable gameplay strategies. People who are good at cultivating their lands (almost literally 'farming,' but more generally speaking administration and possibly minigaming) would play a role, because they could either serve a more generalist/warlike liege as a steward, or they could become powerful managers relying on hired mercenaries to run their armies. It'd be interesting if the model allowed you to recreate not only, say, medieval France (with a feudal network of fiefdoms) but also medieval Venice (with a society of merchant princes who rely on their wealth to win wars).

[bilateralrope]

Equally, information from a distance away takes time to reach you. If you just hear your outermost province got invaded, but that message took a month to reach you, then you were invaded a month ago. Any message you send is going to take a month to get there.

The problem with information taking time to travel is that the players will be in instantaneous communication with each other. How are you going to account for that ?

[Korto]

The problem with information taking time to travel is that the players will be in instantaneous communication with each other. How are you going to account for that ?

In game, it would be easy enough. All communication could be by mail (royal missives), which could be delayed the appropriate time. Since your avatar can travel about, you could even go to have a face to face meeting and discuss in real time, although that may mean you're not where you need to be for other things. You could send an emissary, either an AI you've given instructions to (and then crossed your fingers), or a human vassal, and the emissary can discuss face to face, and you'll hear back later.
Out of game, it would be much harder to stop communication. Email, phone. I mean, you could disguise (as a "privacy matter") who people were and not give any kind of instant messaging service, but I don't believe you could stop someone who wants to contact someone out of game to make in-game plans. This isn't a moral call that you "shouldn't", I just think it would be impossible. There may be ways to minimise the damage this may cause.

Year-per-day progression would be too fast then; the starting characters' barrier to entry would be too high.

Maybe Month per day. You could still have horribly long sieges lasting over a year ("I've been besieging this bastard's castle for over two weeks!), and building projects that take decades in game could still be done. The fact that it would take you perhaps over half a year to build that amazing cathedral may make it all the more meaningful. But stuff wont flash by too fast. I'm sure play-testing could work this out.

1) The established system of 'guilds' and 'clans' in MMOs as a whole would start to subvert the vassal/liege relationship structure.

Might be able to utilise it. I have nothing against people feeling allegiances to each other, and coming to each other's support. I can't think of any way to stop it, so try to make the best of it. I would like the Guilds to form as kingdoms, so try to encourage that.

2) Some 'guilds' would form a single territorial bloc with a defined feudal hierarchy, but this would create an interesting dynamic: to make room for more players, the guild must either conquer more territory, or subdivide its territory by delegating low-level functions to players (i.e., the guild of Freedonia has so many members that every regimental commander in its army is a human player)

Big guild territorial blocks could cause a problem if they tend to monster and invade any new people starting on their borders. I would hope to reduce that trouble by making it increasingly difficult to run more than one province directly, forcing you to farm them out with all the paranoia that goes with it. (My spymaster says Duke Bob's been talking a lot with KillFreedonia. What's up with that?), and while new starting provinces are placed randomly, perhaps a biased random, where they're unlikely to be put near large kingdoms. Basically, group like with like.
I suppose too that a kingdom could send out new settlers into any wilderness near them to start new provinces. Assuming there is wilderness near them, but randomly I suppose in some cases there could be, particularly if someone's been spreading by conquering a lot, and there's been a lot of "grouping like with like" (which could create a polar world, with Greater Freedonia in the north, and the Allied SmallStates in the south huddling together for protection). Eventually a kingdom may become so large it breaks apart under its own weight.

3) It would be good to create a niche for "landless" people with no defined territory- the equivalent of medieval mercenary captains. This would allow more freedom of association, be more realistic, and provide a more diverse set of viable gameplay strategies. People who are good at cultivating their lands (almost literally 'farming,' but more generally speaking administration and possibly minigaming) would play a role, because they could either serve a more generalist/warlike liege as a steward, or they could become powerful managers relying on hired mercenaries to run their armies. It'd be interesting if the model allowed you to recreate not only, say, medieval France (with a feudal network of fiefdoms) but also medieval Venice (with a society of merchant princes who rely on their wealth to win wars).

This sounds like a good idea, allow someone to choose to start landless and become a merchant prince, mercenary captain, master of a powerful guild, etc. It could also give the lords something to do when they have to decide a dispute between two humans running merchant families within their duchy.

[bilateralrope]

Out of game, it would be much harder to stop communication. Email, phone. I mean, you could disguise (as a "privacy matter") who people were and not give any kind of instant messaging service, but I don't believe you could stop someone who wants to contact someone out of game to make in-game plans. This isn't a moral call that you "shouldn't", I just think it would be impossible. There may be ways to minimise the damage this may cause.

If the game has any kind of messaging service players will use it to exchange their contact details. Delayed messaging just means it takes some time before they have each others details. Censoring will just force players to figure out how to identify themselves to each other on forums/reddit.

It would be better to include an instant messaging system in-game. That way you can log it and when one player complains about another harassing them, or gold spamming, your logs can provide proof of what happened. No instant messaging and players will lose out of game comms, removing your ability to combat gold spammers and harassment.

Big guild territorial blocks could cause a problem if they tend to monster and invade any new people starting on their borders. I would hope to reduce that trouble by making it increasingly difficult to run more than one province directly, forcing you to farm them out with all the paranoia that goes with it. (My spymaster says Duke Bob's been talking a lot with KillFreedonia. What's up with that?), and while new starting provinces are placed randomly, perhaps a biased random, where they're unlikely to be put near large kingdoms. Basically, group like with like.

I'd advise against NPCs eavesdropping on communications between players as that would encourage players to stop using them in favor of secure, out of game communications. Then ignore anything the spymaster says about them.
The spymaster reporting on player actions or messages to NPCs is a different matter.

I think the message delays in ordering armies around would help keep player nations small if combat is entertaining enough. If your nearest enemy is too far away, combat will not be interesting as all you do is tell your troops to follow orders from a player closer to the front lines. So players will attack their own allies because peace is too boring.