So almost a year ago (ironic!) I made a topic, seeing if anyone else on GAF would be interested in building a browser-based realtime MMOG. For those unfamiliar with these games, they're all more-or-less the same. They're text-based, and you play them in your browser itself, and they run in realtime, meaning you can play and succeed just by logging on once or twice a day. You could log in, and queue up six ships, each one taking a (realtime) hour to construct, or send your fleet to attack an enemy that's 12 hours away, etc. Some examples of these kinds of games:
http://www.ogame.org/
http://www.kingpinmafia.com/
http://www.inselkampf.com/
The response was pretty positive, and for a few months myself, OnWarmerMusic, Tf53, and a few other people bounced around lots of design ideas, talked through various questions and problems, and just generally created what (I feel) was a pretty good, workable idea for a game. Something worth pursuing and prototyping, at least. There's only one problem: it didn't get built
. I got busy, OWM (the main engineer) got busy, and, like a lot of things, the project just kinda stalled.
I'd like to get in un-stalled, though. And that's where this topic comes in
I'd like to get some help from some GAF members that have the relevant skills, and get this sucker into a playable, alpha state. Just something nice and simple to bring back and show GAF, and then use that feedback to build on that basic framework, and basically build the project out from there.
Here's what we have, so far:
Piracy! (alternate names: Pixel Pirates, Kingdom of Pirates, Sea Raiders...
Premise: Gamers begin with their own small pirate island. They gather resources and build buildings to increase their income, and advance the tech tree. Ultimately a shipyard can be constructed, allowing for the construction of ships. From there, fleets can be sent to neighboring islands, and gamers must balance offense vs. defending their own island from attack and further growing their economy. If you fully conquer an opponent's island, you now have *two* bases to work from...
Resources
Pirates - Your biggest/most important resource is your pirate crew itself. Crew is needed to staff your ships, and staff your economic buildings. The idea behind people being a resource itself instead of ships/buildings just running themselves is that it allows for flexibility. You can shift crew from ships into mining and back, as necessary.
Pirates are generated from the Brothel building. Upgrading your Brothel will increase your total Pirate cap, as well as the rate at which you gain new pirates.
Lumber - Generated from a Lumber Mill. Upgrading the lumber mill increases lumber output, but also increases the required # of pirate workers. Lumber is needed in small-ish amounts for the construction of buildings, and in very large amounts for the construction of ships.
Metal & Gold - Metal & Gold are both generated from a Mine. Metal in great quantities, gold in much smaller quantities. Upgrading the mine increases the output of both, but again, more pirates are required to staff the building. Metal is required in large amounts for building construction, and in small amounts for ship construction. Gold is a scarce but all-around resource. Most of it will most likely be spent on tech-tree advances rather than ship or building construction.
Rum - Rum is generated by a distillery. It's a late(ish) game resource - it's the fuel your pirate ships run on. After a distillery is built, all that's left is the shipyard itself, and then PvP ocean combat begins.
Buildings
I won't rehash the resource-generating buildings already discussed (Lumber Mill, Mine, Brothel, & Distillery).
Shipyard - Allows for the construction of ships. Upgrading the shipyard allows for the construction of more advanced ships, as well as decreasing construction time.
Alchemist - Right now in the design the alchemy shop manages the entire tech tree. You'd go to your alchemist to research gunpowder for cannonballs, tempered steel for better swords, construction techniques for bigger ships, etc. It's possible these buildings could be split into various separate buildings - a blacksmith, a gunnery, etc.
Combat & Ships
Combat is all ship-to-ship. Or ship-to-island, but the island is basically treated as a "ship" in those cases. All ships have four stats: Offense, Defense (health), & Speed. Offense is determined by the number of cannon ports - 30 cannon ports on your giant Warship, and it'll have an Offense of 30. Speed & Defense are set more abstractly.
Combat is then a dice roll, weighted by Offense - Defense = damage dealt, with speed acting as a "miss" modifier. It's not as complicated as it sounds. Think about it like Risk. In Risk, you always know which army has the advantage, but there's still a degree of chance built-in. This is the same way. Example Scenario:
Attacking Ship A has an Offense of 15, Defense of 15, Speed of 5. Defending Ship B has Offense, Defense, & Speed of 10. In this scenario, Ship A is quite a bit stronger, but slower. The dice roll would determine how many of Ship A's 15 cannons missed, and how many hit. Ship B's +5 speed advantage will modify the dice roll, causing it to dodge more of the volleys.
...that still sounded confusing. Let's say a ship is outfitted with 30 cannons, and is up against a ship that has "30" as its defense stat. Each cannon represents one potential HP of damage dealt per volley, meaning the attacking ship COULD destroy the defender in one go. But that's where speed comes in. The faster the speed of the defending ship, the more cannons miss their mark. And the misses are determined by a tight dice roll.
Wrapping up
...aaaand that's basically it. That's the game, in a nutshell. You build up your base, expanding your economy and the size of your pirate crew, until you can eventually build ships and engage in stat-based ship-to-ship combat. You need to balance ship strength with ship speed, economic growth with fleet growth, etc.
We decided on more stuff than what's in this topic - this is just the overview. So many of your "what about this" or "what about that" questions we've probably answered. There ARE some things that never got sorted, however:
- The exact formulas for resource income & expansion. These are HUGELY important. What's your base lumber income, and how much does each Mill upgrade add to that? And what do those upgrades cost? That sort of thing. These determine the speed/pace of the game. WarmerMusic built a tool to allow for the testing of various scenarios, in order to tweak it to perfection:
http://dev.vidhammer.com/calc/
- We also never sorted through a great system of combat target priority, since most combat is fleet v. fleet, but you don't control ships individually. Do we give players if/then controls for their fleet? do they attack the weakest enemy ship, or most powerful enemy ship? etc. Maybe they just attack a random enemy target?
- Win conditions / late game gameplay. Most of our focus went into thinking about the early game, where you're expanding your island & home base, and building your fleet to try and challenge your neighbors. We didn't come up with a great solution for how the game looks when you have 3, or 5, (or 30) islands under your control. The game can't "pull back" Spore-style, but gamers shouldn't be managing the production of 30 different shipyards on 30 different islands.
So, that's it!
That's our design doc, in a nutshell. You build a base/economy, and send out ships to attack the enemy. I think we came up with great solutions for buildings & resources, and great solutions for combat. And those are the game's two big systems. With those two systems in place, you would have a playable game. A basic one, but a game nonetheless. From there you can add all the goodies (special ship abilities, special units like spies, defensive island buildings, etc) and really flesh it out.
...all that's needed is someone to build it If anyone involved the first time around is reading this, you're all more than welcome to come back into the fold. Anyone with programming experience (we were building it in mysql and php the first time around) interesting in contributing, please reply or PM me. We also need help with a front end - someone to build out the UI itself in conjunction with the individual doing the database and back-end work.
http://www.ogame.org/
http://www.kingpinmafia.com/
http://www.inselkampf.com/
The response was pretty positive, and for a few months myself, OnWarmerMusic, Tf53, and a few other people bounced around lots of design ideas, talked through various questions and problems, and just generally created what (I feel) was a pretty good, workable idea for a game. Something worth pursuing and prototyping, at least. There's only one problem: it didn't get built
. I got busy, OWM (the main engineer) got busy, and, like a lot of things, the project just kinda stalled.I'd like to get in un-stalled, though. And that's where this topic comes in
I'd like to get some help from some GAF members that have the relevant skills, and get this sucker into a playable, alpha state. Just something nice and simple to bring back and show GAF, and then use that feedback to build on that basic framework, and basically build the project out from there. Here's what we have, so far:
Piracy! (alternate names: Pixel Pirates, Kingdom of Pirates, Sea Raiders...
Premise: Gamers begin with their own small pirate island. They gather resources and build buildings to increase their income, and advance the tech tree. Ultimately a shipyard can be constructed, allowing for the construction of ships. From there, fleets can be sent to neighboring islands, and gamers must balance offense vs. defending their own island from attack and further growing their economy. If you fully conquer an opponent's island, you now have *two* bases to work from...
Resources
Pirates - Your biggest/most important resource is your pirate crew itself. Crew is needed to staff your ships, and staff your economic buildings. The idea behind people being a resource itself instead of ships/buildings just running themselves is that it allows for flexibility. You can shift crew from ships into mining and back, as necessary.
Pirates are generated from the Brothel building. Upgrading your Brothel will increase your total Pirate cap, as well as the rate at which you gain new pirates.
Lumber - Generated from a Lumber Mill. Upgrading the lumber mill increases lumber output, but also increases the required # of pirate workers. Lumber is needed in small-ish amounts for the construction of buildings, and in very large amounts for the construction of ships.
Metal & Gold - Metal & Gold are both generated from a Mine. Metal in great quantities, gold in much smaller quantities. Upgrading the mine increases the output of both, but again, more pirates are required to staff the building. Metal is required in large amounts for building construction, and in small amounts for ship construction. Gold is a scarce but all-around resource. Most of it will most likely be spent on tech-tree advances rather than ship or building construction.
Rum - Rum is generated by a distillery. It's a late(ish) game resource - it's the fuel your pirate ships run on. After a distillery is built, all that's left is the shipyard itself, and then PvP ocean combat begins.
Buildings
I won't rehash the resource-generating buildings already discussed (Lumber Mill, Mine, Brothel, & Distillery).
Shipyard - Allows for the construction of ships. Upgrading the shipyard allows for the construction of more advanced ships, as well as decreasing construction time.
Alchemist - Right now in the design the alchemy shop manages the entire tech tree. You'd go to your alchemist to research gunpowder for cannonballs, tempered steel for better swords, construction techniques for bigger ships, etc. It's possible these buildings could be split into various separate buildings - a blacksmith, a gunnery, etc.
Combat & Ships
Combat is all ship-to-ship. Or ship-to-island, but the island is basically treated as a "ship" in those cases. All ships have four stats: Offense, Defense (health), & Speed. Offense is determined by the number of cannon ports - 30 cannon ports on your giant Warship, and it'll have an Offense of 30. Speed & Defense are set more abstractly.
Combat is then a dice roll, weighted by Offense - Defense = damage dealt, with speed acting as a "miss" modifier. It's not as complicated as it sounds. Think about it like Risk. In Risk, you always know which army has the advantage, but there's still a degree of chance built-in. This is the same way. Example Scenario:
Attacking Ship A has an Offense of 15, Defense of 15, Speed of 5. Defending Ship B has Offense, Defense, & Speed of 10. In this scenario, Ship A is quite a bit stronger, but slower. The dice roll would determine how many of Ship A's 15 cannons missed, and how many hit. Ship B's +5 speed advantage will modify the dice roll, causing it to dodge more of the volleys.
...that still sounded confusing. Let's say a ship is outfitted with 30 cannons, and is up against a ship that has "30" as its defense stat. Each cannon represents one potential HP of damage dealt per volley, meaning the attacking ship COULD destroy the defender in one go. But that's where speed comes in. The faster the speed of the defending ship, the more cannons miss their mark. And the misses are determined by a tight dice roll.
Wrapping up
...aaaand that's basically it. That's the game, in a nutshell. You build up your base, expanding your economy and the size of your pirate crew, until you can eventually build ships and engage in stat-based ship-to-ship combat. You need to balance ship strength with ship speed, economic growth with fleet growth, etc.
We decided on more stuff than what's in this topic - this is just the overview. So many of your "what about this" or "what about that" questions we've probably answered. There ARE some things that never got sorted, however:
- The exact formulas for resource income & expansion. These are HUGELY important. What's your base lumber income, and how much does each Mill upgrade add to that? And what do those upgrades cost? That sort of thing. These determine the speed/pace of the game. WarmerMusic built a tool to allow for the testing of various scenarios, in order to tweak it to perfection:
http://dev.vidhammer.com/calc/
- We also never sorted through a great system of combat target priority, since most combat is fleet v. fleet, but you don't control ships individually. Do we give players if/then controls for their fleet? do they attack the weakest enemy ship, or most powerful enemy ship? etc. Maybe they just attack a random enemy target?
- Win conditions / late game gameplay. Most of our focus went into thinking about the early game, where you're expanding your island & home base, and building your fleet to try and challenge your neighbors. We didn't come up with a great solution for how the game looks when you have 3, or 5, (or 30) islands under your control. The game can't "pull back" Spore-style, but gamers shouldn't be managing the production of 30 different shipyards on 30 different islands.
So, that's it!
That's our design doc, in a nutshell. You build a base/economy, and send out ships to attack the enemy. I think we came up with great solutions for buildings & resources, and great solutions for combat. And those are the game's two big systems. With those two systems in place, you would have a playable game. A basic one, but a game nonetheless. From there you can add all the goodies (special ship abilities, special units like spies, defensive island buildings, etc) and really flesh it out.
...all that's needed is someone to build it
If anyone involved the first time around is reading this, you're all more than welcome to come back into the fold. Anyone with programming experience (we were building it in mysql and php the first time around) interesting in contributing, please reply or PM me. We also need help with a front end - someone to build out the UI itself in conjunction with the individual doing the database and back-end work.
