A quick general overview of the map. The map is going to be a six player map, where people have a cargo ship that they can fly around in, visiting different cities and trading ressources, buying and selling. Upgrading their ship in offensive, defensive, cargo bay size, speed or features like radar, afterburners etc. to either advance them towards a batter trader or a better fighter. The game will be balanced so that people going towards trading can purchase protection from escort convoys and hire mercenaries to hunt other players, or put a bounty on them. Whilst people upgrading their ship offensively can hunt down other players or convoys and steal their goods. Around the map there will be an increasingly amount of dangers determined as random.
The trading system is going to be very interactive, with constant changing values, that are affected by what you sell or buy from the towns, constantly updating the price and the value of your goods. Varies town produce different materials, and will have cheaper prices on these, whilst their demand on other goods will be higher, but setting up a trade route will be heavily changing on what dangers lure between towns.
Here is an example of the system made so far for trading in a town. The video is very low quality, so might have to watch in fullscreen. What you are looking at is, the panel in the right corner showing cargo space and gold, but even more so, how the prices to buy, sell and stock amounts changes interactively as the player buy or sells, and also how the stocks of the store constantly (slowly) changes anyhow. This is just a mechanic test.
Currently looking for a terrain editor for a very basic terrain, and a data editor for some also simple data changes. As well as people with good ideas are always welcome.
I think most projects fail since it is always easy to just begin from one point and make what you can think of - but at some point the ideas stop and theres no real red connection in what you made, then it becomes dull. To counter this I am going to write out everything for the game in advance, going to make a full turntable over the game including names, prices, upgrades, materials, routes, features and everything in a sort of checklist. I'm not promising this map will be done in a month. It's a fairly simple map, but I rather just work at a speed everyone can still feel comfortable without losing interrest and burning out. If someone really wants to kick in, they can just pick up some more tasks. But overall, no matter the support, I am going to finish it myself if people drop off or lose interrest. Pps. I belive in making a working demo asap is another good way to counter the immenent fail of most maps now days (especially rpgs, people have big dreams, but it never becomes playable)
I can definitely do the mapping for this project. I just won't be able to do much until I get back from vacation in a little over a week, but after that I have lots of time to spare. Until then and maybe after, I can help with the brainstorming as well.
Sounds good. I am just experimenting with the mathmatic aspect of adjusting prices in a town depending on stock, as well as making the stock change towards its base value over time. Working great so far, but err, that was not the point. Sure, enjoy your vaccation, I would love to have someone to chat about the ideas, problems and solutions with.
So what is the ultimate goal of this game? Attain a certain amount of resources? Buy out all the other players? Buy the best weapons and kill everyone else? Some combination, or something completely different?
I updated the text in the first post. As far as ultimate goal, that's a good question. Considering theres many way to get your cargo ship destroyed on, ending the game when you lose your ship would be rather dull. A considerations was when you were unable to purchase a new ship you would lose, as the gameplay increases with increasingly dangerous things, random events, and perhaps increasingly prices on ships. But I'm still open to any ideas on that point.
Simply playing until you die without an ultimate reason not to die has two separate reasons of being a bad idea. First, it would mean long, tedious games of arbitrary buying and selling for no reason. Second, long games means it would be harder to boost the map higher in the popularity system.
There are many things that you can use as ultimate goals:
Economic:
gather a certain number of money,
gather as much money as possible in a fixed amount of time,
buy everything (deplete the resources in all cities or just buy the cities)
Militaristic:
hero war (buy the strongest ship and kill everyone else),
tug of war (owned cities spawn military units; destroy enemy cities),
risk (buy or conquer majority or all cities)
Free Play (No goals, like Sim City; play until you're bored) < - - what it is right now
By far the option for making the most amount of people happy would to incorporate all the goals (or as many as possible) and let the players choose at the beginning of a game.
All very decent ideas. There are many ways to tackle the actual end of the game, but I will try to incorporate as many as possible to make it an option. At the moment I am leaning a bit towards having each player control their own town, and then using the trade towns as optimal towns that are not player controlled. The players town will be able to produce varies products and the goal (as my current idea, prune to be changed always of course) would be that the players had to eleminate the other players towns.
I think having a small trading town would be good, but you actively control a boat. You can buy better boats and upgrade the boats cannons etc. You could even buy other towns from players or the AI, and gain some income per trade at the town :). When you die, you have to buy another ship. If you don't have the money, you have to take out a loan to buy it, and it takes a few mins to make the ship. Winner is the person who gets the set winning conditions (such as last ship standing - Be the last ship alive at one time or buy out all trading towns, get a set amount of money etc.)
A quick general overview of the map. The map is going to be a six player map, where people have a cargo ship that they can fly around in, visiting different cities and trading ressources, buying and selling. Upgrading their ship in offensive, defensive, cargo bay size, speed or features like radar, afterburners etc. to either advance them towards a batter trader or a better fighter. The game will be balanced so that people going towards trading can purchase protection from escort convoys and hire mercenaries to hunt other players, or put a bounty on them. Whilst people upgrading their ship offensively can hunt down other players or convoys and steal their goods. Around the map there will be an increasingly amount of dangers determined as random.
You pretty much reiterated what we've been talking about already.
Will you have specific needs and production of each city based on location? Or will it be when you walk into a city it will just have a list of goods at random prices within a range.
You know what would be cool? If you had a table of each goods you can carry and it's average price across all cities, then you could add cities to a "watch list", where you could look at the prices of a cities goods and compare them to the average. Then, you could have a type of ticker across the top of the screen that says when a player makes a sale, or when special events happen.
Name: tba Theme: Open Trade RPG
EDIT: http://www.sc2mapster.com/teams/traders/pages/main/
A quick general overview of the map. The map is going to be a six player map, where people have a cargo ship that they can fly around in, visiting different cities and trading ressources, buying and selling. Upgrading their ship in offensive, defensive, cargo bay size, speed or features like radar, afterburners etc. to either advance them towards a batter trader or a better fighter. The game will be balanced so that people going towards trading can purchase protection from escort convoys and hire mercenaries to hunt other players, or put a bounty on them. Whilst people upgrading their ship offensively can hunt down other players or convoys and steal their goods. Around the map there will be an increasingly amount of dangers determined as random.
The trading system is going to be very interactive, with constant changing values, that are affected by what you sell or buy from the towns, constantly updating the price and the value of your goods. Varies town produce different materials, and will have cheaper prices on these, whilst their demand on other goods will be higher, but setting up a trade route will be heavily changing on what dangers lure between towns.
Here is an example of the system made so far for trading in a town. The video is very low quality, so might have to watch in fullscreen. What you are looking at is, the panel in the right corner showing cargo space and gold, but even more so, how the prices to buy, sell and stock amounts changes interactively as the player buy or sells, and also how the stocks of the store constantly (slowly) changes anyhow. This is just a mechanic test.
Currently looking for a terrain editor for a very basic terrain, and a data editor for some also simple data changes. As well as people with good ideas are always welcome.
@Deeweext: Go
Well i can do the triggers if this is going to be a serious map and not going to be cancelled halfway through like so many other maps are :/
I think most projects fail since it is always easy to just begin from one point and make what you can think of - but at some point the ideas stop and theres no real red connection in what you made, then it becomes dull. To counter this I am going to write out everything for the game in advance, going to make a full turntable over the game including names, prices, upgrades, materials, routes, features and everything in a sort of checklist. I'm not promising this map will be done in a month. It's a fairly simple map, but I rather just work at a speed everyone can still feel comfortable without losing interrest and burning out. If someone really wants to kick in, they can just pick up some more tasks. But overall, no matter the support, I am going to finish it myself if people drop off or lose interrest. Pps. I belive in making a working demo asap is another good way to counter the immenent fail of most maps now days (especially rpgs, people have big dreams, but it never becomes playable)
Regards,
Deeweext
I can definitely do the mapping for this project. I just won't be able to do much until I get back from vacation in a little over a week, but after that I have lots of time to spare. Until then and maybe after, I can help with the brainstorming as well.
@Abion47: Go
Sounds good. I am just experimenting with the mathmatic aspect of adjusting prices in a town depending on stock, as well as making the stock change towards its base value over time. Working great so far, but err, that was not the point. Sure, enjoy your vaccation, I would love to have someone to chat about the ideas, problems and solutions with.
Enjoy your vaccation.
@Deeweext: Go
Add me on Xfire. wolfman95. :)
So what is the ultimate goal of this game? Attain a certain amount of resources? Buy out all the other players? Buy the best weapons and kill everyone else? Some combination, or something completely different?
@Abion47: Go
I updated the text in the first post. As far as ultimate goal, that's a good question. Considering theres many way to get your cargo ship destroyed on, ending the game when you lose your ship would be rather dull. A considerations was when you were unable to purchase a new ship you would lose, as the gameplay increases with increasingly dangerous things, random events, and perhaps increasingly prices on ships. But I'm still open to any ideas on that point.
@Deeweext: Go
Simply playing until you die without an ultimate reason not to die has two separate reasons of being a bad idea. First, it would mean long, tedious games of arbitrary buying and selling for no reason. Second, long games means it would be harder to boost the map higher in the popularity system.
There are many things that you can use as ultimate goals:
Economic: gather a certain number of money, gather as much money as possible in a fixed amount of time, buy everything (deplete the resources in all cities or just buy the cities)
Militaristic: hero war (buy the strongest ship and kill everyone else), tug of war (owned cities spawn military units; destroy enemy cities), risk (buy or conquer majority or all cities)
Free Play (No goals, like Sim City; play until you're bored) < - - what it is right now
By far the option for making the most amount of people happy would to incorporate all the goals (or as many as possible) and let the players choose at the beginning of a game.
@Abion47: Go
All very decent ideas. There are many ways to tackle the actual end of the game, but I will try to incorporate as many as possible to make it an option. At the moment I am leaning a bit towards having each player control their own town, and then using the trade towns as optimal towns that are not player controlled. The players town will be able to produce varies products and the goal (as my current idea, prune to be changed always of course) would be that the players had to eleminate the other players towns.
@Deeweext: Go
I think having a small trading town would be good, but you actively control a boat. You can buy better boats and upgrade the boats cannons etc. You could even buy other towns from players or the AI, and gain some income per trade at the town :). When you die, you have to buy another ship. If you don't have the money, you have to take out a loan to buy it, and it takes a few mins to make the ship. Winner is the person who gets the set winning conditions (such as last ship standing - Be the last ship alive at one time or buy out all trading towns, get a set amount of money etc.)
@wOlfLisK: Go
You pretty much reiterated what we've been talking about already.
@Deeweext: Go
Will you have specific needs and production of each city based on location? Or will it be when you walk into a city it will just have a list of goods at random prices within a range.
You know what would be cool? If you had a table of each goods you can carry and it's average price across all cities, then you could add cities to a "watch list", where you could look at the prices of a cities goods and compare them to the average. Then, you could have a type of ticker across the top of the screen that says when a player makes a sale, or when special events happen.
@Abion47: Go
Ah, sorry. Didn't reread the first post :). But the table would be easy to do. Very easy.