I agree… as the funky as these ideas are… we need to develop the basic core gameplay first.
A lot of good ideas and suggestions coming out, feasibility will certainly need to be taken into account.
Once voting is up, though, let’s all be prepared to accept the fact that the democratic portion of this activity is over - if something gets done, it will be because kevglass listens to all of our suggestions and rules swiftly and solidly against almost all of them, picking only the ones that he thinks can actually be accomplished in a reasonable amount of time. Benevolent dictator is the only way to go here, so please, let’s all be ready to accept that, I’d hate to see such initial excitement turn into widespread bitterness when the ultimate direction doesn’t match each of our individual visions.
That said, this should be quite fun, I look forward to seeing where it goes.
We can easily have customizable ships as long as it’s stat-based and not graphical. As in, certain guns do extra damage, so you can buy them instead, but they take up more space, etc. That’s all numerical so is pretty easy to do.
'tis feature creep if you decide your going to actually do it and do it within the stage / milestones that your in.
That being said I’ve probably seen more projects fail because in the whole prioritising and dismissing of things to get it playable finished and then ends up not getting finished at all because to the programmer it has lost any form of challenge and is about as interesting as screwing on lid’s on toothpaste.
I’d say bring on the idea’s and choose a direction and select the absolute minimal subset needed to make a first step, with an exciting feature.
trust me talented ppl can pull it off as far as code goes( perhaps not as polished but afaik we are still aiming for a showcase. ) - the reason you don’t want to do this is that it also requires ton’s of content
ANY real time networked multiplayer support. - because?
Highly customizable ship building. - as Demonpants you hardly have to go all out. Aiming for a sporelike ship creator is going to mess you up, get the mechanics right first.
I taught this was a technology showcase - which was why playable was even a necessary requirement
Not getting too invested in anything is likely a good idea.
[quote=“ewjordan,post:42,topic:32798”]
Meh, it’s highly democratic - just make your voice heard by sticking a fork in it.
Followers follow because you want to go places. Whipping ppl to stay in line is not going to help you in the long run.
How about making a dedicated thread for the three genres/games and collect some bullet points and ideas in them, so we can see whats desired and possibly available for each game before we decide.
Best would be if someone starting the thread is wiling to update the first post to always contain a summary of what’s being discussed/decided in that thread.
@Real Spache Physics:
I agree, let’s keep it unrealistic. If it were real, such as in Elite III, no one would play it.
@MMO or Single player:
We should really think about what we want to make as it really determines the concept and the features.
f.i. Time warp is fine for SP, but not MP.
Flying UPS missions should never be fun. But if that is what you want to do, why not?
I find trading to be fun, but it is surely not for everyone.
@Crew:
Actually this is right aligned with Starfleet Command where you had officers and marines (only used to do or defend against raids)).
The level of your officers determined their effectiveness and can also effect the sections they guard over.
I.e. better engineer = more power harhar.
Being the evil guy that I am, I would also add in special features such that crewmen can die, retire or get promoted elsewhere.
Also modules can be damaged or even destroyed.
F.i. if you are in a battle and you sustain a critical hit, then regardless of shields, the damage can also ‘leak’ into the ship and harm crew and/or components.
@Modular ships:
I would not go all out and have visual modifications of ships. Let’s just say you can buy a hull and then pack into the hull whatever you wanted.
I get the feeling we have people in two camps. Those that want an interactive tech demo that focuses on showcasing technology, and those who want to create a rich, fun, and polished game (but perhaps less weight on technological challenges), showcasing a great game experience.
In addition to choosing a game genre, I hope we can make up our minds about what we want to produce, as well. It definitely impacts how I’d like to participate.
I personally want to create an end product; a real game. There was a link somewhere showing a kick ass gfx engine rendering a space station over a planet, and then descending onto the planet. I don’t need this. That was cool, but I’d only watch it once.
So I want to focus on the game concept. Playability, how story and content plays a role, what’s the scope, where do we draw the line of what should be possible and what shouldn’t? To what extent do we want multiplayer (I’m actually assuming that some kind of rudimentary player interaction is a must).
And I’d definitely go for the space trader. I think the sandbox will end up a tech demo, and I think creating a really good RTS (that would be played and cause a stir) is unrealistic.
Any volunteers to spec up this space game (and/or the others - lets just go ahead and define all three and see where it goes yeah)?
For an idea on the sort of thing I’d expect to see in a specification of games here’s a couple I wrote up a long time ago and never got made:
http://www.cokeandcode.com/specs
They’re just the way I write them, but it might be a starting point. Post before starting and we’ll agree who is going to write the first version of each before anyone commits time. For now, just post it wherever you can - or if someone else would like to volunteer to sort out a wiki, tracking and source control (google code?) that’d be great too. Volunteers please for:
a) Spec out Space Trading Game
b) Spec out RTS
c) Spec out Sand Box Game
d) Set up some initial infrastructure that might get changed later but gives us somewhere to set this stuff up.
Initial specs will be just that, starting points.
Kev
I’ll be happy to have a go at (a).
Okie dokie, thanks for volunteering! In the news:
- SimonH takes on an initial specification for the space trading game
Go as detailed as you want but the sooner we can get something up for discussion (even if a bit draft) the better.
Thanks again!
Kev
Cool - I’ll post it as a thread so we can amend/improve it as we go.
D)
SCM
Euh Git was proposed sounds fair enough - if I understood it right we don’t need a central server for that.
Communication & collaboration
Forum - can’t we just get a section here? - I could set one up but it feels redundant
Wiki sounds fair
though it’s useally offered with the rest of the stuff.
atlassian solution Track Jazz comes to mind
automation
Hudson
Other stuff:
Checkstyle config
tuned findbugs / pmd config (though this could be just evolved over time easily)
Deployement and test servers are something for later.
Did I miss obvious things?
Agreed 
@Mr_Light - was that an offer to go ahead and set this stuff up then great, thanks for participating. At the particular moment in time I think we can live with just:
- wiki
- issue tracking
- source control
If this means we can use some well known central provider then thats great, but I’m happy to try something new if that makes sense. Most important thing with this task is that whatever gets set up doesn’t slow us down in any way - so common tools that are widely understood would be my first thought. Let’s not worry about automation, testing or servers just yet.
As you say, we can keep using the forums here (since we’re already registered ;)). If we keep going long enough I’m sure Chris can sort us out with a sub-forum.
In the news:
- Mr_Light opts for d), sorting out some initial infrastructure for collaboration. Nice one!
So we’re still hanging out for volunteers for:
b) Spec out RTS
c) Spec out Sand Box Game
Kev
If we can’t find a hosting solution, i’ll put up a wiki or svn on my vps server and use it until either the hard drive fills up or the bandwidth gets to high. but i want to use my server as last resort and cant find a descent place to fit our needs. So if we want mine give me a private message later on after we pick the game.
For hosting a public Git repository I’ve been satisfied with GitHub. They have nice tools for keeping track of commit and branch/fork activity. The site has good guides for using Git and GitHub. Contributing to a project is easy even if you don’t have commit rights (see this guide). I haven’t used GitHub’s wiki and webhosting tools - some other place probably has them better.
Google Code has nice provisions for wiki and issue tracking. They provide an SVN repository, which has good web tools (browsing, commit history, diff). Google Groups is also OK for a mailing list. There are also other services from Google (Google Docs, Google Sites etc.), about which I have no experiences. The negative side is that Google Code does not directly support hosting a normal non-wiki web site (you can put the pages in the SVN repository and access it through the SVN repository’s URL, but that isn’t very elegant). There are also some limitations to the wiki markup (for example no background or font colors, except that the tag might be support).
SourceForge’s webhosting (updated through SCP) and project categorization are good, they even provide a MySQL database, but otherwise the project tools (issue trackers, forums etc.) are IMO outdated and messy. They provide SVN and CVS repositories, which have bad web tools. I don’t know about the hosted apps that they nowadays have (wiki and forums). I have a couple of projects at SourceForge, but nowadays I’m more inclined to using Google Code for new projects (and in either case my public code repository will be at GitHub).
Given bobjob has already expressed a interest in the RTS idea I wonder if he’d be interested in writing up the initial spec (yes this is my attempt at getting him re-interested rather than lose all that talent!)
Kev
cool, Ill write up the specs and start a new thread.
Damn, I have such a need to follow patterns, In the news:
- bobjob jumps on b), writing up the spec for the RTS concept. Brilliant.
Kev