Indeed ;D
Nothing that your wouldn’t have do with any rpg or fps generaly you can get away with imperfections since in rts’s your seeing the units from some distance as opposed with other games. Also most of the units are defined by their tools of war which is just funky animations.
[quote=“kevglass,post:77,topic:32769”]
Even allowing ppl to design there own ‘race’/units under a predefined set of rules. Each race would get ranked based upon players winning with it(and their rank) + allowing ppl to vote on ascetics. Decent races will bubble up automatically - and saves us the time from creating them + fine-tuning them. (which is probably a lot of work…) + Maps off-course which also saves us from making those (if not generated.) Given we got all that working we can always add the goal of Massive multilayer-ness.
[quote=“kevglass,post:77,topic:32769”]
I don’t know you might want to conceptualise our idea’s further (not too far else ppl get too invested). On the flip-side as long as one is allowed to change their vote seeing the way everyone is initially leaning to might not be a bad idea either.
Apparently kev went ahead with it 
Awesome idea. It sounds silly but I love the idea of having a persistent world where people interact with the trees, plants, animals, vehicles, aliens, monsters and people. It bugs me in even the simplest platformers where enemies you have killed reappear.
Having many people interact with the world makes it even more imersive and I think it would really be worth it in terms of increasing its impressiveness to players and developers.
For developers, it is impressive because, well look, everyone here says its difficult to get MMO networking right!
For players, there is clearly a trend these days for multiplayer games. Team Fortress 2 is a great example of a multiplayer only game.
The idea above is quite ambitious but at the same time quite open so although alot of planning would be required for all the details, the main foundations could be set up fairly quickly.
is it definately open source?
Isn’t decided as yet. Doesn’t make a lot of difference. Just because the code is public and other people have the opportunity to comment doesn’t mean you/we/anyone has to listen.
Kev
Although it’s very unlikely that I’ll be helping develop the game, I have to say that from a “Java showcasing” point of view this idea seems superior to both the space-trading and RTS proposals. It has the benefit that it isn’t at the mercy of story/mission content, it’s all about the technology (which is surely where, as programmers, our strengths lie).
If someone were to ask you “So can you develop proper games in Java?”, and you were to answer “Sure! Just check out Community Project Mark 562” what would you want them to see? For me, I’d like them to see a single package (i.e. not collection of mini-games) with a snappy interface; fast, pretty 3D graphics; and some form of physical simulation. Multi-player interaction would be a bonus. All three proposals could do this, but the other two seem to come with extra baggage.
There’re my two cents.
No thanks at all.
while nostalgic… i do not think that it will “wow” any layman or programmer about games built using java…
Yes, another good idea and one I have also thought about.
But the depth at which it would have to be developed to be fun would probably go far beyond our scope, or?
But if we think about it, would the Elite-Clone not also just be HarvestMoon in space (or at least it should be).
We do not have to make the Elite clone a 1:1 3d clone. Why not a ‘step-based’ (where you move like in the early Ultima games)?
So you ‘step’ around the galaxy, through solar systems and on planets.
i played ikariam (http://www.ikariam.org/) for a while last year, and perhaps this project could produce something like that*, except with an interface so people can write bots - the work could be separated into:
- central game server, with rpc/rest/whatever (networked) api
- web or java2d-based interface to that server, for human players
- bots using the api - anyone can write their own bot/ai
i realise i am somewhat late to the party, just chucking an idea out there.
*ikariam is a real time strategy game, but actions take hours instead of minutes
Where is this project at? I might be interested in this, and, of course, already have plenty of ideas, gameplay ideas, and artwork of my own.
Same question, how are things going?
All community projects are dead in the water.
As I said earlier, for something like this to work, you’ve got to start witn a solid base, or it will never work out.
Everybody wants something else, and in the end everybody gets nothing done.
Well Kev was going to lead it all and organize everything but then he just… didn’t. Suddenly I was supposed to be the one organizing the Sandbox project and there was no way I had time for that, nor did I ever nominate myself for the position. 
I don’t think anyone really volunteered to lead any of the projects, just some people had it slightly thrust upon them. I considered volunteering to do it for Sandbox game but frankly I’m lousy at the non-technical stuff like task management.
I wonder if the community projects were too broad in their scope - in an attempt to be open and attract as many people as possible they became huge and generic. As a result everyone was interested but no one was really enthusiastic and committed. I’m becoming of the opinion that to do a successful community project you need to start with one or two dedicated people with a vision of their own, and only once there’s a certain amount of base work completed and something to show can you open it up slowly and allow more people on board.
The community project needed someone with the authority (and willingness, and leadership skills) to say “no” to suggestions. As it was every suggestion became a “yeah, we’ll do that too” feature, and in the end I don’t think anyone had a clear vision of what the end goal was.
With hindsight, the project splitting into three was the first sign of trouble.
Agreed. The initial discussion to see what sort of projects people want to be part of was (and probably still is) valuable. But it’s difficult to see anything actually taking shape unless one or two people “own” the project and put in the initial work.
Simon
Anyone around here is specialized in project/task management? How they do it in big company?
There’s no special way of doing it as far as I can understand. It really comes down to incentive. If you’re actually working for a job, then that job is your first or second priority (depending on if you’re a family man :P) out of absolutely everything in your life. If you’re doing a project like this, then it’ll typically be like 5th, 6th, 7th, or 20th or more on peoples’ priority lists. Playing World of Warcraft is often higher, I’m sure.
The incentive level can change depending on certain factors. Like if there’s already a foundation for the game that makes it really fun, then the incentive goes up because people think they can join on a cool project and get some of the glory. If there’s money or notoriety involved then it goes up, obviously. If you have someone constantly nagging you and pushing you to do something specific, it goes up.
We started with more or less the bare minimum level of incentive. Everyone talked about a game they wanted to play, but not spend the time to make. Classic problem.