Evil Genius

Cross-posted in my blog.

I want to make a web-based game, yup, indeed. It may or may not be successful, but that is ok, to me it will be a fun project. After tossing it around for a few months, I wanted to recreate a joy of my past called Warlords II.

The basic premis is that of a turn based strategy game, the player creates and manages their unique in-game persona and you start out in one city. The game starts out with a set number of people who want to play, each in different area in the world. The object of the game is to win via diplomacy (agreement by everyone playing) or by total military victory.

As the game progresses, players can vote if they want to allow more players into the game.

Of course, this isn't the end all description, it can be tweaked and I was hoping for input from all of you.

I would like to keep this hard-fantasy (like berserk pre-eclipse), but it isn't set in stone. When the game ends, I would like to keep the stats of the game persistant and form a ladder, have people form clans, guilds, cults.. etc, team play encouraged. The games I would imagine could last a week or years depending on how it is played.

However, keep in mind... the end result is to make money. So I can support my family (Wife and Kittie).

So yeah, what do you guys think? Would you want to play, help out, or look down your nose?

Sounds like it could be fun. I will give it a shot when it was done.

Does sound fun. Im up for it.

I'm good to game.

Make Buzkashi the main character.

Not sure what you mean, but I will sure give it a try.

Well, I plan on tonight drawing up some screens... and perhaps through some html together to get a feel for a development environment. My idea is to make a web 2.0 turn based strat game, that allows players to compet in domination of a world or scenero. The results or outcome will be permenant and will result in your account's advancement, and hopefully just for giggles let the hard-core RPGers get into the action to if they wish.

Th core that i'm focusing in on (at least for the tech demo) is an island with 4 points with 4 players with differing resources and troops. The point of the game is be the one who dominates the map either by force or by diplomancy over a set period of time. If it turns out to be fun, I will expand it one part at a time, and use the force of the forums here to help direct what I develop next.

My hope is that I'm not alone in wanting to make sometihng fun and others would like to volunteer their time into helping. Either with music, tiles, graphics, drawings, concepts, programming, etc.

Basic troop production: infantry, knights, and archers. (again, just for getting it started)

Each player starts in one city, there are a few neutral cities that can be taken by your forces, these cities are guarded by their cities production of units too. Some of them might even wonder around the country side... *grin*

During a conflict, if your units survive they can be upgraded to veteran giving them bonuses. Terrain gives bonuses and negatives and different units have their stats varried by terrain as well. Slower movement for infantry through forest and hills, but faster archer movement through forests, flying units have no such movement limiter and can move over mountains.

Units can join up to form armies that take up only one square to make that one square more easy to defend. Defensive bonuses in cities, less so in forts, and no bonus for open land combat.

Cities themselves can be modified to add structures and to watch your population grow or fall. more population means more resources at your disposal, means faster unit production or better unit production at the original rate.

For the time being, the maps will be created by me by hand.... I may at some point make a map-generator or map-editor and allow people start their own games and make their own makes. Who knows, perhaps we can have a Berserk universe one with Chuda, Midland and the Kushens.

At this point, I have no desire to have civ like game, meaning no 'technology' improvements. All of that stuff is out of the scope of what I want to build, however... it doesn't mean I won't do it either. I want to start out small, and build all the above in one thing at a time and have each part play-tested through to get the bugs out.


So.... enough of that, anyone still interested?

I am. I don't know what I can help with, but I'll try to be helpful .

If I can I'll help and I'll test the game.

So the game will have a game system like Newage's? I was hoping it would be more of a Advance Wars and Fire Emblem format, I don't know why the links for the online are down though. Sounds like a good idea nevertheless.

no, newage3 is a character centric power level fest, over time you build outposts in a persistant spacial field with planets... and wage war with people. It never ends, and the only thing you have to look forward to is getting a higher level.

I'm trying to create a something that can be played, multiple times, as many times as you want, with a definate ending. Newage3 doesn't offer a winner, it is a persistant state world.

While your account and it's stats are persistant, the games themselves are not. You can play against one person, or 63 if you want... invite people in the middle of a game if you want.

The framework can be sci-fi if i wanted it to be, but i wanted low-fantasy to start out with and perhaps put in a few Berserk tid-bits.

Neat thing is, if it gets competitive enough, then perhaps people can donate money into game and compete for prizes.

I had an idea for a PHP based online game once, but never really had the desire to create it alone. It's really similar in concept, it was a war based game of players fighting to earn resources, land, etc. There would be multiple victory and defeat scenarios and players would retain earnings in some way, and the games would be fairly long.

You'd have to register your character for a match before it began, and it'd be configured and set up on an automated schedule like a tournament.

If you're interested in doing this for real and want to set up some kind of development section where designers/developers can interact I'd be willing to lend some of my time to contribute some PHP code / DB design / Game design.

i'm interested and have some stuff i want to throw together for a mock up before diving in.

if it takes off, it might actually be a part of the forums.

Your choice of graphics scares me.

Hopefully some talented people out there that want to do the artwork.

BTW: that game that you are referring to graphics wise is Warlords II, circa 1993. I still play it today, it is hella fun. Another game that tickled my fancy in the same way was Masters of Magic, made by the same creators. Very cool stuff.

haha, if it's web-based then graphics still can be professional looking however I would like for 'em to remain either 8, 16 or at most 256 colors because of how much bandwidth gets sucked down just by pushing the images.

The other side is that should people play the free one, we can charge money for a nicer client that isn't web-based. Using GTK+, QT, or SDL we can make it a lot cleaner and less bandwidth intensive.

On the progressive note, I've made a few layouts last night with the pen & paper, next step is through up some HTML and demo javascript.

I would like to put a lot of thought into design before even touching code. I will be using the MVC development model and use Fusebox as my framework. I have a few plugins to fusebox that will greatly increase development with debug statements, memory dumps, shows queries used and their resultset. Pretty good test-harness that I've built at work that the boss man has allowed us all to use in and outside the office.

Should people like to work on it, I may open it up via SVN, but I think if I design (hopefully with help), and architect it it... after that it is just fill in the code with is specified in the documentation.

Paying money for the higher end one reminds me of something like Tibia .

Well, I'm still cracking away at it.

Right now I'm making a technical demo that fleshes out what I can and can't do with javascript, css, html.. etc.

Of course, there will be a bit of Berserk inside it. And no, the main characters will not be playable... ever.

are there any screens or info release so far?

Sounds good. You might want to look at Utopia and Earth: 2025 from Swirve for inspiration. I used to play both many years ago. Even had a top-rated account for 2025 for a round. Certainly wouldn't mind something else to come around.

Sounds like something to do till I get into high school.

psi29a wrote:Of course, there will be a bit of Berserk inside it. And no, the main characters will not be playable... ever.

Can I be Guts.

Sounds like a plan, i´ll be waiting for this.

i used to play utopia as well.
i dont think many people like text-based games. its synonymous with 'boring' but i like it cos its simple and easy to pick up.

will the game be text based?

I'm going to through up a quick page over at http://www.shatteredhalo.com/ (also owned by me) giving a brief overview of what I want to do.

I want to make a browser based game. It can be as simple or as complex as necessary. If it turns into something great, I would like to extend it further by making parts of the game playable on other platforms.

My vision is to have many 'games' playable in one persistant world. If you don't like Turn Based Games, then how about Simulation style game, or perhaps later on, more RTS approach?

I of course will not make all of this right up front, so I want to start small and work my way up.

So, #1 objective, make a Warlords II clone... web-based style. Objective, to control all the towns and cities on the map by defeating other players with units produced by the cities

#2 objective, adapt #1 to allow players to enter the game as 'heros'. They will choose sides under a leader of a faction and gain rank and fame by deeds done.

Depending on where this project goes, I would like to make scenerios wher ethe game can last as long as the players want to play. When the game is concluded, stats are recorded and players can sign up for a new game with their hero.

Right now, I'm thinking... drop down options at the top, big ass 'zoomed' map on the left, and a mini map on the right with status information below it.

The big map will be scrollable like google maps, where you will be able to move your units.

Sounds like you know what you want form this game.

http://www4.kingdomofloathing.com/login.php


I use to play KoL sooo much, the text of the game was what made it soooo great.