WC Armada Style love or hate it

S

sigma_nunki

Spaceman
Hello all,
over the past 3 weeks or so I've been slowly but surely "cutting my teeth" on pygame (instant cross platform :)) and have been thinking of what I can do with it. Since I like WC and strategy I thought of a WCA style game (MMOG).

I am now at the point that I am going to start coding the actual game code and since it is rather involved I am wondering if a project with this general style would be well received by the community or if people are more into the flight sim aspect - I don't want to do something that no-one will use.

Sorry for the lack of details but I have only planed out milestone 1 and it's still very early in the development process. I do have ideas for the later milestones but that is another story (feature creep).

Anyway, if it is I'll start, otherwise I'll move onto something else. Any thoughts are appreciated.
 
Thanks.

Since I seem to only have 1 person interested in the project I must ask if anyone else is interested? Playing it I mean.
 
sigma_nunki said:
Since I like WC and strategy I thought of a WCA style game (MMOG).

I am now at the point that I am going to start coding the actual game code and since it is rather involved I am wondering if a project with this general style would be well received by the community or if people are more into the flight sim aspect - I don't want to do something that no-one will use.

Sorry for the lack of details but I have only planed out milestone 1 and it's still very early in the development process. I do have ideas for the later milestones but that is another story (feature creep).

Anyway, if it is I'll start, otherwise I'll move onto something else. Any thoughts are appreciated.
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Good luck. Not to dash your hopes or anything, but this is a good place to point out that there are already a few failures at this particular task. Off the top of my head I can think of three people that announced it at the point of 'going to start coding the actual game code', and the only one that that got past the point of even showing off screenshots was Origin, back before PO was canned. Your chances of success are probably miniscule in the extreme.

Be that as it may, it would be well received. I have to suggest that an MMOG format is probably wuh-HAY out of your reach unless you get a fucking top notch development team together: not the sort you'd casually recruit on a forum. It might be wiser to try for something closer to Freelancer. Not an MMOG, but a server/client multiplayer system that could allow for, say, 64 clients (provided you or one of your magical code elves is a net-code demigod). Hell, 8 clients would come across as a resounding success, I think.

Anyway, aim a bit lower. If the momentum gets going and you surprise us all with some real results, then you can raise the bar a little. But we won't be holding our collective breath.
 
I am aware that I am planning a rather ambitious project and I do admit that I am announcing far before I would've liked to but when I got to the point of writing the server I realized that the amount of time spent to event get the login code working would be large given that I would have to account for everything else that would have to go in there (I don't want to code the thing multiple times if I can help it). So, that's where asking if there is a "market" for this thing is. Time vs useful to no-one ratio may be too skewed.

From my point of view (being a math major/programmer) there isn't much of a difference from 8 or 64 or n clients. If you code something properly there shouldn't be any problem with n clients (system resources permitting ;)).

I didn't say it before but I will be using the quick combat style, which will simplify things greatly, as well as reduce the net traffic resulting in more clients being able to be connected at the same time. So, this will be less crazy then PO was, on alot of levels. I want a strategy game, not a flight sim or a flight sim/strategy game. I admit my clarity was probably lacking on this point.

By the by, has anyone hear about VegaStrikes online addition? Last time I looked I couldn't find it on their website.

Although I may have implied that I am recruiting on this forum, that was not my intent. I was merely asking if people would want such a thing. I know some local programmers that can help but maybe at a later date I would want to recruit an artist or 2. I suck at drawing. But that's later.

I hope that I can surprise you guys, but free time isn't abundant in my life so definitely don't hold your breath, it'll probably be awhile.

Anyway, thanks for your thoughts and I hope that I've cleared up some ambiguity.
 
I dunno . . I think you should include some flight sim. Part of the WC experience is personally getting on someone's six and blowing it off. Or pulling a balls-to-the-wall frontal and coming out alive. You should consider, possibly, making the quick combat optional. That'd make everyone happy :)
 
overmortal said:
I dunno . . I think you should include some flight sim. Part of the WC experience is personally getting on someone's six and blowing it off. Or pulling a balls-to-the-wall frontal and coming out alive. You should consider, possibly, making the quick combat optional. That'd make everyone happy :)
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My decision to not include flight sim is not final. But, I did make it mostly because of resource limitations and limitation due to MMOG.

First and foremost it'll take one hell of a pipe to push that amount of data to the users involved and I'll be running this off my own personal Internet connect.

Also, a persistent universe would have to have some sort of time - ie 1 hr real time = 1 day universe time. So, if someone has been dogfighting for 45 min rt that would mean 3/4 of a day ut and all the while not being able to see what is happening to your other systems!

There are other problems that come with a persistent universe as well but that neither here nor there.

I'm just trying to say that for this specific project it really isn't that feasible. And when Origin had problems (for whatever reason(s)), I don't think that I want to tackle that problem set just yet.

It might be something for the future, but not now.
 
Both... kinda.

For things like construction it makes sense to have some script running once per game day.

But, for movement it doesn't make sense to have a carrier only able to do one jump per turn as it just has to go though a jump node and then turn around and continue it's journey. So, this will be "real time". It will probably take a few minutes to be able to jump again though.

Of course, all this is open for debate :)
 
Useable jump points are generally at different locations. I know where you're coming from (various approach a jump point wrong end up somewhere weird references) - but for normal charted travel you usually have to cross a star system to find another jump point.
 
Then given some average speed for a carrier what would be an appropriate time for a carrier to travel from node to node within a star system?

Running some numbers it would take 14.5 days for a Ranger Class carrier to travel from the sun to the earth at max speed (assuming I didn't make a mistake). So, I would assume that the nodes would be grouped closer.

I'd just like to have some continuous interaction between the player and the game instead of having to wait fixed amounts of time in between turns (ie 1 hr intervals). Such as, once someone has a well established fleet (s)he can initiate a command for a carrier to jump to a different system, do some other tasks and when (s)he has completed said tasks the the carrier has completed the jump (or close to it).

But, if it is found that this isn't possible I'll just bite the bullet and go turns.
 
When a ship moves from point to point in a straight line, it closes its scoop and accelerates... allowing it to approach the speed of light (in extreme situations).

Generally, it means a couple of hours to a day to go from jump point to jump point (with the ship unable to change course during that time).
 
So there is no difference between the different carrier classes?

Would anyone have a problem if I fixed the times between jump nodes? Possibly varying the times between different jump nodes within the systems.
 
progress report

I thought I might give a progress report since I've got some tasks completed.

Got registration code done on the website (just on my hdd right now, web later). Next on that is home world placement and setup the initial fleet.

Client gets to login screen, gets/sends user name and password and reports if the login was successful or not.

Server sits and waits for logins and upon connect checks the sent user name and password against the database sending back pass/fail to client.


Next is random universe generation code (50% done) and related items. This should take some time as I have to pretty much plan the rest of the game.
 
progress report

Completed random universe generation code (also checks connective-nes) and got the home world placement upon registration working (makes sure you are at least 5 jumps from anyone).

Next is getting that data from the server to the client to render it. This should produce some screen shots so you all can see what I'm doing instead of just reading about it :)
 
TheFraix said:
How about the storytelling of Armada?
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H'm, never even considered a story line. I have always thought of Armada as being primarily a strategy game. Here's some detail of my plans.

The user will only see the systems that he has explored but must also spend time looking for the jump nodes to other systems (I won't make this take a lot of time).

Ore won't be in this game as I don't want someone to expend a lot of energy and resources to take a system and have it already raped and pillaged. Instead I will have pilots. Each will have there own stats and get better with combat experience (I'll figure out training later). I find it a far greater loss to lose a well trained pilot then a ship.

You will be able to build carriers and those carriers will only be able to hold a limited amount of ships and pilots.

Shipyards and Academies will be the structures that can be built. Shipyards will only be able to build light fighters until an upgrade is performed (time only). Academies will have instructors (pilots assigned there) and the "graduates" will have start off stats somewhere in between the minimum value and the instructors value. Both structures will be able to house a limited amount of ships.

Combat will be quick combat only. There is technical reasons for this, see a previous post.

Beyond this basic starting point 1 game day will equal 1 hr. There will be hourly scripts that do construction, training, etc. The movement and combat will be handled on the fly by the systems in which they occur. Both will take time. I am still in the process of figuring out a good way to do combat but it defiantly will be a turn based system with x number of seconds per turn so to have way to tell how long to combat lasted.

I am trying not to change too much and hopefully have succeeded in creating something that when done will be fun to play.

All that being said, I am still in the early phases of development so pretty much all of this is open to debate. Let me know what you guys think.
 
Hey I have been waiting for a WC strategy game, haven't played a space strategy game in a while that I found addicting. WC is addicting to me, so hopefully this game will be too lol. More power to you!
 
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