Geldonyetich's BYOND Development

I think I've been feeling out of sorts of the past 3 weeks. I don't want to call it "swine flu" because it didn't have a fever, but then again, apparently that's not uncommon.

In any case, I'm feeling a bit better today, a mysterious ache I've had in my right hand for days is gone and I'm thinking clearly for a change. I actually completed my homework before class instead of booting up the laptop - amazing!

I've begun work on my project again. Barring making much progress this week, next week should be a breeze, as I've actually all Thanksgiving week off. If having 10 days in a row to myself won't get me to make major progress on my project, nothing will.

"It's not gaming, it's research for game development," certainly sounds like a cop out. However, to a great extent, I think this might have been greatly behind my motivation to play X³ lately.

I've reached a point in my project where I'm trying to establish a great and sweeping overall purpose to play in the long term, and X³ offered perhaps a glimpse at the tried-and-true "accumulation" model taken to a great extreme.

In X³, you start with a fighter or freighter (maybe more depending on which start you choose) and eventually build your way into a whole trade empire of various capital ships, fighters, freighters, marines, and facilities.

What I accomplished last week.

However, though the game allows for a great deal of dynamic content, it has one critical shortcoming and that is that the territories are immutable (they can be conquered and built on but they're never new patch of space) and the various factions are equally static. Once you've isolated the main antagonists and nailed them down with fortifications and patrols, what then?

In the end, the accumulation model has a problem because you can only accumulate so much before there's a question of, "why bother?" When you've a billion dollars free and have everything you could want in life, pretty much all there's left to do is retire... and die.

Now, I was raised in a capitalistic society and I recognize that some of this might sound downright socialist, but it seems to me that this is just poor design, at least if the goal is to have players striving to do their best. Rather than accumulate to the point where it's pointless, I would instead prefer more of a systems building perspective where players are put in the position to simply continually improve what they've already got.

That is what I'll probably be looking into this week.

What can I say? There's far too many good games distracting me right now.

Dragon Age is so good as to be genuinely addictive. I had thought Bioware was just going to make a quick buck off of a Baldur's Gate throwback, but it's really more like they advanced the state of the art of that type of game. Aside from having a riveting, epic story, a feature I really like about the game is the inclusion of Tactics, which are customizable conditionals that streamline out the monotony out of commanding your PCs to perform obvious actions. (It's almost an identical copy of Final Fantasy XII's gambit system.)



Borderlands did not have that same hold over me, but it's certainly a game worth playing. If you're willing to overlook the general infeasibility of where ammo and money comes from - hey, in the old days we'd just have floating boxes of heath and ammo in any ol' place - it's simply a highly refined and relatively open-ended RPG/FPS fusion. A surefire formula for entertainment if ever there was one.

I spent the last post complaining about X³: Reunion... then I realized that I'm talking about a 4 year old game, found a place selling the heavily revised stand-alone, X³: Terran Conflict, for $10 and (with some regret of the time I wasted in Reunion last weekend) restarted my trade empire anew.



Though Terran Conflict looks nearly identical to Reunion, it's really heavily modified and enhanced in hundreds of ways. Every one of my complaints from the previous post - inability to run minimized, not being informed when a unit needs orders, and so on - have been addressed. It's a bit like a space shuttle in itself, identical on the surface but a much different beast under its skin thanks to the constant meddling of astronomy-minded thinkers. They probably could have got away with calling it X⁴, and probably chose not to simply because the core engine hasn't changed much.

Terran Conflict is about a year old, but the last patch (version 2.5) was released last month. It was released with several issues, perhaps owed to the additional complexity added since the relatively flawless Reunion. Fortunately, Egosoft's diligent patching has made a major difference, and now it's a pretty solid game. The remaining holes (e.g. glitched mission difficulty, little cheats you can do here and there for profit) seem to be erring on the side of being a more open-ended experience.

Now, the main trouble with the game is that it's a grind. I can spend days or weeks just slowly making money to earn something big I want. Eventually one's trade empire becomes neatly automated, a steady credit-generating thing in the background, and I can focus on more interesting things like commanding an armada of warships. What is this if not the age old grind's possibly empty promises of a good end game awaiting you?



Of the three games, I've mostly been playing X³, Reunion until yesterday when I picked up Terran Conflict. I'm not sure what this decision in entertainment proves more. My attraction to the idea of an open-ended and dynamic game or that I can't prioritize worth a damn?

What I'm going to try to do is schedule myself to get the things I need to do done. It's tough - I've forgotten a great deal of my motivation techniques, and I haven't exercised much lately so the body isn't particularly willing either.

Truth be told, I'm on one of many sticking points in my game design. We're getting down to the nitty gritty of what it really means to be a player on the side that represents human expansion over the world in face of the indigenous forces. There's many ways I could do that, but relatively few ways I can make it entertaining to do.

It will take quite a bit of contemplation to decide on a definitive course of action. Right now I'm leaning in the direction of Dwarf Fortress-like automation in the colonies coupled by a few powerful customizable combat units which you give standing orders to.

As I mentioned last week, this was a week I largely spent devoted to classes, and so I did. I pulled my fat out of the fire for one of the classes, perhaps the other. I still have a couple of tests this upcoming week to study for, so I'm not completely off the hook yet, but I hope to return to developing my game soon.

Another little distraction is that Borderlands came out. I haven't really been able to enjoy it much because of all these little pressures in my life preventing me from making any gaming time spent last week feel obligation free.

I hope I'm sure about this - coding all those little interface controls will consume a fair later half of a day, at least.

I put a lot of rumination into my game over this weekend. It's beginning to look like what I want to put together is going to be closer to X³: Reunion in that I want the players to have the control over a small number of powerful units (customizable mechs/vehicle) without having to be in control over them constantly. Like in X³, it would be a bit of a trade wars game with a vehicle piloting interface. A beginning player might start off piloting a single vehicle but, as they become a more accomplished player, eventually have several of vehicles operating under their control, even their own bases.

I don't like how X³ does it in that the game doesn't quite have very robust remote control mechanisms in some ways. You either give your units one order which they complete (you are not immediately informed when it has completed its task and is waiting for additional orders unless you are monitoring your possessions screen) or you give them Trade Software Mk3 and they become completely autonomous. I like a medium, where the player gives several orders in succession with the option of repeating those orders, like Space Empires V. This is my goal.

X³ is also wantonly demanding of the player's attention. You get kicked out of accelerated time mode at the drop of a hat, so you can't just leave it running. You can't alt-tab out of the game, or it will pause. Yet, if all vehicles are dutifully fulfilling your orders on autopilot, why do you even need to be there? X³ could be a great empire building game but it's held back by these problems.

X³ would also be a lot more significant if it were multiplayer, as my game is intended to be, because in a wholly single player game your space empire will impress no one but yourself. Yet, EVE Online has the same trouble in that you're not really able to control more than one unit (expensive multibox "solutions" aside). The trouble with that is that there's not really enough substance to controlling only an individual unit to keep the game interesting.

Simultaneously, I want to keep things relatively small scale. This is because I've played games like Mankind or your typical Trade Wars-style game, and they no longer have that sense of personal involvement. There's far too many units involved, it's just a whole lot of redundant bulk, and the players have no real sense of relating to them anymore. I want the players to be as intimately connected to their units as they would a squad member in X-Com.

What I'm hoping to push here will be a good medium. A game in which the personal involvement still feels poignant but simultaneously one that allows the player to build something truly epic. Something that doesn't get boring when you've mastered controlling just one unit because eventually you'll be in the position to control several.

When I first started my Vehicle Wars project, I had in mind the old Battletech MUX I used to play as teenager. These were persistent online environments that centered on players piloting mechs using a real time conversion of the popular FASA franchise.

3 months later, I still haven't added the core vehicular combat system. I was largely distracted with a life simulation, trying to make something interesting happen within the virtual world I develop. That's a lot of what you saw in the video I posted up early last month.

After about a month vacation in Champions Online, I've returned to development, and have been focused primarily on inserting the player into the game. I've now quite a bit of working interface to show for it:



Of course, this interface is not set in stone, not by a long shot, but you get the general idea of where I'm coming from.

I still haven't added the vehicular component, but I have added a great deal of a world building support. The economy (and there will definitely be a robust economy) isn't in yet. However, the important thing is the game can now interact with a player.

I also taught the indigenous creatures of the game to burrow underground. They're very fast when they do this, so now they can accomplish more much quicker. I anticipate the experience of building a base and needing to repel a sudden attack of burrowing enemies will be a significant one this game will offer.

That's about all the development I have time for awhile. While I was largely in a, "screw my classes, I want to develop" mood this week, I've got some pretty big class projects due throughout next week. The more of that I finish now, the more time I'll have to get back to what's really important to me: working on this game. Hopefully things will be pretty much resolved by next weekend.