InfiniteSpace-online

[technomage]

Fair point :think:, but I'm not doing this for fame or fortune, I'm doing it because this is something I have had in my head for about 8-9 years now, and I personally want to be able to fly around in the world I created and expore it. If others want to join me in my exploration then that is fantastic, if not that is fine too.

You are right there are allot of space games about. I personally am very excited about the following

Infinity
Battle Star Galactica Beyond the Red Line

Both of which are in development, Infinity in particular has a very active Community and the developer is very tallented and I will be playing that game when it's released.

Now if all the people who wanted to write a game took the atitude that if that style of game (e.g. space exploration) had been done before don't do it, then there probably wouldn't have been games like Eve, Xwing, FreeSpace 1 & 2, WingCommander, X 1-3, Frontier Elite because Elite is pretty much is the best Space exploration game ever built.

You are right allot of games of this style and they are the same, allot are very boring, but each of the games listed above pushed the evelope in some way, be it in graphics, gameplay or something else.

Like I said I'm not trying to build a huge game to make loads of money, this project is mainly for me. That said I welcome any help/feedback I can on game play, models, physics, design even coding. So people can either stay on the sidelines and say when I finally release game that it is boring or step up to the plate and help me to make a game that is ground breaking in some way.


BTW - OOlite is an excelent re-creation of Elite, I have it installed on my linux box (haven't made it to Elite status yet though )

[marmin]

Well.. a thing that I always like is a realistic stock market system. I always hated the limited trading features of Frontier.
I've tried Oolite but it was buggy and I got extremely slow performance..

[technomage]

Funny enough, a stock market trade system is on the cards. I just need to figure out how to implement it (I'm not sure I understand the real world stock market )

[savage]

(I'm not sure I understand the real world stock market )

Watch the movie Trading Places, Wall Street and most importantly a documentary about the fall of Enron called "The smartest guys in the room".

[WILL]

Stock Market trading huh? :lol:

Don't get me wrong, it's a really cool idea. I'm all for it, but what are you basing the trends off of? A company's stock value will rise and fall (fluctuate) based on world events. You'd have to have enough companies with bases, goods, etc and keep a running tally of it all. Not impossible, but you really have to plan it out well with the rest of the game's sales, purchases, etc...

In this you may want to have every product (weapon, shield generator, ship make/model) not only have a cost, but also have a manufacturer or company behind it. So that way you can record the company's profit value as each item is sold. And also record the losses from attacked/destroyed convoy's, etc. Just remember that profits only count towards the company when the items are sold from actual 'accredited' company dealers.

[size=9px]Warning, Rant: You know the best example of a space game with a 'real world' type economy was Freelancer. It had a ton of factions that you could build up a rep with or against each. So there was active politics throughout the game. And goods cost more at some bases/planets and less at others so you could do cargo runs as a means to build earn cash. Plus of course the 'Jobs'! Take out X-Y-Z, get X item, capture X guy, etc... There was even a great news system that you could read and it would tell about whats going on in diferent areas of the game world! The one downfall to the game though (besides the ultra short story mode) was that you quickly found less satisfaction in doing jobs as they started to appear very similar with each other, just different names AND once you completed the story you get the best ship in the game wit hthe best weapons so there really isn't much modivation to earn cash and upgrade. :? (ok thats not true there are a few ships at higher levels but it's so far away and the missions are just so darn boring now... )[/size]

What you could do is at the beginning (probably in development) start everything in the world as baseline... ($500,000,000) and just keep a consistant tally of whos items are sold and whos cargo ships are attacked/destroyed add/subtract the totals and keep track of each company's net worth. just be sure that if you make a news network system in your game that you ROUND the number of 'the company's reported net worth.'

I think that might be a great place to start off before doing the actual trading with shares, etc...


Oh... and you can include major factions like governments and militaries into these stats too. Like the fortune 500s govs and mils have budgets too. So if a Carrier/Destroyer or a base go kaboom... $50,000,000 go bye bye.

[technomage]

Thanks for that WILL, some good ideas there.

The game design puts a Solar System in the Hands on a Player (the Base Solar systems will be run by Me or somoeone on the dev team), so each solar system will be responsible for generating goods to trade depending on the reources available in that system. If for example one system has loads of iron ore it would need to trade that ore to get food etc. I was planning on the prices being set by the system administrators, they would pay more for stuff they want and see goods they have loads of cheaply.

So companies would really be at the solar system level, one system would do better than others. If you manage your system correctly you will make money if not you'll go bust (not sure what will happen then). So If I mnaged to get 500 solar systems then a Fortune 100 or something.

I'm still working out the design, but that is a rough idea on how it would work.

[WILL]

Hmm... so you're saying that it will be an Empire-scale game rather than a Privateer-scale game? I was under the impression that you'd be able to play a single character and pilot yourself through the world as an individual.

Oh! :idea:

I just had a great idea... what if you after completing 'Infinite Space - Online' left the game client open for expansion (can be offered as an expansion pack) and you expanded the servers to support a seperate edition of the game where individuals can take part on a person to person scale trading goods, etc...

You could call this game 'Infinite Space - Privateer' and all it would use the same online real-time world runing on the 'ISO' servers but feature different aspects of gameplay. All the while, the players of the original will get to see unique individual players of 'ISP' growing and becoming greater influences on their empires.

This would then add a 3rd aspect of gameplay where these powerful individuals would then effect the Solar system 'Lords & Leaders' (players of the original ISO game) to have to either protect or 'go against' these privateers (players of the new ISP game).

This would be an amazing way to play off the relationship that in a RTS(like Homeworld, etc) game you would deal with individual units OR in a Space Sim where you would go and do jobs and have a rep with the different factions in the game.


Here is how I think this expansion might work: Lets say you have two Solar systems...

Ansari Prime & Sol (2 players of ISO)

...now you have a privateer who interacts on a smaller scale with all the factions doing business to earn cash, buy better ships, weapons + systems and so on and build up a good rep. with governments and businesses to do better business, etc...

...now the System leaders of both Sol and Ansari see what commodities they are selling and not selling. As they put a price on their goods they offer competative pricing with other systems this creates a business relationship between privateer and system depandancy. But the buying of goods is based on a set price by the system leader so there is no real direct interaction between these individuals. (at least not yet)

Also, the system leaders will obviously have problems with NCP controlled bandits and pirates, etc... they will need to have a strong capability to defend and police themselves. Well... maybe by lack of man-power, they need to hire privateers to investigate / take out key enemy installations, escort important cargo convoys or just hire a private militia and pay out credits on commision for each enemy ship destoryed.

So lets say the privateer in this example starts working for Sol and gains a great rep with them. Well... Sol and Ansari Prime become enemies. So... in our example the privateer would rapidly lose any rep points and eventually become an enemy of 'Ansari Prime' as he performed jobs for Sol against Ansari Prime. You can try to 'walk the line' and be on neutral terms with both, but like the markets for goods and trading, the more that Sol and Ansari Prime war, the more jobs that the privateer can take up between the two will be geared towards fighting each another.

There are soo many things that can be done with this concept! Once you build up a steady amount of system lords you can make this a reality, but it would be awesome and be able to bring in 2 kinds of interested types of gamers to your concept! [size=9px](I don't think this has ever been done before...)[/size]

Whaddaya think?

[technomage]

There is a concept entry over on the "ISO" forum outlining the ideas' behind it. (you need to be registered to get to it.)

but here are the basics

There will be a client app which will be like privateer , eve etc where you fly between systems trading goods,fighting etc.

But there will also be a Solar System hosting kit, in which you get the servers you need to run a solar system. clients will connect to the solar system you are running. the current design allows parts of the solar to be hosted on various machines (the chat server and the system server can be on different machines). So there will not be any "servers" as such as it is a distributed system. You will need a good PC and broadband, but I think it will work.

The solar system admin(s) will manage the police force, trade prices and contacts for mining (and NPC mining etc) as well as building space stations etc. The privateer style clients will visit these systems and buy/ sell goods etc. Currently the Soalr system admin screens are web based , but a nice RTS style gui is on the cards for the future (I still have allong way to go for that).

I do have some of the solar system services like chat and the connection service running already though

In short the basic concept you outlined is correct. you can probably see why I was asking for help with this project, it could take years and years otherwise :cylon:

[WILL]

Ah... ok I think I understand the concept better now.

I would however suggest that before you enlist too much help, get a full design document written up. At least outline all your major design concepts so that everyone participating will know exactly what is involved right from the word 'go'.

Such important things I'd love to read is all the ways a client player can earn cash and update/upgrade his player/ship or whatever equates his status in the game. I assume cash and his ship cost would be the biggest factors in this? (as with most space games)

The other things that would be of great value is what exactly is all the things a server player or 'solar admin' can do... create a new base, etc...

Beyond this... all the little things... what is auto generated in each solar system (created by the 'solar admins') and what is user created? how do the solar systems connect with each other? Are there trade routes like in Freelancer? Besides the solar system police and structure, what other factions are there in the game, etc... What happens when a server player turns off his app? ...and so on.

Doing this may be the boring part for you, but I think it'll give them something to dive into the inner workings of the game and get creative about. (It's kind of like involving your artist or musician into the workings of the game engine and coming up with a greater idea with their help. I find great benefit in this myself. Well... most of the time. )


BTW: As you can tell I'm quite the busy brain guy, sooo... if you give me instructions for how I can write up descriptions or do little bits of generated story/text or news items, I'd love to lend a hand there.

Perhaps, if I had a string format to work with, I could do all kinds of short descriptions that can be used in generated news articles and tickers throughout the news menus in the game. (You are planning to have a news broadcast system in the game right?)

[size=10px]Examples:

"%A earnings are through the roof! Strong trend indications expect that further growth is yet to come. %B however is not looking so good. If they expect to make it as a major competitor in the galactic market, they'll have to increase earnings."

and

"NEWS FLASH: %A has just declaired war on %B! With the fighting breaking out in the %C region, civilian and merchant ships are warned to take alternate routes to prevent becoming a casualties themselves. More to come as things progress..."

and

"The kind an generous president of %A has lowered the cost of %B to %C today. Steady availibility of %B there is expected throughout the coming week."[/size]

The basic idea being that you'd come up with a statistic that you want to create an auto generated news item about and you randomly pick from a series of stored templates in the engine.

[technomage]

A design document is a good idea. I was hoping to get some more members on the ISO forum to talk over various ideas so I canwrite up ideas.

I also need to do a ship/asset design document for anyone wanting to help out onthe modelling side.