Overall game design from YOUR perspective

The land-based version of Allegiance, under construction.
Virex
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Post by Virex »

I've been thinking a bit about the problems of static, defensive gameplay, and the best way to prevent it, at least as I see it, is twofold.

First of all people should have early and good acces to artillery that has more range then defensive emplacements. Artilery needs to be made so that it is devastating against slow or stationary targets but ineffective against moving targets. This would force the defenders to take a proactive stance and go out and destroy the artilery before the opponent is capable of destroying the defensive emplacements. Destroying or capturing normal buildings should still be mainly a short-range afair, but destroying defensive emplacements should be a long range affair. This also means that we need some kind of artillery that can shoot through alephs, or some way to bypass alephs alltogheter, or else people'd just pull up a lot of defenses around the alephs.

Besides that it would probably be best if units have a decent chance of surviving long enough to get close to the defenses and disable them manualy. To acomplish this I propose a new kind of equipment, a portable defense grid. Basicly, this'd be a large, spherical shield that'd keep out at least a part of the incomming weapons, but not units themselves. It could either be a percentage of all shots, or everything untill it runs out of energy. Such a system could be mounted on a vehicle, with it's power depending on the size of the vehicle. This would hopefully provide an attack force with enough defense to make it close to the defenseive emplacements. From there they can start capturing or destroying the turrets and taking out the defending units.

Of course these two options sound a bit contradictory, since the defenders could use grid generators to keep out artillery shells as well. So I think grids should normaly only keep out fast projectiles. This means that slow artilery projectiles and possibly also laser-based weapons (are we going to have lightning and sonic weapons as well?) would be capable of bypassing grids completely or to a certain extent.
Last edited by Virex on Tue Jun 16, 2009 9:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.
killerbee
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Joined: Sat Jun 28, 2008 11:15 am

Post by killerbee »

economy
simple not like the alleg with so many paths and options each with a specific order depending on the core/faction one a very simple research system i like the mines system you could buy a player controlled vehicle that scans the selected area for valuable rocks also different substances different price say you dig for helium a common substance it wont be worth as much as a rare substance.

combat
i don't expect to see any other ground troops walking around the map so a game mode for ground combat only with small maps
also ground troops in tt's should have a warning that the driver is dead

i expect everything to be like up to what unit where there's a cycle where one unit has a weakness to a unit but also has a advantage over others so a (1)w/ a machine gun could kill a (6)w/ a pistol



wall could work with an engery shield that could get stronger by increasing the power given to the shield but will decrease power given to the turrets

turret slots on the buildings would be fine to me as long as they can be destroyed without having to blow up the whole base

about the sniper maybe it could have like a hacking kit that can disable miners for 3 minutes that would keep the stealth mission stealthy also it could be something good to research
or request an air strike tool

and i feel aircraft wont work helicopters yes but planes will fly over too quick to kill anything other than aircraft you would have to sort that out
Last edited by killerbee on Sat Jun 27, 2009 2:29 pm, edited 1 time in total.
sono
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Joined: Wed May 07, 2008 7:47 pm

Post by sono »

I didn't even nearly read the whole thread,

but if you want to create a semi-3D FPS that feels like Alleg (strategy >> bunnyhopping and conefire) then what you got to get right, absolutely got to, is game dynamics.

Ask yourself: Why does alleg work the way it does? This question has many answers which i believe might be put under some top points:

Seeing and not being seen.
Out-teching the enemy.
Territory control and safe mining ./. getting attack vectors on enemy mining.
Diverse choices of tech path, factions, game settings, all these things.
Player skill. Lots of it.

Make a list like that and derive from that your design dogma. Then you can build a game around it, and it will feel like alleg, yet be as different from alleg as you want it to be.

It won't be easy to create a ground-based game that works like alleg, however.

Therefore maybe you should aim a bit lower for a start.

For example, leave out the whole economy part for the first version.
Have commanders choose their tech path builtin to the faction at the start of the game, as usually most RTS work - e.g. ICC Enforcement Command with their unique arsenal, GigaCorp Loan Sharks with theirs, Ga'Taraan Ground Defense Forces etc.. Don't try to 100% imitate sup, exp, tac - this works in space, i don't think it must work on the ground just because it does work in space.

Remember that what you give up in freedom of movement over a space game and flexibility you must somehow re-gain to keep the game spirit.

Ultimately the game could feel like Infiltration EAS. Not that anyone here has played this, but that would be the one example of a game that comes close to the strategical demand. I know of no other ground-based FPS game that would even come close to the level of Allegiance. Anyway..

1) Set your design objectives.
2) Collect designs and design elements that are inherently complete, not just bits and pieces of ideas.
3) Chose the best elements from those designs and incorporate them into a concept.

All that of course in the spirit of agility.

Have fun. It'll be a while, and you might learn a lot. =P
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finnbryant
Posts: 360
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Location: England

Post by finnbryant »

well said sono.

as for keeping the first release simple, I plan for the first release to be basic, but very flexible, it will probably come with 1 core with 2 very similar factions that have very basic techpaths, and a very simple and totally unbalanced economy system. In other words I hope the ground work to be there, but it will almost certainly be completly unrefined, but hopefully basic enough that refining it would take days rather than years. It would be up to the comunity to start building better and more complex cores (i will probably do a proper one at some point, but it wont be an official core, just a bit of fun). I'm hoping that someone with core dev experiance from alleg will have a go at making something of equivalent complexity.
wizlawz
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Post by wizlawz »

game engine stuff. Sectors/environment

I-Novae Engine :advanced procedural engine allowing for a seemingly infinite including seamless planetary landing
open-ended world design
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sambasti
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Post by sambasti »

Quantus is supposed to be like allegiance. You probably should have read up on it more. The approximate gameplay has already been specified, this thread is pretty old, and the engine has been chosing too. The programing has already started.
Andon
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Post by Andon »

might want to lock the thread then
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sambasti
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Post by sambasti »

Mods are MIA :sad: completely and utterly awesome.
Last edited by sambasti on Wed Sep 16, 2009 4:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Cadillac
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Post by Cadillac »

Aaaaand lock :lol:
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