New concept in game character control

posted on July 15th, 2012, 10:51 am

I have developed a new gaming concept, one that focuses on macro management but preserving micromanagement for those would still like it but the true emphasis is on strategizing and tacticizing and spending most of your time divided between planning your evil schemes and watching the fireworks happen. It is most adequate for 3D environments such as space.

Now I won't delve into details but I am troubled by how to introduce it to some relevant party without it sticking its name tag on the proposal and pocketing the money.

Any ideas anyone?

posted on July 15th, 2012, 10:58 am

lolol original idea donut steel.

yeah good luck with that. unless you can actually make a game/mod with this revolutionary gameplay concept yourself, you ain't gonna be able to protect it.

and even if you do make a really good game/mod with this style of gameplay, others will still be able to copy it. nobody has ever been able to claim copyright on FPS/RTS/MMORPG or things like CTF or DotA. if you release the concept, you give it to the world.

posted on July 15th, 2012, 11:55 am

Yeah, well, as much as I would like the idea to go out as something new for anybody to try and improve, I wouldn't mind it for the money so much if only I weren't flat broke.

posted on July 15th, 2012, 2:37 pm

thing is, you aren't gonna get any money the way you're going about it. you love your innovative idea, but you have no way of protecting it via copyright/trademark law.

it'll remain an idea only in your head, as you don't have the resources/skills to be the first mover on this idea.

to make money out of a really good gameplay idea you'd need to release a retail (even if only on internet) game with this idea. if you release the idea in a free mod/game then others will be able to copy it.

you can try pitch it to some indie game studios, but they'll want a cut if it really is good, you'll have to team up with them. and that's assuming the idea really is revolutionary.

posted on July 15th, 2012, 3:27 pm

Yes, well, you're right about the indie companies, the big bastards however have their heads so far up their asses that most of them send automated responses to customer support requested by >paying< customers.
You need to dig through a layer of automation before somebody actually receives what you want...

As for the money, to be honest, I'm not that worried about not getting paid, what troubles me the most is the fact that some yellow-belly employee would read that mail and steal my idea. In that case I would probably end up in prison as I would smash his head open!

posted on July 16th, 2012, 9:55 am

Ever heard of a lawyer? PDF's with date, a well written concept layout (ordered and clean) and distribution to several witnesses of it helps also. Should those donut stealers make a big money from your idea you can make a shitload of money by just suing and winning. Easy take. But other parties are not stupid enough for that. So they don't do it. If you want to be part of the development process, however, you should discuss that with your lawyer and how to prevent any kind of abuse of your idea. But since you seek help on the Fleet Operations discussion board to trumpet around your amazing ghost idea there's a strange feeling about a fantasy world floating around... better you take your idea, wait for at least 5 more years and then come back on it again. Yet it seems it's to big for you.

posted on July 16th, 2012, 10:24 am

Ever heard of a lawyer? PDF's with date, a well written concept layout (ordered and clean) and distribution to several witnesses of it helps also. Should those donut stealers make a big money from your idea you can make a shitload of money by just suing and winning. Easy take. But other parties are not stupid enough for that. So they don't do it. If you want to be part of the development process, however, you should discuss that with your lawyer and how to prevent any kind of abuse of your idea. But since you seek help on the Fleet Operations discussion board to trumpet around your amazing ghost idea there's a strange feeling about a fantasy world floating around... better you take your idea, wait for at least 5 more years and then come back on it again. Yet it seems it's to big for you.

i don't think the law will be able to help him. he has an idea for something that is a gameplay idea, like CTF or something. he can claim copyright over code he writes or trademark a name for it, but he can't copyright a general idea. nobody can copyright a game type because they were the first to think of it. eg horde mode or whatever. copyright law isn't meant to protect things so general. i've never in video game history heard of something being defended successfully in such a way.

posted on July 16th, 2012, 12:32 pm

I have developed a new gaming concept, one that focuses on macro management but preserving micromanagement for those would still like it but the true emphasis is on strategizing and tacticizing and spending most of your time divided between planning your evil schemes and watching the fireworks happen. It is most adequate for 3D environments such as space.
Any ideas anyone?

Going by this description, I instantly think of Sins of a Solar Empire or Haegemonia.

posted on July 16th, 2012, 6:49 pm

Well now, I see I have sparked somebody's interest, I'll throw you a bone here:

SOASER still requires units to be controlled individually, and the game play, despite having a 3 dimensional camera, is still limited to a 2D plain with a 2D playing field. Besides having 30-40 planets in a single solar system is not logical. The problem also is that they don't rotate around their parent star.

My idea removes the necessity to control an individual starship, it also displaces the conventional economy (harvest this, build that ect.). It also impares the so-called "research" to a more broad variety. It also deals with the fact that after some research is conducted, the benefit seems to just "magically" apply to all the object it benefits.

Lol I seem to be saying "also" a lot...
I don't want to overtalk myself but I will reveal a part of my master plan , which I have been indeed developing for years.

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT FROM MY PROPOSAL SHEET:
To tackle the research problem and seemingly instant benefits gained by it, all research is conducted off map (what I mean by off map I prefer not to reveal). All completed research, for example weapon upgrades will be meaningless unless they are delivered to the recipients. Summarily, conventional research facilities are replaced with technology implementation centers which would download the updated technology after constructed, with a moderate delay of course.

Now the next natural step would be technology implementation on the benefited object. To that extent, upgrades are available to the technology implementation centres which allows movables, ergo ships to dock and have a speedy retrofit before being launched back in the field. Additional upgrades are also made available for upgrades to be conducted automatically by the facility sending out mobile crew to conduct the upgrades.

It might seem like a complex procedure but may I remind you all that is conducted within an element which more or less removes micromanagement for those which do not want it. The whole thing would practically run by itself with extremely clever AI assistance, the only thing you would basically worry about is strategy - where would be a good idea to put that thing and when would it be a good time to send the boys in for a facelift!

ADDENDUM: Since we are talking about "off - map activities" in this transcript I would also like to explain that inspite of my saying that, this is about RTS or 4X style games and NOT those, which are semi-turn type like LOTR: Battle for middle earth or the total war series! Research will indeed be conducted off-map... in a way!

posted on July 17th, 2012, 11:25 am

i don't think the law will be able to help him. he has an idea for something that is a gameplay idea, like CTF or something. he can claim copyright over code he writes or trademark a name for it, but he can't copyright a general idea. nobody can copyright a game type because they were the first to think of it. eg horde mode or whatever. copyright law isn't meant to protect things so general. i've never in video game history heard of something being defended successfully in such a way.

...which makes it even more complicated and hard to achieve.

posted on July 17th, 2012, 1:32 pm

Look, I'm just trying to get it into the right hands, anything else is a blunder on my part.

If money comes for it, fine, if not, I would appreciate to be at least credited for it...

posted on July 17th, 2012, 4:29 pm

SOASER still requires units to be controlled individually, and the game play, despite having a 3 dimensional camera, is still limited to a 2D plain with a 2D playing field. Besides having 30-40 planets in a single solar system is not logical. The problem also is that they don't rotate around their parent star.
[/i]

I also mentioned Haegemonia. This game has 3D-camera (unimportant for game mechanics) and you focus on macro-management there a lot more, because except for big or special-purpose starships (battleships, spy-ships, colony-ships etc.) you have squads of several ships differing in size between the shiptype - 2 cruisers, 4 corvettes and up to 11 fighters with the only micro-management there is to move, to chose a tactical pattern and to rebuild a lost ship in a squad if close to a planet.

Then you have a dynamic tech-tree with a point-system. You start out with research-points to spend and you can get more by either having a random map event that involves scientific phenomena or by sending a diplomatical ship through your territory. You can also get discounts by stealing inventions from other players with spies. Unless you get and assign a good spy-hero with specialization on this, it's difficult to success there though.
Also research consumes production-capabilities and money (in addition to your rather limited RS-points) - which you only get via taxations on planets.
There starts the truly micro-intense part of the game that doesn't overshadow overall gameplay and really hasn't got much to do with the fireworks unless one or more of your planets are under siege.

You can build on planets individually to raise production with factories or to raise peoples happiness with a shopping mall or to raise defense. Keeping your planet-populations happy has two effects: The production will work better and the colony takes a lot more time to be conquered by an attacker that hasn't a good spy around (spies can destroy all fun you have if you don't look out for them).

Yes, there are heroes in this game. They're found by random events and can be hired (all your units and heroes and installations on planets cost money - if you have none or not enough, things will go offline and units in space will suffer damage from no maintainance over time).
Heroes can have a wide variety of boons. There are spies, politicians, diplomats, scientists and all sorts of battle-veterans. A spy-hero is actually necessary for you to succeed on the harder spy-assignments and to counter the enemy ones. A Squad-leader on the other hand is only good if you assign him to a fighter-squadron and a stations-expert is only cool on a military-base.


Haegemonia has hard-caps to limit the amount of necessary micro-management to a minimum though. The exact settings depend on the chosen map. Some have fewer combat-units and more spy-ships, others have a dozen combat-unit-squads and limited civil/spy-availabilities.

if your tech is good enough and your spies are only conducting search for other spies, all you need to do is sending your battlegroups out to vanquish the enemy. As the maps can be pretty big with several starsystems involved by jumping through warp-holes, having only up to 12 squads around makes it necessary to be patient though. Spies can at least help tracking the enemies assets.

posted on July 17th, 2012, 9:30 pm

It might not sound like a cohesive answer to you but I'm condensing pages and pages of carefully planned ideas into this short sentence, which ironically, despite my shortenings, is also quite long! Well here goes nothing:

Yes, but what this stuff do? I mean colonize planets, its pretty much an old cliche for all space games. Why colonize planet when there is "knife work" to be done?

Gather resources? Right, Precious rocks that need to be harvested, make a mess of the things, and making that economy always troublesome to build up. And to top it all, amidst that complexity there is over-simplicity by having only few types of resources. And then somehow miraculously you gather enough to build hundreds of ships and cause intergalactic chaos and mayhem. And as the fighting goes on you still have to worry about ship production so you don't fall behind on your outrageous spamming.

Such elements cause a mess in the late game of any competition, some games have it so bad that its game-breaking. And where does it leave you deal with strategizing? no time, must send more ships into the fight!

However we turn it around, we must understand that this is all oldschool. Such gamestyle for 4x games hasn't changed much since the old days. Bring something new to the table, something fresh! So you won't walce and say "oh noes not again, another one with boring mining, ship produciton, on site research that you do over and over again untill you grow green in the face..."

But instead of such incessive base building what if you had this:

No more yeasty starts with a single construction ship and a scout or anything in between. When you attack, its apparent that you are in enemy territory. You arrive with a fleet, you establish a beach head then the rear guard comes, you just say "okay this is a good spot" and have these lolygaggers go to work on their own. But they are not building mining stations and such bullshit. No, what is being constructed makes sense: A forward outpost, which is a supply base for personnel, supply and equipment, later on adding technology implementation, base defences, repair facilities etc. Why on earth would you have time to establish mining, what sense does it make to harvest resources if the harvesting operations are exposed to enemy attack?

posted on July 18th, 2012, 8:38 am

Hm, looks like you are taking some things too serious, at least in my opinion. Games aren't simulations. Take the research example for instance. Yep, once a research project is completed, the effects apply to all units immediately in most games (starcraft, sins of a solar empire or of course fleet operations). Yet, look at it from a more abstract perspective. One could say that the resources required to refit your existing vessels are already included in the research costs. Yet, that is of course just an excuse for gameplay considerations. We thought a lot about the way research works, for example, and I even implemented a rough gameplay sketch of research that requires ships to move to a yard for refitting last year. Yet it just didn't end up the way we'd like. You have some limited resources available, like clicks per second or "concentration" of a player and some games see their priorities in different areas. Like most "classic" RTS games, like StarCraft (1), Command and Conquer or Fleet Operations. To have research items is an abstraction either way, as in reality you usually don't know your actual result before you initiate research and you will end up in dead ends quite often.
Nevertheless, we will see some new aspects to research in FO in the next versions, spoiling spoiling!

Similar ideas apply to the resources. You should see it from a gameplay point of view. Resources are a link to connect map control/influence of a player to its unit production per minute. That's the key point of having resources in most "classic" RTS games. The player with larger map control should get more benefits. It's of course not that simple, but I hope you see the point.

At the end of the day, it depends on the type of game you want to do. Not every idea, even they sound cool in the first place, is a benefit to the final game. My desk is full of ideas we implemented but then removed again cause they didn't fit

posted on July 18th, 2012, 5:29 pm

Its no just the fact that it's unrealistic, that style of playing is old, very very old and you see it over and over again in all rts.

Have a look at SWINE. Simple, elegant, nazi pigs vs. allied rabbits tank very funny game. Its an RTS, but there is no bases and there is no plucky resource gathering.

Another example is the sudden strike series. Hugely popular to strategists of its time.

Warhammer 40000 dawn of war II. One of the most sold games out there. What do you have? a squad of space marines wripping across the playing field. The only thing you have to worry about is strategy.

So what do you do? Go with the old, mining, research and all the mainstream stuff there is here, and overcompensate with other aspects such as graphics and hope it will stick? Red alert 3 failed while Starcraft II got lucky, saved by its epic storyline that brought a big smile on my face. But it was buisness as usual which made me believe that in no way it is worth the money they charge for it!

No, you take the stuff that got some attention through unconventional styles and make it better.

What if I were to release my idea here huh? Would you read it? Or would you just bunnyhop across just a few chapters and make a summary judgement? Might I remind you that this isn't just some weekend project I though off from the top of my head. I've been plotting and scheming this alternate-economy engine for years.