A new Dune game

[X3M]

To get this community going again. Perhaps that some might work together in the creation of a text based Dune game.

 

It is "easy" to make. And as a MMO, thousands, perhaps ten or hundred thousands of people would play the game.

 

There for this topic is created.

Start throwing in idea's.

(and if you thing it would not work, why not?)

 

One more advice though, it is mostly text based. So you need to keep it simple.

I know of a project that failed because one of the members wanted to much in the game.

[Luminar]

check this: http://primera.e-sim.org/lan.515847/

 

I think e-sim is the best MMO game. You should check it out.

 

If you make a game like that in Dune style, you will be a hero!

[X3M]

Never heard of that game. But it does have a lot of meme's around.

 

Without creating an account, can you tell us how it looks and how the game works?

[Luminar]

Nope. Check it on youtube

[shai]

Looks interesting 

[Dunenewt]

You say its easy to make, but who actually knows how to make it? This kind of game has been proposed many times in the past (most notably Dune Generations) but no-one has ever actually made one.

[X3M]

That is why the " ". I never said it is easy. It looks easy. Since it is not, perhaps keeping it easy. That is the flow in what I wanted to go.

 

I know that a 13 year old boy had hit the 100 player mark before the game was crashed. (It crashed because we made it ourself to hard)

It was text based. And I get the feeling that people think there should be moving objects? No no, text based mostly doesn't even have a map.

 

PlayTeq is also such a game. There has been times of 1000 players. These days only 100 remain though. But that is a success story. Of course they don't add things any more, that is why there is a decline. But here is an example of that game.

I now know with the experience that I have gained by watching my cousin program something alike. That this game has been set up very easily. The only problem with this game is that it isn't updated any more for getting the attention from new players. Nor is there proper "noob" or "fubar" protection. But it does have it fun perks.

 

O game, as mentioned before, does add things. It does have some sort of "noob" protection and if a player is fubared, that player stays in the game. However, O game fails in battle balance and calculating stability. Some units become obsolete in time and some units crash the server by requiring over 1.000.000.000 random events in 1 battle.

 

What we need is a game that has:

- combat balance. (by a game designer)

- calculating stability. (by a game designer/programmer)

- easy to play like TEQ. (by a game designer/programmer)

- easy to expand like Ogame. (by a game designer/programmer)

- Dune based; Dune2/Dune2000/EBFD idea's mixed up plus new idea's. (The community)

- Glitch/Bug/Hack free (by a game programmer)

 

And while we are at it.

The game in my eye's should contain:

- Different houses, yet balanced

- Different technologies, yet balanced

- A proper techtree based on research and upgrades

- A proper research tree

- A proper upgrade tree

- Several ways for gaining and increasing Spice production (worm taming, harvesters(different types), carry-alls(different types), purification processes)

- Everything is destroyable

- Proper noob protection (2 ways obviously)

 

What we don't need are:

- people that say, we can't do this.

- people that give up half way.

- people like me that propose this idea but can't program at all.

 

And even though that I started this topic. I now retreat a bit into being part of the community that only offers idea's.

[X3M]

Great that you like it Shai-Gel98.

Although I only was giving examples.

 

But I do get the feeling that it already has come to an end before it even started properly.

[X3M]

Great, another like :D.

 

Who here is interested in the cross linked damage calculation that I used 10 years ago for a certain war game?

 

It supported Rock/Paper/Scissor (RPS) and Fodder mechanics

Also the strategies: Focus, Decoy and Divided attention was implemented.

Out ranging was also an option. But I feel that needs rebalancing after 10 years of experience. Plus movement should be scrapped.

 

No matter what for war game, some one wants to make (medieval, modern, sci-fi), this can be used.

 

More of this when I have the time. (Perhaps I find the document :) )

 

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If notching is visible and all is text. What use is range and what use is speed? What can these 2 add to the game?

[X3M]

Ah right, found the document. Last save (second version, about 80 units, 20 structures) was Januari 2010. However, the game (first version, about 10 units, 10 immortal structures) already ended in december 2004 for all I know.

 

An important part of the document is of course the battle.

There are many reasons why the battle followed a certain sequence. And to go into detail is a bit too much if no one is interested. It does take a few pages only for explaining to players. Imagine the workload that my cousin had to go through. And imagine that the game did not have 10 or 20 different units, but somewhere in the total of 100 if a player reached the maximum of research. All actively in one big calculation.

 

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So I will only put some of the targeting basics here:

- Units with highest range go first. Lowest range go last. Each range is first calculated completely before the next range is calculated. This for units to DIE!!! So they don't participate in the next range sequence. This was hard coded at first. My cousin never soft coded this, to inexperienced at that time.

- Defences also target all opponents. However they do 0 damage against the units that have more range. Thus defences are less effective and often no effect if you defend against long ranged units only.

- The higher the range, the less chance of being targeted. Chance of being targeted is something completely different than a chance of being hit. R

- The more units you have of something, the higher the chance they are targeted. N Games like O-game call this fodder effect.

- R and N where basic strategies for protecting your units.

- Focus F. Is how much your army is ordered to focus on a certain armor type, particular unit, damage type etc. It was completely custom-able and the upkeep formula is still in the document. (Although it needs a review)

- Bait B. Is how much a certain group of units in your army serves as bait. Meaning it actually drew attention from the enemy away.

- Divide D. Is how much your army would focus on a flank. If the enemy had 100 units, and you had divide 2.5 active, then you would only flank 40 of the enemy. The remaining 60 would not know what to do. With long range this was pretty destructive. In other words I could say that the return fire is reduced by this factor. But to be more clearly. The units that you fight is a part of the bigger picture. Thus having beaten 30 out of 40 gives 10. Only 10 will return fire now. The number of units that fight are calculated before the range sequence commences.

- Well, there where plans for Speed, S. But we already have Range for that. And we never got any further than that.

- Obvious we need a total amount of units. T. But this variable is also influenced by the range, focus, bait and divide. Not just simply adding up all the N. So it stands for the total amount of points.

 

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Thus the chance of being targeted, lets say 10 walls and 90 rocket launchers.

The walls often had 90% chance of being hit by the rules stated above. And the strategies used by players.

 

The formula of 1 unit (type) being targeted:

N * F * B / R = Xunit

and

T = Xunit1 + Xunit2 + Xunit3 + Xunit4 + ...

the chance that an unit is hit in the targeted army

Xunit1 / T = Yunit1

 

Where all the values are from the defender and only focus is the value from the attacker. Or vice versa.

 

To see this in action:

N1 for the walls is 10. N1 for the rocket launchers is 90. If notching is changed, these are Xwalls and Xrocketlaunchers.

The attacker has the focus on the rocket launchers. F2 = 4.

The defender is using a lot of bait strategy on the walls. B1 = 54.

R1 for the walls is 1. R1 for the rocket launchers is 6.

 

Filling in gives us for the walls:

Xwalls = 10 * 1 * 54 / 1 = 540

 

And for the rocket launchers:

Xrocketlaunchers = 90 * 4 * 1 / 6 = 60

 

T = Xwalls + Xrocketlaunchers = 540 + 60 = 600

540 / 600 = 0.9 or 90%

and

60 / 600 = 0.1 or 10%

 

And there you have it. How a few walls can protect an army of rocket launchers by applying strategy. You can't have this in an RTS :). However, you can play with a million walls and 9 million rocket launchers now. The Y values are simply multiplied with the corresponding damage that they would receive. Thus if a damage of 1000 would be given. Walls receive 900 damage and the rocket launchers only 100.

 

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For those who know my board game. It is still the same damage calculation :). But simply another Health/Damage ratio is used. However, for balancing, range is effective on both health and damage in this text based game.

 

With each Y, there is a particular damage to that unit. For example, if walls would only receive 100 damage and the rocket launchers would receive 1000 damage with the same projectiles flying in. Than by Y we get 90 damage on walls and 100 damage on rocket launchers. Thus the rocket launchers would still receive more damage. (But lets not forget about the fact that walls often had only 10 health and rocket launchers at least 90 health :) )

 

I think I will no longer post until someone else posts here with idea's. Or someone has to say, "Hey! Lets revive that old game and do it properly".