Re: Strategy games (was something else and Texture mapping)

[Jan Ekholm <chakie@infa.abo.fi>]

On Fri, 5 Nov 1999, Philipp Gühring wrote:

>>And now for something completely different....
>>
>>Are there any people on this list that are interested in discussing
>>strategy-games?
>Yes, I am interested.

Nice. Far too much emphasis is nowadays put on the sound & gfx of games,
and making the really stupid. I think most strategygames are still today
dumber than those on the old C64. CPU-power has increased thousandfold,
but all it has gone to gfx, very little to the actual 'depth' of the game.

<flamebait>
I think the focus on gfx is a result of the average gamer becoming more
stupid. It has to look nice, but it has to be really simple and not make
the poor gamers confused. Manuals should never be needed. I remember the
old Microprose games where the manual was thick and actually extremely fun
to read on its own, like a war-novel (Gunship, Stealth Fighter,
Pirates...). So flame me for this...
</flamebait>

>> The emphasis nowadays is a bit too much on 3D-games witgh
>>pretty gfx. I'd like to try (again) to make a simpl Empire-clone or
>>something resembling the old Civil War-series that SSI had 15 years ago.
>
>I haven´t played Empire or the Civil War-series yet, so please excuse
>me, if I talk about something different.
>I found Empire Deluxe on an old CD-Rom, I will try to have a look at
>it in the next days.

That's about what I try to one day achieve, something like Empire Deluxe.
In the end it should be a bit more involving than ED, but that's the basic
idea. You can view ED as a turnbased version of C&C, but with less gfx and
more strategy. Then there's the _real_ Empire, which is played on servers
with multiple humans involved which is _really_ deep. I wouldn't dare to
undertake such a project, but it would be nice to have a version of that
too which would be a bit easier to play. I have libs which make the
networking of multiplayer games very easy to implement, but the actual
logic behind such a beast is still very hard.

>>Has anyone else has similar ideas?
>I know Dune 2, C&C and similar games, and as far as I have
>understood that, they are called Realtime Strategy, short RTS games.
>(I am a german native speaker, so please correct me, if I understood
>something wrong ;)

I don't really like RTS-games, I prefer turnbased, or maybe something
where the action is realtime but the orders are given as turnbased. Anyone
remeber Panzer Strike, Typhoon of Steel, Computer Ambush.

>I have a different idea, which I call Defensive Realtime Strategy.
>Several parties are at war. The player controls some specialists from
>one of the parties, some civilists, ...
>The background stories:
>The specialist was sent to a building, to fullfil a mission there,
>but something went wrong, and he has to escape from the building.
>s/building/area/g
>One of the missions is to free prisoners.
>...
>The idea is that the player has to lead a group of units to escape.
>Escape from an area, a building, ...
>
>And I am currently working to implement this idea with the Defkon
>system.

I've read about it on this list. Can I download it freely and have a look?

>>I've over the years worked on N versions of
>>Empire, and every version gets a little closer to getting ready, but then
>>my energy and/or knowledge has stopped me from finishing it. 
>
>Could you show me those games? Is the sourcecode still available?
>Please send them to me, if possible

For the latest (and greatest), yes. For the old ones, no. The first ones
go back to Amiga (AMOS, Lattice C) and my old 286 (Turbo Pascal). But, the
reason I stopped developing them is that I found out that my initial
design and datastructures were too limited. I'll start over when I find
some spare time. This time it will be completed... :-)

---------------------+------------------------------------------------------
 Jan 'Chakie' Ekholm |    CS at Ċbo Akademi University, Turku, Finland
    Linux Inside     | I'm the blue screen of death, no-one hears you scream