I finally decided to make a topic about the game I've in mind for some times now, just to get some feedbacks and motivation cause motivation was not my best during the past few days
So let's start by a brief description of what Evolvere is in my mind.
Generally speaking, I want it to be relatively close to Balanced Annihilation but a few things really annoys me in BA : mainly comdrops, teching and porcing. What I'd like is a ÔÇ£simplifiedÔÇØ gameplay where teching and constructing your base is a little bit less important. Porcing will just be impossible considering the different type and amount of defensive turrets available (I'm even thinking of removing them completely )
Basicly I just want players to focus on attacking the enemy, build units and fight to death in big battle.
But that's too easy, let's talk about the few feature I've in mind to make this not a boring game.
I ÔÇô SuperPowers
1 ÔÇô What do you mean by superpowers ?
First let's draw a quick list of the first faction's superpowers to see what's I'm talking about :
Tier 1 [*]Spy : Show a part of the map during 1min [*]Dgun : Give your commander dgun for 1min (dgun is disabled by default) [*]Defense support : Give you a defensive turret inside your base range
Tier 2 [*]Arachnid shield : Make an area of the map really slow to travel for the enemy during 2 minutes [*]Land support : Give you some tanks and kbots inside your base range [*]Air support : Give you some fighters/gunship/bombers inside your base range
Tier 3 [*]High-Frequency shock wave : Disable enemy radars. Enemy player only see his own units, allies and enemy ones are hided for 1min [*]Artillery : Receive help from artillery : Bomb the targeted area [*]Resources hack : Give to you and your allies the enemy resources income for 1min
Tier 4 [*]Super-Unit : a super-unit (T3-T4) is teleported near your research center and under your control for 2min [*]Hack : take control of an enemy units group for 1min [*]Teleportation : Teleport units anywhere in the map minus enemy base range.
This is ofc not the final list but it gives you a pretty fair idea of what I've in mind :
Superpowers are not designed to be super destructive, but just enough to make the gameplay deep and dynamic. I can easily imagine players combining superpowers to weak the enemy before launching a big attack with units or use them to trap a large group of approaching enemy units.
2 ÔÇô So, How do I get superpowers ?
As you've seen in the list, superpowers are divided between different tiers, each tier being more deadly than the previous one.
First, you need to build a research center, which is available only with your commander. It costs a certain amount of metal and energy to be built and also constantly needs a certain amount of energy to run. If you don't have energy or if the research center's health is <50%, it's set momentarily inactive.
So once you built the research center, you can immediately choose once of the 3 superpowers constituting the first tier. Once the choice is made, you can not go back, so choose wisely depending on what allies already chose and what kind of game you want to play (support, attack, defensive..).
The research center will then take 5 minutes (~) of active research to reach the tier 2 and go on for tier 3 and tier 4. If the research center is killed, you do not loose your superpowers. The research will just restart from the last tier if you build a research center again.
To sum up : Commander  Research center  Choose T1  5min  Choose T2  5min  Choose T3  5min  Choose T4 12 superpowers, only 4 playable for a single player in a game
Superpowers themselves doesn't require any energy or any metal to be used but each power have a specific reloading time so use them as much as you can !
II ÔÇô Commanders
When the game starts, you can choose between different commanders. They all offers different weapons types and gameplay and also it's own power. Yes, commanders have their own little "superpowers" :D
Example : [*]Marine : Heavy armor, slow speed, medium weapons, high rate auto-heal. Designed to launch offensive assault. Power : short range EMP. [*]Technician : Medium armor, medium speed, light weapons. Offer a bigger energy/metal storage capacity and productivity. Designed to repair and build. Power : Large range heal. [*]Scout : Light armor, high speed, paralysing medium-long range weapon. Designed to scout the enemy. Power : short range teleport.
Few notes : D-gun is disabled by default but available as a superpower
Commanders can't no longer be transported. Choose fast traveling commanders if you want to expand your base really far/fast instead.
I'm also thinking of levels and XP to improve commanders' power to keep them useful against bigger units (T2-T3) but I don't really know how yet.
III ÔÇô Factories, units and factions
There are 3 factories :
Land factory : produces tanks and kbots, amph tanks... (4 tiers) Air factory : produces everything that can fly : aircrafts, planes, seaplanes... (3 tiers) Sea factory : produces ships, submarines, hovercrafts (3 tiers)
Factories are upgradeable : this is the only way to get to the high tiers
Tier 2 factory can still build tier 1 units (maybe with a slight faster rate ?)
Factories model are pretty huge and take a lot of place so players can't spam them.
Each tier except the last one offer a specific constructor.
I'm not sure about nano turrets at the moment and how to give more build power to factories/cons.
Pretty important note, I'd like a different armor/health ratio between units (tanks, kbots etc) and base units (factories, economic units, ...). I mean, I want tanks to be destroyed with a few big bombs but I don't want a player to loose his buildings with a little rush or a single bomber pass. I really want base to be way more stronger than units. I don't like how BA's bases can be destroyed by a few tanks or bombers.
I'd like to make tiers in a way that the player will still build T1 units in an advanced game. I mean I don't want T2 units to be just T1 units with bigger guns but I'd like them to offer different gameplay and weapons. I know that it's pretty hard to do in term of balancing and all that but well, it's something I seriously think about.
Lastly, not much to say about factions except that, if we ever make a second faction, I seriously want a different gameplay. I'm just sick of games that offers different factions, just to realize they have the same units/weapons and basic gameplay. I'd like different units, some weapons specific to a faction like EMP, different superpowers, different commanders even if it will lead to hard balancing problem. I seriously laughed at the factions of supcom. It's all the same but with different models.
Ok so here we go, I think it could work, I think it could be really fun to play. As I said, commanders list, superpowers list, specifications of the research center and trivial gameplay specs are not definitive. It's what I've in mind but I'm really open to better suggestions but the main ideas (understand superpowers, different commanders and general gameplay which is focus on attacking enemy with units) are, I think, non negotiable
III ÔÇô What now ?
What now, well I'm still alone on the project. Maybe it's time to make a little team with a few guys if anyone is interested
The game is intended to be free, with GPL/or gpl license compatible code and free artworks (I still don't know what license to pick yet :D)
What's the situation right now ?
I almost completed every land buildings of the first faction including economic, strategic, offensive and defensive buildings with all tiers land/sea/air factories. Air cons are done, land and sea cons and also 2 commanders are in texturing process. UI graphics are 70% done.
So yeah, roughly, except artworks/unit models-textures, nothing is done
The roadmap for now : - Recruit people - make SVN, bugtracker, wiki... all tools needed for dev. I used tuxfamily's services last year but the bandwidth is terrible... - make a nice clean game base package without non-needed file - start scripting units, polish and/or complete started ones, find FX for weapons or make new one if you can't find nice one, find sounds, make proper lua unitdef, make corpses (yeah corpses -_- ) - implement the ui - start coding superpower gadget - new nano laser FX - new "build on progress" FX - ...
My first goal is to release a complete game including all land units, superpowers and a few different commanders in a few months (6 ?). Air and sea will then come and then the second faction.
I don't need too much people. I already leaded a project one year ago, people get overexcited when I announced my project and I had to manage 20 peoples... The project failed few months later so yeah I hope on that to get a better chance this time :)
For me, I think the team should not excess 3-4 people right now.
What kind of people do I need ? People with strong Spring knowledge, good lua skills and/or lups skills (to do FX, I think it's lups, right ?), people who wants to participate to a fun and viable team project..
I guess that's it.
Just a few already showed screenshots, I've nothing new yet sorry :D
Cya :D
edit : I don't work on this project anymore but the files are released under freeart license so feel free to use them
How do you pronounce the name? I think that name is bad when marketing is taken into account. If it was an indie adventure game than that name would probably be perfect.
For project hosting I can recommend google code. Works great and is very fast. It has SVN, Wiki, bugtracker and is easy to integrate with other things.
Lots of your gameplay goals actually match those of CA and ZK so I hope it will play good :) (Like more incentive for interesting fights vs porcing, different commanders to pick and upgrade, less powerful comm early, stronger later).
Sheekel > not yet implemented, it's just an overlay with gimp
zwzsg > ye true it's pretty close to Evolution RTS but it's only a codename. Any suggestions for a better name ? :D At the end, I think the game will be pretty different from BA, even if how tiers works and economic system are pretty the same.
Forboding Angel > I'm not basing it on BA, just the general idea. Economic system, tiers, and large scale battles :) I'll change the name whell I'll find a new better one. I've none atm :D
Looks good. As Licho said the goals sound a bit along the lines of CA. The similarities are emphasis on combat, different comms and general TA epicness so it is only broadly similar.
I would say it sounds closer to SupComm than BA but if you have the scale, unit physics and general economy of TA it is going to be similar to any TA mod in many ways with plenty of room left over to be different.
Regarding the name if you're going to have a free IP game don't go with a *A title.
Looks good. As Licho said the goals sound a bit along the lines of CA. The similarities are emphasis on combat, different comms and general TA epicness so it is only broadly similar.
I would say it sounds closer to SupComm than BA but if you have the scale, unit physics and general economy of TA it is going to be similar to any TA mod in many ways with plenty of room left over to be different.
Regarding the name if you're going to have a free IP game don't go with a *A title.
Why does it even need to be different. TA gameplay in general is excellent. All it needs is a slick polished look and its a hit.
Joined: 22 Feb 2006, 01:02 Location: cheap kitchen
well I do not know why you make another *a mod (the ba people will play ba and everbody else goes euuuh more *a) with your obvious talent, because the screenshots look nice.
Imo it would be better to base it off Supreme Commander than BA. Basing it on BA would be a waste cos people will just play BA and it would be a shame to have a wasted project.
Basing on Supreme commander would allow you to improve on Supreme commanders many flaws whilst keeping the general feel of a TA game.
Licho > thx, I'll have a look to google code, sounds good :)
Just going to pop in and say that Conflict Terra uses google code, and we're very happy with it.
It sounds like you've got a lot of good ideas, and definitely the artistic know-how to accomplish a polished look. Excited to see how this goes. Keep up the work.
Why does it even need to be different. TA gameplay in general is excellent. All it needs is a slick polished look and its a hit.
As in similar but not exactly the same. Not radically different either.
If it is exactly the same as TA or BA I think it is a wasted opportunity as people find new things more interesting and they are generally more interesting to implement. The novelty of something a bit new can be partnered with the core TA -ike design.
Honestly, I'm not fond of the gameplay concept... the models, are of course, sexy.
Now, to be clear: the upgrade-oriented gameplay sounds great... and the powers themselves, I love the idea of spells... but otherwise, The gameplay seems very BA-like, but without defenses. Being unable to defend your base with anything but your mobile units doesn't sound fun at all.
Obviously, I encourage your idea of emphasizing unit-to-unit combat, but I really think "BA without turrets" is _not_ the way to go about it.
If you want to ditch turrets, that's cool, but in that case I'd ditch large-scale structure-building altogether. I hate having to invest tons of time and effort into something I can't adequately defend, and I'm sure many others feel the same.
If you want to put the emphasis on mobile-to-mobile combat, then either gut-out the large-scale base-building altogether or make the objective something other than "destroy the enemy base" and restrict structures to a well-defended home-base area.
When I said I want that to be relatively close to BA, I meant I want something closer to any TA games/mods than Commander&Conquer, warcraft, starcraft or even aoe :D. I like the overall economic system of TA and how the tiers works, and I want to keep that, that's all. I really don't want to make another A* mod, in fact the gameplay will be probably pretty far from TA.
SanadaUjiosan > thanks, I registered on google code. I'll create a new project if I find a cooler name :D
Pxtl > I agree with you that defending a base with mobile units only is painful but I really don't want to put as many turrets as TA offers. Light/Medium/Heavy turret+flak and 2 different long range turret is all that is planned right now.
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