Zero-K wants you!

[Master-Athmos]

RTS game itself is not the innovative part of the project.

Innovative part is the integration/online persistency.

Thats why there is no point presenting RTS game design, which will be based on CA-1faction.

Ehm - did you hear what you just were saying / suggested with that? There's no point presenting the actual gameplay because what really matters to you is the new presentation / additional online playing features like tournaments? I thought you still were looking for people helping you develop the game rather than just developing the lobby and other stuff around it. Seriously - you look for help for your game but see "no point" in actually describing the game? I hope that just turned out different from what you intended to say...

That "core" game is CA-1faction, mutator going on for last year as stated in opening post.

Well I guess you're a bit too much into CA here. You actually didn't say a word of Zero-K being the 1-faction-fork. You just told that the idea for this project was born as CA-fork. Now you're looking for new people to help so you really should tell a bit more here because it isn't obvious to everyone (as not everyone knows CA and all of its forks there may be) that this now means that it's all about the 1-faction-fork. Even I who knew about that fork initially thought you started a new game design by using the CA art as placeholders (or even as final models if they fit) and now want to make this a real project rather than keeping this as brainstorming fork...

Only basic rules for game design are set, you can read them in numerous documents about balancing, visualising stuff etc. But don't expect exact list of units.

Well I only see design stuff about CA but nothing about Zero-K. Again it might be clear to you what should be in Zero-K and what not but you are looking for new helpers here and they might want to know what game they are asked to work on. Asking them to help on Zero-K, then giving the CA design as reference which at the same time isn't really what Zero-K exactly will be about (because then it would be two-faction-CA and not 1-faction-Zero-K) is strange at best...

That's why I said you really were unprecise with your opening post. You didn't make clear at all that this is about CA or to be more specific a 1-faction-fork of it. I also think it wasn't the smartest idea to just write a textwall of what I'd call "marketing gibberish". No offense intended here but you have to admit that some things you wrote are close to being stupid. I mean you actually wrote that your focus is about "gameplay" (you even put that in bold). I mean wow: a game that's about gameplay. The next thing you should tell people is that the game should be fun and ... oh I guess you did that. To be true though you didn't exactly say that but add in that even the creation should be a fun task which makes it a bit more interesting although you unfortunately give no single clue as to why even the creation should be so much fun. Well I guess working with you really has to be outstandingly fun...

Hmm ok - that last thing might have a too aggressive tone so I'm sorry if I insulted you with that - I just wanted make clear how hollow some of your phrases are. What I'm actually trying to point out is that I know you're a smart guy and are very skilled at what you do. You definitely can do better than writing such a vague textwall with cheap marketing phrases like that the game will totally have fun gameplay, cool online features and even might earn you some money. Especially when you don't give any solid base like the actual game design which you said describing has "no point". I mean those additional features sound cool but if your game sucks you can trash all those tournament features and so on. Maybe the game design you desired is clear to you as you're into CA and especially into your fork of it but for anyone else it simply isn't and you really did a bad job at describing the actual project and just gave what I called "vague marketing gibberish"...

[Licho]

Just so we can get clarification, is this statement roughly accurate:

Zero-K is developed from CA-1Fac, and thus has CA-1fac gameplay... BUT... with customizable comms, and certain units, comm-morphs, and comm-customizations being unlockables that must be acquired external to the main game.

Is that it?

Roughly yeah.

And different commanders to pick at start, and with Planetwars and with all that integrated to lobby, etc..
It's very ambitious, and most work is now outside the mod itself.

Thats why the call is for 2d artist, webdevs and coders and not for 3d modelers - though can join too of course, because models can always be improved or added and we will need more superunits and commanders :)

[Pxtl]

What's the plan for the web infrastructure? ASP.Net? MVC? Will PlanetWars still be a webapp or part of the lobby, or will you be embedding a web-browser into the lobby and thus the answer is "both"?

[Licho]

What's the plan for the web infrastructure? ASP.Net? MVC? Will PlanetWars still be a webapp or part of the lobby, or will you be embedding a web-browser into the lobby and thus the answer is "both"?

Lobby will include webbrowser to show some not-too demanding parts, like shop with upgrades, statistics, rankings etc.

Thus website can use any technology we want. Basically implementor decides. Some parts will certainly be in php and some in asp.net.

More demanding section of integration - galactic map, is going to be implemented in lobby directly using WPF and will fetch data using webservice, so it's again server technology-agnostic.

[smoth]

ITT: people hating on ca because it isn't ba or their ba mutator.

Licho, I wish you luck, sorry the piro is taking so long irl, spring being fuct and a few logic bugs are keeping me from finishing.

[Pxtl]

Well, Smoth, I think it's reasonable for the idea of a persistence-based game to get some resistance in such a hardcore skill-driven community.

I'm personally not fond of it, but I trust Licho and the rest of the CA/ZK team to make it work. Hey, it works in TF2, doesn't it? A hardcore competitive game that mixes in RPG-like optional upgrades.

As for contributions, I always felt like I'm one month away from getting back to hobby projects like this for about a decade... I'm getting the sinking feeling that day will never come. Also, I've never touched WPF, and have come to hate web-development enough I'd never do it for sport.

[KaiserJ]

from what i understand the "pay" perks will be cosmetic only.

[Gota]

I like the idea of unlocking stuff especially since it will help combat smurfing and its just usually pretty fun unless its taken to extremes.

[AF]

Is it not true that Mono have specifically said no to implementing WPF?

WPF - no plans to implement

[Licho]

Athmos:

The opening post describes goals and motivations of the project. We want to focus on gameplay/fun and accessibility.
That means this is the main criterion when judging something (as opposed to say visuals, atmosphere or story or profit or some other ideological goal "TA feel" or "fit with original design doc" for example).

Of course if someone wants to join project, his motivation should be fun from being creative and making stuff. I think the post makes sense.

I don't understand why you insist of mentioning ZK is based on CA1F when you claim you don't know what CA1F is. I stated its fork from CA, which is what 1F is :) It was started from ground up and I don't think anyone has played it enough. Even I don't know what all units are there and how it plays in big games because there were none yet :)


I also believe even the best game designs often wont survive collision with reality, thats why we keep game design a bit flexible. If something wont work we will change. Its hard to predict because we want to restrict our balancing options mainly on engine "physical" simulation (as oposed to using special damage categories etc), so not all goals outlined from table-top are achievable.


Ultimate test will be the game itself, but as its not ready yet for public games, I cannot advertise its design, because it could change.

I can only mention ultimate motivation, design principles and general rules because those wont change.

[Master-Athmos]

The opening post describes goals and motivations of the project. We want to focus on gameplay/fun and accessibility.

Ok - I still think that there should be more than that in order to make a good presentation of the project. While I think you may succeed in what you write there most of the things you write are just cool details that will spice up the gaming experience. In my opinion the most important aspect should be the game though and here your opening post lacks any information despite the vague CA fork comment...

While the foucs on accessibility is a good point you should roughly describe how you want to accomplish that which probably again is where the actual game design comes into play. The gameplay/fun focus really was a bad choice to put there because ... well a "game" is the definition of an action with joy in mind. I guess nobody would have thought that you want to make a boring and "unfun" game so why would you even mention this? Those are shallow descriptions as they simply are obvious - you also could have written "We want to make a good game!" or other comments which would fit to any other projects...

I don't understand why you insist of mentioning ZK is based on CA1F when you claim you don't know what CA1F is. I stated its fork from CA, which is what 1F is :) It was started from ground up and I don't think anyone has played it enough. Even I don't know what all units are there and how it plays in big games because there were none yet :)

Well I insist on mentioning it because I think it's quite important. When reading your post I thought you had started with something completely new you started protoyping with CA as underlying base. In fact your not doing something new but "simply" trying to get some people to work on CA's 1-faction fork. I also insist of mentioning that as you said things like that there's no point of describing the game design while also telling people to look up the CA wiki. So if there is this extensive wiki with all the information about the game why didn't you outright say that people should go and look things up there instead of saying that describing it has no point?

So to maybe sum this up: Your project currently lacks a good and to the point description of the game design (and yet again I'm not talking about things like a complete unit list but rather a description of the basic gameplay mechanics that actually let you build units, score points or whatever the actual game will be about). I think that's really important because you should make people curious by the game itself and not some fancy lobby / tournament management built around it...

[hoijui]

it will only work with SD, and therefore only under windows?

[Licho]

it will only work with SD, and therefore only under windows?

Most important things will be accessible from web directly, so not only on windows.

PlanetWars part will likely remain restricted to windows though. Well not participation (you can play from any client), but control over PW game will most likely need windows.

Its too hard to make rich web-application. And as AF mentioned mono wont support WPF.

[Licho]

Oh I would like to note one more thing.

While I was responsible for key game design decisions and balancing of CA, I'm not directly involved in game design of ZK.

This is entirely in hands of Google_Frog, Saktoth and KingRaptor. They are building upon rules made during development of CA.
ZK allows more freedom so it has some strange units, like time slowing weapons, cloaked melee units, units with personal linking shields etc.

They have my full trust in this area, I'm busy actually coding and preparing for those "off-game" elements.

We actually need some game-design help for PlanetWars and related areas.

[CarRepairer]

it will only work with SD, and therefore only under windows?

Most important things will be accessible from web directly, so not only on windows.

PlanetWars part will likely remain restricted to windows though. Well not participation (you can play from any client), but control over PW game will most likely need windows.

Its too hard to make rich web-application. And as AF mentioned mono wont support WPF.

I will gladly make a PHP/Javascript website for PW. It will be better than SD!

[hoijui]

control over PW game.. thats for admins, defining the planets and such?

[Licho]

No I mean actual game decisions, like moving fleets from planet X to Y, building structures etc.


But if CarRepairer is really up to job to make rich enough website, then this restriction does not have to exist :)

Im sceptical though, because there were already 2 planetwars prototypes. One using classic HTML+javascript and other using Silverlight.

They both failed to deliver - first one wasnt rich/fast enough and second one didnt work on linux properly.

[CarRepairer]

Do not underestimate me.

Who knows, maybe by the time I get started, HTML 5 will explode in glory and I'll be bringing you 3D galaxies in your browser.

[Licho]

MS just announced IE9 with Html5 support, I'm looking forward to those 3d galaxies! :)

[hoijui]

would it not be easier to simply use a cross platform language? or do you trust in that new stuff working well, and in the same way in all browsers?
just asking, i do not know about it.