Victor Tombs wrote:Hmm.... and your target audience would be who exactly? Playing a game that lacks any element of fun is not enjoyable and doesn't qualify as a game IMO. Some "games" are more like work and I have plenty of that sort of "entertainment" in the real world.

Anyway, good luck with that, Etsu.

Thanks.

To talk about target audience is a difficult thing, so I must be vain and selfish for a moment and say that I am my main target audience, at least at this state of the development. If I manage to create something I myself enjoy to play maybe someone else does too.

When I talk about 'Fun', and not wanting to make a game that fulfills exclusively that particular emotion, I'm talking about this:

Extra Credits: Beyond Fun

Etsu wrote:To talk about target audience is a difficult thing, so I must be vain and selfish for a moment and say that I am my main target audience, at least at this state of the development. If I manage to create something I myself enjoy to play maybe someone else does too.

I find your explanation perfectly reasonable, Etsu. So your target audience is people, like yourself, who enjoy something different to the next iteration of a mega-selling FPS etc. Josh is one of the first to say if he doesn't consider a feature to be fun it won't remain in LT (or even get there in the first place).

Etsu wrote:When I talk about 'Fun', and not wanting to make a game that fulfills exclusively that particular emotion, I'm talking abot this:

Extra Credits: Beyond Fun

I always think of "fun" as meaning "amusing, entertaining, or enjoyable". Now that covers a broad spectrum of emotions as far as I am concerned. I enjoy games which can make me laugh or cry. A game which can give me goosebumps or gives me a warm glow is equally as much fun.

Etsu wrote:To talk about target audience is a difficult thing, so I must be vain and selfish for a moment and say that I am my main target audience, at least at this state of the development. If I manage to create something I myself enjoy to play maybe someone else does too.

That is quite a valid reason to do something. Your spare time is yours and if you want to have fun playing with rocket simulators, why not?

Only if you think in terms of a target audience to sell the game to, there is the question what other people might like. But trying too hard to please the largest number of customers often leads to boring games. There is a reason why "mainstream" is a swear word to some .

Victor Tombs wrote:I find your explanation perfectly reasonable, Etsu. So your target audience is people, like yourself, who enjoy something different to the next iteration of a mega-selling FPS etc. Josh is one of the first to say if he doesn't consider a feature to be fun it won't remain in LT (or even get there in the first place).

Well, a smarter person than myself would try to make a mega-selling FPS with a lot of personal content and meaning. He would have tried to hide his message in a game only in appearance typical and commercial. In fact, a very traditional FPS, but with innovative mechanics hiding inside, or at least mechanics traditional to other genres (like point & click item picking and engaging puzzles, a personal favorite of mine), and with a mature storyline of acceptable quality, would not be a bad idea, in my opinion.

But I'm not a smarter person.

Victor Tombs wrote:I always think of "fun" as meaning "amusing, entertaining, or enjoyable". Now that covers a broad spectrum of emotions as far as I am concerned. I enjoy games which can make me laugh or cry. A game which can give me goosebumps or gives me a warm glow is equally as much fun.

Yes, I know that people use the word to express everything they like, but if we start using the same word for everything suddenly it lost all its meaning, like it happens with that other ugly word: 'immersion'.

I prefer to make some kind of distinction, because when I play a game or watch a movie that I like what I feel can hardly be described as 'Fun'. When I see a movie like, y'know, The Shindler's List, I can't say I'm having fun, even if there are some funny moments in that movie, because I'm not. Or when I play a game like, lets say, The Walking Dead. An excellent unfunny game.

I remember a story, about a group of people playing the RPG Gray Ranks, a game about Polish teens soldiers set in the summer and autumn of 1944 during the Warsaw Uprising. During the game, which usually last three sessions, one of the girls let a German soldier raped her to be able to survive. I am sure that none of the participants felt that this episode was 'fun' or 'amusing' in any way, and I think the game is better for it.

When I play a game the last thing I seek is fun. The best moments, in my favorite videogames, sometimes have been when I have been hurt by what happens in the game. Yes, even if it seems weird, I like to be hurt by videogames. Some horror games have failed by trying to be fun instead of inspiring fear or horror. The movie Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, by Kenneth Branagh, is not fun at all, but it's awesome.

Of course, this doesn't mean that this little space game I'm starting to make will be a deep and complex look at the depths of the human soul, or a kind of disguised critique of modern society, or that is going to change your life or whatever. It will be game about a guy or gal (that would be you) who pilots a spaceship. I'm talking in general and purely philosophical terms, because I'm personally at war with that word, and with the idea of video games as digital toys whose main purpose is to entertain. I don't want to entertain anyone, and I don't play games to evade or escape from the real world and its problems. As a human being, I have concerns and interests, and want to use video games as a medium to talk about what concerns me and interests me with other people. I know it's an unpopular and pretentious viewpoint, but I can't lie to you: I'm a very unpopular and pretentious person.

Rabiator wrote:That is quite a valid reason to do something. Your spare time is yours and if you want to have fun playing with rocket simulators, why not?

Only if you think in terms of a target audience to sell the game to, there is the question what other people might like. But trying too hard to please the largest number of customers often leads to boring games. There is a reason why "mainstream" is a swear word to some .

Yes, that's right. But I have to consider that this particular game was conceived in this forum, and during conversations with people involved here. So the point of view of the people who wish to share it is important to me. I guess no one wants to make a game that nobody cares or wants to play, but that is an ever present risk. In this case, I'm running even additional risks because of the way I've chosen to make this game. I'll probably take some unpopular decisions, but that's the only way I can be happy with the idea and hope to move on. Besides I can't guess what other people want, so try to make a game in order to satisfy a particular audience is not necessarily easier.

@Etsu, because I don't feel like quoting you this early in the morning.

The meaning I gave is a definition of the word "fun" so my ideas concerning the word are not really straying from that definition.

I don't disagree with you on many points you make, Etsu, but you keep offering examples which for me and as far as gaming is concerned have only tenuous relevance. I read books and watch many films for different reasons. I certainly wouldn't want to play a game called "Schindler's List" but I watched the film and was deeply moved. I don't play games that depict the death of real life modern combat soldiers as I respect life and the depiction of death as something trivial, sickens me. You won't find any Call of Duty titles, or their equivalents, on my shelves. It probably explains why I find multiplayer to be anathema and find real fun and immersion in singleplayer games. In multiplayer you can get heavily involved with real people and that is not who I am.

As to your smartness quotient...you undersell yourself (probably, deliberately).

As to your qualities as a person... you may consider yourself to be unpopular and pretentious but I don't read you that way.

Thanks for your comments, Victor.

Now, I want to sketch out a list of requeriments to get this project going. Probably I'm going to need to fulfill every item in the list before moving forward to the next item. This is a tentative list, so feel free to share your sugestions.

• - Ship designs. (I need to designs some ships. These doesn't need to be too pretty, but have to be funtional in some way.)
  - Ship designs extra. (Textures, normals, proxy models, etc.)
  - Implement ships in engine. (This could be easy, hard or anything in between, and is when good designs prove to be very ugly. We'll see.)
  - Environment implementation in engine. (I need to learn how to design a useful environment, in this case zero-gravity deep space.)
  - Environment props. (Asteroids, space stations, planets, etc.)
  - Gameplay mechanics. (First, I want to be able at least to fly one ship, so I'll need to start designing the first gameplay elements.)
  - Special effects. (Ship FXs, like thrusters, explosions, sounds, etc.)
  - Additional mechanics, ships and environments. (Things like: shoot other ships, docking, first basic AI, start conversations with NPCs, etc.)

As I said before, this is not going to be your traditional space sim. Probably there are things that are very important to the so called space simulators than are not going to be a concern for us, like AI, flight mechanics, fight with others, economy, trade, etc. But I want the player to be able to fly around, do different kind of stuff, even fight once in awhile, but I don't thing these recreational activities are going to be the main focus of play, in the same way that walking is not the main focus of the gameplay in so many games, even if you can walk around. (And if you can not only walk but decide where to go and do other kind of stuff, like examine objects and talk with other people, then much better.)

So, I'll need a consistent flight mechanic. (I said is not a concern because the quality of the game doesn't depend of the kind of flight model we have, but what we can do with it.) Now, I would like to have a "realistic" flight model (within the limits of what will be a sci-fi videogame, so we can take some liberties, provided it is explicable within the fiction). I open to sugestions in this part of the game. I would like to consider first how it would be, at least hypothetically, in real life, and then, and only then, consider other fictional possibilities.

How fast a manned spaceship could go, how far, how much time could take to go from here to there? What kind of facilities this kind of ship should have, what kind of food, how to prevent muscle and health problems in travelers? It is possible to have energy shields? What kind of technology would allow it? What kind of weapons?

That kind of stuff.

I started to design my first ship, using insert meshes in ZBrush and BadKing.Com tools, but it doesn't seem to be working too well. You can see here my first embarrassing attempt at making a spacecraft:

Etsu, if I understand you correctly, your overall vision for this game is really to provide a single player with a reasonably detailed simulation of long-duration spaceflight. Players may be able to do other things typical to space games, but the primary play mode will be dealing with the technical challenges of long-term survival in a very large and harsh environment. Is that close to what you're thinking?

If so, one source you mind find interesting is the Case for Mars books edited by Carol R. Stoker. These are papers presented at a conference in Boulder, Colorado, USA, in 1987 that deal with many of the real-world difficulties in getting humans to Mars and back again safely.

Some of the papers are super-mathematical. Others are more of an overview of particular issues. And they're all focused on near-term technical capabilities for getting just to Mars and no further.

But as a whole, this book (a copy of which I've had for quite a while) is a very detailed look at the many realistic problems that have to be solved for (relatively) long-duration existence in space. Even if some of the details aren't applicable to the game you're conceiving, you might find some of the ideas inspirational.

Good luck!

Thanks for the link, Flatfingers. I will investigate more.

Flatfingers wrote:Etsu, if I understand you correctly, your overall vision for this game is really to provide a single player with a reasonably detailed simulation of long-duration spaceflight. Players may be able to do other things typical to space games, but the primary play mode will be dealing with the technical challenges of long-term survival in a very large and harsh environment. Is that close to what you're thinking?

Unfortunately, that was not what I meant.

Previously, I was planning to make a space game when you are the only occupant of a spaceship, and you can travel all along the solar system in real time, when go from A to B could take several months or even years. I was planning on using the old magic trick of hibernation to let you go from one place to another without forcing you to let the game running in the background for real months or years. "Do you have to pick up cargo in one of the moons of Saturn and it will take to the automated systems of the ship eight hours to complete the process? How about going to sleep? I'll wake you when it's finished." Of course, you can't go to sleep everytime you want, so I was thinking on creating some kind of rule like: Roll a six-sided die; the difficulty is higher if you've recently slept, but decreases as more hours you are awake; if you succeed you can sleep one hour for every two hours you have been awake. Or something like that. But of course you can use the hibernation chamber everytime you want, with some risks, or if you prefer maybe you can sit and enjoy the show through the observation windows of your cargo ship.

The theme of the game was going to be loneliness and isolation. Can you go alone for months or even years without loosing your mind?

But THIS GAME I'm making RIGHT NOW is not going to be a simulator, and I'm not going to need to simulate anything. That kind of stuff fulfill an specific element I mentioned before: EXPLORATION, but our main focus in this case is going to be FICTION. I need that kind of data to inform the Fiction, not the simulation.

For example: Are the spaceships going to need some kind of Fuel or energy? Yes, probably both. Do I need to simulate any of them? No necessarily, because the spaceships are just part of the fiction. Cars in movies usually need fuel, but you don't take account of how much fuel is left, right? We worry about the fuel just when the fiction so requires. Maybe fuel and energy are a unified Stat. We test that stat when we need to know how good we have been conserving fuel or energy.

This will be an RPG, but not a traditional one, and an adventure game also. I will not get into the specifics, because is not all decided yet, but we are going to use dice to playing it. (I was thinking even letting the player to use real dice if he so wishes. Could be very interesting.) If you want a comparison, I would compare it with Ultima VII rather than with any Space Sim. I hope this doesn't sound disappointing.

Flatfingers wrote:Good luck!

Thanks a lot!

Etsu wrote:Now, I want to sketch out a list of requeriments to get this project going.

You seem to have a good grasp on what you're trying to achieve with your project, Etsu. I don't have anything particularly enlightening to say about your list. It looks cohesive enough to me. I'm not even sure if I would want to play the game you described in your previous posts. It sounds like a highly personal venture IMO.

Flat, is your man for this sort of "ideas" discussion. I can see he is already giving you some sound advice. I don't always agree with what he has to say but I always have respect for his, usually lengthy,"dissertations". He is always inquisitive about a wide range of subjects. There are others here who could offer more in the way of highly technical detailed analysis of your plans but it's unlikely you will find them here. They rarely stray from certain specific forums.

As to your attempts at making a spacecraft. Well, I doubt if it would make it into Star Citizen but I've seen a lot worse. I've yet to see what Mr Parnell has to offer via his algorithms. If procedural is the future I do hope it has more to offer than the unimpressive "assets" we have seen so far. It certainly doesn't compare well with the work done by the likes of Ryan Church. We will see what the coding maestro can devise.

Sorry, Etsu, I sometimes get a bit sidetracked by my thoughts.

I hope you will continue to keep us informed of your progress. I like watching projects develop.

Etsu wrote:THIS GAME I'm making RIGHT NOW is not going to be a simulator, and I'm not going to need to simulate anything. That kind of stuff fulfill an specific element I mentioned before: EXPLORATION, but our main focus in this case is going to be FICTION. I need that kind of data to inform the Fiction, not the simulation.
...
This will be an RPG, but not a traditional one, and an adventure game also. I will not get into the specifics, because is not all decided yet, but we are going to use dice to playing it.

Ah. I think I understand better now. Thank you for clarifying that for me.

For what it's worth, I'll just say I think determining the features in order to communicate the intended fiction is not all that far off from how Paranoia was meant to work. The authors created a setting and some rules, which combined to offer ideas for how to get players behaving in an entertainingly paranoid way... but it was up to the GM to keep those settings/rules, add to them, change them, or throw them out and use other rules if doing so meant helping players experience a more enjoyable story.

I look forward to hearing more (if you choose to share it with us) about how your game will deliver the fiction you want your players to experience.

Etsu wrote:If you want a comparison, I would compare it with Ultima VII rather than with any Space Sim. I hope this doesn't sound disappointing.

I'm not disappointed at all. The only thing that disappoints me is when a game doesn't fulfill its potential to entertain.

It sounds like you have a pretty well defined idea of what you want to build, though. Best of luck to you in turning that vision into a reality.

Funny timing: I just read this morning about Tharsis, a sort of roguelike about surviving a voyage to Mars after a collision with a piece of space debris.

Probably not quite what you're thinking of, Etsu, but possibly interesting.

Victor Tombs wrote:Sorry, Etsu, I sometimes get a bit sidetracked by my thoughts.

Feel free to do so everytime you want.

Victor Tombs wrote:I hope you will continue to keep us informed of your progress. I like watching projects develop.

Sure I will.

Flatfingers wrote:It sounds like you have a pretty well defined idea of what you want to build, though. Best of luck to you in turning that vision into a reality.

Thanks! There will be a lot of stuff to test and experiment in the future.

Flatfingers wrote:Funny timing: I just read this morning about Tharsis, a sort of roguelike about surviving a voyage to Mars after a collision with a piece of space debris.

Probably not quite what you're thinking of, Etsu, but possibly interesting.

In fact, very interesting. I like a lot, at least conceptually, survival games. And this game is reflecting some ideas I had in the past, including the first manned trip to Mars and the discovery that maybe you are not the first one to set foot there. These guys read my mind! It sounds really intriguing indeed, and the use of dice caught my attention immediately.

Thanks for the link.

Yesterday, after a enjoyable search on that thing that people call the Internet, I finally resolved, at leat in my head, how spaceships should look like in this game. (Oh, by the way, it seems that I didn't give you the name of the game. It will be Sky Junkers.) I even managed to design my first prototype entirely within the new engine, no external 3D program involved. (I'm going to be using Unreal.) I'm not ready to show you anything yet, but I'm very pleased with the results; I think it's a good start.

I can't guarantee that everyone will approve the philosophy behind the design, but we already have too many stylized spaceships around; I think we don't need more. I'm loking for something more 'real' this time.

So now I'm working to cross out that first item of the list. Wish me luck!

Etsu wrote:Yesterday, after a enjoyable search on that thing that people call the Internet, I finally resolved, at leat in my head, how spaceships should look like in this game. (Oh, by the way, it seems that I didn't give you the name of the game. It will be Sky Junkers.) I even managed to design my first prototype entirely within the new engine, no external 3D program involved. (I'm going to be using Unreal.) I'm not ready to show you anything yet, but I'm very pleased with the results; I think it's a good start.

I can't guarantee that everyone will approve the philosophy behind the design, but we already have too many stylized spaceships around; I think we don't need more. I'm loking for something more 'real' this time.

That sounds like a good start, Etsu. As long as your prototype can't be described as "a metal brick with peashooters taped to the front", as Grumblesaur so aptly put it, I am sure it will be triumph of functional design. I look forward to the time you feel you can reveal more.

Etsu wrote:So now I'm working to cross out that first item of the list. Wish me luck!

You know we wish you luck.

I have some experience in modelling and would like to help you out at times ^^

While i might not have the time for lots of productive work (University + Work + my girlfriend also wants attention) i can provide constructive feedback