A Mad Week, Deadline coping Plans.

Geti, what about archer combat? As much as I know archers and knights still have the same base speed. I think archers shouldn't hurt 1.0 damage when they are on air/ladders. Maybe it would balance a bit.
+ mobility
- damage

 

As good as it sounds on paper, I'm a bit sceptical about this.


From how I understand it, you're basically focusing on building a platform that uses an object driven system to fuel the game. What I mean by that is, using the limits of the engine, you create a world type with its own rules, populate it with objects that represent various items and characters, and finally wrapping it all up with a game logic script as well as a custom menu.


Its a sound concept, however the things you can experiment and innovate will be limited to the engine, although you can still make a lot of interesting stuff if its anything like what I speculated above. If you'll try adding new mechanics to the engine (new systems, like adding zombies, physics and water to KAG) you risk having to reiterate the engine itself to keep it robust, which is very important for modders. If your engine is unreliable, not many modders are going to stay long with it.


Also, with such a short schedule for games, you won't have enough time for robust game design, especially when the type of games you'll most likely be building are entities-interacting-with-a-world-in-realtime, which are some of the most demanding types of games to properly set up. This short time may very well result in most of your projects being shallow throwaway experiments, that may have fun idea within them, but none will have a lasting appeal. Like fireworks. Nothing wrong with that, but its still going to be something less significant and polished than more serious titles out there, meaning less people may buy your wacky experiments and save their money for more polished games because those are more well rounded and thus more exciting.


Modders may be able to pickup these experiments and expand them further, but since these projects are built within a month or so, a time that is not enough to lay down a robust foundation(standards for world rules, entity basics), it might be far more suitable to start from scratch, which is a lot of work. Enough work to make people think twice before starting and most likely considering a way to gain something back from their work if they decide to release it into the public, which is ultimately the whole point.


Also, unless that engine is going to get new features with new projects (which, as I said above, can destabilize it for the need of reiteration), modders that have one game, may even become a direct competition against your own official releases by making new games that are better in everyway, causing users to play modder made games than the ones you will produce, even if they are free. The modders having more time one their hands to make better games overall and be a big threat if the modding system is infact that open as I speculate it is. Unless the modding tools are not that robust to create a whole new game from scratch or there are some hardcoded restrictions, then this will not be the case, however, then the modding possibilities are very limited in the end, which isn't good either if all you can do is mod on top of a shallow base.


Besides all that, a hat store wouldn't work in this setting at all, as its only suitable for serious projects that are built to last.


All in all, this kind of strategy is ok if your goal is to generate ideas and concepts without commiting to them, but its certainly not going to produce quality products or make anything big, which means not as many people will be too interested in the projects as they are with KAG because they will know not to expect anything more than what they will get, even if they show potential for something bigger (which KAG had and still has to some extent, which is one of the largest reasons for why its so actively followed.).


These projects may help you figure out a bigger game you may want to develop in the future or atleast give other devs some ideas to think on too. Very curious to see how will turn out, but thats what I think of this now.

 

Well they have a contract with "sombody", assuming the deadline is so they can make more money off of products and such, it could mean they are being semi/fully absorbed into a larger group, in which using there ideas on a larger scale could push out more awsome games like KAG much sooner than just the few of them are.
We will learn more about there situation and how things will plan out once the deadline hits, because i assume THEN we will know just whats going on behind the scene.
;)

 

Im really looking forward to the Overworld update. I hope it is for single player as well as multiplayer so when i dont have interweb connection or just dont want to be with people! :D Cant wait for all the other stuff to

 

overworld does not exist anymore. the idea was not viable for the time frame

 

Instead we have War Mode being made, which seems to be the core gameplay of Overworld adapted to fit with regular KAG more.

 

Will we still get the extra classes in war mode? (Barbarian, Thief, etc.) Contrary said no, as the Overworld was cancelled.

 

As far as I know, even if we don't get classes, some form of upgrading/progression has been announced for War Mode, although I think it's in the form if workshop upgrades or team buffs.

 

The potential to mod them into the game will be there though won't it? I'm hoping that the sprites that were made for them amongst others that were made for KAG stuff will be publicly available for modding extras in the game.

 

Is it possible that shielding could be made as a toggle function? So instead of holding down RMB, it could be just hit once to toggle on/off?
(I ask this because I have a one-button mouse, which can do right-mouse functions, but requires to be clicked in a different location, not allowing both LMB and RMB to be used at the same time)

 

Thats a VERY odd mouse, but no i doubt they will have such an option. You should probably just get a normal mouse lol, but i guess we will see what they say if they comment back to you.

 

Okay, I must say my choice of words sucked totally when I said "serious game". Should have said "serious hardcore game" instead. I really need to explain more about the origin of those opinions of mine and clarify what I meant by a serious game. More on that in a second.

Although the engine is suprisingly more flexible than I thought (the water example was pretty neat), I feel like my examples of new engine systems were bad. What I meant say is this: what if you wanted to extend or modify the existing engine to have new systems that a new game project needs. Unless you're purposefully limiting the areas in which you will innovate and experiment in terms of gameplay, the kind of production strategy you have may easily generate the need for modifying or extending the existing engine. Stuff like fundamentally different systems that the current engine is not capable of creating or would not be optimized enough without modifying it.

Alright, like I said, when I said "serious game", I meant it serious in the sense of a hardcore game. A game that takes itself seriously to be more than just a one time snack thrills like most casual games are. A game that can last virtually to infinity through its game design, content updates or community mods. A game with high amount of detail and depth. Serious in that way.

You brought up Canabalt. Thats a flash game turned into a phone game. Much like Angry Birds, this is indeed a viable thing to do with the smart phone market booming and all that, but does that mean you're aiming at making phone games then? I don't think you can have the whole modding thing working on that, can it?

As for targetting the PC with small standalone games, it won't be easy competing with the countless free flash game portals and the meaty hardcore games that are often the main reason for home PC gaming. However, the modding aspect holds a big benefit though, so maybe I'm wrong about this strategy having a hard time competing with other titles.

Still, on the topic of casual games like Canabalt. That game and the many other ones that follow a similar simple game design are often fun for 5-30 minutes and then its old at its core. Having played many games over the years on phones, the PC and even some on consoles, the games that ultimately are far more superior and the ones you actually come back to are the serious hardcore games.

Casual or scripted story games always only have a lasting effect of a single playthrough due to their very nature, with some titles artificially trying to extend its lifetime through lame tactics like unlocks, achievements and other similar shallow systems. But thats not so fun when the game turns into a predictable routine, is it now? Knowing what happens next in a scripted game you already played will never have the same effect of fun as you did on your first playthrough; the game feels dead at that point.

A well made serious hardcore game can render thousands of casual or scripted games obsolete just like that and beyond. I strongly feel that making small or scripted games is quite futile when all that hard work of many weeks or months of development are reduced to a single-use product that is overpowered by any serious hardcore game.

Infact, most of the time you can recreate many casual game experiences within the hardcore game themselves, further indicating how vain casual games can just be.

Never underestimate what people are capable of.

Especially if you make the modding aspect as good as in that post a long while ago I wrote on these forums detailing all the stuff necessary for the ultimate modding framework for a game/system. If this were the case with CC, I'd be all over it, even if as a hobby.

You may want to seriously think ahead about people making money from their stuff they make on your engine, because ignoring that aspect can make many modders fall short or beg for donation to continue work that could have been cool as hell. Theres a big potential here for you guys to make your engine be the next big game creation kit, rivaling the likes of Unity, XNA and others in the realms of 2D games, granted you organize it the right way, among many other things.

What do you mean?

 

Instead of laying on all of your opinions, and making yourself seem like a total bad guy all at once, hammering them with complaints/critisism, go to IRC and try chatting with them, they are on it somtimes, and would probably chat about these things, instead of spamming the threads with your conversation, rather than what we want - updates on how things are going. Thats what he means by "strawmanning", so many things at once makes it seem like everything is/is going badly, when they haven't voiced there opinions, just clarifying.

 

not very odd as apple mouse is a one click mouse

 

@FlameHaze3:I see what you mean, but please do remember that both Geti and I are on the opposite sides of the globe. I'm also very busy and forum posts or emails are much more thorough and flexible for these types of discussions.

Ah now I see.

Although Canabalt and multiplayer games are way on different levels of complexity, and the reason for Canabalts success was being a right type of a game on the right type of a place and time, where as a multiplayer is an entirely different beast, but your plan does sound very good actually now that I know properly what you're up to. It ain't perfect, but I'm excited to see what you guys will come up with.

The final concern I would have is with the game design of these projects, especially with such hasty schedule and from what I've seen done in KAG, in terms of design choices made, which some of them were as bad as making the game unplayable or stupid. Design is the most single important thing that everything else will depend on and its not something that can be rushed. That opinion comes from lots of experience.

But I'm still giving you the benefit of doubt that you can pull of good design in such short time, considering the knowledge accumulated from past work, although my personal experience says the opposite. Well see.

 

Isn't that the reason for them constantly updating the current engine to be broader and more flexible though, through all the time spent on the engine they'll know it like the back of their hand and how to do what they wanna do with it, giving them the opportunity to spend much more time on core mechanics and content then desperately trying to fix problems. If they continue to develop with the engine for different games they'll be able to hunt bugs more easily and they'll iron out core problems with the engine itself that make development more difficult over time won't they.

That's a fairly ill-informed opinion coming from someone that knows next to nothing about programming or games development, but it seems that's the ideal geti/MM/etc are pushing for.