Have you considered to crowd-fund the development?
It looks really promising, and it feels like one of those ideas that could become popular.
(I like how you placed Notch's Minecraft character in the doorframe of the image as part of the 'If you're names not on the list you're not coming in'-update :))
I showed this game to my partners, all Tycoon fans. They were salivating over this. Even in early stages, this is something we all want to play really bad.
It isn't every day you get on HN. Hurry up and release something. Provide the usual warnings (this is beta, this sucks right now, things break, etc), but release something. One of the reasons Minecraft was successful was the "release early, release often" philosophy they took. You'll get users, and user input, quickly, should you follow the same path.
No questions. Just wanted to say I'm glad you made this. A few years ago, I was playing Roller Coaster Tycoon and World of Warcraft a little too often. Had the idea to merge the two, since WoW is basically an amusement park. I mapped the project out but never put anything together.
I was a huge fan of Ultima Online as a kid and the emulation communities are what got me into programming. This has a lot of ideas I always wanted to implement, awesome stuff!
I'm actually working on a multiplayer map builder in a ww2 fps: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XdLbRzsCDg (I hope this is ok to share I don't think they are in competing markets)
Reminds me of Dungeon Keeper, a old PC game where you have to build your own dungeon, with rooms for your monsters, treasure room, magic room to research spells, etc. Heroes try to invade your dungeon, and you also have to fight neighbouring dungeons. One of the cool feature was that while monsters were controlled by an AI, you could take manual control of one, going to a first person view and playing like a FPS game.
So yeah, seeing this feels like Dungeon Keeper meets Minecraft. Which could be very interesting if executed properly, but it's not going to be easy.
Dungeon Keeper is still one of the best PC games ever. I still play it to this day. I wish they would come out with an updated version, like DK1.. not DK2.
This is one of these fairly simple, yet brilliant ideas that make you go "Why didn't I think of this?" Granted, tycoon-style game ideas are a dime a dozen, but few are this novel or meta.
Superhot is another recent game that also meets the criteria; time advances only with player movement. Dead simple core concept. I suppose Minecraft probably stands as the most famous example though (which is ironic considering this game's art style and game mechanics appear to have been heavily influenced by it).
True, though really you could say this of any game. Ideas are cheap. It's the execution of the idea that draws the crowd.
- Superhot actually took the stop time mechanic from Time4Cat [1], a free flash game. With guns added, and a unique art style, players were drawn in. It also helped that the game was originally created for the 7DFPS challenge where it received initial interest.
- Minecraft gained popularity originally because it added enemies that came out at night, something the world building genre hadn't really seen before (and so the reviewers jumped on it). Voxel engines weren't new, but it was unprecedented to use them to give creative ability to the user like so ('user customization' being a common theme in many successful games, see: TF2 hats!)
- Same again with Portal, the mechanic was neat, but the story is what people always talk about.
- Monument Valley strikes me as another, great idea with the isomorphics, but also great art style and animation regardless. The progression of puzzle difficulty is what keeps the player interested though, as the learning curve is subtle enough to work in the casual games mobile market.
- Here is an example [2] of a good idea on the scale of Portal, but so far poor execution, resulting in lackluster gameplay. It is Pillow Castle's First Person Puzzler where picked up object's are re-scaled depending on your perspective.
The concept reminds me a bit of Majesty: The Fantasy Kingdom Sim, in that you're loosely overseeing a bunch of AI adventurers running around and getting into trouble. Of course it's coming at the idea from a very different direction. Mostly it's just that Majesty holds up astoundingly well for a 15-year-old sim game, and I've been thinking about it lately. :)
What about being able to play as a Hero-class unit, as well as overseeing? The player could be Gandalf, who can exercise bad-assery and turn the tide in an individual battle, but also direct the overall battle. Like an RTS where you have to ride to line of sight give commands?
I always dream about an RTS where one gets to be the DM (God, Gaia... whatever you call it) where computer players fight against each other. I love scripting maps to make current games (especially AoEII and C&C Generals) work like that. I'm hoping this is, in a way, something like that. I know an RPG is played in the map (city) you design, but still. I'll give it a try.
> I always dream about an RTS where one gets to be the DM ... where computer players fight against each other
There were quite a few of these around when I was learning to program: I and a couple of friends competed in one where you provided a robot that had to kill survive longer than the rest. Each action (movement, shooting at an enemy, using your shield, scanning to see anything) took energy and sources of that were unevenly distributed around the simple landscape (so a robot could camp on a large source for a while as an example tactic). My robots didn't tend to do very well unfortunately.
There must be modern equivalents around, though it sounds like you want to go the other way: providing the challenge to the AIs rather than an AI itself, so perhaps you could create your own.
I've considered it - it is one of the many projects on my "when I win the lottery or otherwise have a lot of spare time all of a sudden" project list. There are two main options: run the AIs on your platform in which case one of the constraints is processing resource (which you somehow need to hand out fairly) or just provide an API through which the AIs can submit moves (in which case you can't govern how much processing resource each AI can throw at the problem, but the game service would be very resource efficient to run. Of course with the latter option if there are limits to what the AI can see (fog of war or similar) then you have to play the whole game out before letting spectators see it otherwise an AI could abuse the spectator interface to gain advantage, if the AIs are hosted on your resources you can constrain such visibility much more readily.
> I always dream about an RTS where one gets to be the DM (God, Gaia... whatever you call it) where computer players fight against each other.
Reminds me of "Sandkings" by George R. R. Martin. It's in the Dreamsongs volume I collection. The connection is the protagonist buys some insect-like pets for which he is like a god and there are multiple colonies which do things on their own in a terrarium.
That is an interesting idea to make a game like that.
This is a random question, slightly off topic, but I was looking at the No Man's Sky videos and wondered how video game programming worked with regard to a server and interfacing with multiple users at once. Does the team design the game to run on the console and also a version to run on the server or is it two separate applications each with its own set of business rules?
Depends on the architecture. If the game has dedicated servers, then they will built 2 separate pieces: 1. The game they ship to the client and 2. The server software which receives messages from the client and propagates world changes to all clients in the same game session.
If the game is PvP (like most xbox games), the there is only the single game, and a 'host' is chosen to act like the server above. This can lead to problems though like host advantage [1], so the networking logic has to be carefully designed in order to mitigate this effect.
It will vary based on the game but generally servers would simply store data and verify inputs to make sure the clients are in sync and haven't been hacked for example. The clients get sent data like all of the players positions and update their internal state based on it.
No Man's sky probably does a lot more server side, as the world is persistent for everyone.
Edit: As pointed out below, don't buy Towns unless you know your buying an abandoned beta-stage game. Good idea for a game, but, IIRC, the dev got kickstarted, took the money, and left
Can someone please build new SimCity. I'm missing it badly and I'll pay anything. This was the game that had a meaningful educational value (real estate development, microeconomics) coupled with entertainment. I didn't like people part (Sims) as much as city planning.
This is really cool! What engine are you building in?
Have you considered approaching Sony's indie-developer program?
As far as I can tell, on this generation they are being incredibly supportive of indie developers ... and I would 100% pay for an indie game like this on PS4.
Looking forward to seeing the progress. Was an active SC4er and really enjoyed Skylines and not really an MMO guy at all. I just love sandbox simulations and this seems like a super unique idea and love your approach. Keep up the great work!
[+] [-] aaronjb|10 years ago|reply
https://itch.io/t/9883/mymmo-design-your-own-mmo-city-builde...
https://twitter.com/aaronjbaptiste
https://www.twitch.tv/the_alchomist/profile/highlights
https://www.reddit.com/r/mymmo
[+] [-] kawsper|10 years ago|reply
It looks really promising, and it feels like one of those ideas that could become popular.
(I like how you placed Notch's Minecraft character in the doorframe of the image as part of the 'If you're names not on the list you're not coming in'-update :))
[+] [-] anonbanker|10 years ago|reply
It isn't every day you get on HN. Hurry up and release something. Provide the usual warnings (this is beta, this sucks right now, things break, etc), but release something. One of the reasons Minecraft was successful was the "release early, release often" philosophy they took. You'll get users, and user input, quickly, should you follow the same path.
[+] [-] xzi|10 years ago|reply
Anyways, I'm thrilled you made it happen.
[+] [-] mrcwinn|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] samstave|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mentos|10 years ago|reply
I'm actually working on a multiplayer map builder in a ww2 fps: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XdLbRzsCDg (I hope this is ok to share I don't think they are in competing markets)
Curious to get your guys response to it!
Great work and good luck!
[+] [-] neeel|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 3327|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nyandaber|10 years ago|reply
So yeah, seeing this feels like Dungeon Keeper meets Minecraft. Which could be very interesting if executed properly, but it's not going to be easy.
[+] [-] agumonkey|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thedaemon|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] enraged_camel|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] samstave|10 years ago|reply
Ever play Knights and Merchants? that game was wonderful, albeit buggy when you got too big a city.
HNGHHGUHG - the sound of a serf dying due to the AI not able to properly manage routing of all the serfs when you had a big city with >100 serfs.
So many hours spent on that game in 1997-98
[+] [-] SixSigma|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rl3|10 years ago|reply
Superhot is another recent game that also meets the criteria; time advances only with player movement. Dead simple core concept. I suppose Minecraft probably stands as the most famous example though (which is ironic considering this game's art style and game mechanics appear to have been heavily influenced by it).
[+] [-] hacker_9|10 years ago|reply
- Superhot actually took the stop time mechanic from Time4Cat [1], a free flash game. With guns added, and a unique art style, players were drawn in. It also helped that the game was originally created for the 7DFPS challenge where it received initial interest.
- Minecraft gained popularity originally because it added enemies that came out at night, something the world building genre hadn't really seen before (and so the reviewers jumped on it). Voxel engines weren't new, but it was unprecedented to use them to give creative ability to the user like so ('user customization' being a common theme in many successful games, see: TF2 hats!)
- Same again with Portal, the mechanic was neat, but the story is what people always talk about.
- Monument Valley strikes me as another, great idea with the isomorphics, but also great art style and animation regardless. The progression of puzzle difficulty is what keeps the player interested though, as the learning curve is subtle enough to work in the casual games mobile market.
- Here is an example [2] of a good idea on the scale of Portal, but so far poor execution, resulting in lackluster gameplay. It is Pillow Castle's First Person Puzzler where picked up object's are re-scaled depending on your perspective.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gO5hjxRsfo
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOfll06X16c
[+] [-] PhasmaFelis|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stcredzero|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MattSteelblade|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] egeozcan|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dspillett|10 years ago|reply
There were quite a few of these around when I was learning to program: I and a couple of friends competed in one where you provided a robot that had to kill survive longer than the rest. Each action (movement, shooting at an enemy, using your shield, scanning to see anything) took energy and sources of that were unevenly distributed around the simple landscape (so a robot could camp on a large source for a while as an example tactic). My robots didn't tend to do very well unfortunately.
There must be modern equivalents around, though it sounds like you want to go the other way: providing the challenge to the AIs rather than an AI itself, so perhaps you could create your own.
I've considered it - it is one of the many projects on my "when I win the lottery or otherwise have a lot of spare time all of a sudden" project list. There are two main options: run the AIs on your platform in which case one of the constraints is processing resource (which you somehow need to hand out fairly) or just provide an API through which the AIs can submit moves (in which case you can't govern how much processing resource each AI can throw at the problem, but the game service would be very resource efficient to run. Of course with the latter option if there are limits to what the AI can see (fog of war or similar) then you have to play the whole game out before letting spectators see it otherwise an AI could abuse the spectator interface to gain advantage, if the AIs are hosted on your resources you can constrain such visibility much more readily.
[+] [-] drivers99|10 years ago|reply
Reminds me of "Sandkings" by George R. R. Martin. It's in the Dreamsongs volume I collection. The connection is the protagonist buys some insect-like pets for which he is like a god and there are multiple colonies which do things on their own in a terrarium.
That is an interesting idea to make a game like that.
[+] [-] emehrkay|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hacker_9|10 years ago|reply
If the game is PvP (like most xbox games), the there is only the single game, and a 'host' is chosen to act like the server above. This can lead to problems though like host advantage [1], so the networking logic has to be carefully designed in order to mitigate this effect.
[1] http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/73302/is-host-adv...
[+] [-] aaronjb|10 years ago|reply
No Man's sky probably does a lot more server side, as the world is persistent for everyone.
[+] [-] ceejayoz|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CaptSpify|10 years ago|reply
I think this shows a lot more promise though
Edit: As pointed out below, don't buy Towns unless you know your buying an abandoned beta-stage game. Good idea for a game, but, IIRC, the dev got kickstarted, took the money, and left
[+] [-] nacs|10 years ago|reply
Its abandoned and an unfinished mess.
[+] [-] Vekz|10 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majesty:_The_Fantasy_Kingdom_S...
I've been craving a new game in this genre for a while. I love the 'idle' game play where the world evolves. Point me to the crowdfunding page!
[+] [-] rodionos|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] natosaichek|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AlexC04|10 years ago|reply
Have you considered approaching Sony's indie-developer program?
As far as I can tell, on this generation they are being incredibly supportive of indie developers ... and I would 100% pay for an indie game like this on PS4.
[+] [-] doener|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] omnivore|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andremendes|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] herbst|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] swozey|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] owenwil|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] akamaozu|10 years ago|reply
Never seen anything like this before.
[+] [-] twoquestions|10 years ago|reply