The ‘Lazarus effect’ and what FOSS games might be good at/for
Posted by: Sindwiller in Uncategorized on March 21st, 2009
So, yeah, I haven’t been actively working on my Blog for quite a while now, but since that is caused by time consuming real life activities, it’s all for a good cause, so no worries. Apart from not having started working on the next part of my blog post ’series’ on combat mechanics in sandbox space sims (and that’s one of the factors I’d like to focus on in the beginning of a possible implementation, as, consisting merely of a bunch of vector mathematics and a bit of creativity, it is quite an accessible field as opposed to, say, economics and stuff) I have been playing more bass lately, and I even got myself a firewire recording module, thanks to which I have more broad possibilities to play around with sound and the Hydrogen drum computer, and I even can publish stuff on the net, so, stay tuned!
But that is not the reason why I decided to post again after this evident break. I know, I know, I’m kind of late on this one, too, but the thought arose in me a few days ago, which I now want to write down and spread it on the internet.
RockPaperShotgun (god bless them for their awesome - I’m not religious though :P) recently sparkled my attention with their article “Unreal Tournament 3 And The New Lazarus Effect”, in which the autor wonders how the number of UT3 players could rise by 2000% [sic] in a short period of time. In a nutshell, Steam started to sell Unreal Tournament 3, Epic announced and probably already have released a big Unreal Tournament 3 update including new game modes and technical improvements, Epic also is about to release a vast update for the Unreal Engine 3, including improved tools for level designers/environment artists (yay). The consequence is a rise of players and thus of sales and thus of money Epic is gaining. It’s remarkable because UT3 has had very poor sales, in comparison to the money and effort that had been pumped into it. The rapid and astonishing growth of the community and player base is quite an interesting phenomenon.
Which leads to my conclusion: That’s exactly how FOSS games are or rather should be developed, right? Usually, FOSS games are worked on and polished regardless of their popularity or the size of the player base. As far as I can see, the popularity of a game isn’t really the main factor influencing a potential contributor towards doing the first steps. Furthermore, a game with a small player base and bad PR during their Beta/Gold phases (and seriously people, games in their Gold phase should be sophisticated, complete and fun to play…) can change that by delivering an update providing new elements to the game. Thus, a “dead” game can rise from the dead (just as Lazarus did, hence the name :P) and gain popularity with a change of concept, new updates and community activity, meaning that passive development is something manageable after all.
If you look at this from a “ransom” point of view: Once popularity is on its downlow, you can gain momentum again by releasing a shiny and big update or so, which is only possible on the Internet and mostly practiced with FOSS games, while not being anyhow bound by sales of physical media or something.
Discuss.
EDIT: Andrew pointed out some weaknesses of my blog post, especially the fact that I don’t back my assumption with statistics (which probably aren’t present anyway). Just to clear things up though: I’m trying to say that there might be an increase in popularity and awareness of the game as a reaction to a big content update or something along the lines of that. Cheers.
Mars is a bitch [1] (updated diagram)
Posted by: Sindwiller in Spacesims on February 19th, 2009
So, one of the things, which bother me the most in space sims, is that space fights can get pretty dull after a while. The style of combat tends to be monotonic, the design surrounding and accompanying space fights is the lamest one; literally the one element evolving the least in space sim designs. It gets even lamer once one considers the number of space sims focusing on combat. The god of war (Mars/Ares, not Kratos) appears in space sims as a destroyer of the habit, as an annihilator of boredom and as one of the paths of playing the game, of which the player can choose from. So why do people neglect the mighty god of war despite the fact that he could bring many, many positive changes to the game?
Typical combat designs in space sims consist of chasing the enemy by flying around in circles, while he may or may not be able to get you on his front side to be able to shoot you. If the enemy has gotten turrets, you’re screwed, - or not - depending on the game’s design. Simply put, the ships with the highest speed, most firepower and fattest shields wins. One of the obvious reasons why combat is so dull is the very simple ship balancing. Every ship owner will come to a point at which his ship is basically worthless, due to the “if you aren’t this big, you’re too weak” design, meaning that every “more advanced” ship can defeat any ships below it, regardless of fitting or tactics - no exceptions allowed. That design can be loosened pretty easily though. I’d like to introduce a design with more variations, involving more tactics - rather than just a straight line.
(both diagrams were made by Tranberry from the FGD forums, visit his wobsite under: http://tranberry.se )
Instead of being instant cannon fodder and thus good for basically nothing at all, fast and light-weight ships, you may call them interceptors or scouts, now have the possibility to be used for, what their name actually suggests, interception of fighters and bombers. They should be quite effective in groups, especially for perturbing the enemy. Interceptors/Scouts should be the cheapest ships in the design. Excluding civilian ships, if there is the need for a separation between faction/military ships and ‘mere’ civilian ships or ships manufactured by independent companies.
The gap in-between would then be filled by fighters, which would be somewhat limited omnipotent packages, perfect for raids, escorts and patrols in small numbers and for hit-and-run tactics, in which you don’t necessarily want to lose a great bunch of your ships.
The next class is filled by heavy fighters and bombers. Heavy fighters, the more expensive variants of the fighters - also with a much greater mass - are intended for universal use. If you have the money and the nerves, that is. The fighter<>heavy fighter relationship might be a critical point in the design when it comes to balancing. Bombers will be designed for anti-capital assaults. They’re particularly slow for their size, although they will have the ability to get a fair speed boost for a limited amount of time during strikes and for evasion of heavy capital turrets and missiles, and their energy systems will be specifically designed for the carriage and launch of very heavy missiles or energy-based bomber equipment, so they won’t be abused as “very-very-fat” fightercraft.
The gap between capital ships and heavy fightercraft will be filled by gun boats (their purpose being the interception of small and medium fightercraft using turrets), corvettes, cruisers and frigates… I will have to think this class through I think.
The capital ships (destroyers, carriers, etc.) are self-explanatory.
As I was already saying in the beginning of this mess of an article, another quite soporific spice put into combat design is limiting and boring navigation and flight physics. Though by any means, do not interpret this statement as it would promote realistic space physics; please don’t. Ultra-realistic flight physics destroy the fun of combat completely. Instead, consider flight physics a way to introduce new elements to combat. Instead of putting all down to physical laws, you should also think of ways technology would’ve worked out the issues of space flight by then. After all, it’s a science-fiction game - don’t take the ’science’ thing too seriously.
Imagine a simple spaceship having two engines. This would allow the ship to accelerate in one direction and thus travel in one direction, but it’d be heavily affected by the gravitational force of the celestial bodies near or not so near it. Thrusters on the front side and on every other sides are added to allow manipulation of the direction in which the ship is heading, as well as the roll of the ship. After a while, a trick allows to get the gravitational force of the celestial bodies out of the picture, which allows much more freedom for space flight. Also, the correction of the course by the thrusters is handled automatically, even though more advanced pilots may consider manual operation for sliding/gliding. The thrusters on the front side are especially effective, in so far as it is possible to stop immediately, decelerate and then recelerate again, making room for many wicked maneuvers. Just to picture it:
You can bite your fingers off at that, vector mathematicians.
Now to a little bit of history. In the history of sefaring, due to the lack of long range weaponry suitable on sea, the first way of nautical combat was quite simple: ram the enemy! The ships were obviously constructed with that kind of combat in mind. The nose of the ship was reinforced with metal and made extra sharp. Thus, the ships weren’t too big and were quite agile. That method of combat was used by the Greek and by the Phoinikians, probably invented by the Pelasgians. Don’t quote me as a reliable source though; the origin of this tactic is unknown.
During the Punic Wars, the Romans were faced with that tactic, since the Carthaginians/Phoinikians were masters of seafaring and nautic combat. They were at disadvantage, as their ships were quite… crappy. Until they had found a solution, they were never able to secure their sea or cut off the Carthaginians from their usual trade routes (Sardinia, Sicilia, etc.). One day, they decided to turn the whole thing into land combat again and filled a whole ship with soldiers, everybody well equipped and well trained for battle. They tricked the Carthaginian ship into approaching them, at which they evaded the Phoinikians, smashed their rudders, sailed to one side of the enemy ship and jumped over. Seamen can’t fight. And so they were doomed. And so, boarding ships was born.
The same thing would be quite interesting in space: Ships of the size of corvettes - so right in-between capital ships and bombers - with the ability to harden certain areas of their shields for a period of time. A new kind of hit-and-run tactic would be born.
Modelling truths!
Posted by: Sindwiller in Uncategorized on February 16th, 2009
Hello everybody!
I just wanted to say that I’ve stumbled upon a really cool blog with a lot of tips about organic modelling and the like 
If you have topology issues or you simply screw up your attempts on organic modelling, that is one of the points where you can find help!
Sandbox games don’t consist of sand…
Posted by: Sindwiller in Spacesims on February 8th, 2009
To sum this up effectively and as simple as possible: A sandbox game keeps the player (or players) busy with a chain of events and tasks. There is a certain ‘rhythm’ based on the intervals between whenever a task (doesn’t matter if it’s a ‘chore’ or a ‘carrot’/'goodie’) pops up and gets performed, when an event is triggered and when the player has to reorient himself, aka “What am I going to do next?”. In an ideal situation, the player doesn’t have to reorient himself at all.
The diagram has to separate branches. The red one is the very simple ‘isle’ sandbox design. After having performed a task, there is no reaction of the environment around the player, nor is there development outside the player’s microcosmos. Usually, there is a time span between the tasks in which the player is pondering about what he will do next. Projected onto a space game, the factor that defines the outcome of the reorientation phase lies in what the player’s basic occupation is, so whether he favors trading or a more martial style of playing, and how many possibilities the game holds open in that situation. This is usually shaped by the price of items and ships, the galaxy map and occasionally by racial differences. I have noticed that as for space sims, it is quite hard to keep up the “Aha”- and “Wow”-moments high in number and concise in appearance. Frankly, there are hardly any “Aha”-moments in current space games (the exception proves the rule), as most mechanics are either obvious - a prime example of that would be the rule of thumb in a simple combat ship design, in which ships with more firepower or shields are simply better than everything else - or built on top of simple, easy to see through mechanics - yes, I’m talking about you, Freelancer weapon balancing. But after all, there may be a way to analyze that and come to a solution (thinking game design atoms). That will mean a lot of handwork though.
Back to the diagram: The plain black branch is what I like to refer to as the “waterfall” sandbox design. It’s a lot more laborious to design, let alone to implement and to maintain - but it is more interesting to design, of course, and a lot more fun to play in the end. It limits the importance of the player as a parameter for the game world, so the environment (factions, economy, etc.) may take a completely different direction, hence the “waterfall”. Though the player is able to manipulate his environment; if he participates in raids of a faction against another faction in the conflict; if he’s a driving economical power (again, space stations, trading, escort/police service, blah, blah, blah); and of course if he has a huge fleet, an enormous wallet and can just gank everything and everyone in the universe.
In the diagram, the normal arrows point at events or tasks that get triggered or are opened after player interaction or rather the performing of a task. The diamond arrows on the other hand point at events or tasks opened up for the player, without the need of player interaction - they just happen or appear. An example of that would be the beginning of a conflict over a system rich on sources. No player interaction needed there. Although, the faction may now offer missions regarding this conflict (raids, defense, recon) to the player. The goal would be to make the waterfalls and occasional isles as long and as rich as possible.
Another trick beside the usual waterfall and isles, and of course, making the basic elements of the game - trading, combat, exploration, story - as fun as possible, to keep the player at it is by adding fun activities or “pretended” fun activities. Say, space racing, gambling, etc. The key there is to add a money bonus to it.
Other than that - my typical credo - : Increased interaction between the player and his/her (AI) environment. A martial player will eventually have somebody holding a grudge against him at a certain point. The player’s standing towards one or more factions will eventually be so low, that the faction will send ruffians to attack his fleet or his stations (if he has any) as an act of retaliation or rather aggressiveness. That would also be a reason for the player to continue shaping his environment and attacking other factions or teaming up with some.
I hope I have cleared things up a bit…
PS.M64 mentioned in his Blog that one of the issues that FOSS game development has to tackle are huge, bloated “game designs” (quotation marks by me), which try to imitate commercial games to some degree. FOSS games should rather focus on casual games with smaller designs, so he says. That is true for most cases, but in the end, everything gets down to the game design, and if there is none, a bigger game can’t be played consistently nor be really fun. I want to prove that
Spacesim - Further Thoughts and Persistent Universe
Posted by: Sindwiller in Spacesims on January 26th, 2009
Now, the ‘problem’ with sandbox games is that most of them don’t have a general objective per se. The player is given the possibility to do anything he wants to, as long as it’s part of the game obviously. In GTA, if you’re not doing missions at the moment, you run around harassing people, set them on fire, run them over, jump from an airplane with a parachute, mostly senseless things like that. Newer GTA games have a storyline which you can play through, GTA2 (and so the first GTA as well I’d reckon) on the other hand didn’t have something as concrete as that. You simply could choose between three rivaling gangs on each island for which you completed missions. The more missions you completed for, for instance, the Yakuza, the more they liked you and the worse the standing got of some other gang towards you. Once you had done enough missions for one faction, you could move over onto the next island. A good sandbox game should be full of surprises for the player, keep him busy as well motivating him to stick at it. A sandbox design, which sadly is too common, rests upon the lack of a greater aim in the game, while giving the player opportunities to set goals himself, e.g. making a fortune, or more short-term goals, such as improving standings for a particular faction, being able to acquire a particular good, et cetera. Activities of simple fun should be present, too. Of course, those heavily depend the type of game.
What space sims these days lack are real dynamics that affect the short-term and long-term goals and the activities of the player. By adding the feature to choose between several races at the start, it is possible to not only define the location the player starts at and the ship he’s preferably going to fly, but also to define the style of playing and the player’s long-term goals, including his impact on the persistent, dynamic world. Other possible differences can include the reaction of the player’s environment towards him, possibly biased/defined by his race’s mores, traditions and political standings to other factions and/or activities. But before one can even get to a design as complex as that can be, one has to define the fundamental mechanics underneath.
This might start to get slightly technical, as the scripting implementation of the game logic and AI also depends on the game’s design. In the case of an implementation (which is unlikely to happen, anyway), I’d like to make sure that nothing goes wrong on that end. At the bottom of everything lie the basic AI commands for ships, no matter how they’re called or executed right now. Fly to position, follow ship, attack ship, and so on. Simply by utilizing simple commands such as these, which then again consist of lower level commands utilizing vector operations etc. (I’m not into things like that), a complete assault of a faction against another one can be staged. Furthermore, if that event depends on whether certain conditions are met, it will seem realistic and logical to the player and there’ll also be room to notify the player and to give him the opportunity to join that assault or prevent the enemy faction from gaining his faction’s space, or to economically support his home faction with resources and equipment. That would then be one of the player’s temporary objectives possibly given by the game at some point or another - preferably taking quite a time.
Projecting this from the macrocosmos of the game world to the microcosmos of the player, which he is experiencing at the moment, to the bigger game world, would mean that there would be systems which two or more factions fight over for a certain time frame. The time frame and the intensity of such a conflict would be affected by economical and military factors, for instance the amount of equipment a faction can ship to support the fleet or the number of ships a particular region can summon up, the arrangement of sectors and systems across the space, which is being fought over, and the direct or indirect interventions of the player or of other factions (pirates cutting off trade and supply lines, etc.), either on one side or another.
This would require that the owner of a system or a part of the system can be changed through scripting. Sounds easy to do, but what might come up is the issue of when a system actually belongs to a faction and when it’s effectively war-torn territory. That will be a subject of discussion. These pictures are only there for clarification of what I have in mind… more or less. The global AI relationships and its impact on the player’s decisions and goals will, too, be a hot subject of discussion.
(Yes, that’s the Llama from Vegastrike, GPL)
Initiating thoughts and breakdown: Spacesims
Posted by: Sindwiller in Spacesims on January 18th, 2009
I recently got into playing the X games again, namely X3: Terran Conflict, a real gem in this sea of crap, which the world of space simulations is at the moment. Since due to the fact that there’s a recent lack of decent spacesims out there, it’s kind of obvious that one single game, even though its storyline missions have some annoying bugs, shines through. X’s design has been proven since and improved in Terran Conflict, rising it’s popularity-bar quite a bit. However, some start to think of X as a real time strategy game or merely a space shooter - or a mix of it. If you think so, you’re wrong. It’s neither. Nor is it both. The only space oriented game that I know and counts as an RTS is Homeworld, which does not have a persistent world, nor free-roaming elements, hence why it’s labeled an RTS. The fact that you can own multiple ships in X and control them through a communication console that allows you to execute AI commands (Follow me, Attack enemies, Trade wares, etc.) doesn’t mean that X is a strategy game per se. Other’s suggest the implementation of a fleet command interface, similar to RTS games’ interfaces, hence why they assume X has to be an RTS of some sort. Misunderstanding the basic concept of a free-roaming space simulation is like assuming that you’ll get a full-fledged, healthy dinner at Mc Donald’s - it’s just wrong, no, retarded.
On the other hand, X3:TC made me think about what amazes me about spacesims the most. I’ve been addicted to space since the first Escape Velocity, then the other 2 ones, which were unbelievably fine games, defining free-roaming spacesims for me, although they were 2D top-down games. It’s an incredible experience to fly around with a fleet of “merely” 5 destroyers, wiping out pirate or alien space. I got my hands on Descent: Free Space, a really compelling combat spacesim, which had top-notch graphics back in the day. Saving earth from weird alien threats was my duty! There was also Starlancer, with which the *Lancer universe started to become colorful for me. Years later, I stumbled over Freelancer, the technical sequel, but with free-roaming elements this time, eventually bought it and had lots of fun with it, especially the entraining storyline. Later the same year, I had bought a gaming magazine, just for the heck of it, which also had some free full game with the weird name “X-Gold”, which I reckoned to be some shitty retro game nobody ever heard of, thence I didn’t really care. The same year, I read about the sequel of a well-known and immerse space game, called X2: The Threat, on the Internet. I figured this X-Gold CD must contain its predecessor and thought “Hey, why don’t I give it a spin”. So the beginning was kind of 0815, “Weird controls, mmkay, probably some mission-oriented game” and then SWOOSH I don’t know where the fuck I was and then this reptile or something talks to me and he has to lend me stuff which I have to pay him back and WHAT PROFIT AAAH WHERE AM I. - That’s the element of surprise, my friend. If I could, I’d buy a game I know is good but I don’t know what it is about, and play it, just for the element of surprise. Anyway, I kind of started with X - Beyond The Frontier, didn’t play that game too long though (sadly, I can’t find my X-Gold CD anymore 
the story really rocked), then tried X-Tension, then went onto X2, a very cool game with really dumb storyline missions. I had some issues with it and X3, too, but I must say that they are really good games at their core, it’s just that Egosoft had to release fast to keep up with the deadline and they had kind of neglected some parts of the game. Terran Conflict somewhat fixes this, however there are still some bugs present. The kind of bugs you can easily find a workaround thought, so it’s not a big deal. Plus all the free-roaming aspects, the new ships and sectors (<3 Terran Cutlass) and the newly added mission system - it’s just overwhelming.
Since the beginning of my obsession with spacesims of all kinds, I’ve always wanted to make a space game myself. That’s the reason I’ll be doing some thinking and breaking down of the spacesim genre here and now and in the next posts of this Blog. Thinking and writing about crap seems to always have been my strength, which is obviously stronger than the restraint of doing something serious. Starting with my thoughts on the spacesim genre and what it should focus on, I’ll try to assemble a game design document. I’ll be trying to do this periodic to some degree, if I find the time and motivation to.
Let’s start.
Simply put, a free-roaming spacesim consists of these key elements:
- Persistent universe
- Flight and Getarounds
- Economy
- Combat
- Background story
All of those points are pretty much self-explanatory, so I don’t need to give them a closer look (yet). What really bugs me is the way how they are combined into the game. I’m talking about subtle style and story impressions given to the player to build up an atmosphere, how war can affect the economy in said persistent universe, how relations between races/factions or between the player and NPCs/factions can affect the way the player, how flight time and such can slow down your gains from trading, etc.
Let’s start with the most important thing to me: The background story and how it is linked to the universe. A link between those two are considered obvious and easy to achieve by most players and thusly by most game designers, except for the ones focused on multiplayer FPS games with or without a minimal storyline that everyone ignores anyway, because it’s of low quality and of no use in the game itself. You have to kill stuff and that’s it. In a spacesim however, a link between said two is crucial and helpful in creating a chain of tasks and events for and around the player(s). A good free-roaming space simulation can keep the player(s) busy if they’re not involved in a concrete storyline of some sort, by giving possibilities to make money, spawning events, missions, showing off new elements (aha-moment; think game play atoms). If the space the player is in is in some border region and the race the space belongs to is basically some unfriendly, violent bunch, the systems/sectors may contain lots of vibrant yet aggressive coloring, lots of nebulae and debris, frequent pirate or enemy raids and lots of military activity (or none at all). The pilots the player tries to contact may be unfriendly and in a hurry, in order to avoid pirates or enemy attacks. They may be out for the player’s cargo. Et cetera. Besides having many background story elements weaved into it, there may be an explanation for all that. Even more so, the more background information there is, the more events, elements and style accents can be utilized. It’s fun to read, fun to imagine and fun to experience. Or it should be. Some people lobby for scientific accuracy in space games. I for one give out my Ceterum Censeo for deep and thought-out space games stories and universes.
Distantly related: Economy and combat. How so? Economy affects combat, combat affects economy. Moreover, both elements haven’t received any modernization in the past decade. X Beyond The Frontier added the production factor into the dry system of supply and “demand” (or, in other, less economy-oriented space sims, “*swoosh* and the ware is there”) and introduced player driven trading and station building. X3 introduced station complexes which you can connect multiple stations with. As already noted, other games, such as Freelancer or Vegastrike (and thusly probably the old Privateer games, too) have a system with fixed trade routes between big stations which supply or demand certain wares. EVE - more an RPG than a space simulation; interesting nonetheless - on the other hand has a 98% player driven economy in and outside NPC/safe space, 2% formed by blueprints, skill books and basic junk offered by NPCs. That on the side of an MMO space sim though. If you’re asking now “Why should I look at other games”, you should also ask yourself “Why should I reinvent the wheel?”.
The innovations in combat are even fewer in number. Capital ships and semi-capital ships which are thought as gunboats to take down fighter swarms. Time get some speed and dynamics into it.
To Be Continued…