Re: What to do with Xconq

[Stan Shebs <shebs at shebs dot cnchost dot com>]

"James R. Dunson" wrote:

Some great ideas, thanks!!

> Perhaps some sort of code or label you can see while you choose
> your game:
> 
> * Early development [major portions of code not complete; game
>     engine may not yet support some needed functions.]
> 
> * Late development [most units, materials, sides, etc. have
>     at least a nominal, working version; game engine code supports
>     all necessary functions.]
> 
> * Alpha playtest [Game works and is playable; however, unit (& other)
>     graphics may still be temporary stand-ins, and historical
>     unit, place, etc. info (names, flags, leaders, etc.) may still
>     need work.  Play balance may still be shaky.  There is at least
>     one scenario included, which involves at some point all major
>     game pieces and concepts. Information on all units, materials,
>     etc. is available somehow, although it may not be well organized.]
> 
> * Beta playtest [Game is basically finished; fine-tuning of play
>     balance and/or historical accuracy may be still needed.  There
>     is at least one "beginner" scenario and at least one "advanced"
>     scenario available.  Doccumentation, including a "beginner's guide"
>     that goes with the beginner's scenario, is available.  A FAQ
>     has been started, although it may not have much depth yet.
>     There is some info about the AI.]
> 
> * Released [Game is "done".  FAQ is capable of answering most FAQs,
>     especially the stupid and obvious ones the designers never
>     realized anyone would need to ask.  Information on all units,
>     materials, etc. is readily available, including both in-game
>     numbers and what it/they represent in the real world (e.g.
>     100 42-gallon barrels of generic petroleum fuel, a platoon of 4
>     tanks, enough ammo for a battery to fire in support of "deliberate
>     defense" for 24 hours, a 12-being unit of centaurs, with light
>     leather barding, broadswords, heavy bows, and iron horseshoes).
>     Terrain restrictions are explained.  Procedures for manipulating
>     (gathering/producing, collecting, transferring, expending)
>     materials are explained.  There is a list of map and game
>     settings that positively or negatively affect the game play
>     (e.g., fog of war, elevations, wind, etc.); and a list of ones
>     that are not implemented.  There is a general description of
>     what increasing one side's advantage does for them, and some
>     suggestions for meaningful handicaps.  Any shortcomings of
>     the AI are set out (e.g., does not handle maps with >90% water,
>     is not good against more than one human player).  Any "cheats"
>     the AI gets are clearly stated.]

This is a great checklist!  Should definitely be applied to all the
games and used to filter out the main new game list...

> >* Unfinished subsystems.  Agreements, standing orders, morale, the
> >list goes on.  They take up space, make the code more complicated,
> >but don't do anybody any good.
> 
>   And are frustrating when you come up with an idea for a game and
> then later realize those bits don't actually work yet.

Yeah, sorry.  Please speak up about specific features you need; many
of them are easy to implement, but they go lower on the priority list
if I don't think anybody cares.

> >* Too far behind state of the art. [...]
> 
>   Agreed that it needs to not be too far behind, but I don't think
> it is.  Turn-based strategy/builder games have not actually advanced
> that far since CivI; and some of the things that are "new" in SMAC (real
> elevations, pseudo-weather) are (at least nominally) in Xconq.  (Compare
> the level of drastic change from CivI to SMAC, versus, say, Wolfenstein
> 3D to Quake.)

That's a good point.  The engine doesn't need a lot, but some things,
such as global material storage (treasury), advances, and foraging/mining
tasks are recent additions to Xconq, even though they've been present
in other games for a long time.  A more recent example is TOAW's "compose
a unit from lots of tiny pieces", which is a very slick way to create
units with unique characteristics.  Xconq doesn't have anything that
is really comparable.

> >* Genre confusion.  These days, strategy games fall into several
> >subcategories - historical wargames (TOAW), complex simulations (Civ),
> >real-time (*arcraft), and maybe strategic RPG (HOMM 3).  Xconq doesn't
> >offer strong support for any of these genres, instead falling into a
> >mushy middle of simple-ish turn-based games.
> 
>   Yes.  Xconq can do historical wargames reasonably well, to compete
> with Steel Panthers, Gettysburg, Horse & Musket, etc., but there
> are few well-developed games that take advantage of this.  Support
> for Civ-like games has recently evolved, although it seems shaky
> yet.  It doesn't do Warcraft, Command & Conquer, etc. well, but
> personally I don't care.  <soapbox> If you have to click and
> act in real time, it's a tactical game, not a strategy game;
> there are no real-time-strategy games on the market, everything
> falsely described as RTS is actually RTT. </soapbox>

One of those historical evolutions - the games were called
"strategy" before they picked up the "real-time" moniker to
distinguish a subcategory...

> Strategic
> RPG is possible, but weak; something like "Age of Wonders gone
> RPG" would probably work if someone put the work into it;
> how about something Darklands-like?  One of my favorite games,
> with little like it out these days.

Which "Darklands"?  The 1995 PC game?  There seem to be several
things by the name, at least according to Altavista...

>   I think part of the problem is the somewhat arcane user interface,
> nearly-nonexistent user docs *for the games*, combined with the labeling
> and unfinished games issues; someone gets a copy, tries out a game,
> gets frustrated fighting the interface and with units that don't
> do what they expect, and just gives up and deletes it.

Amen, and succinctly expressed!

>   This doesn't bother me much, although it would be a neat idea
> (wood and scroll look for fantasy, Star Trekish panels for SF games,
> etc.)  Unless implemented with real differences (i.e., command lag,
> fog of war, etc. tied into interface), is "eye candy", pretty but
> irrelevant.

I think people get drawn in subliminally, especially the more casual
players.

> >* Do more graphics.  The only games for which players don't care much
> >about graphics are the established old-time Unix games (Nethack) and
> >some very specialized historical wargames.  In both of these cases the
> >gameplay is very deep, with years of refinement having gone into the
> >rules (the opposite of the thrown-together-over-the-weekend Xconq
> >module!)  The current state of the art is 3D in various forms; that's
> >not necessary, but something on the order of CivCTP or RRT2 would be
> >good; isometric, 8- to 16-bit color, canned animations of rendered 3D
> >models.  This is closer than it seems; there is already a prototype
> >isometric display in Xconq for instance.
> 
>   I strongly disagree.  The work needed to produce 3D or pseudo-3D
> icons is considerable, and would be a strong barrier to game
> development.  Far too many current games made this mistake;
> people are grumbling about SMAC's and Civ:CTP's choices.  Support
> for unit facing would be helpful for some games, but little pictures
> of guys walking about the map is not what these games are about.

But I haven't heard anyone grumbling about AoE/AoK's graphics, on the
contrary they are universally admired.  There's still an artistic aspect
to icon generation, even if you use models.  One of the attractive points
about 3D models is that many exist already, while it's been harder to
find or paint good-looking images.  Extra like unit facing would make the
custom painting even harder, while with 3D you just turn the model and
render it again.

> Consider: this is *strategy*; the analog is to generals looking
> at a map; the U.S. military is spending considerable effort on
> reducing the complex, busy look of modern combat to easy-to-recognize,
> clear, information-carrying symbols.  A set of clear icons with useful
> inherent info content is far more helpful than a bunch of muddy little
> pictures that took weeks to render, time that could have gone into
> the AI, the economic or diplomatic models, etc.

If it were as simple as that, then why don't commercial games go that
way?  Commercial game developers often complain that they don't get
to do better AI, because the development budget is going into graphics.
I use commercial games as an example, because unlike our situation,
those developers have to convince people to come up with $50 for each
game, and after 25 years of doing this, they've figured out that
better graphics sells more than better AI.  So by ignoring graphics,
we put ourselves in the position of having to work harder on less-popular
features just to achieve the same degree of interest from new players.

That's not to say that if someone improves the AI and contributes some
code, that I won't add it, nor that I won't work on it myself.  But I don't
think the audience can be increased without improving the graphics.

> Some brainstormed ideas:
> 
> * Master of Magic done better, with user-definable units; [...]

I've heard of this, but never played it - what's it like generally?

> * Something like Ogre/GEV, where you have the ability to spend
> points out of a unit mix to pick your forces, and one or more
> sides gets to pre-place them on the map.  (In fact, something
> very much like Ogre/GEV would be a pretty good choice for Xconq.)

A setup phase would be a moderately large change, but doable -
process is similar to online design...

> * A multi-scale game, where players could "zoom in" on critical
> battles and handle them on a new map. [...]

This is the kind of thing I'd really like to do too, and it would
definitely be attention-getting!  The practical problem is that
it's such a large project it would need some more people adding to
Xconq than at present; either people on this list, or new "recruits".
How do you get the new people?  By making Xconq more popular!  Kind
of a chicken-and-egg problem...

> As for what I can do, I'm not a particularly good coder, especially
> when it comes down to nitty-gritty hardware stuff.
> I'm reasonably good at game design, and play balancing/testing (I
> do a lot of playtesting for pen-and-paper RPGs like GURPS); I
> have some background in HCI (Human-Computer Interaction)
> and multimedia interface design.

Hmmm, didn't we just talk about how all those games in the library
are unfinished? :-) Would you like to pick one or two to complete?
If you need features in the code, let me know and I can add them.

Stan