Plan for Steven "Fulkcrow" Roach
by Steven "Fulkcrow" Roach · 06/06/2002 (2:05 pm) · 1 comments
Im currently still in high school and have yet to even step foot on any major projects. Im searching to create or help create games that I would enjoy playing, games that envolve team tatics with rewards and punishments for doing so. My future is very unclear as i have yet to decided what my career should be, Iv been a national art winner for a few years now and have won many awards in Oklahoma where i live however art no longer gives me the joy it once did. I now find that after taking the CCNA i have a new found love of programing and i have been reading book after book ever since.
Truthfully my life has no plan i simply travely the road laid before me the problem seems to be that the road ends just off the distance and i seem to need a few tools to pave my own.
Truthfully my life has no plan i simply travely the road laid before me the problem seems to be that the road ends just off the distance and i seem to need a few tools to pave my own.
Anthony Pham
Might I suggest graphics programming? Coming from an art background you'd know how things should look, or how to code an engine to render light in artistic ways.
As for team tactics, the main problem with games these days is that there is no leadership on a server. However, a few current games in development have hit upon a few ideas.
Take the Natural Selection mod for Half-Life:
http://www.natural-selection.org/
or
http://www.readyroom.org/
They added real-time strategy elements in to the game, where one player can hop in to a command post, and sees the map from a top down RTS view, then give other players orders. Then those players go about following them in first person. Now, the key about their system is that an order doesn't lock the player in to doing that task, he can choose to ignore it. However, if you ignore the commander, who usually has a much broader view of the battle, he can refuse to give you upgrades, or to respawn you as a better class. Worse, your team will probably lose, because the marine side is inherently weaker than the aliens side (early on), except for their ability to coordinate and build.
On the other side, take a look at the way C&C: Renegade multiplayer plays. There is plenty of strategic depth in the game, or potential for depth with the way players have fixed structures, vehicles, different classes, and resources. But no one but veterans of the game uses that strategy. Instead, the designers had to build in loopholes in the map where uncoordinated attacks could get through (hence one upgraded engineer can easily destroy an important building).
In a future torque game I'm working on, code named Combined Arms, will combine the idea of vehicles, aircraft, strategic installations, and infantry, in to one package. Then it will be bound together by commanders, than can give orders to troops. To keep a player's freedom, he can ignore those orders, and still gain some rewards for excellent performance, but not as much than if he'd accomplished an order.
Much like you, I'm fed up with current online games that degenerate in to indivuals running around. I like the idea of accomplishing an order, and from a design standpoint, even a mundane order from another player is just another fun short term goal to accomplish. Of course, there's room for abuse, but that's what testing is for.