Imagine you had an RPG mixed with a Civilization type game. You''d start out as a grunt, and have the potential of ending up as world ruler. Assuming you''d ever want to play this (or that you''re still reading), how would this work? What would be some of the problems? It occurs to me that anytime you mix genres you have to have a common thread. You need to prevent players from feeling like they''re playing 2 (or more) different games. This means a consistent interface, viewpoint, controls, and gameplay. Another thing is that if you make a hybrid, it would seem that it has to offer something that can''t be found in the constituent genres. Otherwise, your player would just go play a game in the genre (i.e, a pure RPG or Civilization game). So here''s how I could see this working: At any level, you''d get to do the same thing. Only the scale would be different. That means if you''re hacking & slashing on a dungeon map, it''s got to be the similar(in terms of control and number of units) when youre the king moving armies on a global map. NPC conversation gets handled with the same interface, and becomes diplomacy later on. Inventory management becomes resource management in a way. (Thankfully, money can be pretty much universal) Problems? AI is ugly, unless it''s used to thinking about the map in terms of a grid and units, and doesn''t care if it''s hallways or canyons it''s dealing with. Player expectations? Players used to RPGs may turn their noses up at strategy, and vice versa. (Sometimes I think we''ve been walled into genre ghettos and have been made to be afraid of trying new things) Thoughts? "It''ll never work, you''re crazy" flames? -------------------- Just waiting for the mothership...

Sounds like Elite/Frontier etc... I loved those games, I wish someone would write a new one ... almost exactly the same, but smarter enemies and better graphics ...

Merrick

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"Children come to us in a state of purity and perfection from the great undifferentiated absolute and then, like everything else on this planet, we fuck them up."

Just a thought Wavinator,
Instead of changing the scale and style of play you can control the kind what about simply adding more characters to the player party until it litteraly counts thousands.

I imagine something like a isometric interface, which is zoomed in such that it just can show all the selected characters.

So when you select an army of your party with you mouse then the camara zoom out and you control more.

So in the beginning you control one character and latter armies - this way with the same interface. In fact, you could take control individually of a single soldier during large battles.

This way "diplomacy" is nothing but a single character meeting wirh the enemy and doing normal NPC conversation. It isn''t the whole army talking.

Jacob Marner

quote:Original post by morfe

Sounds like Elite/Frontier etc... I loved those games, I wish someone would write a new one ... almost exactly the same, but smarter enemies and better graphics ...

To tell the truth, I prefer the gameplay of Elite over Frontier. At least I had some serious combat in Elite, while Frontier when you''re attacked you pause, see where they are coming from and hope to destroy them in milisseconds before they blow you in pieces with those damn white or yellow lasers (not to mention encountering an Imperial Explorer right in the start of the game - something I think happened WAY to many times).

Damn... I think that even I couldn''t make a game with that many bugs

Gaiomard Dragon
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quote:Original post by CodePlayEatSleep

You are on a roll this morning man!

It''s not me, it''s the $%^! caffiene!

quote:
I had the same idea, except it was a space/rpg game. Where the player start out as a captain, controlling a single junk-ass ship. As he progress he gains power/fame/money the usual... Along the way he could choose to join the military, become a merc, a pirate, or whatever the hell he feels like doing (well not everything). If the player has enough credits, they could build stations, planetery base, space fleets. In theory I guess if the player plays long eough he/she should be able to take over the game world. Conquering different star system, planets...

Yes! This is actually what I''m working on now, a SF RPG/empire game. Good to know there''s someone else out there!

Have you ever played the Mac game Escape Velocity? It''s got butt ugly graphics, but it''s fun as heck and there''s a point at which you can grow strong enough to take over the galaxy (or at least hold a big sector hostage ). I used to be a PC-only gaming snob until I played that game. Even if you can just borrow a Mac, you should try it:

quote:
Combat:
It can happen in space, on your ship(maybe not that detailed), on a planets...

I have a scheme. If I can get an RTS engine working right, I can get it to display RPG content (think Rage of Mages). If I can imbed maps within maps, then I can do: boarding actions during ship to ship combat; building combat during base/city combat.... ahhhh... it may all be impossible, but I''m not givin'' up till they pry my keyboard from my cold, dead fingers!!!!!!

quote:
Rendering:
I think 2D with 3D sprite would work for this game. Could go full 3D tho.

I''m irrationally attached to iso perspective. It just seems that you can have so many different types of gameplay if you leave the perspective alone and concentrate on changing the avatar. For instance, if the control scheme is the same, then it''s natural to fly a ship to a planet, leave the bridge, get into a terrain vehicle, drive somewhere, and get out and walk around. At least it seems that way...

quote:
A.I
Hard??? Maybe so maybe not.

Bloody evil. Actually, it depends on what you want it to do. I''m actually looking for more stuff than just combat, so that increases the difficulty tenfold. It''s not just a question of when and how to fight (which has been well researched) but how to do noncombat activities as well.

quote:
Well, I''m off to bed...

Well at least one of us has some common sense!!!




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Just waiting for the mothership...

quote:Original post by felonius

Just a thought Wavinator,
Instead of changing the scale and style of play you can control the kind what about simply adding more characters to the player party until it litteraly counts thousands.

This is interesting, but wouldn''t you be changing the style of play as well? I guess it might depend on how detailed your units were, but my fear would be that you''d end up doing something at the end of the game that was dissimilar from what you started out doing.

I can see you running into some management problem, which is why I was thinking that you should be limited to so many "counters" and that these "counters" represented 1 unit, or 10 units, or 100, etc. So you could have as many units as you liked, but no

quote:
I imagine something like a isometric interface, which is zoomed in such that it just can show all the selected characters.

You know, these games that are coming out that let you zoom from orbit all the way down to a flower may call for exactly this sort of thing. If there''s a way to automatically turn units into unit groups at each zoom level I could see this working.

Now, combat resolution wil be another matter altogether...

quote:
So in the beginning you control one character and latter armies - this way with the same interface. In fact, you could take control individually of a single soldier during large battles.

I like more the idea of always being a single unit. This way, if you work your way up from a grunt to a great leader who charges at the head of his army, the feeling will still be the same. (Of course, with rank comes privledge, namely that of sitting on your backside while other people spill their blood...)

quote:
This way "diplomacy" is nothing but a single character meeting wirh the enemy and doing normal NPC conversation. It isn''t the whole army talking.

I hadn''t thought of this. Good point. Have to think about this some more...


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Just waiting for the mothership...