Quote:Original post by Pxtl
Remember the lesson of MOO3: even if you hide complexity under the hood, its still complexity. The player wants to know how thigns actually work so they can plan based on that. Plus, by spending time coding hidden complexities, you increase the difficulty of balancing and creating the game without adding any perceived value.

MOO3's complexity hiding in action ;)

There is most definitely a desire for some of the more mathematically inclined players to spreadsheet out values and figure out the internal computations. To them, I say too bad. I'd rather serve the much larger group who simply want to understand enough to play the game well, and accurate text descriptions serve that purpose.

As far as the level of internal complexity, that's another debate, and depends greatly on the system in question. Certainly, frivilous simulation should be reduced and abstracted, but one can argue that detailed simulation can provide interactions that would not be possible with more simplified systems. Either way, my post was simply about hiding that complexity from the player.

Again, thanks for the attention

Some answers first:

Quote:Original post by Edward Ropple

I'm of the "if it ain't broke don't fix it" mindset.

Sorry about what i am going to say but if everyone was thinking like you then we would be still living into caves! For me ,at least, evolution of something is a very good motivation to get busy with it. Even if all the evolution is just to go 1/10 of a step forward or to just improve something existing it worths working with. Even if this wont work out then... its ok nobody gets hurt. I will just have learned some more programming (experience is what makes a good programmer) and the next will know some more good and bad ideas about the subject.
Dont misunderstand me... ;-)

Quote:Original post by nuvem

Just a little note about simplicity: It only needs to be simple for the player.

Quote:Original post by pxtl

The player wants to know how thigns actually work so they can plan based on that. Plus, by spending time coding hidden complexities, you increase the difficulty of balancing and creating the game without adding any perceived value.

I agree with pxtl: it doesnt worth making the best-most innovating-most sophisticated managing system if the user doest even know about it! Work by the programmer is supposed to be done in order (1)to make the users life easier, (2)to make the game more robust and (3)to make the game more interesting. (Not all objectives were presented here)

So nice things now (the game stuff):

The specific game is not that complex as it may be presented now. To explain myself: the stats for each unit will be:

• fatigue, that will affect the speed and fighting ability in form of current fatigue/maximum fatigue, something like energy that will be reduced by running and constant fighting
  
• strength, that will affect the fighting ability if form of energy (see fatigue) that will be reduced by armor, weapon etc weight
  
• experience points, that will affect fighting ability and will increase while fighting, while the increase depends the enemy XPs meaning that if the units doesnt fight for a long time or fight with a unit with significantly (sorry if i have misspelled it...) lower XPs (ie 3000 against 500 (!)). Of course the decrease rate will be very low so that units dont lose XPs for just sleeping one night(!) but also in order to keep interest so that the user doesnt send always his best troops to resolve battles.
  
• health, that will be in form of energy, meaning healable. It will be decrease if dodged, hit by a hammer that will not kill him, a bow that hit him at the shoulder etc.
  
• hit points(why? why? why?), that will not be healable and will specify the "power" needed by someone to kill him. So, if a hit (swords, lances etc will have infitive HPs attack that will kill a unit no matter how many HPs it has, or something like that (very great creatures ,ie dragons, may need several "killing" hits)) wont kill him it will reduce his health.
  

The weight:

Each item carried by a unit will have weight and volume so that a cart carrying 10 villagers will run faster than carrying ten hammer-men as of course the hammer-men will carry heave armors and the heavy hammers. Also carts may carry armors, weapons etc and the cant carry ie 20 swords maximum OR 20 hammers maximum! It may only carry 5 hammers (for this example) as a hammer takes up four times the space of a sword.

The Mounts!:

Units may be mounted meaning that they can mount a horse, unicorn, camels, pegasus, wolfs(!), dragons(!), elephants, etc. Of course a tamer (in a way of animal trainer equiv to the barracks trainer) will have to tame the horses, camels, elephants BUT BUT BUT BUT he will have to find ,if any in the map, the other mounts. So you may produce as many horses you want but you must be lucky if you find lets say a dragon. Of course it would be easier to tame some "Dire Wolves" that would be more in a map than a dragon but a dragon can fly and spit fire(not the ww spitfire airplane ;-))...
Of course the unit is not bound to the mount meaning that the mount or unit can die without having both to die or that the unit can unmount the mount.

Thats all for now, i will come back...
If you want to help me with 3D models or artwork OR know where to look or you know someone that wants please let me know! costasgr43@yahoo.com

Quote:Original post by costasgr43

Quote:Original post by nuvem

Just a little note about simplicity: It only needs to be simple for the player.

Quote:Original post by pxtl

The player wants to know how thigns actually work so they can plan based on that. Plus, by spending time coding hidden complexities, you increase the difficulty of balancing and creating the game without adding any perceived value.

I agree with pxtl: it doesnt worth making the best-most innovating-most sophisticated managing system if the user doest even know about it! Work by the programmer is supposed to be done in order (1)to make the users life easier, (2)to make the game more robust and (3)to make the game more interesting. (Not all objectives were presented here)

My point was not that you hide everything, simply that if you're going to have a complex model, don't inundate players with stats. My suggestion being that consistant text descriptions can be used to make the game mechanics far more understandable, while maintaining the benefits of the system underneath. What those benefits are is entirely dependent on the system in question.

In Halo2 for example, there's no number telling me the exact % of shield I have, no information screen telling me for each weapon how much damage each bullet does and how many rounds/s it fires, or how accurate it is. Complex simulation, simple UI.

Weird, i'm seeing here lot's of not so positive opinions about large/epic armies, 200+ units. I had the feeling larger armies would be more fun.

I for one would love a game in the line of Lord of the Rings with huge armies. The unit's control didn't have to be too complex since most of them would be of the same type, and most would just be grunts with close to no special skills at all(the clay of the army ).

What i thought would be fun was, having a sorceror or something cast diferent spells in diferent parts of the army, depending on factors like, if that part of the army was being flanked, if it was under siege from archers, if chavelary charged them, or they got any negative buffs from the other sorcerors. The complexity would pretty much come down to a few key units.

With a small army places that are good for ambushes just aren't ambushy enough i mean, here they are crossing a canyon, well if there are archers up there, the army is so small that just pulling back the intire army will cost them next to nothing, plus since the armies are small, there won't be many archers up there to begin with. Things like flanking just aren't that much possible, the army isn't large enough, there are no local strategies, the battle doesn't take long enough for us to even enjoy it. You guys ever played Warcraft III? A battle between two big armies would be decided in a few seconds, that's it.

Micro management could just go out the window, most micro management tactics could be easily coded in the AI of the game. When a unit is getting too weak, leave for a bit(to possibly lose any melle attackers) and come back, ranged attackers focus fire on a single unit preferably the weaker ones, implement auto heal, or auto whatever other skill some non-key unit might have, and we have some pretty decent MM.

Something in the line of Starcraft/Warcraft, but bigger!

[Edited by - xor on December 8, 2004 6:52:40 AM]