This is an idea for an RTS game with a prehistoric atmosphere. The game takes place in a fantasy world where humans still have Paleolithic technology. The world has two continents: a northern continent with a temperate climate where mammals such as saber-toothed cats and woolly mammoths are the dominant lifeforms, and a tropical southern continent where dinosaurs and other reptiles are dominant. Each of the two continents also has its own species of human. The northern continent is populated by the stocky, light-skinned Neanderthals, and the southern continent by the slender, dark-skinned Sapients (Homo sapiens). You begin the game with a village of either Neanderthals or Sapients. Your citizens need to gather one of three resources: food (which can come from berry bushes, wild animals, or dead enemies), building materials (from either trees or the skeletons of animals and dead enemies), and stone for your weapons. Food is the resource you need to keep an eye on the most, for each unit you train consumes food over time. If your food supplies dwindle below a certain threshold, your units' health will suffer. Your tribe's resources are stockpiled in a special structure called the Storage Hut. You need to guard this structure carefully, for enemies can destroy it and steal the resources stored within. You build up your army by sending citizens created at your Town Center to military structures where they will be trained into warriors. Citizens can also be trained into medicine men, who can heal your units, convert enemy units, and domesticate certain wild animals. Warriors and medicine men consume food at a faster rate than ordinary citizens. Nature plays a more important role in this game than in other RTSes. The game world is teeming with many hostile wild animals which may attack your citizens and war bands. You'll also have to contend with weather such as storms (which can damage your buildings and units). On the plus side, certain terrains, such as tall grass and forests, can hide your units from your enemies' sight, allowing you to prepare ambushes. As stated earlier, there are two playable species, Neanderthals and Sapients. Neanderthals are physically stronger and are better at enduring bad weather, whereas Sapients are faster and consume food at a slower rate. Neanderthal medicine men can tame mammals, while Sapient medicine men can tame reptiles and birds. The game's natural world will be more realistic than in other RTSes. Herds of herbivores will roam the map, followed by packs of carnivores. Herbivores and carnivores will fight each other. Animals will reproduce, mature, and die of old age. Animal Species (northern continent) Woolly mammoth Woolly rhinoceros Bison Megaloceros Wild boar Brontotherium Mastodon Wolf Smilodon Cave hyena Lion Aepyornis Gastornis Teratornis Animal species (southern continent Apatosaurus Brachiosaurus Triceratops Stegosaurus Ankylosaurus Anatotitan Iguanodon Parasaurolophus Deinonychus Allosaurus Tyrannosaurus rex Dinopithecus Gigantopithecus

You've given a lot of specific details, but left out quite a bit of the big picture? Is this a 4x RTS? If so, (which it seems it is), how do you build, how do you mine each resource, are there any twists to the generic AoE system, etc.

No offense, but all it seems that's different about this game (as described) from generic RTSs is an emphasis on PvE over PvP. The tech tree seems to be nonexistent, although it could be simply because you didn't expand on it, and the unit selection seems correspondingly restricted.

If this is a fantasy area, have cave mine riding mammoths, throwing spears left and right. Have giant lizard riders, and trained attack apes. You could even have a cool 'domestication' system, where by taming enough of one animal, you can recruit that unit from certain buildings. I like the idea of teching by taking control of the environment; you could expand a ton of early game power to tame 10 mammoths and start making mammoth riders, or easily tame 10 different specifies and have a more diverse force.

doomhascome, youseem to be a little over concerned about the specific gameplay specifications. Kahotep's approach is perfectly legitimate, but rather than think too much about how the tech tree works or specific balance issues, it's evolving organically out of the atmosphere. I think this is a perfectly good approach, it lets more interesting things pop up, little things that don't seem to necessarily need to be there but make things richer and more interesting.

Your point is valid and well taken. My point (which I agreeably could have expressed better) was that he gave quite a bit of specificity on the PvE side, with very little on game mechanics. I felt that given the specificity he was dealing with, naming individual units and abilities, specific advice would be the most valuable.

The simplicity is fine for broad strokes and getting people interested, but if you expect people to join a team and help develop the game, you're going to need to flesh out every single little detail, down to the way the user interface will look and which mouse button will select units and which will move them.

If you're just running a design idea by the people of gamedev.net, it looks good. It sounds interesting that's for sure.

Although, if you plan every little detail, you'll indubitably run into some issues with some features just plain not working. You might actually be better off going in with a high concept and a slew of features than a completely fleshed out game design document with every little mechanic tuned and balanced. As long as you come up with a core mechanic that works and is fun, things can evolve out of that. I mean, look at Mario, that started out as a game where you play as Popeye and you have to rescue Olive Oyl (and was later adapted into the better known Donkey Kong), but the general mechanic was fun enough that it just grew into a whole 16 level game full of secrets and surprises.

Quote:Original post by Kahotep
The game's natural world will be more realistic than in other RTSes. Herds of herbivores will roam the map, followed by packs of carnivores. Herbivores and carnivores will fight each other. Animals will reproduce, mature, and die of old age.

Ah, I always like to see basic ecosystem ideas being tabled. You'll be at it for a while trying to develop and balance a stable equilibrium-capable system, but thar be gold here somewhere...

Quote:Original post by Kahotep
Animal species (southern continent
Apatosaurus
Brachiosaurus
Triceratops
Stegosaurus
Ankylosaurus
Anatotitan
Iguanodon
Parasaurolophus
Deinonychus
Allosaurus
Tyrannosaurus rex
Dinopithecus
Gigantopithecus

So, largely stock dinosaurs? (nothing necessarily wrong with that, btw)

You've probably grabbed the Deinonychus as an attempt to include a stock JP-Velociraptor-equivalent, but denoting a specifically larger species tells me that you're at least somewhat interested in palaeontological accuracy. The Deinonychus weren't quite the size of the Jurassic Park raptors, either, though - I'm pretty sure none of the Velociraptorinae were 2 metres (~6ft?) tall.

Also, Deinonychus (and most (all?) other raptors) had feathers.



[wink]

There's a whole list of raptors over at Wikipedia, though - maybe you can find something suitable there. My next stab would've been the Utahraptor, but apparently it's a bit too big - looks sweet, though.



Anyway, all of this is forgetting that we're talking about a game. Maybe the best approach is to pull out your artistic license - maybe your dinosaurs are different, or somesuch. You're talking about a fantasy world, so while you're largely drawing from dinosaurs, you could throw in all kinds of kooky ideas from left-field as long as you can balance them all out sufficiently. Hell, you probably should.


Also, you're going to have to explain why all these vicious lizards, living in the same time as those cuddly mammals up north, don't just decide to spread into the north like an Eldritch plague and wipe out everything they find; and also why the homo sapiens choose to live among such terrifying creatures; and finally, how the two human species ever come to conflict given their geological displacement from each other. Personally, I'd rethink a lot of it - palaeontological kitchen sinks are a lot of fun, but it will more likely work best with a more convincing (and functional, since you intend on simulating this ecosystem) variety of species.

Those are my thoughts, anyway.

[Edited by - Fenrisulvur on November 1, 2009 8:40:32 PM]

It's a lot easier to get other developers involved from a professional stand-point when you flesh out as much as possible so that it doesn't look like you simply had a whim to make a game and typed up a 1000 word description. Design documents can certainly be flexible when a feature turns out to be wrong for the game, but the fact that it's documented and described makes the coding/content-creation/etc so much quicker and easier.

The easier it is to visualize YOUR idea, the quicker the realization and the more accurate the interpretation will be. If you say stone-age RTS, I may think Fred Flintstone and you may think Jurassic Park, but by fleshing out exactly what you want, it's a lot easier to distinguish between the different ideas. And as I said, there's always room for improv.