EFS Remake

a place to discuss it

Moderators: Deathifier, Sukayo

1eyedparrot
Infantery
Posts: 8
Joined: Thu Feb 16, 2006 2:01 am

EFS Remake

Postby 1eyedparrot » Thu Feb 16, 2006 10:24 pm

I sent this email to Kat(runs the webring). I've had no response so i'm posting it here. If anyone from Nova and the Hyperion groups still frequents this site, send me an email @ thompson.132@wright.edu after reading this. Thank you.

Hi,

My name is Patrick Thompson, I have played EFS on and off for a number
of years, often modifying it myself. I have, working now, a simple,
tile, Java game engine that I am working on. My intent to is remake
EFS using the Java platform. Before I get too deep with this email, I
intend on remaking this for my own reasons regardles. However I was
looking to see how much interest and or people were left who would
still be interested in playing, perhaps helping in the project. A few
facts of what is acclomplished so far-

What is has-
The engine is coming up nicely, it is windowed and can be maximized
and minimized. It has a splash screen, control and resource panels,
and even a rudimentary tiling panel for the main show. I am working on
creating the space map also.

I have several, many many ideas on what to change, modify, completely
alter that I am considering. I do not have an official design document
ready, just a text file with a lot of unorganized ideas. Some of these
are:

Cities with multiple tiles; remember Byzantium II? Now imagine on the
game map actaully having a single city(residencial districts,
factories, etc..) spread over several tiles. Cities this size would be
mega cities, of course smaller one tile cities(or towns, ?) would
exist in many places as simple trading route outposts, raw materials
exploitation, etc.

Cities would be made up of mostly residencial tiles, these residencial
tiles would all have a mix of industrial output, manufactured
materials production(chemicals, cermastel, etc..). These would be
dependant on your house's current technologies and how they would be
built into such city tiles(simple upgrade or intentional building?) I
have not fully determined.

SuperScaler structures would exist. I envision these as gargantuam
Second Republic industrial works, it would be akin to the previous
game. Example, a factory tile, it is an entire tile(several
kilometers, exact measurement unknown) covered in industrial
production work. A single one of these would have 10x the production
power of even a mega city that offers significant industrialization in
each city tile.

These SuperScale structures would be rare, most found would need long
repairs before going online again.

Resources, large revisions here, and a lot of unknowns. Do we keep
existing ways and means on these? Do we really build chemical,
electronic, biochemical, etc.. facilities? If we do build these, once
again are these click and built into city tiles, do we allow
SuperScale structures of these? What exactly is the impact of these
more advanced refined resources in the industrial output of a
technological advanced society?

As detailed above, I am looking to make EFS into a more realistic
simulation of imperial ways. Are we going to seriously believe that
any advanced economy can be built on the backs of fuedalic lands with
serfs and cows?

I see a more Roman imperial economic system with a fuedal backdrop. We
still have lords, dukes, barons, but also commerce and trade are the
corner stones of a succesful economy.

Would leaders, as the Noble of a great House, recruit engineers and
workers
ourselves and commision them to build a mine? Or perhaps, zone a metal
rich area for construction. Authorize the closest city to organize
engineers and workers to go there and start construction. A compromise
of the two? Allow capitalism but only with the authority of their
fuedal masters?

I have some thoughts on technology as well. Instead of researching new
technology, the goal is to reverse engineer old(far more advanced)
Second Republic technology. War golems, powered armor capable of
spaceflight, huge star cruisers and dreadnaughts, tens of kilometer
wide industrial giant complexes, etc.. Your house discovers these old
technologies through exploration, conquest, trading with the guild.

Army thoughts, with the revamped production design(creating as many
units as per the industrial output of the city can produce per turn) I
see smaller units being built with the goal of creating a taskforce
dynamic. Orders are: Squad(100 men, 25 vehicles) built in cities,
Company(when 10 Squads are in the same tile), Battalin(10 Companies),
Regiment(10 Battalins), Division(10 Regiments). Or something similiar.
The purpose of these is that they fight as an army, instead of just
calculation attack and defense values for each unit during the fight,
the combat to occur would be coded and designed to simulate a real
Regiment or Company fighting. It would evaluate and incur penalties and
benefits based on logic as infantry lines, infantry shielding for
vehicles, suppression fire from vehicles. Not so detailed, but designed
in an abstract way to simulate it.

I can see planned battles, for example: you right click on a tile
contained an enemy Regiment of heavy infantry. A context menu appears
beside the tile, there are a few options, one of them is to plan a
battle. You click that and a list pops up of nearby friendly units
close enough to attack it, artillery, ranged space, and air support
that are in range to bombard right before the attack. Etc..

This being not a 3D game, and really not that visual. I have thought of
using the EFS way of showing units. Using the same type of cards. For
instance, when you bring up the profile of a Space Dreadnaught the
picture next to the specs/history should be this mammoth city killer
wafting in space. I see the start ships as being very, very huge
(Dreadnaught being 9 kilometers in length?). Ships built to last
centuries, they can be defeated, turrets and hulls shot up so much that
the crew is mostly dead, the engines fail and the ship basically dies.
But the derelict hulk remains to be salvaged, to be refurbished and
refitted. I definitly see this for Dreadnaughts. Also, less casualties
in each fight. In EFS one side usually only retreats when most of their
units are dead. Instead how about a situation more of, they flee
because their line breaks, their morale fails. Make it more about
position than straight death ratio.

I don't know, a lot has to be worked out.

If you still have contacts within the EFS community, please see if
they, or you as well, would be interested in assisting me with a design
document. There is far, far too much to work out and be thought over
for it to be a simple process.

Well that is all, my regards.

-Patrick

Looney
Fighter pilot
Posts: 31
Joined: Wed Mar 31, 2004 1:01 am
Location: Vernon
Contact:

Re: EFS Remake

Postby Looney » Fri Feb 17, 2006 12:56 am

Awesome! I'd love to help, though my capabilities are limited.
Some people think good graphics make a good game. Good people think good graphics only make a good game better.

Grimly Fiendish 2
Assault Legionnaire
Posts: 89
Joined: Wed Jun 15, 2005 1:01 am

Re: EFS Remake

Postby Grimly Fiendish 2 » Fri Feb 17, 2006 6:32 pm

I like your ideas about units and dreadnoughts. And you are right about the economy needing a fuller resolution.

Of course the universe of EFS is not meant to be a medieval galaxy: think more the European Renaissance with the Byzantines and the Romans still ruling their remnant empires far away, with the Huns/Mongols/Turks marauding in the East while in the West new lands beckon. Trade and tech are developed but secretive and tightly controlled; instead of mass consumerism driving tech, think luxury goods and personal armies. The current game only pretends to show all this.

Great to hear you have an engine to work with!

Mjolnir420
Fighter pilot
Posts: 34
Joined: Sat Mar 11, 2006 2:01 am

Re: EFS Remake

Postby Mjolnir420 » Sun Mar 19, 2006 12:44 am

not familiar with JAVA but I am familiar with HTML and had some training in C++ I would same I am probably capable of doing gruntwork I.E. the tedious repetitive tasks that people who can work on the engine or do graphics would be better off not wasting time on... Mainly just want to make sure this project doesn't flop and maybe get few of my own ideas in there...

1eyedparrot
Infantery
Posts: 8
Joined: Thu Feb 16, 2006 2:01 am

Re: EFS Remake

Postby 1eyedparrot » Sun Mar 19, 2006 3:04 am

Hey all,

I WILL finish this remake(even if just for personal enjoyment), the community is smaller than I expected however. If you feel you can/want to help out email me: thompson.132@wright.edu , i'm really looking for designers(really you would just be debating with me and the other designer(s)(if any) about what should this do, do we do this? etc..), ARTISTS'! Definitly need people who with some art skills, all art for this remake will be either unit picture art, tile art, gui art, and simple 2D animations(like nuclear mushroom cloud, tracer fire, dust cloud, explosions, etc..), and if any music people want to help out that would be good too.

I do have a design doc that I am working up, just to note: there will be at least 2 months of design work simply because SO MUCH has to be re-thought, re-worked, re-designed. So people to shoot the shit with are a must.

Also, I would like to see if it is at possible to try and stir up interest for the remake, get a bigger crowd.

Anyways, thats all.

lycurgus33
Tank commander
Posts: 19
Joined: Tue Mar 07, 2006 2:01 am

Re: EFS Remake

Postby lycurgus33 » Tue Mar 21, 2006 11:17 pm

Well, I'm working on a bachelor's of economics, so I guess how I could contribute is to evaluate different capital expansion (basically city and labs production rates, and "engineer unit" (ie new city builder) production rates) paths and unit upkeep costs relative to how a house expands and grows over time.

And then playtest and offer suggestions.

bradumba
Tank commander
Posts: 13
Joined: Fri May 19, 2006 1:01 am

Re: EFS Remake

Postby bradumba » Mon May 22, 2006 7:33 am

So I would be more then willing to help out my programming isn’t the best but I have a knack for bring up unusually but important things such as considering having a more developed noble family structure. Like having a family tree, marring off daughters to seal an alliance things like that and I would be willing to be a tester as well.

pjtr
Infantery
Posts: 2
Joined: Wed Jun 07, 2006 1:01 am

Re: EFS Remake

Postby pjtr » Wed Jun 07, 2006 12:29 pm

Sorry, I posted this in the wrong forum part..

Please note that I have never played EFS longer than 3 turns, so my opinion may not fit the audience of this game.

"I can see.."

From my experience as a ( hobby play by email ) game designer I would recommend You to make things more simple than more complicated.

Game depth is not necessarily given by the complexity of the game engine ( i.e. number of technologies, movement possibilities, trade goods ). Too often, tedious micromanagment spoils the fun of the game, or game balance issues either make one strategy the best or do not allow any player to win ( the "endless war" scenario ). Especially if You want to create a multiplayer game, these things must be taken into consideration.

In my opinion such a game has a good chance to take off - but right now I see the danger of the 'talking the project' into the grave.

My suggestions:

Present a simple (!) concept at the beginning, which can be extended later on. Do not loose Yourself into details, but outline on which level of detail You want to create the game world, and how You want to bring strategy/tactics/player interaction into play. Again: the simpler, the better. Make the blueprints for Your game engine ( one program or host/client solution? ). In short: Make and publish a work plan for the project.

I hope that helped a little,

Piotr ( iyhael@yahoo.de )

Grimly Fiendish 2
Assault Legionnaire
Posts: 89
Joined: Wed Jun 15, 2005 1:01 am

Re: EFS Remake

Postby Grimly Fiendish 2 » Thu Jun 08, 2006 7:37 pm

All true!

1eyedparrot
Infantery
Posts: 8
Joined: Thu Feb 16, 2006 2:01 am

Re: EFS Remake

Postby 1eyedparrot » Wed Aug 09, 2006 6:19 pm

Hey guys! Still here and still working on this. I sent an email with attachments containing notes and an early build of the tiling engine to some of the members who contacted me earlier, can't upload anything right now but if anyone else wants to see it just leave a reply with your email or send me an email at thompson.132@wright.edu

Mjolnir420
Fighter pilot
Posts: 34
Joined: Sat Mar 11, 2006 2:01 am

Re: EFS Remake

Postby Mjolnir420 » Fri Aug 11, 2006 1:53 pm

If you sent anything to me, I didn't get it... I would like to do what i can

1eyedparrot
Infantery
Posts: 8
Joined: Thu Feb 16, 2006 2:01 am

Re: EFS Remake

Postby 1eyedparrot » Fri Aug 11, 2006 6:16 pm

Well whats your email?

Russell
Noble
Posts: 239
Joined: Thu Feb 10, 2000 2:01 am
Location: USA

Re: EFS Remake

Postby Russell » Sat Aug 12, 2006 5:18 pm

Hi, my e-mail is kebooo@hotmail.com, and I am certainly interested in any kind of remake. I do hope any remake allows the user many of the options we have now in terms of editing it.

Mjolnir420
Fighter pilot
Posts: 34
Joined: Sat Mar 11, 2006 2:01 am

Re: EFS Remake

Postby Mjolnir420 » Sun Aug 13, 2006 12:20 am

Jroxbury@mix.wvu.edu ---> pretend i didnt just post that on a public forum

1eyedparrot
Infantery
Posts: 8
Joined: Thu Feb 16, 2006 2:01 am

Re: EFS Remake

Postby 1eyedparrot » Tue Aug 15, 2006 6:37 pm

Close to finishing another build, i'll wait and send that out to you guys when I finish it.


Return to “Fixing it ourself”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 10 guests