Sharing Inspiration from Remake Journey

all the talk around the remake

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TKComposition
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Sharing Inspiration from Remake Journey

Postby TKComposition » Sat Jul 08, 2017 11:11 pm

I thought I'd share a few of the inspiration I've come across while working on a remake/clone. I've been reading way more than I've been coding, and so I'm really just getting to rendering the game world now. I've been reading about a lot of game development experiences and I've filled many pages in my game journal thus far. I hope someone finds some of these as interesting and enjoyable as I have. They've influenced my thoughts on the redesign I have in mind. I've also read the wish list and many of the posts on this forum.

1. http://gameaccessibilityguidelines.com/ - great information on ways to make your game accessible to gamers of all abilities.

2. http://www.checkmarkgames.com/2012/03/b ... me-ai.html - Great blog series, with videos, on building AI into Advanced Wars like game.

3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fy0aCDmgnxg - great video on making game user interfaces more jucy (fun). Checkmarkgames also applied this to their Shattered Throne game; http://www.checkmarkgames.com/2012/09/

4. Also inspired by Shattered Throne, House specific power-ups that can be used when they reach certain thresholds. This may be another way to balance late game so strategy still matters.
- al-Malik might get double (maybe 1.5) Research points for a turn
- Hazat might get double attack stength (maybe 1.5) for a turn
- Hawkwood might get a 100% production bonus (maybe 50%) for a turn
- Decados might get double move points (maybe 1.5) for a turn
- LiHalan might heal up to 50% health of all units instantly
- other options might be finish building units immediately (maybe only with less than 3 left to build), finish research immediately (or maybe 300pts of research), etc.

5. I was reading several articles about making choice matter in games and making the player make choices throughout the game. I have so many bookmarks I'm not going to list them, but the inspiration is to provide different ways to win the game. So far I've come with
- Conquer/Exterminate the Symbiot; so maybe if you conquer their planets and eliminate their threat you may get the popular vote
- Conquer and hold X planets for Y turns; meaning no enemies on the planet. This may require no completely invisible units or a way to expose them, like a satelite array or something.
- Win over the Vau. I've sort of decided to make the Vau relic hunters. So in addition to maps they would be willing to trade relics for mercenary services. I've also kind of hypothesized that the Vau can use the jump gates to go directely to any planet.

TODO: Different ways to lose

6. Along the same lines as the previous item, offices shouldn't be meaningless other than the resources they provide. So here's the thought
- Reagant ~ grants production bonus to structures and experience bonus to units
- Fleet ~ grants attack bonus to all units
- Stigmata ~ gratns defense bonus to all units
- Eye ~ grants research bonus to all labs; also give them Stealth Raider ships from the very beginning of the game

7. something else I've been bouncing around is to minimize research a bit and add something like a talent tree the player would be locked into and get to build up over time. Maybe this could share the same build up as power-ups so the player would have to choose unlocking a talent or the power up. Once you pick a tree you'd have to live with the choices the rest of the game. Examples I've thought of so far might be
- A preference toward foot combat with talents that may double movement points of foot units from base, increase their damage, reduce their damage taken, etc.
- A preference toward track/wheel/hover with talents to reduce their cost, allow them to move over more types of terrain, etc.
- A preference toward air/space with talents increase research, a bombard bonus, cost reduction, maybe extra fuel, etc.

8. To make Sect matter, each Sect should have their own technology proscribe preferences based on their beliefs. The loyalty of troops may be affected by your relationship with the church. The church should also be able to declare war on houses that research too many proscribed techs; this would give players something to worry about even if their labs are surrounded by other cities. Maybe the church should also have a way to detect skimming at certain thresholds and come take over the chruch on your planet to eliminate skimming completely.

9. Definitely want to do some balancing so late game the resources don't seem so abundant and there's more to do with those resources. Maybe the League offers mercanary services. Maybe resources degrade over time, but perhaps also randomly spawn on terrain at a very low rate. This might encourage more exploration.

10. Give engineers an abilty to survey a 1hex radius area of itself to reveal resources information so resource gathering might be optimized without having to walk around so much. Another option would be to making building cities more drag and drop so you could see how much you would gather on the places you could put the city; within the engineers move range.

11. As far as research goes, some research should only be obtainable by exploration or trade with aliens or maybe the league. My hope is this would also encourage exploration and diplomacy.

12. That also brings up another theory I've been toying with. In the game today the Church always knows what you're researching, but how? So I'm planning on having the labs keep track of what they've researched, because I want to be able to filter what the church knows about. Here's how
- The Eye knows about all research activities on planets they have a fort/city on. If they Eye knows, the Church knows.
- The Eye only builds forts/cities on planets owned by a Noble house. So the players may explore, but not take hold of a planet to hide research from the church for a time.
- To avoid making this indefinite, maybe the Eye will roam the worlds (at least when controlled by AI) and search for and report house owned labs and their research to the Church. The exception might be that the Eye might totally avoid worlds owned by Symbiot, Vau, and Rebels. Then you have a choice of research vs. loss of revenue.
- Being found by the Eye might add some excitement and players may not always take the role seriously.

13. Helping the player by drawing attention to what occured during other players turn. Maybe a position is at risk, new enemies have arrived, or maybe reccomend sentrying units that haven't moved in a while. Maybe messages about lost cities, destroyed cities, and attacked cities.

14. Also to make late game more interesting, maybe between 100-200 turns the Symbiots break through Stigmata. Maybe no one should be allowed to become emperor until they're beaten back. I'm not sure if this would just discourage long games or cause the players to set aside their differences and work together to restrain the Symbiots.

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