New attempt for EoFS type PBEM-only game

all the talk around the remake

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pioja
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New attempt for EoFS type PBEM-only game

Postby pioja » Fri Feb 01, 2008 3:53 am

Disclaimer: This is by no means a design thread. I do not want to start another discussion about flying dragon units, heroes, special artifacts. It is also not a post about the Atlantis pbem game. This is a partial repost of a Atlantisdev Yahoogroup Message.
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Hi all,

I was wondering how many people are lurking around like me . Are there still some people that have some itching fingers when it comes to the design and production of a pbem game?

Me, I was lurking around a long time - not only in this forum. From time to time, I contacted some Atlantis players and developers. And I feel that while manypeople are interested to do something, they either often tend to repeat the Atlantis story again, or they do not have enough manpower
and time to complete a project.

Personally, I am fed up of with Atlantis due to various reasons [1]. Also, I
think that there will be a very nice java based engine availible soon - including a webclient [2]. This somehow eliminates the need for me to go further and hack around in the Atlantis rulesets, or try to iron out it"s many "features".

However, what intrigues me is the re-design and implementation of two old
classics, namely the turn based graphical game 'Emperror of the Fading Suns' from Hollistic and the nice civilization based pbem game 'Prometheus' by M. Kettner to a python based Atlantis pbem engine that is now beeing developed by Anthony Briggs [3]. Both games I mentioned had fundamental flaws, but also contained some great design ideas. The first one I do not have to mention here - it is well known - the second one I can briefly describe: It is a well balanced clone of civilization, designed for simultanous turn moves. The turns are diplayed in html format and pdf graphical output. An example turnsheet can be found in the download section of www.pbem-spiele.de.

So what would a pbem game of EoFS require?

From my point of view, that would be

1) A group of people with a) designer skills to make the necessary abstractions and cuts to EoFS. Some of those people would need good python skills, others should provice graphical art.

2) Redesign of EoFS for simultanous movement. Redesign of game system for simultanous turns. Reduction of Micromanagment through abstraction.

3) Implementation of the game rules into the pybem engine (host/client system). Creation of game graphics. Design and implementation of graphical display (either with client program or prometheus like turn sheets).

4) Setting up a game server. Testing.


I do understand that such a project would require a lot of effort and time, and I would find it only doable with a larger group of interested people with a longer commitment to the project, who would contribute not only ideas, but also code, graphics, testing, and so on, and I wonder if we have the potential here to do such a project, or if the group had run dry of active game developers. Essentially, this would mean that there would be a closed development group. While the speed of development would not be of big importance, I would not like to take part in a project that had not chance of beeing finished at all.

Regards,

Piotr


[1] search the atlantisdev yahoogroup. There are plenty of reasons :)
[2] type "menouthis pbem" into your favourite search engine
[3] type "pybem" into your favourite search engine

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BrodieBrodie
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pbem game

Postby BrodieBrodie » Thu Feb 14, 2008 3:12 pm

please keep me up to date on your project. links to games progress would be appreciated.

i like the simultaneous turn idea.
An optimist believes that this is the best of all possible worlds,
the pessimists fears that this may be true.


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