Do You Like This Sort Of Wargame? (Turn Based..)

[skeezix]

I'm a big fan of turn based strategy games like Battle Isle, Advance Wars etc. so this sounds great, I'd definitely be in.

The best time for me to really get involved in something like this is on the train (about an hour every day) but there's no wifi and I have no mobile internet. Would the client support offline play? i.e. sync with the server at home, play enter my moves on the train and then submit when I get to the office?

This is a big part of my client debate. I've often gone ranting that things have onyl gotten mroe pita to nail down these years, than they were int he past.. with platform decisions.

ie: Offline client implies a pretty smart client, or something like Gears/HTML5; HTML5 on somethign like a handheld is pretty spotty these days, though will improve over the next year or 18months. Doing it offline with a dedicated client would be a piece of cake. (Suck down world state in the morning, do its at leisure over the day, push the orders up when you get time.)

Or a hybrid client .. native client that is just embedded webkit for rendering (so that could likely be a full webapp easily as well), but with native client doing the data marshalling..

I'm mulling it over

jeff

 

[paddy]

I love the sound of this type of game ,i have never played a war stratagy game like this ,it's almost football manager waiting to see what the out come is ,tho bare in mind i don't play football manager ,don't like football games/anyway - yes i would like to see this game as well ,tho i would like games to be on a 1 week timeframe/7days
and mabe you can do an order once per day and a side order in the middle like 6 hours ,a side order could be only several options like using an item or such ,something like that.Also when you have made your orders there could be stuff to read up on or reserch ? to better your army ,realtime chat ,and at anytime would it be possible to check the status of your moving target/or your own unit to see what stats go down as you are progressing towards the other unit ,some units might have low stamina and you can check this as the unit is progressing in real time ?
so at the 6 hour second order you could top up with an item.

I am going to think all night about this now ,if i have anymore suggestions for you i will post them ,i don't know if what i have said so far is a given but i really have not played a game like this before ,anyway sounds great but as long as games don't go on for weeks ,it would be enjoyable in an ebay bidding war kinda way where you check every day.

 

[Aninhumer]

I think the general opinion I've heard (and agree with) about Neptune's Pride is: "It was brilliant, but I never want to play it again".
Playing a game like that over an extended period leads to you spending every waking minute thinking about strategy, and paranoidly checking the state of the game at every opportunity, in case one of your allies has betrayed you.
By the end of the game I was completely drained, and just wanted to get it over with. It made me wonder if Neptune's Pride was actually an artistic statement about the nature of war.

However this is probably due to the the design of the game, in that you gain a significant advantage by acting often, and also the game makes betrayal inevitable. I've seen much more positive reviews of other long term PBE games, and I imagine that design has a significant effect on how consuming they are.

 

[Tempel]

Playing a game like that over an extended period leads to you spending every waking minute thinking about strategy, and paranoidly checking the state of the game at every opportunity, in case one of your allies has betrayed you.

The way skeezix describes his game, it doesn't sound like that would be a problem. Since turns are executed at specific intervals, you can't know if you're being betrayed until after the turn is done. The game allows you to set your orders and safely ignore until the next turn.

Of course, that won't stop you from spending every waking minute thinking about strategy.

As an aside: skeezix, make sure the turn timer can be changed on the fly by a game administrator or whatever you might call them. That could allow LAN games of a minute per turn, followed by pausing (indefinite turn lengths) for breaks, followed by more intense play.

 

[dflemstr]

I'd probably play this, but I'm really more of a real-time game player... But if the mechanics are interesting enough then hells yea. (I really like systems à la Dwarf Fortress with insanely complex mechanics)

Also, I could do the web UI for you (the client-side JS stuff; *and* the server stuff if you: 1. create a back-end that is REST-y and 2. don't use any obscure languages; Java, Python, Erlang or Ruby preferred). But you haven't asked for help so dunno what you think about contributors; I usually do stuff by myself, and maybe you prefer to too.

 

[skeezix]

dflemstr -- I'm still mulling over; I've got much of the game design down (turn sequence of events, build rules, movement and visibility rules, etc and so on) and am building the server as an xmlrpc process (jsonrpc works too). But I'm still pretty early, and still mulling over my client.

Currently, my client is just python xmlrpc and text UI; it is tempting to put up a PyQt UI on top of that, but I'm not sure I really like the PyQt licensing models. (wish it had LGPL!) .. a pure xmlrpc or jsonrpc based javascript webapp might be the way to go, but its a big learning curve for me, and also implies net connection.

I rather like the idea of pulling your player state down to a sqlite file 'in the morning', then futzing with your orders over the day and hitting 'push' when you get back home; its trivial to implement if you do a native client, but a real pita (triply so on mobile platforms) as a webapp.

But of course, how important is that; we're mostly pretty connected nowadays.

/me weighs the options

(Naturally, the bonus is not being restricted to just one client. Could just document the api and have lots of clients, right?)

Once I figure out 1) what direction I'm really going in and 2) how far I'm going, I can let you know

jeff

 

[Zotty]

We get to beat up Gruso?! WOOHOO

Anyway, I'm all for a slow paced game. At work I have no way of playing (no inet due to high security) and during the weekend I'm often away with only a few short sessions through wifi. So this would fit perfectly into for my weekly schedule. 20 mins a day is something I can easily scrape together to play. So bring it on and I'd love to give it a spin!

Btw, concerning web based games. I usually hate those. It all sounds nice, but reality is there's always some sort of sh*t with it. Browser incompatibilities and stuff. But maybe html5 solves this and while I'm happy to try it out, I've got reserved feelings about it.

edit:
Coming to think of it, during the weekend I spend 5 hours total traveling by train. Would be ideal playtime, but no inet. Would it be possible to do things offline and sync once back home?

 

[peca]

I get one idea for this kind many-player turn based strategy. Why not end turn immediately after all players do their moves. There can be some time limit (few hours or day), but if all players have done, then is no reason waiting for the rest of time limit.
And I like if server can forward game messages to email or jabber account. Ie if new turn begin

 

[skeezix]

the normal 'reason' that pbem games don't do 'fast turns' (when everyone has submitted), is it creates a culture of pressure .. "oh, you're holding us up!" .. but yeah, once I get somewhere, can add piles of options to it, so admins can decide whatever policies they want.

Email notifications is definately in for things (ie: you have received a communication from Fo...), etc.

jeff

 

[Mithrildor]

No bloody email notifications. I hate all those you got a PM messages.

 

[fusion_power]

I'm for everything as long as it has an Offline Single Player mode and GOOD AI.
I know, in the Homebrew-Scene you can be glad if something has AI at all but hey, I never loose my hope.
I plan to play "Wesnoth" onto my Pandora, so another setting in the turn-based World besides phantasy/Middle Age is very welcome.

 

[urjaman]

I so this type of game, please do this! And yeah I'm like that there should really be a dedicated client that can do pull + work offline + push. But I'm not against there being a webapp style client, just that i'd use dedicated if possible.

 

[rum runner]

Yeah I think it sounds like fun specially for some one like me who likes to play on line but with a heavy college load doesn't have a whole lot of free time. I can get on put in my orders and check it out tomorrow.

 

[moxie]

I'd definitely play it. I was thinking only yesterday, actually, about where all those PBM games went.

And I definitely like the push-pull idea with a standalone client. Me being who I am, I'd probably be happy with the raw non-GUI python client

 

[Asiyura]

Yep the whole concept of pulling the state of the world in the morning, thinking about the strategy for a whole day and pushing the result in the evening make me want to play that kind of game.
Count me as a potential player!

 

[scottm]

I'm a huge tbs fan (even re-written a couple myself in Blitzmax). I would love a single player option against the cpu as well though - pretty please ;-)

 

[crade]

I like this kind of game. Reminds me of the old ROTK games.

 

[rick0815]

As described it sounds very interesting to me! I will definitely try it. I like the idea that it's turn based and designed for long periods of playing. One turn per day would be more then enough for me. But I'm also a little scared, because even if making the orders for the next turn may take only a few minutes, as you play with humans you have all the possibilities of diplomacy, making allies, braking them, intrigue... this will be the most time consuming part I guess. BTW it would be nice to have the possibility to share resources

Perfect would be a nice looking client but also the possibility to go to any machine with a browser and do at least the basic things. As this seems to be difficult I'm very happy with the idea of getting the status in the morning online, queue orders offline and send them later.

I have played a browser game which was more or less real time, relatively slow but still real time. So some times it was necessary to get up at 3 in the morning to get the optimal result. It was fun but very exhausting. I hope your game is different in that aspect.

 

[crade]

I know, in the Homebrew-Scene you can be glad if something has AI at all but hey, I never loose my hope.

http://xkcd.com/297/

 

[rabidpoobear]

I have to have something that I have to wait for every day once the Pandora's out, so yeah, make this game!