Second Stage of the Game- MMORTS

I left off my last article by explaining the game up until the end of the “first stage” of the game. I will now commence with explaining the second stage of the game and then hopefully follow this article with another one regarding how the user can interface with the world.

 

The Second Stage of the Game

The first stage was primarily based on planetary warfare. The idea being to capture your own planet and evict or assimilate other generals thus achieving dominance. This sadly was only just a minor portion of the game.

The second stage involves dealing with your local galaxy (perhaps the in game word for the server the player plays on though I do not plan to block server to server game play as evident by the third stage once detailed). The concept of the galaxy needs not much explaining in itself but several new game elements will come into play. Players will now find that their own planets are insufficient to fund their war effort/civilizations and they will have to expand to other planets to overcome this issue. Furthermore, the idea of a unique resource/end goal for each planet will now be made more prominent as planet to planet battles take place for control of these unique resources.

The player will have to adopt new strategies and take advantage of that which is space. Several concept ideas include Space based weaponry, moon bases, fleets and etc. Another problem the player will face ensuring that trade routes are secure. This is done so as vital supplies can reach sub bases from the main planet and from colonized planets to the main hub. The player will have to ensure that their planets are defended with appropriate orbital defenses lest they get attacked while their own fleet is elsewhere.

Furthermore, the player will have to deal with democratic issues such as civil unrest and what not. This will further become a crucial point as enemy opponents initiate espionage procedures such as provoking civil unrest via spy’s and what not (Similar to Civilization games.)

From all that, several key items have come up that deserve special notice.

1. Moon Bases.

   Each planet will have its own moon(s). These will have key common resources required by the player. Furthermore they can provide a good primary or secondary level of defense especially if a planet has multiple moons. By establishing bases upon the moon, players can dispatch fleets faster, maintain them more efficiently and keep them off the main planet. The latter can provide several advantages including more space available on the planet and for the ability to conduct experiments away from the eyes of the public.

    

   I suggest that to maintain a moon base, a planet must have some sort of massive space station or military base to provide a ground level link for the base.

    

   Lastly, moon bases may be fitted with lasers and what not further augmenting their possible defensive uses.

2. Fleets.

   The player will be forced to make a fleet of ships (Even if for defensive purposes such as one required by players who wish to merchant and not engage in primary conquest) to defend and attack other players. A fleet will consist of individual ships which can be grouped into one body. A fleet can further be upgraded (A MASSIVE topic to be discussed another time) and can provide bonus’s for having grouped units together.

3. Trade and Resources

   The player will require resources not only to expand their army, but for maintenance purposes as well. They are the limiting factor placed upon all aspiring generals. Without overcoming this issue, entire fleets may be abandoned and dissatisfaction and chaos may ensure within the empire. Also not having enough resources effectively places a bulls eye on the player making them an excellent target for larger armies.

    

   It is my idea to make resources a very big element of the game. Protecting and establishing trade routes, trading in a universe wide market and establishing resource collecting centers will all be major tasks. I’ll only make a small mention now, but the problems in this field can greatly be alleviated by the joining of an effective clan which can hedge resources, etc.

MMORTS Concept. Initial Thoughts

A lot of things go through my mind. From sword fights to accounting to gaming. Some call it weird but I call it a sign of intellect (Insert LOL here.)

One of my many ideas is a concept regarding a MMORTS. Before i even begin to go into some detail, it is important that you are familiar with the term. The term stems from two genres of games, MMO-RPG, and RTS. What they stand for respectively is, Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game and Real Time Strategy. An example of an RPG would be for example, Fable, Mass Effect, Runescape (an example of an MMORPG), Guildwars, and etc. An example of a RTS would be supreme commander, Command and conquer, Tom Clancy’s Endwar, Age of Empires and etc.

So using this knowledge, we can take the MMO part from MMORPG and combine it with RTS to achieve MMORTS, a Massive Multiplayer Online Real Time Strategy Game. Essentially it would be a “Resource collecting, base building, mass army battle” online against thousands of opponents. There are many technical, gameplay, and other issues regarding this genre however and over the span of this series of articles, I wish to cover most topics that come to mind including technology structures (In game that is), the concept of worlds, how to possibly achieve the creation and hosting of such game, what is to be expected and etc.

The purpose of this article is simple. To introduce you guys to the concept, to detail the situations in which I will present my ideas, and to lead you folk into the main body of this series.

First things first.
This may come as a surprise, but this project has no name whatsoever. It is a fact that usually early on in a project or even before commencing it, I have the name for it ready but in this situation I just simply dont have one. Perhaps it’s due to the fact that even if such a project could be realized, it would not be due to my actions i.e I wouldn’t be creating the game by coding/creating graphics and what not.

Second things second
So if one thinks about the potential size of a MMORTS, one can quickly reach the conclusion that Earth in itself is an unsuitable battle environment. Considering the size of the armies, the number of people playing and what not, we will need a bigger, a limitless battle environment. No other environment but space can fit this role.

The player will begin on one of the thousands of worlds created for the game. It is crucial to know that a player wont “own” a planet. On a planet, there can and will exist other armies, civilizations or whatever it shall be called. Though the ideal situation, and one most experienced players will achieve is to achieve total command of their own planet thus kicking out the other players. This planet struggle will be the first part of a young aspiring commanders experience.

The game will begin with the commander attempting to establish his army (For the rest of these articles, I will use the term army whereas the term civilization can be used interchangeably) and attempting to gain favours from the local populace centres (Neutral AI controlled cities.) Further more, while attempting to please the populace, the commander will begin fighting against other players for resources of the planet. Each planet having some sort of key “target” such as a rare artifact, access to a limited amount of a valuable resource and what not. The key target will play as the end game for that specific planet though the majority of the battles will take place over access to common resources such as power generating resources (For the sake of examples, lets assume this is coal), money generating resources (Minerals what not, oil?), and key passageways.

Once the end game is achieved, usually the player will have a strong enough force and will begin systematic erasure of other players from the planet (The concept of death in the game will be covered in another article, so make sure to constantly keep an eye on the ‘mmorts’ tag.) Once this is achieved, the player will have established total command of the planet and will now “own” it in the traditional sense. At this stage, the player will now begin the second stage of the game.

Third things third
There are many topics i can cover from this point on such as technology (both in game, and powering the game), the second and third stage of the game, the battles, and other intricate features of the game such as the civilisation elements, advantages of dealing with the local populace, clans and what not but for the sakes of this article, I will now describe the situation in which i shall write the other articles.

The aspiring commander I will refer to for examples sake will be myself, Scrinner. However, once detailing the true end game of the game, I will assume that being the first player of the game, I have allready established a massive army spanning several galaxies, and am the leader of a very powerful clan that the entire game is attempting to team up against. Also having created the tech tree to an extent (though not having developed it physically, or whatever you want to call it), i know how to create several high tech “Destroyer level weapons”.

Thus the situation will be that I am this feared titan in the game in which all the other clans of the game will attempt to team up against and over run my armies. Though its a theoretical situation worthy of a LOL (I know, etherealbyte is probably laughing himself to death somewhere right now), the situation is one where I can easily let my imagination flow into these articles while allowing me to write about all the intricacies of the game.

And so, to keep this long article, not too long, I will now end this with a note that this was just an introduction to the game. More articles describing the areas above will be written in due time. So I recommend either following the main page or to watch the tags to the side and click ‘mmorts’ time to time to find any updates you might have missed (assuming you are interested).

– The Mad General, In an attempt to establish true dominance
Scrinner

Left 4 Dead Two- Details and Rage

So unless you’re living under a rock (Hey, now that’s a perfectly good excuse), you probably know about that event called E3. You know THAT event, the one that every single ^%@^&$ website (I refuse to link to gamespot) seems to be covering. Well if you have, you probably have heard of Valve’s little surprise for us (And by little I mean absolutely hu-eg.)

Only 7 months after the release of Left 4 dead One, Left 4 dead Two has been announced for a November release (No published stated as of yet, Digital distribution will obviously be done through steam.)

So just what exactly can you expect from this new game? Well according to some people (With appropriate references backing those claims given below), it contains that which was meant for left 4 dead, mainly free content in terms of campaigns, characters, maps and etc. Obviously the community is currently in an uproar (Relevant pictures and videos attached as well) but before we get to that, below are links to relevant videos and links to bring you people up to date.

Shack News Interview: http://www.shacknews.com/featuredarticle.x?id=1138 (Relevant video’s including gameplay)
Official Preview from Valve: http://store.steampowered.com/app/5268/

From the interview, it is apparent that valve began to work almost immediately after left 4 dead one launch on the new game creating the second game in record time. It is clear that valve did not intend to fully live up to its promises (It did provide Survivor mode/Four vs Four matchmaking is inbound with an ETA of one month) and would perhaps rely on the community to create content for themselves (So far, there are no complete/fully working maps one can find at L4dmaps.com). If you have been following this blog till date, you will know that I too have written extensively on my own left4dead campaign with another detailed article in the making.

Now down to the main reasoning for this post.

The community is in an uproar.

Fans are demanding the content which they were promised but which was never delivered. Fans are enraged at the fact that left4dead two will be a fully priced sequel (USD $50). Fans are enraged that the left4dead community will be destroyed and the player base split thinly amongst the two games. Modder’s will be expected to drop left4dead one projects knowing that the game will become outdated come November and begin designing campaigns for left 4 dead two leaving the original game behind. In short, Valve, the company that was known to be one of the best when it comes to interacting with gamers and the relevant communities has disappointed all. I won’t go into any more detail for just a simple Google (Or bing, depending on your preference) will turn up more information.

I’ll now leave you folk, with fan made material and relevant quotes.

“Speaking to VideoGamer.com at Leipzig Games Convention, the Valve co-founder and managing director said the developer intended to follow a similar downloadable content policy as it has with Team Fortress 2.

Newell said that Valve’s support of the game post-launch will be essential for growing the community.

He said: “One of the things that we’re doing is we seem to be in a transition between games as a package product and games more of a service. So if you look at Team Fortress 2, one of things that’s really helped grow the community is the continuous updates, where we release new maps, new character classes, new unlockables, new weapons. And we tell the stories about the characters, like the meet the sniper, or meet the sandwich. And that ongoing delivery of content really seems to grow the community.

“So each time we’ve released one of those for Team Fortress 2 we’ve seen about a 20% increase in the number of people who are playing online. And that number is really important because it determines how many community created maps there are, how many servers are running, and so on. So we’ll do the same thing with Left 4 Dead where we’ll have the initial release and then we’ll release more movies, more characters, more weapons, unlockables, achievements, because that’s the way you continue to grow a community over time.”

Excerpt Posted

Hey guys, Just a quick post.
Today, after a year of work and many more years of coming up with the idea and pondering over it, I finally with joy reveal my greatest secret till date.
Project Insanity.

Project Insanity, is essentially a book I am writing and hope to one day publish. The first draft of the book is almost complete with only six chapters (Out of 52) remaining. As such, in an attempt to gain feedback, today I have posted two chapters (16 and 17 respectively) on this blog. You can find them uptop by clicking on the tab ‘excerpt from Insanity.’

Prefferably, please leave comments on the page OR leave a facebook wall message.

Thanks, and may you all enjoy what I have come up with.
– Scrinner

To Do List

Yesterday, I struggled to come up with ideas to talk about. Today, something in my brain must have turned on for now suddenly I have too many ideas to talk about. Hopefully, i’ll get around to most of them soon enough. Till then, below is a list of articles I have knocking about inside my head.

1. Instagib related with screens of Kn00tcn owning both etherealbyte and I.
2. Left4Dead Campaign #2- Titanic
3. MMORTS Related articles. This one will be an ongoing multi part series where I will discuss ideas for my imaginary MMORTS.
4. State of PC Gaming. I plan to split this into several parts including failure on the OEM’s Part, Failure on Microsoft’s Part and piracy. In each part I will add my relevant suggestions to fixing the problem.
5. Finally, an excerpt from Insanity.

Till next time, When the sun is high, and aliens invade.
– Scrinner

Left 4 Dead Campaign Idea Numero 1

Left 4 Dead Campaign Idea #1- SkyHigh

Description

Sky High is a campaign based on Downtown Toronto. The basic premise will be that the four survivors somehow find themselves in a stadium (The Skydome) and will attempt to climb the CN Tower to escape. As usual, a five level system will be adopted spanning across both the Rogers Dome and the CN Tower.

The Levels

1. Rogers Dome-On the grass, in the middle of the stadium. The safe room will be the actual exit of the skydome.
2. Passageway in between the Rogers Dome and the CN Tower. Though in actual the path is quite short depending on the exit used, there will be many obstacles for the Survivors to overcome. Essentially this passageway will become much longer with many high points for smokers and hunters to attack from. The obstacles stated could be destroyed busses and what not. One notable landmark required will be the ticket stalls where preferably there will be graffiti spray painted.
3. Inside the CN Tower, the survivors will attempt to work their way from the lobby towards the shopping area/The Elevators. This level will be our “Press button, and survive for X minutes” level. The basic wait will be for the elevators and from all sides zombies will attack. For added effect, it would be preferred if the inventory held by the stores could be burnt using a Molotov.
4. Once inside the elevator, the lift will stop half way to the top. Though I am not sure if the architecture of the CN tower is actually like this, what the survivors will have to do is exit the left via an exit built into the roof. There, they will have to go through a hole and make their way up the stairs. Ladders and platforms will be made to provide at least two methods of achieving their goal. Preferred option for this level is the ability to blow up stacks of rock and send them rolling downwards crushing incoming zombies. Due to the inherent difficulty assumed for this map, an abnormal amount of health packs should be provided albeit being hidden behind obstacles.
5. The final level where the rescue will happen will take place at the top of the CN tower. One difference from the actual CN tower will be that the entire floor will be made of glass further adding to fear. From this point we can see a burning Toronto (Similar to the burning city across the river in the Boathouse level) down below. Zombies at this point will come from many sides including the stairwells, the broken elevators and etc. The rescue itself will come from the spectators viewpoint where people can use binoculars to overview Toronto. The protective cage however will have been destroyed by incoming zombies and what not.

Difficulties Presented

1. The added preferred elements of game play.
2. Laziness.
3. Finding schematics for both the Rogers dome and the CN tower.
4. Plotting out the maps.

Update:

Idea #1:Another idea that came to mind was the level of detail on the map. In a usual L4D map, you will find messages from other (usually dead by the time you come) survivors that passed through the area alongside public announcements. The idea mainly for the top level is to copy the exact details from the current CN Tower i.e copy the timeline posted on the walls of the actual tower and then add several other messages from other former survivors.

For eg. Lets say the time line goes up till 2010. From there, continue the pasted timeline and using red marker add new times such as “2010- August- Keith was here” and etc etc.

Idea #2. For the load screen, the CN tower and Rogers dome will be shown in the background amongst a burning Toronto. The Tagline that comes to mind is a little silly but appropriate: “They thought the glass floor was the scariest part.”

Origin of the Name

As mentioned in my first post, Gotei 13 was originally a project Etherealbyte and I attempted to kick off. The purpose was to create review’s of animes we watched and provide detailed information of said animes. All in all we attempted to spark conversation, pass time and what not but as usual, laziness took over and the project was abandoned.

We did however turn out one result in our brief planning period, and that was the name of this blog. Gotei 13. It was brilliant. Unique, untaken, and more importantly, it was related to the topic at hand. It was of course Etherealbyte that first suggested the name and when I asked what it meant, i immediately smacked my forehead. Gotei 13 is the name of the 13 squads of Soul Society in the Japanese version of ‘Bleach.’ A series I have watched loyally till date.

The name itself was further refined and our sub title/heading was turned to “The 11th division Anime Review Board.” This I can with some dignity claim as my own idea. However now that I have taken over the blog; as one person I cannot review anime and survive to tell the tale. So the edits we made to the side were removed, the heading was turned to “The 11th Division Communication Board” but the title remained. The title, a symbol of my passion for anime.

So there, we have a short history lesson. Hopefully next time, ill have some stuff on instagib explaining the game concept to normal people.

– Let it Rain Mad Cats
Scrinner

Hello World!

Time and time again, I come back to the concept of blogging. True I have only but wheted my mouth with the experience, but i find myself unable to escape its grasp. Constantly i find myself staring down its barrels From several failed Windows Live Space projects (What was microsoft thinking when it created that name…) to two revivals of my blog at blogger and finally tothis, Gotei Thirteen. This too is actually my second attempt The first time around, this was supposed to be the “11th division anime review board” headed by both me and etherealbyte but now I have laid claim to it as my own.

So who am I? I am Scrinner. My true name, is Awais Ullah but I am known by many as Scrinner and so that is what I shall go by. I am an accounting student currently studying for the ACCA accounting qualification. Furthermore, I am a gamer, an anime freak, ‘mad general’, an aspiring author and much more. My full biography however is something for another time.

So what is this blog?

It is a medium of output for me to discuss a range of topics including none the least, tech related articles, whatever else i see fit, links to favourite places, some half hearted reviews, randomness and most importantly, more randomness. I hope to further add game related screenshots and use Gotei Thirteen as a launching pad into other projects which I hope to start. These projects include the Classified Insanity Project, the not so classified Gametourist project, and anything else of interest.

I hope to make this blog unique, and not just another website to clutter the webs. So bear with me, as I come to grips with the concept of blogging and last but not least, wordpress itself.

Peace to all those that seek it,
Scrinner.