May 4th, 2015, 22:20
(This post was last modified: May 4th, 2015, 22:30 by Ray F.)
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I'm working on a feature clone at java-moo.com. I am a big believer in the MOO1 feature set and have no intention of fixing something that isn't broken. The one exception will be fixing obvious bugs and/or exploits. The ones that come immediately to mind are using unarmed scouts to guard planets, the rich planet reserve multiplier, and switching from large ship designs to build instant fleets.
The UI layout is intentionally very close to MOO1 with exceptions for things in the original game that were clunky (Planets listing, Fleets listing). In addition, some additional management features will be available. For example, you can set missile base limits per colony and will be prompted to increase your colony spending when missile technologies are learned.
Graphics will all be upgraded from the old 320x200 graphics of the original. The planets are all completely computer-generated and rotate, and I have enlisted the services of a professional illustrator to update game's artwork. Hopefully some examples will be available soon.
I totally get that fan-made projects start with high expectations and typically crash-and-burn. I have certainly fallen victim to that before. Therefore, I give this project a solid 50/50 chance of meeting the same fate! For this reason, my goal was to get all of the UIs done and the ability to play the game simply before even mentioning it publicly. If for some reason I need to walk away from the project, I'll open-source the code.
The game is almost to that point now and I am hoping that I will be able to enlist some fellow MOO1 players to give it a whirl and provide constructive criticism and comments.
Look, we all know deep down that commercial video game companies will never make another 4X space game like MOO1. They all want to follow down the popular Sid Meier 4X model (as with MOO2 and GalCiv) or want to make a 3D graphical explosion fest. And with wargaming.net now in the mix, MOO4 will probably officially descend into videogaming hell with the advent of microtransactions.
Why not just bring MOO1 into the modern era instead? That's my goal.
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You're making awesome progress! I'm the same guy who gave you the LBX extraction utility  As far as I know, you and my team are the only ones actually making MoO 1-esque games, all others want to be MoO 2 clone or a completely different game. But we know MoO 1 is the best one of them all  I wish you success!
With two of us, we have a statistical better chance of at least one of us being successful with a MoO 1 clone . The good thing is that our games are different enough to not basically "re-invent the wheel". It looks like you're going for a pure MoO 1 clone, with some exploit/issue fixes, while we're going for a "modernized" version that retains the overall MoO 1 feel but not exactly a duplicate.
That said, I have a few questions:
Are you planning on replacing all artwork with new ones from your artist? Or only the UI part, retaining the races' artwork and the ships?
Are you publishing your game for free, or are you planning on selling it?
Are you planning on adding multiplayer, or will it be single player only?
How do you plan to address the exploits/issues that you mentioned? I'm very curious as we've already discussed them on our end for Dominus Galaxia.
Rich planet tax exploit? (We've decided on an approach that fixes this exploit without altering any other parts of the reserve mechanism as explained here: http://beyondbeyaan.blogspot.com/2015/04...nisms.html, it's the third point)
Unarmed scouts guarding? (We have some ideas, but none set in stone yet)
Insta-ships? (We plan to retain this "feature")
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(May 5th, 2015, 11:31)Zeraan Wrote: You're making awesome progress! I'm the same guy who gave you the LBX extraction utility As far as I know, you and my team are the only ones actually making MoO 1-esque games, all others want to be MoO 2 clone or a completely different game. But we know MoO 1 is the best one of them all I wish you success!
Thanks! Same to you.
(May 5th, 2015, 11:31)Zeraan Wrote: With two of us, we have a statistical better chance of at least one of us being successful with a MoO 1 clone . The good thing is that our games are different enough to not basically "re-invent the wheel". It looks like you're going for a pure MoO 1 clone, with some exploit/issue fixes, while we're going for a "modernized" version that retains the overall MoO 1 feel but not exactly a duplicate.
Our games would not really be that different. But then again, there are already dozens of 4X space games on the market. Everyone is already reinventing the wheel.
(May 5th, 2015, 11:31)Zeraan Wrote: That said, I have a few questions:
Are you planning on replacing all artwork with new ones from your artist? Or only the UI part, retaining the races' artwork and the ships?
All of the artwork.
(May 5th, 2015, 11:31)Zeraan Wrote: Are you publishing your game for free, or are you planning on selling it?
Free
(May 5th, 2015, 11:31)Zeraan Wrote: Are you planning on adding multiplayer, or will it be single player only?
Single-player.
(May 5th, 2015, 11:31)Zeraan Wrote: How do you plan to address the exploits/issues that you mentioned? I'm very curious as we've already discussed them on our end for Dominus Galaxia.
Rich planet tax exploit? (We've decided on an approach that fixes this exploit without altering any other parts of the reserve mechanism as explained here: http://beyondbeyaan.blogspot.com/2015/04...nisms.html, it's the third point)
Well, there's two ways: 1) No multiplier of rich planet reserve when it goes into the empire reserve, or 2) No multiplier of empire reserve when it's transferred into rich planets. Option 2) seems the approach most intended by the game mechanics. The empire reserve is a key contribution of Rich planets and going with Option 1) would take that away.
(May 5th, 2015, 11:31)Zeraan Wrote: Unarmed scouts guarding? (We have some ideas, but none set in stone yet)
Pretty straightforward. Unarmed ships cannot initiate combat. Therefore, when a 2nd scout arrives at a system, it is not "challenged" by the enemy scout currently in orbit.
Quote:Insta-ships? (We plan to retain this "feature")
Accumulated ship BC is simply transferred to that planet's reserve fund when the design is switched. This immediately eliminates the exploit but still allows the planet to produce at a doubled rate as if the funds had originally been placed in reserve.
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Very good! I am impressed by your wisdom and level of maturity. Good luck to you!
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(May 4th, 2015, 22:20)Ray F Wrote: I'm working on a feature clone at java-moo.com. I am a big believer in the MOO1 feature set and have no intention of fixing something that isn't broken.
Sounds really neat!
Quote:The game is almost to that point now and I am hoping that I will be able to enlist some fellow MOO1 players to give it a whirl and provide constructive criticism and comments.
How would you like folks to express interest in doing so? Post a reply here, post comments on your site, or just watch this/these space(s) until you ask for testers?
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(May 6th, 2015, 14:39)RefSteel Wrote: How would you like folks to express interest in doing so? Post a reply here, post comments on your site, or just watch this/these space(s) until you ask for testers?
Hmm, I guess responding here will be fine. Things are not going to super formalized. I just need to find a good checkpoint at which to end Phase 2, probably with adding nebulas, and then package up a jar file for people to run.
The illustrator is already coming back with some amazing work, so I'm really champing at the bit to get started on Phase 3, when all of the race relations and images will be added.
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I'll throw my name out there (so to speak). I'll be very interested to see what you have put together. Good luck and keep us posted on your progress!
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It's great that there's another MoO-1 based project out there. I wish you all the best of luck, and of course I'd love to help you test. When our product is ready for testing, you can test it as well if you wish.
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(May 7th, 2015, 11:00)Jeff Graw Wrote: It's great that there's another MoO-1 based project out there. I wish you all the best of luck, and of course I'd love to help you test. When our product is ready for testing, you can test it as well if you wish.
Just curious. Are you planning to sell your game? Since it varies from the MOO1 feature set, how do you decide what needs change?
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(May 7th, 2015, 17:27)Ray F Wrote: (May 7th, 2015, 11:00)Jeff Graw Wrote: It's great that there's another MoO-1 based project out there. I wish you all the best of luck, and of course I'd love to help you test. When our product is ready for testing, you can test it as well if you wish.
Just curious. Are you planning to sell your game? Since it varies from the MOO1 feature set, how do you decide what needs change?
Jeff Graw is on my team for developing Dominus Galaxia. WhiteMage is as well, plus a couple of other developers that I don't think frequent those boards.
Yes, we're planning on selling our game. Jeff has quit his job to work full-time on game development, so he need some source of income.
As for the differences between our game and MoO 1, I've posted some of them on the blog. To sum them up:
Three types of nebulas - One that blocks any travel, one that renders radar useless, and one that slows movement. Nebulas aren't a predefined blob, they're generated procedurally, and can be small or huge.
Improved UI for colony management - One slider for each major feature - Missile bases and shield construction are split out into separate sliders for example. Reserve exploit is addressed as well by using a slider to determine how much to tax or withdraw reserves.
Galaxy generation - No longer restricted to four sized rectangle maps. We can have varying sizes and shapes, from 25 to 250 stars (the min/max number of stars are still up in air, we'd need to do a lot of playtesting to find a good range).
For others, they're not set in stone yet, but what we want to address are:
Transports - in MoO 1, they're too easy to exploit in an offense sense. It doesn't make sense being able to transport 50 units of population in one turn, when it takes 5 turns to build a colony ship that adds 2 units of pop to a new colony in early game. So we're going to make them actually take time to build, among other considerations. No more surprise 1-turn invasion from an nearby enemy planet. You'd be able to see them building up the invasion forces and prepare accordingly.
AI - Whitemage is our AI developer. We plan on making an AI that minimizes cheating as much as possible, we're going to try and make them act more like a human player, this means limited intelligence (no seeing the whole map, etc), smarter calculating algorithms, etc.
Race balance - in MoO 1, some races are simply superior to others (Psilons vs Mrrshans, who do you think will win most of the time? Hint, it's not the race with fur). We want to make each race roughly balanced yet distinct. Only a lot of playtesting will answer this.
There's many more that we haven't fully decided on and are still working out the details. But it WILL be noticeably different from MoO 1. You'd still get the "MoO 1" vibe, but can easily notice that it's a different game from MoO 1. Hopefully it'd feel like a sequel that MoO 2 was supposed to be  
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