icycalm wrote:cosmicwar.net Clan Wars on Fragile Existence and some tips on game designHello, I used to run Clan Wars on Planetary Annihilation for years. We ran up to 30-player, 10-planet, 3-hour wars on a weekly basis at
http://cosmicwar.netWe'd love to resurrect our events in your game, if you would be so kind as to put multiplayer in it. It is my humble opinion that a campaign is the wrong choice for a single developer with a tiny budget; campaigns require big budgets. And even if you manage a decent campaign, it doesn't foster a community because campaign players finish the game once and don't touch it again. If you focus instead on multiplayer, you can gain a community that will stay around for as long as you keep updating the game, and as long as it stays on the cutting-edge.
Right now, you are on the cutting edge because
Dyson Sphere Program dropped the ball on war and multiplayer. They are now saying they will add war, but I am not holding my breath. It will probably be some lame SimCity-style monsters, and no MP. Maybe in a decade they will have 20 units in and some lame 1v1 MP.
So you are the only hope of the RTS community for a true successor to PA. You've already got the toughest part down: space battles. That's what was missing from PA, and this aspect seems amazing in your game. Several other aspects however are inferior or could use more work:
1. Above all MP. That's the number 1 thing you can do to improve your design and game right away. Anything else you are working on is of negligible importance compared to this. You need to drop all other work and get this running asap. And make sure the MP is as scalable as possible, as with PA. No one wants to play 1v1. People want to play massive star-spanning wars with dozens of players, or as close to it as you can manage.
2. A big deficiency of PA that I can see you are repeating is bland/inferior planetary surface features. We need mountains that the units can climb and fortify, not a triangle model placed down to represent a "mountain", but which instead acts more like a boulder. Now this is tough when the planets are so small, because there's not much room for real elevation. But that's the problem this genre is facing, and it really is PA's second problem, after the lack of space battles, which you've solved. So see what you can do about it. It's not a deal-breaker if you don't solve it, but I just want to emphasize its importance for the creation of believable and enjoyable planets. After half a decade designing PA planets, people are bored because there's not much variation on the surfaces due to the lacking elevation.
3. The artstyle of your game is decent/utilitarian. It gets the job done, but it's nowhere as inspiring as PA's. Not much you can do about that on your own, you're doing the best you can, and for a programmer it's pretty great actually. But if people will be putting in thousands of hours in the game, they could use some better artwork. That's why I think you should prioritize making the mod tools so we can simply import PA's units wholesale. And why not also SupCom's etc. Then we can finally have massive wars between half a dozen factions or more, including the units you are making.
4. Same with music. You'd need to be a genius musician to beat Mostrom's soundtrack for PA, so let us just import any music that we want through the modding tools.
5. Your planetary surfaces are drab. All boring gray-brown mush. You need to spruce them up. You need glittering blue seas, dazzling white ice, green trees etc. Same with gas giants. Look at PA for inspiration. This game needs MORE COLOR. And more detail in general in the surface features. The ships have plenty of detail, so I can see that you can do it.
Some helpful links:
I awarded PA GOTY for 2014:
https://culture.vg/reviews/awards/game-of-the-year.htmlAnd this is my Videogame Art essay on PA:
https://culture.vg/reviews/videogame-ar ... ation.htmlTrailer for my PA Clan Wars (giant multiclan wars):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYyg52r3dLITrailer for my PA Clan League (clan vs. clan league):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Jtc6MK57qwI am ready to start running and streaming weekly clan wars and clan league events in your game the moment you add decent multiplayer support in it, and my clan, The Cult, will have a couple dozen players on the game immediately. We know several other clans from PA too that would join the events immediately.
In sum, you are the only current hope for the RTS community. None of us want to play stupid sh!t like Age of Empires on tiny square maps bounded by invisible walls all around us and with laughable 200-unit limits. We want PA2, and you are already 80% of the way there. I pray to Nietzsche to illuminate and inspire you to make the right moves so you can finish the remainder 20% and usher in a new era of real-time strategy on a galactic scale, and I and my clan are at your disposal for consultations and playtesting at any moment. Just add me and message me on Steam if you would like some help.
All the best and
bon courage.