Nation

Fellas I have been kicking around the idea of trying to get a group together, including some programmers, and create a new game. My idea is something like what I would like to see in SC5 but it is never going to happen. I have some hope for CXL but that game is focused on online play so I doubt it will happen there.

The idea of the game is basically this:

It would basically be a simulator on a national level. Think of Civ but you could "drill down" when you built a city and concentrate on that city. You could also build things on the national map such as infrastructure, power plants, damns, roads, farms, etc.

You would have both a national economy and a city economy. The national treasury would be funded by taxes from the city and any residential, farms or private enterprise on the national map. Actually the game would begin by placing residential areas on the national map and the city screen (a zoomed in view) would only be available when you incorporated an area.

Like Civ I would like the game to begin early in man's history when life was sustained by agriculture and hunting. Therefore your early cities would have to be built in areas where rich farmland, fresh water and game was in abundance. The challenge early on would simply be to keep your citizens alive - your population wouldn't just grow easily, it would be something like the pilgrims settling America.

I think games need an ending, a distinct "win" screen with some kind of scaled definition of how well you did. My idea is that the nation would at some time in the future come under attack from an asteroid bombardment. Your challenge would be to advance your nation in technology to the point that you could send all your citizens off to a new home on a distant planet before the nation is destroyed. The bombardment would not come all in one day. It would begin slowly and get worse as time went by. How well you did in the game would depend on how quickly you got your citizens off the planet.

So the idea would be how to achieve this. You might go for big population growth because the more citizens you have, the more chance you have of producing scientists. That would mean putting a large portion of your population in food production. You could go knowledge which would mean putting a substantial number of your population into research. Of course these are macro factors. You would have many more micro factors and these would be micro-management but not repetitive type tasks.

My idea is to create a shell really, a basic nation building game and then produce expansions that would get very detailed as far as such things as transportation, trade and industry.

Many things that would affect the game would be just sheer luck. The engine would not look to see how you were doing and then penalize you if you were doing great.

I would be willing to invest at least $10,000 if we could get people interested and some people who can really produce the work. I realize this is not very much money but there might be other people willing to invest. Thoughts?

Wow Roads, you've really thought about this a lot. That sounds like it would be an awesome game! My only worry is that it is too much like SimEarth, the way you described the people getting off the planet and everything. But I did like SimEarth in a way, and bringing it up to modern specs and throwing in a bunch of better tools and options would be nice.

I love the idea, though developing a game is a LOT of work, especially if you want it to compete in todays market. I can't say I could be of too much help with the actual game making or money part, but I'm good for ideas If you're seriously going to do this, you'll need to find some good programmers and such that would be willing to undertake such a project.

If you do pull it off I think there's a good chance that people will like it (from what you described so far)

Yeah Roads, it sounds like a very serious project. It will take a lot of work, but I think a game coming from fans of the game would definitely have a lot of appeal to people.

You would need modelers, programmers, advertisers/promoters, and everybody else involved in making a game, but I think if you're fully committed to something like this you should definitely go for it.

Thanks SimZilla. I've never played SimEarth and probably should take a look at it. How much I do on this depends on how much interest I can generate. It may be a niche market, What got me to thinking about it seriously was reading the CXL board and the things people are asking for there.

It is a completely different group from the typical (and I don't mean that in a bad way) SimCity or Civ crowd. It seems the SimCity people like very specialized stuff while the Civ people are very anti micro-management.

So I guess I'll see if I can get both a fan base interested and some people who can actually do the work. If that happens then I can worry about setting up a company.

Please post any ideas you have or anything you would want to see.

Oh I just now saw your post Infernus. Sounds like you have a good handle on what is needed. Hope you will post any ideas you have for game. Also anything else you can think of that could get the ball rolling. Goes for you too SimZilla.

Well the number one thing that you already hit on is to build up a lot of interest in your game idea. That is by far the first thing you need to do. If you build up a lot of people who really like your ideas you'll have better luck finding the right group of people to help you with development. (programmers, etc.)

An easy way to start doing that would be to go around to different game sites (not just SimCity sites) and get some input from a large group of people. It would also help if you set up some kind of website and/or forum to more formally present the ideas and concepts you have in mind, and to show that you really are serious.

Yeah I was thinking I, we?
would need a website as well. The game doesn't have to be exactly what I want. It needs to be something of an agreement among people with similar likes. I just don't think any one person has all the good ideas or that all of his ideas are good. Things need to be questioned. But one thing I believe is this and that is a defined layout of what the game will be and not just a collection of general ideas.

Although I really think the game should be something of a skeleton that can handle many plugins or expansions, the skeleton itself has to be extremely playable.

Right now I'm thinking this:
The city screen should work pretty much like SC4 with zoning indicators for how much is needed but those indicators would be driven by the three things necessary to sustain life - food, shelter and clothing. These would have indicators as well and you would need a screen to assign people to those tasks. Here is where the startegy begins.

Say the game begins at 1000 B.C. and you have 100 HoH's (head of household). After zoning, the people you had assigned to shelter would begin building houses. Those assugbed to food would begin farming and/or hunting and the rest to making clothes (this would probably be all hides or leather at this point). You could also assign some to academic persuit.

The strategy at first would be simply allocating your people well. Later you would need to develop a more far reaching strategy to allow for excess food to build up because no food from farms would be produced in winter. Also there needs to be a way of keeping a rein on the population gowth because in times of plenty the population might grow well beyond what could be supported in lean times or, God forbid, a swarm of locusts or some such.

It would be depressing to see funeral fires break out all across the city

What y'all think? Does it just sound boring? Don't worry you won't hurt my feelings, I have two sons that have already tried that.

I like the idea. It lacks details, as it should, but the general idea sounds pretty good. It almost sounds more like a mix of Civilization/SimEarth/SimCity/and a little bit of Societies. I assume you would name it something like SimNation (or just Nation?).

I would be happy to help out as much as possible though, so I suppose we can say 'we', and if SimZilla joins in that'll be three.

I'm going to include SimZilla unless he tells me he wants nothing to do with it.

After all, right now all we are doing is pitching ideas around. At some point if enough people get interested we'll have to start doing some real work and that will be soon enough for us to decide if we want to become a working part of the project or part of the fan base.

Actually I don't think I'm opposed to the idea of the company being owned by the players - at least the founding players. You could issue shares depending on how much work and/or money each player put into it. No doubt that would be a complicated thing to pull off and probably a lot of headaches as far as deciding exactly what would be in the game but the upside would be huge. There are a lot of people out there like me who don't know much about programming or graphics but with a bit of guidance could do grunt work.

You are exactly right, the idea is a combination of games, taking some from each and adding our own to it.

To me a real game killer is if it is too complicated when you first bring it up to just begin playing. I like the idea of being able to play a game without ever reading the manual, maybe not doing too well but being able to play. It doesn't need to be so overwhelming when you see the map that you have no idea of what you can do first.

I think it could be as simple as being presented with your little band of followers, panning the map and deciding where you want to plop down your first city. The map is where I would depart pretty big time from what is out there now. I think you need something like four versions of the map. One that shows terrain - what you typically see. One that shows soil fertility and approx altitudes, one showing game (animal) concentrations and one showing resources. Like Civ I think only the resources of which your citizens knew about would be shown. I'm thinking in the beginning it would possibly only be flint for making arrow heads. When the city is created you could zoom in on the area and begin zoning. The only other thing that would have to be done is allocate your citizens to tasks.

Once the game is un-paused, the citizens would begin working and the FSC (food, shelter, clothing) indicator would be begin to rise. There needs to be a line across these indicators as in SC4 but the dif is that a deficit in food would cause starvation, a lack of shelter and clothing would lead to exposure - how severe that was would depend on weather conditions.

I think the game should progress on its own at that point and even as the population increased you would not have to constantly go to the task screen and micro-manage. The number of people performing tasks would simply increase in proportion to how you originally set it up. Of course at any time you could go in and adjust it.

As the game progressed and your population increased, any excess of the FSC could be traded between the two cities under certain conditions.

The game needs to randomly generate great citizens who do certain things. Maybe it could work like this; a popup saying something like - "a child has been born in the hamlet of Pleasant Site who shows a great sense of direction and adventure." This would generate a new button on your screen for creating a path. That is after you give the kid some time to grow up.
But all great citizens would not generate new buttons in your game, they would do different things.

This post has been edited by Roads on August 21, 2008 06:46 am

I like the sound of this. It would definitely cause me to buy it. It would be difficult, but it is very possible to make (I have no experience in this field at all).

However, I have some friends, who might have enough skill to help out.

Unless, however you need any music. I could write you some songs for free if you want. I do most styles (jazz, alternative, rock, hardcore, funk, trance, etc.).


This post has been edited by mastre on August 21, 2008 07:31 am

mastre, many thanks for your post and interest and yes please spread the word of what we are trying to do.

Of course we need music! Probably some songs too if we can setup the right situation. I tend to get too sentimental (maybe even corny and cheesy) about things so y'all will have to put the brakes on me about that. But if you can't be corny and cheesy in a game, when can you be?

One instance when at least music would be good is when a great citizen is born. I'm thinking you need the option of either naming him or the game generating a name. I'd like him to be kinda like a real character you can get attached to. Remember how you had those heroes in Civ III you could name? I don't think he should live forever but have a normal lifespan. He could even die in the game by getting lost in a desert sandstorm, die of a plague,etc., but back to the music. When he died it would be good to have a little sad music.

One more idea on the game and please say if this is just going too far. I wouldn't mind having a chuch with a little funeral service and then burial in the cemetery. Certainly a song would be appropriate here. If we go that far the cemetery should absolutely have a tombstone with his name on it. I can imagine that hundreds of years later you might be panning around and suddenly see, zoom down on that tombstone and remember those early ancient years.

I realize it is getting complex but I think one way to handle that is for the release of the game to not span the entire time from beginning of nation to the end of it. It could be released in sections like ancient, medieval and modern.

kk I will get working. here is a small amount of my music (already written before this idea) right here

If you like anything, please tell me. I will get working soon. I love writing music.

This post has been edited by mastre on August 21, 2008 01:43 pm

Yeah, I think that is going a little bit far. So far I'm liking the other ideas though. I will be kinda busy working on the site for a little while, so I may not get too many ideas in right now.

OK, no funeral services. But could we still have a cemetery with tombstones for the great citizens? I'm sure you could bulldoze it later on and build one of your awesome skyscrapers if you wanted.

mastre, I only have a dialup connection so listening to the music was difficult. Still it sounded great and ideal for gaming. Some of it perfect for events and some would be great for when the game opens.

I have one suggestion: when it gets up to modern cities and you start zoning and things, please make it like the way SC4 works, where you lay out the zones and then the game builds it. I don't want to have to put in every single building.

But I definitely like the idea of seperating the game into different eras. Then it would almost be like 3 different games: one set in the past with the goal of keeping mankind alive and teaching him skills and other caveman stuff; Another one set in the medieval times (or whatever you'd call it) where you have the rise of religious powers and you start to get more advanced civilizations like the Romans and Greeks and such, and there would be wars and all that fun stuff; And then lastly you enter the modern era (like after 1800 or so) where you would see the rise of technology (depending on how well humanity has fared in the last two eras), and you would *possibly* see peace and the expansion of modern cities and the rise of the megalopolis, which brings things more into SimCity territory. Then, maybe there could even be a future era where you're city/state/planet/thing would suddenly befall some sort of dire situation that would force them to relocate or take some other serious action to avoid being wiped out. But there would need to be more than one thing, like an asteroid bombardment, but then other things like nuclear war, severe plagues, the effects of climate change from too much industry destroying the planet, etc. etc...

But, there are SO many things to discuss, perhaps we need to organize ourselves first?? That way we don't just keep throwing around a bunch of completely random ideas that will eventually get lost in the huge mass..^