Some f&% good games that should have been made in Java

[kappa]

what i really like about spores is that they are trying something new and innovative not just remaking a game like everyone else. Whether its fun or not is another question.

[ChrisM]

what i really like about spores is that they are trying something new and innovative not just remaking a game like everyone else. Whether its fun or not is another question.

Spore seems to be, at this time, the ultimate sandbox game.  No point yet other than experimentation.  However, their experiment will lay the foundation for techniques and elements that will make their way into other games.

-Chris

[zingbat]

Oh, besides, he said it had the same amount of plot as every other successful real time strategy game.

You know, like Command and Conquer, StarCraft, Dune 2, Warcraft and Total Annihilation. ALL of them totally devoid of plot and sense of purpose.

Sure some simulator games have a plot others don't and can be very fun the same way like SimCity. Honestly i don't see what kind of a plot could be attached to a game like spore. It seems that Spore would work better with random events like the ones seen in SimCity. Stuff like earthquakes, sun flares, meteorite collisions, alien invasions. Spore doesn't mess with stuff like trading and diplomatic alliances between races, even if there are other races in the spore galaxy to dominate and each one will have its own characteristic behavior. Thats the stuff Galatic Civilizations II expands upon and that game even has a simple plot.

Games published by our own members! Check 'em out!

[Markus_Persson]

I bought Galactic Civilizations II today, by the way.

[kylix999]

I bought Galactic Civilizations II today, by the way.

and how is it? does it have some 3d action like battles etc or just 2d ? on screenshoots it is not looking intresting...

[Tzan]

If you dont like SimCity or TheSims then you probably wont like this either, unless they add more gamish elements that havent been disclosed yet.

Youngsters .

Heh 

I think the key point here is all the Maxis SimXXX games you *didn't* mention that were utter crap.

The main common feature? No plot, not enough "game", too little cohesion, too much "simulation for simulation's sake", no "score"/"points"/etc.

Worst of the lot: SimEarth.

Followed by other great bestselling (not) games such as SimAnt etc...

* blahblahblahh still has original boxed copies of simearth and simcity. Dont think I've got originals for any of the others.

Of course I didnt mention them, they were crap! I played SimEarth and Ant and I didnt like them. I did like SimCity and the various railroad games. Its still yet to be proved whether Spore will be a good game. Its a fine line sometimes between a good and bad game. Fiddling with a city, fiddling with ants, both could have been good but only one was.

I wrote a letter to Maxis after they made SimCity but before Ant came out. I suggested that they should make zones in SimCity like army bases etc.. so two sim cities could battle it out for land. They actually wrote back and indicated that they were working on a strategy game, which turned out to be ant, I was rather disappointed. The concept of battling ants was good but it just didnt play well.

I'm with Chris on this, I think it will alter the way games are made.

Oh, I also bought Galactic Civ II a few days ago. I played MOO and liked that. I havent played GCII enough, seems ok so far, I'm about to invade Earth.

[kappa]

I bought Galactic Civilizations II today, by the way.

whats GC2 like? game looks really good, but not heard much about it

[Timedancer]

And when you get the ufo.. well.. heh.. No more game.

I think "Game" is likely a bit misleading when applied to Spore. Hobby, pastime, craft might be closer. What I got from the video was that it is a creative game in which you create a world and upload it the server for others to visit. You can then visit their worlds with your ufo, and use some of their stuff if you like.  This a common 'game' mechanism in the model building, gardening and crafts worlds.  Create stuff and show it off,  browse other peoples stuff for ideas.

The name of the game in the creative world is "fame". Who is using my stuff? Spore measures that. So it has the structure needed for a creative game. Nothing like the structure of an RTS though.

I'm picking it up like a ringing phone, of course, but I don't expect it to last very long. :\

I hope its not long lasting. Most MMOGs put enough grind in there that people will play for years. But that takes it out of range of most casual players. Asynchronous creative  multi-player is inherently far  cheaper than synchronous competitive multi-player. So EA should be able to make money off quite casual, short term play. Hopefully, a whole new audience for multi-player games.

[nva225]

I'm not sure if this has been suggested (too lazy to read all the posts) but I don't think UFO = God Mode.

I'm guessing you need to build up a certain number of resources and research certain technologies to be able to perform such an action as terraforming. The game is just in a very pre-alpha state. The game mechanics aren't there. I think (hope) that it's just showing off the power of their universe creation system. Random conflicts will probably be introduced and substantive competition should come into play. One can't just go blowing up entire solar systems.

I'm sure that, if they aren't aware already, they will realize it's better to put in certain limitations and increases in difficulty because it makes it that much more fun when you actually pull off these incredible tasks. What we saw was probably just a tech demo of sorts.

[Timedancer]

I'm not sure if this has been suggested (too lazy to read all the posts) but I don't think UFO = God Mode.

I'm guessing you need to build up a certain number of resources and research certain technologies to be able to perform such an action as terraforming. The game is just in a very pre-alpha state. The game mechanics aren't there. I think (hope) that it's just showing off the power of their universe creation system. Random conflicts will probably be introduced and substantive competition should come into play. One can't just go blowing up entire solar systems.
 

I’m not sure they need to go beyond God Mode to provide things to do. The "game" in God Mode is creating stuff. Its what gods do. And some people like doing it to. Plus, in some respects,  its a good business proposition. The server load in a creation MMOG is a lot less than in a competition one. The "score" in a creative world is fame. And that is cheap to track. In Spore as currently described, you just need to track who uploaded which civilization when. That’s saves a lot of hassle at the server end.

Introduce substantive competition between civilizations though, and validating a score  becomes much more difficult. Not only do you have to track the outcome of a battle, you have to check that neither side cheated. And that means validating the detail transactions that made up the war.  Tough in a game which mostly happens asynchronously on players desktops.

Be interesting to see which way they go with it.