30 Aug

Shadow Wars - Designing a Game - Part 1

Category: General

Game Types

When you first join a game, two major game types will be available: Casual & Dedicated. Casual games will be a configured to be more beneficial for new players or those who are not able to play regularly. Dedicated games will be configured to be most beneficial for those players who are experienced or able to login daily.

There will also be tournament games regularly for those die-hards who want to challenge for a title and cash prizes. These games will typically be very short and intense, and only a few players can play in each game. A tournament can also be set up at any time between players who wish to do so. These games will take place in very small galaxies.

Casual Game Type

  • Longer build times
  • Longer movement times
  • More expensive and time consuming to hire planetary governers, fleet admirals
  • Protection time to allow players to colonise home system
  • Defences more powerful
  • Large sized galaxy
  • All systems are the equal

Dedicated Game Type

  • Shorter build times
  • Shorter movement times
  • Less expensive and time consuming to hire planetary governers & fleet admirals
  • No system protection
  • Defences less powerful
  • Medium sized galaxy
  • Neutral systems will have better planets than home systems

Tournament Games

  • Intense one-day games, also longer one month games.
  • Pay-to-play, premium players only
  • Winners receive cash prizes
  • Small number of players
  • Tiny galaxy

Officials

To control the rate at which players can aquiring planets or create new fleets, officials must be hired to administer them. These measures protect newer players by giving some guarantee that a number of planets will always be available to colonize or even invade. Dedicated players will still be able to aquire planets more quickly than casual players, but not take more than their fair share.

Officials can be hired at any time, if you have sufficient credits. They do take time to hire though as well, so don’t think you can just hire them at a moments notice in time to colonise or invade, you will need to plan in advance.

Planetary Governer

  • Hire Planetary Governers to administer Colonies
  • Can not colonize or invade without a free governer

Fleet Admiral

  • Hire Fleet Admirals to command Fleets
  • Can not create a new fleet without a free admirals

Posted Saturday, August 30th, 2008 at 3:51 pm
Filed Under Category: General
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12

Responses to “Shadow Wars - Designing a Game - Part 1”

Muffinman || September 2nd, 2008 at 5:19 pm

Not as good as the post that was deleted, but still interesting. :p

Keep up the good work.

Zedd || September 2nd, 2008 at 6:05 pm

I’ve broken that post down into bite size pieces so people can digest them more easily, I didn’t really realise just how long it was …!

I’ll post the parts quite frequently, but any comments on each one individually will be appreciated :)

Riithi || September 7th, 2008 at 11:40 am

The devision between casual and hardcore seems a good idea, but you will need some system to prevent pro-alliances going on a griefing spree on a casual server.

Zedd || September 7th, 2008 at 5:01 pm

Agreed, I think that some games will end finishing very quickly due to such situations, however I am hoping it will not occur to often - otherwise we will be forced to put in place some kind of protection against this (ideas?).

Alliances will have the opportunity to participate in a league of their own which will prove much more fun i think. Hopefully keep them from causing too much havoc in the main games :)

Riithi || September 7th, 2008 at 7:31 pm

There will always be jerks ofcours, no one can help that. In a way the best thing to avoid this problem is to make it so that any pro-alliance would have a really annoying game-experience on a casual server. Things like a low alliance limit and slower gameplay.

Enforcement always sucks and costs time, it’s always better to make sure unwanted behaviour is not fun to do.

Cova Lue || September 12th, 2008 at 9:58 pm

The idea of having the planitary Govoner and the Fleet Amerial is good.

Away of controling bullies in casual games would be to allow only the premeum players to form an alliance.

But if there are only going to be two factions Humans & alians then there should be no alliances, only clans, who would be all working togather to stop the other faction.

The Green clans could not fight each other. they can only fight the red clans.

Cova Lue

GEn || September 20th, 2008 at 7:42 am

i have a suggestion to keep large alliances out of the casual games, add some kind of tex rate or penalty based on alliance size, so it’s not worth to be part of it =)

Darzan || October 1st, 2008 at 6:47 pm

alliance limits are bah. Larger alliances will work around penalties base don limits, and indeed, the limits themselves.

After X amount of time of Y event, there is no attack between casual or hardcore gamers.

X could be any measure of time or hours from any Y event, the fist expansion, ship battle, signing into the game.

Just a thought.

Dolon || October 4th, 2008 at 4:26 am

Hmmm, only two races seems kind of limited. Perhaps 3: “Terran”, made-up-alien-race-name-1, made-up-alien-race-name-2?

Darzan || October 10th, 2008 at 1:51 pm

Dolon || October 4th, 2008 at 4:26 am
Hmmm, only two races seems kind of limited. Perhaps 3: “Terran”, made-up-alien-race-name-1, made-up-alien-race-name-2?
__________________

Like “zerg” and “protoss”?

:p

Zedd || October 10th, 2008 at 6:50 pm

The idea of just two races is in keeping with the whole ‘keep it simple philosophy’. However do not worry, it will be easy to add multiple factions for future versions if it is the popular to do so. The game will be very flexable in that regard.

waster || October 12th, 2008 at 7:32 am

governors good. fleet admirals bad. i feel like that would force large fleet battles and i prefer to use smaller tactical fleets. (not that i really ever had that option in dg either) speaking of which, a limit on fleet SIZE rather than fleet numbers would force folks to rely more on tactics than brute strength and allow for a more spread out defensive strategy than was possible in dg. unless you were one of the truly large players in dg you would be forced to use a single large fleet to defend all of your planets which had the additional drawback of limiting your ability to attack as well. not that i have any idea of how to put my idea into practice…

also if admirals could be killed with the fleet you would lose the ability to sacrifice your fleet of 5bts(example) in order to bleed the enemy and that would severely limit options against a numerically superior foe.

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