Archive through May 17, 2014
Star Fleet Universe Discussion Board: Federation & Empire: F&E COMPUTER PROJECTS:
F&E Computer Development:
Archive through May 17, 2014
I have been talking about both because I realized that SVC does actually have the ability to get a full-blown $20 million project funded if he really wants to put in all the work to pull it off, but I am primarily advocating that you and/or Eric do something like what Chuck and Richard and I have been mentioning. A tool for F&E players to play online that looks and acts like a computer game instead of a primative editor. It's controls and interfaces should work like a game instead of an editor. You can switch between PBEM or live online at any point during a turn. Like Chuck pointed out, it should allow spectators while live and maybe even leave a viewable recorded file to be viewed whenever the game is not actively online.
Basically a full blown game in every way except there is no single player mode and it won't be quit as polished as a retail game. By working like a game I mean things like when you click on a battle hex it just automatically brings up a battle board and all the forces available to begin working out the fight, autmatic pin count of when you hover the mouse over a hex, and the software knowing the rules of F&E and not allowing illegal moves/entries.
This is easily doable as an indie-type project.
There are 4 projects being talked about here:
#1. Randy and his Module V
#2. A full blown F&E PC conversion
#3. A lite F&E PC conversion
#4. An enhanced version of Cyberboard
#1 is all Randy, and from what I've seen of it it could be super neat on a PC, and make people not even want to play F&E anymore 
#2 is currently impossible, and probably always will be. Even if possible, it would be far less than $12M, probably only a couple as things like graphics, sound, level design, terrain art, music, movies, etc aren't required. To become a possibility much of the rules need clarification and SIT data centralized. AI would be next to impossible still though.
#3 was what I was curious about that sparked all our comments the last couple days. I don't think #2 would be fun even if it could be done with perfect AI.
#4 is what Chuck had kinda mentioned, I wrote this last year, though it does need some cleanup before release. A couple weeks of dev time (90% of it on the interface) and it would surpass Cyberboard in every way.
However, #4 is a trick. You can get mostly there, but take construction as an example. You can't implement the construction rules without cleaning up the actual rules and cleaning up the SIT. So even though its easy to think the construction system is easy, it has a HUGE number of dependencies. Same way with ship counts, as some ships are 1, .5 if crippled, some 1 and 0, some 0/0, some only count defensively and not when moving, and so forth. All of that data has to be specified, which means SIT data (by SIT I mean a much expanded one). This is what prompted me to write my online SIT.
Simply adding up ship counts requires a lot more than pictures of little counters and saying "1, 2, 3....37!, far more than any of you seem to be understanding to be so experienced with the game 
#2 would have to be what people in the industry call a "AAA title" to have any chance at success. It is a game I have thought of making my whole life (along with a similar translation to computer of Supremacy). It is not currently impossible, it's just that the only way it could realistically happen is if SVC created his own independant dev company to make it himself. You'd never find a publisher willing to take a chance on it, no. Because it would have to be a AAA title it would cost somewhere between $12-$20 and take 3-4 years to complete. All those things like music and movies would be neseccary, your competition here would be Civilization... not an easy game to compete with. It would have to be all out, and it would be a translation of F&E to computer that would be much more different from the board game than you are giving credit for. I have always thought that F&E could be one of the best strategy computer games ever made if done right, and still do. But it would be a full-blown all out major effort no different than making the next Civilization or Call of Duty.
I agree that what we should be realistically be talking about is an improved version of cyberboard for F&E players to use to play online. The mass market version wouldn't actually be F&E anyway, it would just be heavily based on F&E.
Quote:Still confused Jean So if I wrote Doom in Starfleet battles, emailed you the app, you could then sell it but I could not. Is that right?
That is correct. We would pay you as an outside developer/author, but you cannot sell it (or give it away) yourself.
Ok, that makes sense then Jean.... final question then, can I do some games based on the SFB universe, have a few beta testers, post some screenshots, and eventually hand it over to ADB for potential distribution? I think my first project would be an offline SIT (with an auto-update feature).
#2 is impossible with the current rules. Sorry, been there, done that, and for it to be $12M means ADB hired all the captains from the series to do voice overs. All those things that make modern games cost over $100M wouldn't apply in the same scale to F&E. I guess the argument is pointless though, it won't ever happen.
Civilization is not a complex game, not by any means. Its very simple, and based after Empire games from decades ago. Its designed and built on a computer, for a computer, and any comparison is apples to oranges.
Ya'll are making me want to start up development again with all the interaction, wish it was here last May
Eric, that is best taken up by email with Steve Cole.
Oh gosh, that would make me feel like I commit to doing it, and I'm not real sure yet as I've gotten burned out on SFB numerous times over the last 17 years. However, if I start something and get it done enough to show him he could be like "meh, that looks like a mole on baboon's butt" and all my work would be in vain.
What to do!??!, what to do?!!?
I started up my DigitalF&E again. Takes a few secs to load (as it loads/creates *thousands* of counters, *dynamically*), uses 185mb RAM, and the drag/drop isn't pixel perfect. However, it has support for effectively infinite trays already, new maps can be recreated in excel in minutes, all very modular.
My next step, to help me test stuff out, was to import all the data from the game Ted and I were playing (A12 I think) so I have more to work with and try to play out a couple turns, adding features along the way and fixing things that popup. However, that is a huge amount of data entry, and its kinda daunting
However, I'll see about finding a day or two to import all that data over (historical would be better, as I can replay all battles/moves of the 12 previous turns at whatever speed you want to see) and see about fixing the final few interface improvements that were necessary, as well as adding the code to save everything's new positions. No promises, but its on my mind now, and I'll try to tinker with it again, maybe people are more interested now.
Eric, man...
What if Thomas Edison stopped at the 112th failed light bulb?
What if Henry Ford listened to all the naysayers that said the V8 couldn't be built?
I am saying this in love yet again, bro.
You are undermining your own credibility, which is really, really sad, because you've got talent, and have produced some really quality stuff, man.
Is SVC hard to please sometimes? Aw hail yeah! But it's not because he's malicious or has an axe to grind. If he says it "looks like a mole on a baboon's butt" then dude, it DOES. You can't let it bother you. You can't let it make you quit.
I prefer the Henry Ford approach, "Whether you say you can or you say you can't, you're right." It [the motivation] has to come from within you, not from everyone else.
So yeah, I'm not a developer, but I do have 30 years of IT experience. Yeah, I may fail the first time (I've failed in every fiction I've written...doesn't mean I stop trying). I may fail 100 times, but eventually I'm gonna get it right.
So will you.
Well Heinrich Goebel actually invented and patented the light bulb, Edison just bought the patent after his death.
And technically the V8 was around 30 years before Ford made his one-block version.
But I see your point
I was saying it not to dog Steve in any way, but just to show the fact that without prior approval (which he can't really give) I'm taking a big chance that anything I make that I'd want published, would be accepted by ADB to BE published.
Though I would LOVE to see a nice, fun to play, version of F&E on a PC, I think I'd rather see a real time faithful SFB game. I know Starfleet Command already had this, but it was also the game that really got me going into development. I even wrote some editors and stuff for it that modified hex code within the exe to support some new features and stuff.
I'll get my DigitalF&E to a working state, better than Cyberboard, but I am not sure how far I'll continue after that. If 100 people are using it and asking for features I'll keep going, if the number is more like 2 I may be hard pressed to justify it.
Real time SFB, multiplayer, with support for everything in the game, I think would be extremely fun. SFC was limited to 3 ships per side and only 1v1 players. Imagine fighting a battle with 100 people per side, a dozen in the fight with the rest ready to arrive as reinforcements. Of course I can integrate in a campaign system as well.
Though its more time than I'd invest, imagine how cool it'd be to send over the marines for a H&R raid, and having it fought out with other players in a 1st person shooter mode. Or when you launch fighters those are individual humans flying them as well. Could be pretty neato, but would becomes a massive project that is more free time than I could contribute.
But here is my deal with SFB/F&E. I *can* do it, I have the ability, the experience, and the time. BUT, I also have big battletech projects, robotech projects, and some other ones on the sideline. Since last May I have worked a lot on Robotech and Battletech, mostly the latter as I've been playing it bi-weekly. Since I don't have tons of folks asking me what my status is on some project, none of them are a priority and I kinda go with whatever I feel into that day. When lots of people are asking me about something, I tend to focus on it. I don't like to let people down, so whatever gets the most requests will get priority in pretty much every case.
Right now, my Battletech tools and online encyclopedia take priority as I have a couple people a week show some interest. If 5 people had kept interested in my DigitalF&E over the last year, being very active when I posted updates and asking lots of questions, it would have been done by now.
So for me, its not as much a matter of "can" or "can't" do these projects, but "should" or "shouldn't". I go where the wind takes me ;)
Quote:Real time SFB, multiplayer, with support for everything in the game, I think would be extremely fun. SFC was limited to 3 ships per side and only 1v1 players. Imagine fighting a battle with 100 people per side, a dozen in the fight with the rest ready to arrive as reinforcements. Of course I can integrate in a campaign system as well.
Oooohhhh. Back in college we had this crazy/stupid idea to do combined F&E and SFB. We ran exactly one F&E battle round, a Lyran assault on a Kzinti BATS ending in a few dead Lyran ships and some dead Kzinti fighters. Then it flopped.
But with the ability to have 100's of people per side? And computerized? That's really what it would take to do that right.
My Module V rules are an attempt to blend F&E and SFB. But it's a boardgame, not a computer game.
Funny how yours and mine started the same way...a Lyran assault on a Kzinti BATS.
I get it and I am hopeful. I will buy everything I need to understand and play a sim I enjoy. If there is a computerized F&E that highlighted what I could or could not do with my ships during move options even after I poured over rules (I bought) in my free time while waiting for my opponents' moves, I would love it. Give me a game system that has the capacity for ALL of the basics. A foundation that is sound. I can tinker and experiment with the rest. Even the core group of SFU/ADB officers cannot make Q&A rulings w/out pouring over all past rules and/orBBS addendum. I believe this is what Eric S is asking for: an "absolute" foundation on which to build a gaming platform on.
I cannot remember everything, but my laptop will remember everything it is told to. My laptop can be my XO. I will make my decisions with the knowledge I have gleaned tempered by the recommendations of my tabletop XO. This in itself would promote gaming expedience.
I would happily pre purchase two Captain's Logs per year as well as access to ADB maintained SIT material and special offers. A "Gold Membership", perse. Maybe said membership would include a 12-month F&E AND SFB on-line access. If I did that, I would definitely have to up my SFB stuff. Regardless, I am buying my CLs. And I barely play! You see? There is a solution here.
One of the most intriguing characteristics of F&E (and ADB) is that it is willing to evolve. Willing to evolve and listen to the devotees of it's community. That is rare, difficult, and priceless.
*edit*
Obviously, momentum must be directed, nurtured, and tempered. Now-a-days, it's hard game FTF. My best friend lives 15 miles from me. We used to game all the time. But now- 25 years, 15 (measly) miles, 5 kids, 4 pets, and 2 mortgages... we don't even find time for ftf Monopoly. There is an answer here... It prolly only takes only a lot of work and improvisation. Just like always. Grand strategy games are going the way of the dinasaurs unless we do something. It seems to me there are capable people willing to change the ebb for just kudos and scoobie snacks. Harness the wind! It's only work and time for something you're passionate and good at. Edit by FEAR for mention of a forbidden topic.
Go Randy!
I look forward to being able play/translate F&E to SFB! Cool stuff! Cheers!
Andrew, if you want to play test it firsthand, I still have two openings for some intrepid Orion Pirate Cartel crimelords. *cough* I mean businessmen.
Eric, I don't know why you think it would be "impossible" to make an F&E computer game, but it isn't. It can certainly be done.
Civilization is not based on Empire, it was based on a board game called Civilization. Of all the board games I know of, I have always believed that the best chances of truly competing with Civilization would be translations of Mega-Supremacy or Federation & Empire.
F&E as a Civ-competitor would cost somewhere around $12-$20 million and take 3-4 years. You are vastly underistimating what I would do with F&E as a computer game:-)
But, you are right, there is not a lot of reason to talk about it. A mass market F&E computer game meant to rival Civilization could only be made by SVC self-funding his own independant dev company. It's too radical of a game for a publisher to support so to get it made SVCs way it would have to be self-funded. SVC could actually pull this off, but I don't see him having a lot of interest in doing so. It would be a tremendous amount of work for him, and the game would be "inspired by F&E" and not 100% F&E because otherwise it would just be a board game on computer.
I don't want to keep steering the discussion back to one of my personal dream-games when the productive discussion here is talking about a better CB, so I'll stop talking about F&E as a major PC title. But it could definately be done, and it if were done right would be one of the best strategy wargames ever made on the computer. So could Supremacy.
2 of 3 games I will forever regret never getting the chance to make, the 3rd being an original of mine called Pirate Dawn.
I kind of mentioned it once before but just in passing. If any of you are interested in playing a good strategy game that is based on the SFU there is a game call Sword of the Stars & Sword of the Stars 2 that is the closest thing to an SFU strategy game that I know of (and I know of most computer games).
The original is about 10 years old, 2 is only a few years old. SWotS is heavily based on the basic ship designs and technology of the SFU and is a good space strategy game in its own right as well. Most SFU fans would probably like Sword of the Stars a lot.
F&E PC is impossible because the rules aren't clear and concise enough for a computer to understand them. Change them and sure, its possible, keep 100% to the F&E rules, its impossible today. Even 20 year vets of the game can't get through more than a few turns before having to hit the Q&A forums.
Sorry, but sure the Civilization PC game was based on the Civilization board game. BUT, the Civilization Board game (1980) was based on the Empire PC game (1977) which was itself based on the Empire board game of 1971. Head to wikipedia and search for "classic empire", or google for "classic empire game" (not in quotes).
F&E would never compete with Civilization, they are completely different games with completely skill sets. I would think F&E would be more likely to compete with things like Fire in the East rather than simple mass-appeal games like Civ. F&E is very scripted, Civ is very open ended and anything can happen.
There will never be money for an F&E PC game, not at $3M, not $12M, not $20M. I may be stretching here, but I doubt ADB could afford $500K for a perfect F&E game to be written in 6 months.
A CB clone could work, and it could have a LOT of the F&E rules integrated within it. Things like construction would be a breeze, economy and fleet stats would be instant. Even retreat priorities could in many cases be done automatically without having to look up rules. Battle lines could be pre-formed based on various types of tactics like "maximum compot" or "maximum survivability" or "maximum endurance" or whatever. Supply lines would be automatic. Carrier formations easy to make. No more die rolling. A map that changes color with occupation. Captured ships that can change their counter color. And a bazillion other things. But these will have to be very clear and concise rules only, or a lot of questions will have to be answered. And again, for the 20th time, it can't really be finished enough to use until the SIT is extended and completed. Many rules omitted as SVC rightfully thought they would drag down the game (hehehe, it takes like a year to get to turn 12, how much more can it drag down? hehe) could now be implemented.
Back to my own DigitalF&E. Today I did some updates, putting in data from Ted and I's First Blood game, A12 I believe. I went through and inputted all 2178 counters on the board (well, minus color points and dead stuff, and stuff not in play, but EVERYTHING else). I also updated the ownership of all the hexes and neutral zones. I need to tinker with the way I'm saving hexes so they know their province, and track things like disrupted and long term capture, but that is pretty easy.
The wife is gone all day Saturday and since I don't have a Battletech game, I'll try to focus on this since its one big chunk of time. I'll get the save implemented, and more bits and pieces overall, but it still has a long way to go before I'd use it instead of Cyberboard. If I really start making progress, and get some good feedback (quantity, I'm cool with "that feature sucks, change it!"), I may even think about playing again which would speed things up a lot if it becomes my hobby focus. Plus, it'll save me some money as my wife isn't too happy at the $5K I've spent already this year on BattleTech miniatures and terrain. SFB is much cheaper
I know what Empire was. We are both right, actually. Civilization was inspired by the Civ board game, but was also based partly on Empire in some it's mechanics. So you are right about that.
We are talking about different games with PC F&E. You are talking about the F&E board game on PC and I am talking about translating F&E to the computer. They are completely different things. The compeition for my version would be Civilization, and you would need to be able to justify making an attempt at competing with Civ with publishers and investors.
And ADB could not afford to fund a $10 million game, but with the right core team ADB does have the credability and reputation to raise the funding to do it. It's always best to use other people's money if you can, and SVC and ADB are a rare entity that actually could do that. Especially if Jon Van Caneghem were involved, then raising the funding would be brain dead simple. You are right that this will never happen, but not for the reasons you think. Only SVC could make it happen, I doubt he has much interest in all that work to make a game that is only based on F&E and his exact vision. I imagine SVC is half-retired at this point and enjoying life too much to care about starting a whole new game company.
Eric and/or Randy... an enhanced CB would be a great thing for the SFU community and something I'm sure either of you can achieve. But there really isn't any money in it. If either of you want to do something SFU for the computer that you might be able to make some money on through ADB I would strongly suggest talking with SVC about Tribble v Klingons. If this were translated to computer as a cute casual game meant for Facebook, Yahoo, etc, it could actually do very well. And it is the kind of thing that can be done well by a single person. If it is cute enough, and funny enough, and the game is addictive in someway... that is the ADB game that a single programmer can really do something with.
That's well and good, but the topic really has been F&E board game, some improved Cyberboard type thing. From what I can tell, nothing else has yet been worked on.
I've been thinking about computerized F&E for some time now. Ever since I made my SFB DAC program, I realized that I *could* do F&E.
I was tempted to make that program into something that could calculate compot and damage for battle rounds for F&E. The data structure involved had a data structure for a scenario, which had a list of all sides. Each side had a battleforce which had a list of ships for that side, and each ship kept track of various statuses and refered to a ship blueprint.
Adding F&E attributes to blueprints would have been trivial, but I decided to stay focused on the main project and did not do that.
So, I have decided I will go ahead and make a computer game version of F&E 2010. It will be usuable via email, and hopefully also play over the internet in some sort of real time fashion. I have put considerable thought into it as to how to speed play. I will handle operational movement by allowing the phasing player to move one or many units/fleets before sending the move to the opponent. The opponent can decline to react to all of it, or can react to any movement sent - with the stipulation that if he chooses to react that the rest of the movement will be cancelled and go back to the phasing player.
The phasing player can then send the remaining move back to the other player or change it based on the reaction.
Basically, this means that the game can move more smoothly than requiring an interrupt for possible reaction every time the phasing player creates such a situation. This is generally how I do it in PBEM, and it should work for 'realtime' play as well.
Another element will be that either player can move any unit or edit the game without regards to rules to take into account special rules that may exist in special scenarios (or for house rules) - but if a player does this, it will be sent to the opponent for approval.
Richard: For what it's worth, my version is going to be entirely web based, using WebRTC session technology for a real time interactive movement experience. Probably with a chat window integrated in the page as well (or at least a pop up).
That way, your opponent can see you move your counter(s) in real time, and can say in chat (or maybe push a button) that s/he will react to that movement.
Is that what you were thinking, too? But, like Eric, you're doing a PC (read: EXE file) based implementation?
Richard, if you are now doing an enhanced Cyberboard sorta system, I would see no point in working on my own. Can you confirm that so I can make my plans for what I'll be working on this weekend?
Randy: To be determined.
Eric: Confirmed.
Randy-
Gosh, thanks very much for the offer. Unfortunately I'm just too busy at the moment to commit. I'm still looking forward to updates and cheering you on, tho. Go get 'em!
FEAR-
Whoops! Me bad.
Maybe you guys should work on it together, maybe some components of your work could be combined. Also, it really should have a live component primarily so players could meet live online to resolve battles, which can be handled much more quickly live online.