by pinback » Mon Mar 17, 2008 1:51 pm
Ice Cream Jonsey wrote:Also, BEN: is there anything one can learn from Pirates! that would go towards the one-day-but-honestly-probably-never "trading space in shit" game that will one day never be done?
Yes, and in fact, I am redesigning the entire game in my mind as a result of my experience with Pirates. Specifically, I have shifted the focus of the game away from being about "trading space in shit", and towards being more about "being exactly like Pirates but in space".
I think this can be done. So where the trading space in shit game will (and must) never be done, the Sid Meier's Pirates In Space CAN be done, and with very little effort. In fact, both Worm and I have begun designing and developing this game as a pure ASCII project. Our current status is 0% done, but this could change any day.
If you look at it, Pirates really just IS a trading space in shit game, but with two very significant flaws fixed, flaws which continue to plague the space shit trading genre, being:
1. There's not enough fun to do.
2. Everything takes too long.
Pirates lets you trade, but also gives you LOTS OF OTHER FUN STUFF to do, in INTERESTING ENVIRONMENTS, and lets you do it QUICKLY, so you're not sitting there for ten minutes on another slow crawl across the galaxy, waiting to dock at yet another featureless spacestation, only to go on another long, boring trade route and dock at another featureless spacestation which looks exactly like the one you just left.
So, take a space trading shit game, cut out the boredom, add a bunch of fun adventure-type shit with some real PERSONALITY, so that you're looking forward to getting somewhere just because you wanna see what its like, throw in a bunch of other crap, make sure the player is never stuck doing one boring thing, make sure that the player has access to several FUN things to do at any given point, and can get there QUICKLY, and never ever give them a reason to stop playing. There's a game.
And Worm and I are developing it as an ASCII game.
James, would you like to say a few words about this?
[quote="Ice Cream Jonsey"]Also, BEN: is there anything one can learn from Pirates! that would go towards the one-day-but-honestly-probably-never "trading space in shit" game that will one day never be done?[/quote]
Yes, and in fact, I am redesigning the entire game in my mind as a result of my experience with Pirates. Specifically, I have shifted the focus of the game away from being about "trading space in shit", and towards being more about "being exactly like Pirates but in space".
I think this can be done. So where the trading space in shit game will (and must) never be done, the Sid Meier's Pirates In Space CAN be done, and with very little effort. In fact, both Worm and I have begun designing and developing this game as a pure ASCII project. Our current status is 0% done, but this could change any day.
If you look at it, Pirates really just IS a trading space in shit game, but with two very significant flaws fixed, flaws which continue to plague the space shit trading genre, being:
1. There's not enough fun to do.
2. Everything takes too long.
Pirates lets you trade, but also gives you LOTS OF OTHER FUN STUFF to do, in INTERESTING ENVIRONMENTS, and lets you do it QUICKLY, so you're not sitting there for ten minutes on another slow crawl across the galaxy, waiting to dock at yet another featureless spacestation, only to go on another long, boring trade route and dock at another featureless spacestation which looks exactly like the one you just left.
So, take a space trading shit game, cut out the boredom, add a bunch of fun adventure-type shit with some real PERSONALITY, so that you're looking forward to getting somewhere just because you wanna see what its like, throw in a bunch of other crap, make sure the player is never stuck doing one boring thing, make sure that the player has access to several FUN things to do at any given point, and can get there QUICKLY, and never ever give them a reason to stop playing. There's a game.
And Worm and I are developing it as an ASCII game.
James, would you like to say a few words about this?