I created an account on GameDev.net and posted the following:
https://www.gamedev.net/forums/topic/694726-wasteland-generations/
Copy of post:
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First post in this forum. Team of one. 17 years experience in desktop applications in VB.NET, no experience in making a game. No experience in making assets. Loved games since 1990s.
I want to make a game, but my abilities limit me to a 2D top down 1st generation NES game. Just learned how to make a map editor with 32*32 tiles, but I know a lot about making classes, handling a lot of objects in memory, inheritance, and such. So I aim to work on my strengths. I can’t do graphics, so I’ll make a game that is strong on the other departments.
*As very few resources are used for graphics (I get 100 000 fps on an old laptop that hardly can handle Fallout 4 on lowest setting, when working on only the map), I can spend a lot of resources on handling things in memory.
*Responsive and persistent environment. Grass that grows and dies depending on season, availability of water and sun, damage from people walking on them, animals grazing. A slot that is often walked on will automatically turn into a road as all grass on it will die out. Until nobody walks on it, and the surrounding grass will again spread to that area. Damage due to combat is persistent. Animals will be able to graze on the grass until its finished, then the grass grows back, until growing season ends.
*The entire world, all persons and animals, are represented live in memory, so no random encounters. You see a local bear? It has a name, and searches for food, mates and has children even when out of sight. If you kill it, the children might starve to death, resulting in too few predators, resulting in a larger population of herbivores for the player to hunt.
*All humans and animals have complex AI where they have to satisfy their physical and emotional needs. Food, water, shelter are basics. Food will add calories, activity will drain calories, caloric surplus will enable muscle growth if the individual muscles are activated, otherwise stored as fat.
*Battles between enemy factions taking place outside of the field of view of the player (think Civilization), and the battles will leave persistent damage on the environment and the population of the factions involved. Player may stumble upon site of previous conflicts, and if the site weren’t cleared, bodies and armaments might litter the floor.
*Player can switch between different characters that are in the group. All characters are killable. All death is permadeath with emotional consequences for the characters involved. Saving is automatic in real time, as all files are updated to mirror what is going on in memory. There are no previous states to load. Burial with corresponding ceremonies will occur. Failure to have a burial ceremony will have emotional impact. Player can have a winform up for each character in the group, so multiple screens will be useful. So you can have a hunting party out in one corner, a scouting party on another corner, and the base personal, all having their own winform, all acting in real time. Game will be pausable. Dialog can have characters generate new winforms were one can see memories they are reliving.
*All actives will require calories based on effort and time required. All tasks will take realistic amount of time, including building, mining and all other time consuming events. Damage to muscles will need to heal for them to be able to perform again, so healing will take realistic amount of time.
*Looting, hunting, base building, farming etc. Farming will require huge areas to be fenced and the ground worked on, and will yield crops after a full natural growth cycle. Oh, you grew some crops? That will trigger the herbivores to come and eat. Oh, you killed them? That will trigger the carnivores to search out food when hungry, meaning you and your cattle. Oh, you learned that the hard way? Maybe put up some fences and just scare of the herbivores, until you got the manpower to kill the carnivores. And not too many of them, or it will trigger hunger in the apex-carnivores. You want to kill the local apex-carnivores? How, you got no gunpowder. Better start using some manure to make some gunpowder, provided you actually know how to do that, and have the mining required for the minerals required… also, now you got shortage of fertilizers. And yeah, it’s gonna be low grade gunpowder. You got the apex-predator? Now you own the local area, but don’t draw to much attention or the local warlords will want to make you an offer you can’t resist…
*Procreation will be realistic, including sexual dimorphism that extends to physical and emotional differences. If the player does not have their characters have children, the game ends after the first generations dies, unless new characters are constantly recruited into the group. Having children will have benefits that will outweigh their great cost.
*Game play will cover several generations were technological advances will progress from post-apocalyptic to recovered humanity.
Having created this, I will then proceed to see what I can do with it.
Well, either that, or I abandon it undone. I’m hyped at the moment.
If I manage to the the AI and game engine right, I’m hopping to be able to attract some people who are interested in doing some assets, dialog and such. If I do get that far, the game will probably be free-to-play with DLCs, or if possible, just patreon. I envision a wiki-style development were the players are simultaneously developing the game, in forks, each fork having it’s own guiding constitution.
I don’t know, dreaming is cheap. Have worked for about a few weeks on it. I’m still working on the map editor. Here is the site of the game: http://blog.wastelandgenerations.com/youtube/
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