I’ve been fiddling around with the game for some time now and I have an interesting metagame idea.
Right now we have the campaign mode, which is a very nice addition on its own, but it is not a 4X game.
However, it is possible to create a Master of Orion 2 like strategy game shell over the GSB tactical space and surface battles. With exploration, research which effects module and weapon availability, buildings and the works. It seems the GSB app can handle this without any alteration in its current state.
Without access to the code, it would be 2 different app in symbiosis. The 4X game feeds the ship, fleet and engagement information to the GSB game. The the GSB engine would return the outcome of the tactical battle to the 4X shell. Unfortunately, the actual result (ship survived, damaged, lost) is not available through normal methods at the moment.
What do you think, would that work, would it worth the effort?
I don’t know if the architecture of GSB would permit this, but if someone made such a game, I would certainly try it out, and if it was well done, probably play it a lot. I loved Moo2.
I suspect it would be a massive effort, however, if it is possible in the first place. I have developed a few Flash games–orders of magnitude simpler than GSB–and it was extremely difficult and time-consuming, much more difficult than making any other kind of programming project I have ever tried.
Worth it? It depends on how much free time you have and how much satisfaction you would get out of the project.
The GSB engine is very very mod friendly and allows everything. With 2 small modification (command line scenarion/ship editor launch + battle result dump) the integration would be perfect. The shell and the integration itself is straight forward job with guaranteed end results, it is just a question of time, really.
The main problem would be the challenging, but consistent AI and the quality 2D and 3D artwork. While I can do those, I’m not skilled at that all that much. Which means it takes 2-3 times as long to make some OK artwork and while I do that, the coding would start to lag behind.
That was the doom of my last X-COM FPS project. Good code + lousy artwork in a high quality engine = fail.
Those are all real challenges, but I will mention one other problem that can be very tricky–making it fun to play. Everything else can be nailed, and a game can still be pretty uninteresting. From personal experience, this is especially tricky because after intensively developing a game for a while, it becomes hard to see it the same way that players do. This isn’t a reason not to do it, just a potential problem to keep in mind.
Only thing I can suggest is to try to get a team together. There seem to be some good 2D and 3D artists on this forum, perhaps some of them would enjoy a project like this.
The GC mode has potential but IMO making a 4X type thing out of it seem to be against the game play mechanic of GSB.
I would prefer more in battle fine tuning before heading to any ‘X’
The strongest point of GSB is customization of the ships and fleet. A lot more can still be explored on that front.
Maybe 4X can be done down the track with dramatic increase of GC component of the game but certainly can’t now. Random map generation is a must and at the moment, i dont see that from happening… I even got a bug at one of the big maps where i can’t select ships off a system at the bottom right corner of my screen!!!