A planatary special and an easter egg

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Tortanick
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Re: A planatary special and an easter egg

#16 Post by Tortanick »

pd wrote:We know how they dress,
Most of that paragraph makes sense, (although I have a very clear idea what your example race looks like from that sentance) but I just thought I'd point out that nearly all Races I've seen sound like they are nudists. Two of my three races are, the other use robotic bodies so their state of dress is debatable.

That said I do have to ask, is this really an argument for including humans? They may be easier than creating an alien race, but they've been done before by all the other games, and bring the human bias, and even if you do include Humans that's only one race done.
pd wrote:
Tortanick wrote:Look at the proposed races in the story board.
To be honest, I've taken just a glimpse at this board. From what I've seen so far there was a lot of crap, but also some nice ideas.

Differs from my impression, I saw a lot of crap and a lot of nice ideas. Not just some nice ideas. I'd recommend reading through one time, I found it very fun.
pd wrote:Taking those ideas and adapting them so that the game understands it, together with creating all the graphic content takes some serious effort. Many ideas will have to be scraped along the way, this is for sure, because they are simply over the top. Creating/Inventing a race isn't nearly done just be those threads. They are just the starting point.
I agree, but is this really an argument for including Humans?

pd wrote: Can you give some examples for what special treatment should be avoided?
Examples:
In the MOO3 back story it turns out that Humans won the wars in MOO1 and created an age of enlightenment. Not only is it highly improbable that a free for all intergalatic war would be won by a single side, its even more unlikely that a age of enlightenment would be the direct result, especially one based on human Western Civilisation. There is also no justification for why Humans won, it just says "shady deals and brute force". Probably say that about any of the races.

It also turns out that Humans become leaders of the galaxy after MOO2, but its a short lived reign this time.

Galactic Civilisations 1: Firstly you can only play the Humans, despite most races being very similar ingame. And secondly it was Humans who created Hyperdrive, no explanation was given as to why Humans alone were able to develop hyperdrive.
pd wrote:I imagine it not being harder creating a interesting backstory for humans than any other races. Obviously we have to be careful with stuff like religion, race and so on because people might be offended. But then again, this is where creating a different history might be helpful, because everything is clearly fiction in this case.
An interesting backstory for humans would be easy, and I'm not too worried about offending people, pretty much every nation, race and religion has at least one Crime Against Humanity on its hands. It wouldn't be Humans if they didn't frequently do something horrible to other Humans in the Backstory.

However while a backstory is easy, the part of the story after they meet other races would be very hard to write in an unbias fashion.

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Re: A planatary special and an easter egg

#17 Post by pd »

Tortanick wrote:
pd wrote:We know how they dress,
Most of that paragraph makes sense, (although I have a very clear idea what your example race looks like from that sentance) but I just thought I'd point out that nearly all Races I've seen sound like they are nudists. Two of my three races are, the other use robotic bodies so their state of dress is debatable.

That said I do have to ask, is this really an argument for including humans? They may be easier than creating an alien race, but they've been done before by all the other games, and bring the human bias, and even if you do include Humans that's only one race done.
There is no way you have an idea what 'my example race' looks like. I've kept everything really generic so far. Not even I do know, how humans would look like, because there are just so many things to consider, what I'm not doing now.

I think you maybe got me wrong here. This whole cloth thing is just an example of things to consider when designing a character(a member of an alien race, in this case). Cloth plays an important role. It shows the social status or religion, it even extends the abilities of the person wearing it. For an alien race there might be a range of new reasons for wearing cloth.

I didn't say humans are easier to create because they wear cloth, if this is what you are thinking! My whole point is, that we have so many references about human(just look around you, everything is obviously related to humans).
All we have for those alien races, is a short text. There is a lot more design work necessary for alien races.
Tortanick wrote:I'd recommend reading through one time, I found it very fun.
I'll do this, when the time comes.
Tortanick wrote:I agree, but is this really an argument for including Humans?
That feels like it's going the wrong way. Humans are like any other alien race. Why would you want to exclude them?

From what you've said so far, I notice you've made some bad experiences of how humans have been treated in other games. This doesn't count as an argument for not including humans in freeOrion, though. Instead you could see it as a chance to treat them like you want this time.
However while a backstory is easy, the part of the story after they meet other races would be very hard to write in an unbias fashion.
But this is the exactly the part the player controls by playing. Basicly there is no need of a story here.
And in campaign mode, the story will always result in superiority for the chosen race, whatever this might be.

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Re: A planatary special and an easter egg

#18 Post by eleazar »

pd wrote:Having a special human mode or similar is not a good idea IMO, it does not KISS.
I don't think there should be a special mode that turn on or off a particular race.

However like Alpha Centari i think it would be good to allow the player to set his AI opponants to be chosen at random or, to choose them himself, and thus avoid any he might object to for whatever reason.

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Re: A planatary special and an easter egg

#19 Post by Tortanick »

pd wrote:There is no way you have an idea what 'my example race' looks like. I've kept everything really generic so far. Not even I do know, how humans would look like, because there are just so many things to consider, what I'm not doing now.


Please don't tell me whats inside my own head, I have a very clear picture, probably isn't anything like your picture, but I have one.
pd wrote:I think you maybe got me wrong here. This whole cloth thing is just an example of things to consider when designing a character(a member of an alien race, in this case). Cloth plays an important role. It shows the social status or religion, it even extends the abilities of the person wearing it. For an alien race there might be a range of new reasons for wearing cloth.
That was just an "Oh BTW" point, it wasn't really that important.
pd wrote:All we have for those alien races, is a short text. There is a lot more design work necessary for alien races.
And you'll have to do it all for the other aliens anyway. So the inclusion of Humans probably wont be required due to resorce constraints.

pd wrote:
Tortanick wrote:I agree, but is this really an argument for including Humans?
That feels like it's going the wrong way. Humans are like any other alien race. Why would you want to exclude them?
Because Humans are boring, A new alien race no one's ever thought up before is intresting.
Because its very hard to write an unbias story including humans and non-humans.
Because I got annoyed at Humans repeatedly taking the centre stage for no good reason that I want to see games with no Humans.
pd wrote:From what you've said so far, I notice you've made some bad experiences of how humans have been treated in other games. This doesn't count as an argument for not including humans in freeOrion, though.
You asked for examples of pro-Human bias, I provided.
pd wrote:Instead you could see it as a chance to treat them like you want this time.
The way I want to treat them is for Humans to have gone extinct without ever becoming noticed or having an influence in the game, witch I proposed by starting this thread.
pd wrote:But this is the exactly the part the player controls by playing. Basicly there is no need of a story here.
And in campaign mode, the story will always result in superiority for the chosen race, whatever this might be.
You do need a story their, and you take the natural victory of the race being played into account. Lets take this very simple example timeline.

Code: Select all

SD 2043: The great Insect Wars begin, a three way conflict between Ants, Termites and Wasps
SD 2052: Ants emerge victorious from the Great Insect Wars. 
...
SD 2487: The Orion sector is invaded by Snakes from another Galaxy.
SD 2490: Wasps are defeated by the Snakes. 
SD 2491: Ants are defeated by the Snakes.
SD 2495: Termites successfully defend themselves from the Snakes. 
The Ant Campaign would take place between SD 2043 and 2052, the Termite campaign would take place between 2492 and 2495. Each Campaign can tell a story about this particular war and how the Ants/Termites won.

The campaigns do need a story, and the fact the playable race will usually win isn't an obstical.

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Re: A planatary special and an easter egg

#20 Post by SowerCleaver »

I don't see the point of Tortanic's aversion to the human race. Why not include humans when it's easy to create artwork and other concepts and it is one specie we can easily relate to? Why story writers cannot avoid "special treatment" of humans easily? We are not genetically wired to say only good things about humans. Even if there is bias for humans in storyline, why is it so bad? If you are concerned about humans getting better "picks", it is just a matter of balancing issue, not inherent in the race of humans.

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Re: A planatary special and an easter egg

#21 Post by pd »

Please don't tell me whats inside my own head, I have a very clear picture, probably isn't anything like your picture, but I have one.
This is getting ridiculous. You claimed to know, whats inside my head.
Because Humans are boring,
Please accept, that this is just your personal opinion. I tried to show ways of how humans can be made more interesting.

I won't comment on anything else, because it's like running in circles.

Thanks SowerCleave for the summary.

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Re: A planatary special and an easter egg

#22 Post by Rho »

Because Humans are boring, A new alien race no one's ever thought up before is intresting.
Because its very hard to write an unbias story including humans and non-humans.
Because I got annoyed at Humans repeatedly taking the centre stage for no good reason that I want to see games with no Humans.
I think women are interesting. That doesn't mean I want to be unable to choose to play as a man in a game. Some people will undoubtedly want to take humans towards that golden age of dominance and enlightenment, while others can do it with any race.

Given a fair treatment, enough details added to the other races, and enough revisions of the story until it's equally biased pro-human as it is anti-human. And to what extent does the story affect the gameplay? Or why not pick a random _alien_ race and focus on that one, leaving humans as the sidekick instead of the hero... or the villain.

With a 'human' checkbox, you can have as many humanless games as you like, Tortanick. :P
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Re: A planatary special and an easter egg

#23 Post by utilae »

I think the description of a human is irrelevant at this point.

We should first define all the parameters of a race, then from the parameters make the humans, and other races. Think of it as though no races exist, until we have the tools to create them.

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Re: A planatary special and an easter egg

#24 Post by MikkoM »

pd wrote: Humans are like any other alien race. Why would you want to exclude them?
I also agree with pd here. The way I see it, there isn`t really any compelling reason why humans can`t be treated like any other species in the game. Maybe we could create more accurate history and art for them by using modern world examples, but I don`t think this would require us to design a special role for them in the game.

The only negative thing about having humans as a playable species that I can see, is that it might link the galaxy to the Milky way and the starting solar system for humans to our solar system. But since this is a game humans could probably be in any shape or size galaxy. And as for the starting star system, it might also vary or perhaps other species would also have a certain kind of a starting star system.

Now if we would have humans as a playable species they could: offer new players something familiar to relate to, add one more species without the extra work that is required to create a species from scratch, add a species whose progress a human player even if he/she would play as an alien race might like to follow and give wannabe dictators the satisfaction of destroying the entire humankind from the galaxy. Some of these reasons have already been mentioned in this thread.

However then there is of course the question of: what kind of humankind would we want to have?
Tortanick wrote: An interesting backstory for humans would be easy, and I'm not too worried about offending people, pretty much every nation, race and religion has at least one Crime Against Humanity on its hands. It wouldn't be Humans if they didn't frequently do something horrible to other Humans in the Backstory.
Tortanick here makes a nice observation of one of our favourite hobbies of all time. And it is not football; it is killing our fellow humans for one reason or another. However do we always have to be such primitive monkeys? Maybe with gene manipulation and new computer technology we can transform ourselves to be something more like those peaceful and diplomatic humans that you can find in sci-fi and sometimes in games like these.

Now what I am trying to say is that what we were in the past doesn’t necessarily have to be what we will be in the future. Personally I have nothing against using real history in creating the humans, since that way they could feel even more familiar to the player, but maybe the violent humans from the past don’t have to be the humans of the future also.

Although even after all this I must say that I like the dangerously cunning, back stabbing humans, who will declare wars if it suits their needs, best. And of course, pd`s alternative history option could also produce interesting results.

pd wrote:And in campaign mode, the story will always result in superiority for the chosen race, whatever this might be.
So does this mean that you can`t loose a game in FreeOrion? :wink:

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Re: A planatary special and an easter egg

#25 Post by Tortanick »

MikkoM wrote: Now what I am trying to say is that what we were in the past doesn’t necessarily have to be what we will be in the future.
A key fact of our past is that we, um, repeat it, again and again. Of course you only have to break the cycle once but it would take quite the stretch of the imagination for these monkeys to do that.
MikkoM wrote:Personally I have nothing against using real history in creating the humans, since that way they could feel even more familiar to the player, but maybe the violent humans from the past don’t have to be the humans of the future also.
We could to create a good Humanity, but what would we gain to justify the unbelivibility? Besides the Xenoracist, egotistical, cunning military/economic tyrant that is every human empire is much more fun.
MikkoM wrote:Maybe with gene manipulation and new computer technology we can transform ourselves to be something more like those peaceful and diplomatic humans that you can find in sci-fi and sometimes in games like these.
You have it back to front, new technologies don't change society, society just defines (for a lack of a better word) new technology. Take the Internet, it had the potential to revolutionise the world, free info on anything to everyone. What is the result: Mostly consumerism and Porn, Web2.0 like Myspace and Facebook is just your normal hanging out with friends, but on a larger scale. Basically we haven't changed, we just do things on a larger scale thanks to new tech.

Genetic manipulation and new Computer technologies could make Humans better peacefull diplomats, but they'd have to be peaceful diplomats to begin with, then enhance this with technology. If the technology arrives before the culture changes then it will just make us more efficient shoppers with shineyer stuff to choose from.
MikkoM wrote:
pd wrote:And in campaign mode, the story will always result in superiority for the chosen race, whatever this might be.
So does this mean that you can`t loose a game in FreeOrion? :wink:
Thanks to the "Save Game" feature, or the "New Game" feature, the player can win any campaign, eventually. So the campaigns will have to be rigged to ensure the player is always playing the guys who win that war in the official timeline.

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Re: A planatary special and an easter egg

#26 Post by Rho »

How about a choice between different governments, different societies, of any single race or species? In Alpha Centauri, mankind split into different factions with different interests and cultures.

Argument from realism: Mankind splits and joins up over and over, and history repeats itself. Britain expanded and the colony declared independence, later they form an alliance.

Gameplay argument: This way, two different empires of the same race have a shared past culture, similar technology, and are probably located close to each other. A little backstory gives us a mankind with factions like industrialist, christian, australian... anything we can pick. The same goes for any aliens we create - any difference in faith, ethnicity, geography, lifestyle, government... And this could yield bonus and penalties.

--

As for the eventual winners of any campaign - survival is a goal too. If there's a campaign or scenario that includes an outside threat that's just around to destroy (such as Antarans from MoO2), conquering the universe or becoming the head of the galactic council isn't your main concern - surviving is. There's a goal for ya.
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Re: A planatary special and an easter egg

#27 Post by MikkoM »

Tortanick wrote:
MikkoM wrote:Maybe with gene manipulation and new computer technology we can transform ourselves to be something more like those peaceful and diplomatic humans that you can find in sci-fi and sometimes in games like these.
You have it back to front, new technologies don't change society, society just defines (for a lack of a better word) new technology. Take the Internet, it had the potential to revolutionise the world, free info on anything to everyone. What is the result: Mostly consumerism and Porn, Web2.0 like Myspace and Facebook is just your normal hanging out with friends, but on a larger scale. Basically we haven't changed, we just do things on a larger scale thanks to new tech.


Genetic manipulation and new Computer technologies could make Humans better peacefull diplomats, but they'd have to be peaceful diplomats to begin with, then enhance this with technology. If the technology arrives before the culture changes then it will just make us more efficient shoppers with shineyer stuff to choose from.
This probably isn`t really that relevant to this topic, but technology most certainly has the potential to allow changes in the human life. For example farming allowed us to form state societies and civilizations, and modern communication and data exchange methods have made easily working world wide business world possible.

But of course, since we humans use this technology it is up to us to decide how it is being used. Now I could well imagine that the first thing that we might use advanced gene manipulation methods, would be to build better soldiers, and not to make us a more peacefull and perhaps more intelligent species. But hopefully in the long run the technology could be used in a more usefull way to advance our species also in mental abilities.
Tortanick wrote: We could to create a good Humanity, but what would we gain to justify the unbelivibility? Besides the Xenoracist, egotistical, cunning military/economic tyrant that is every human empire is much more fun.
Like I already said:
MikkoM wrote: Although even after all this I must say that I like the dangerously cunning, back stabbing humans, who will declare wars if it suits their needs, best.
Now in my opinion the most interesting option would be, if we could create a human species that reflects the modern mankind as we know it. This way the player could easily relate to these humans and even if you would play as an alien species it would be interersting to see how the AI human empire interacts with other species and with you.

However like I also already said it probably wouldn`t be very hard to make peacefull humans believable, since we could explain it with human driven evolution of our species.
marhawkman wrote:Well.....

1: advanced tech

2: salvageable ruins, stuff that can be used as a framework for building stuff.

3: depressing ruins that have no real value at all.
Now I certainly hope that there won`t be any ancient ruins in Freeorion without atleast some sort of value. At least give them somesort of a moral bonus, so that even if you can`t find state of the art technology or usefull ideas or plants from them, they offer something to your cultural awareness and perhaps give you a better understanding of the history of the universe and in that way are usefull.

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Re: A planatary special and an easter egg

#28 Post by Rho »

However like I also already said it probably wouldn`t be very hard to make peacefull humans believable, since we could explain it with human driven evolution of our species.
Assuming the players believe in evolution rather than a theistic universe of recent creation. :P

Looking at history, we haven't changed much. Technologically, we're looking at FO within the next millennium, if FTL travel is possible and there's anybody out there. Within this millennium, I doubt we'd turn into Star Trek's cute and cuddly civilization. More likely, we'd become a global society, which would become a technocratic totalitarian society, which would then be overthrown in a massive worldwide revolution, or just wither and die when power requirements to run the planet exceed the available power. Then we'd have a period of craziness, after which a hopefully wiser humanity would arise, trying to avoid making the same mistake again, therefor making another mistake. All this because humans are afraid of everyone but themselves. However, the appearance of an alien civilization would likely unite mankind, as there'd then be a new "others" to fear.

Summary: We're human. It's not like we've changed much the past millennia, just our technology. Why would we have become any different by the approximate time FO is set?

I voice my opinion that the familiar, paranoid, covetous, neurotic, megalomaniac, conceited, and aggressive humanity would, aside from being realistic, be more interesting to play _against_ than the Galactic Federation of Nice-Guys.
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Re: A planatary special and an easter egg

#29 Post by Rockstone »

I_ ALWAYS_ PLAY_ HUMANS on all my games. So Please, keep humans!
Master of orion 3 rules. (a pause) Why are you guys getting tomatoes out?

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