A planatary special and an easter egg

For what's not in 'Top Priority Game Design'. Post your ideas, visions, suggestions for the game, rules, modifications, etc.

Moderator: Oberlus

Message
Author
User avatar
Tortanick
Creative Contributor
Posts: 576
Joined: Sat May 26, 2007 8:05 pm

A planatary special and an easter egg

#1 Post by Tortanick »

I have a planatary special idea and an easter egg that depends on it.

The planetary special idea is that you can find planets that were home to races that went extinct before they ever left their own solar system. This planetary special gives a small moral and environmental penalty but can be cleaned up. Mabey once a population reaches a certain % of the planets natural maximum the special vanishes.


The easter egg is that if you're extremely lucky you can find earth, and it has the ruins of a pre-space civilisation (us ;)) To find earth you need to create the milxy way in the galaxy setup screen, then it will randomly decide weather or not our solar system exists (mabey at 10% chance it dose). Then any yellow star in roughly the correct area may be our sun. But since you're playing an empire that never heard of us, it won't be called Sol. You can only recognise it because it contains the correct sequence of planets, they look like generic gas giants and such but they're the right order and size for here.

Earth may not be a terrain planet, it randomly decides from terrain, desert, tundra, toxic, ocean or radioactive.

User avatar
eleazar
Design & Graphics Lead Emeritus
Posts: 3858
Joined: Sat Sep 23, 2006 7:09 pm
Location: USA — midwest

Re: A planatary special and an easter egg

#2 Post by eleazar »

I like the idea of including the solar system in the game— assuming it makes sense with the back-story.

I also like the idea of including formerly inhabited planets, but i'd make it a science plus.

User avatar
Tortanick
Creative Contributor
Posts: 576
Joined: Sat May 26, 2007 8:05 pm

Re: A planatary special and an easter egg

#3 Post by Tortanick »

eleazar wrote:I like the idea of including the solar system in the game— assuming it makes sense with the back-story.
Uh, its a easter egg with zero impact on the story, it doesn't have to fit in.

Actually it dose fit in anyway :) Its just another system that has the ruins of an extinct atomic-age civilisation. With zero influence on the story it automatically fits in.
eleazar wrote:I also like the idea of including formerly inhabited planets, but i'd make it a science plus.
I thought we already had the artefact worlds special, the difference is simple:
One (artefact worlds) is from a civilisation who's technology is advanced enough to be of intrest to you're scientists.

The other, proposed above, is a civilisation that's too primitive to be of any interest to scientists (save historians) but advanced enough to leave environmental damage and depressing ruins as their legacy.

marhawkman
Large Juggernaut
Posts: 938
Joined: Fri Jan 20, 2006 9:34 pm
Location: GA

Re: A planatary special and an easter egg

#4 Post by marhawkman »

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.
Computer programming is fun.

User avatar
pd
Graphics Lead Emeritus
Posts: 1924
Joined: Mon Mar 08, 2004 6:17 pm
Location: 52°16'N 10°31'E

Re: A planatary special and an easter egg

#5 Post by pd »

From my point of view that's no problem. I have texture maps for all planets of Sol.

AFAIR I have also proposed this some time ago.

SowerCleaver
Space Squid
Posts: 54
Joined: Wed Oct 25, 2006 8:59 pm

Re: A planatary special and an easter egg

#6 Post by SowerCleaver »

Wouldn't we want humans as one of the playable species? If so, shouldn't humans' homeworld be the earth?

User avatar
Tortanick
Creative Contributor
Posts: 576
Joined: Sat May 26, 2007 8:05 pm

Re: A planatary special and an easter egg

#7 Post by Tortanick »

Why would we want Humans as a playable species? They take the same effort as any other species but are far less creative. They also get in the way of a good storyline because of a strong pro-human bias, and get in the way of a belivible storyline for the same reason.

Rho
Space Floater
Posts: 45
Joined: Sun May 20, 2007 6:33 pm
Location: Finland

Re: A planatary special and an easter egg

#8 Post by Rho »

So, a mode with humans as playable species, Earth their home; a mode with no humans and no Earth. Different rulesets, similar to what freeciv uses, could work here, the different species and some events and technologies might be mode-specific. Personally, I'd enjoy a mode where all science is rewritten to fit a YE-creationist interpretation, although obviously scifi-ish.

Listing event types, species included, and a few other things in a set of rules would make modes a little easier to customize. Rewriting the tech tree would be a little more demanding, but in the case of whether or not to include Earth and humans, it shouldn't be hard to create a "Human" checkbox somewhere in the game setup.
--
.rho

User avatar
Tortanick
Creative Contributor
Posts: 576
Joined: Sat May 26, 2007 8:05 pm

Re: A planatary special and an easter egg

#9 Post by Tortanick »

You missed the point, if we have humans even just for some special "human mode" (why would we want to give them seprate treatment anyway?) then we have to do all the work of creating ships and leader pics for them, far better to spend that effort on a new creative alien race.

In addition there is a planned campaign mode where, I think, diffrent campaigns take place on a very long timeline like Wesnoth dose. If we have Humans there will be a strong pro-human bias that degrades the story. Just look at what they did to the MoOIII backstory, if I recall they won both MoOI & II and created a golden age both times :roll: . and they may be descended from the Orions.

I'll stick to my proposal, a ruined Earth as an easter egg and no Humans.

marhawkman
Large Juggernaut
Posts: 938
Joined: Fri Jan 20, 2006 9:34 pm
Location: GA

Re: A planatary special and an easter egg

#10 Post by marhawkman »

Hrrmmmm...
medium yellow sun
tiny radiated planet
small-medium toxic planet
medium terran planet
asteroid belt, tiny barren planet
medium gas giant
tiny Asteroid belts at the Lagrange points relative to the Sun and Jupiter
small-medium gas planet
small ice-gas planets
horde of tiny planetoids
Computer programming is fun.

User avatar
pd
Graphics Lead Emeritus
Posts: 1924
Joined: Mon Mar 08, 2004 6:17 pm
Location: 52°16'N 10°31'E

Re: A planatary special and an easter egg

#11 Post by pd »

I don't see why we should not have humans. They are as likely as any other alien race. Some people might even prefer to play humans, because they relate more to them. Creating art assets and 'inventing' the human race can be just as creative as creating an alien race. We don't have to stick with with our real history for example. We could say, what if the roman empire did not fall, but rise further and develop space travel at some point? They would still be human, but completely different than we are.

Having a special human mode or similar is not a good idea IMO, it does not KISS.

User avatar
Tortanick
Creative Contributor
Posts: 576
Joined: Sat May 26, 2007 8:05 pm

Re: A planatary special and an easter egg

#12 Post by Tortanick »

Technically Humans have an upper limit on creativity thats lower than other Aliens, unlike any other species you can't be creative with Biology. And even if you do get creative on history you still have the problem of Humans getting special treatment when people write the story. I know I'd end up doing it even if I try not too. (admittedly I'd be bias against humans to express my frustration that Humans are _always_ involved and _always_ the centre of the story)

User avatar
pd
Graphics Lead Emeritus
Posts: 1924
Joined: Mon Mar 08, 2004 6:17 pm
Location: 52°16'N 10°31'E

Re: A planatary special and an easter egg

#13 Post by pd »

Tortanick wrote:Technically Humans have an upper limit on creativity thats lower than other Aliens, unlike any other species you can't be creative with Biology. And even if you do get creative on history you still have the problem of Humans getting special treatment when people write the story. I know I'd end up doing it even if I try not too. (admittedly I'd be bias against humans to express my frustration that Humans are _always_ involved and _always_ the centre of the story)
I have to disagree. Nobody knows for sure how humankind will develop biologically, since it's based on spontaneous mutation. On the other hand, we don't even need to be creative with it. Humans are created already, so that saves some labor. At this point we can't even say, whether humans are boring or very special, because we can't compare.

About the story part: I don't think we should create a story line that involves the player races all together. We will have separate backstory's for the respective races and there might be a story about the past of the universe, maybe including some past(now gone) ancient races. But the story about the playable races interacting with each other, should be created through playing the game.

Just to be clear, I agree that humans should not receive any special treatment.

User avatar
Tortanick
Creative Contributor
Posts: 576
Joined: Sat May 26, 2007 8:05 pm

Re: A planatary special and an easter egg

#14 Post by Tortanick »

pd wrote: I have to disagree. Nobody knows for sure how humankind will develop biologically, since it's based on spontaneous mutation.
Humans that look nothing like Humans, that's an interesting idea, but I still think people will be naturally inclined to give them special treatment in the story section.
pd wrote:On the other hand, we don't even need to be creative with it. Humans are created already, so that saves some labor.
Not really, there are more than enough proposed races in the story board so saving labour isn't an issue
pd wrote:At this point we can't even say, whether humans are boring or very special, because we can't compare.
Looks at the proposed races in the story board: Boring, very boring.
pd wrote:About the story part: I don't think we should create a story line that involves the player races all together. We will have separate backstory's for the respective races and there might be a story about the past of the universe, maybe including some past(now gone) ancient races. But the story about the playable races interacting with each other, should be created through playing the game.
From posts by people higher up the chain of command, I _think_ there will be an official Backstory, and the rest of the story will be written through various campaigns. Kind of Like Wesnoth's story. This is a decision I totally support I like the idea of developing the races rather than them just being static, and after seeing how beautifully Battle for Wesnoth dose this it seems like the right way to do things.
pd wrote:Just to be clear, I agree that humans should not receive any special treatment.
I agree, but more than any other race Humans require a conscious effort to avoid special treatment one way or another. I'd sooner not have them and save the trouble.

User avatar
pd
Graphics Lead Emeritus
Posts: 1924
Joined: Mon Mar 08, 2004 6:17 pm
Location: 52°16'N 10°31'E

Re: A planatary special and an easter egg

#15 Post by pd »

Tortanick wrote:Humans that look nothing like Humans, that's an interesting idea, but I still think people will be naturally inclined to give them special treatment in the story section.
I didn't mean to go that far, it's just a reminder, that the picture of a human we have in mind, shouldn't be too fixed and set in stone.
Tortanick wrote:
pd wrote:On the other hand, we don't even need to be creative with it. Humans are created already, so that saves some labor.
Not really, there are more than enough proposed races in the story board so saving labour isn't an issue
I am referring to creating all the art, related to a race. Having a vague description of how a race looks in a couple of sentences (for example: "A large blob of blue jelly with 1 giant mouth in the front, 3 tentacles on top and green insect like wings at the back") really doesn't help very much. On the other hand, we have humans. We know how they look, how they function down to every muscle, how they communicate. We know how they dress, what artifacts they have and what kind of buildings they create. There is an overwhelming amount of references we can work with.
So, in my humble opinion, I'd say creating a human race takes less effort than creating an alien race.
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. 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.

Tortanick wrote:
pd wrote:Just to be clear, I agree that humans should not receive any special treatment.
I agree, but more than any other race Humans require a conscious effort to avoid special treatment one way or another. I'd sooner not have them and save the trouble.
Can you give some examples for what special treatment should be avoided?
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.

Post Reply