Still around people

[Buggi 685]

@ Drharris... there is no multiplayer component, only viewing your city or others' cities and changing your city. I guess you could give your password to someone else and they could change your city... only one changer logged into it at any given time, however.

Has anyone seen the videos for the game "From Dust"...

@_@

[Nique 291]

Don't use GeoMipMap. You have to rewrite it yourself. Why? Well, people seem to forget that in a city builder, you need the diagonal to be flipped some times. Otherwise you get these jagged edges on mountains from which SC4 suffers also.

.

If you want to have a realistic looking terrain, do this!

[Buggi 685]

I'm typing up the design document at the moment. However I'd hate for my ideas to get stolen and put into a corporate game. It's happened to me before, actually. Anyone ever play Supreme Commander? How about the expansion Forged Alliance? The expansion concept came out of my head and bastardized by their lead designer.

Anyway, my ideas are good and I'd hate it if EA just gobbled them up. *pokes EA*

[Nique 291]

Well, you can keep it for yourself, but then i doubt your game will come alive . You need help from the community to make the game and the community needs your design document to do it . So i think there is no other choice than take the risk.

I believe in a 'we are all one consciousness' concept in which we are able to simulate we are separated. The ideas you have, are fabricated with the tools you have. But somewhere else in the world, people might have the same ideas at the same time. Because 'it is in the air'.

It's hard to understand and live in such concept, but on the long term, we must share whatever we can share to develop. Not only your children, but just for human kind. We must share any knowledge, idea's and other creative manifestations with each other. What is the fun of having something without sharing it? Isn't that what life is all about? Sharing...

Good luck!

  Edited August 23, 2011 by Nique  

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Buggi, you can play it close to the vest, but if you do you will be engaging in a Herculean task. There are a lot of people in the community that would happily work on this, but you would have to be the Project Manager, and find whatever funding you need.

Staying on the Microsoft platform simply means that you must not allow their incestuous stuff to creep into the implementation. You are not constrained to using their development tool set, which is a lock-in. There are lots of free tools available that work very well indeed. Most of them run on the MS platform without depending on it.

The most costly thing in any software project, as I am sure you know, is man power. But you have an opportunity to use free, volunteer labor. You should give this a thought. With volunteers, you must r3emember that "by their fruits, you will know them". If people don't do a quality job, you can easily drop them from the project (gently, because you don't need any animosity). Of course, free labor comes at a cost, namely that you have to go with the idea that this will be a piece of open source freeware. Failing that, you must then extract enforceable non-disclosure agreements from everyone and encrypt all transmissions. This will probably limit your choice of bodies to the United States and maybe Canada. International law and copyright is a thorny jungle.

I really think your best bet is to find a coompany that will employ you and your design to carry on from there. You will have to be quite flexible if you choose this course, and good luck.

Are you aware of the articles on the home page that indicate, faintly, that EA might be going forward on SC5 on the q.t?

[Buggi 685]

I am typing up my design document and hopefully do the illustrations later. I will give the GIMP a good look, so thanks for the tip. I was also looking at the Unreal development Kit as a tool to do the prototyping that's required of a few of my design concepts. It seems a very good starting point.

Anyone familiar with the UDK?

[Nique 291]

I am typing up my design document and hopefully do the illustrations later. I will give the GIMP a good look, so thanks for the tip. I was also looking at the Unreal development Kit as a tool to do the prototyping that's required of a few of my design concepts. It seems a very good starting point.

Anyone familiar with the UDK?

I've played around with the UDK. Fantastic Engine.

But making procedural terrains is kinda hard.

[Buggi 685]

I'm also looking at the Unity engine. I need to tinker more with it to know if its a good fit.

I know I've been bad at responses, I'm trying to get my ducks in a row.

I haven't disappeared again, just trying to get my life in order.