If You Made An Outsider-based Video Game How Would You Do It?

[Bamax]

Let's say you are given 15,000 USD (about the price of some economy cars) to develop a computer or videogame based on the Outsider universe.


With only $15000 you must:


1. Hire game designers and graphic artists and make a deadline for game completion.

2. Decide what gameplay will be like.


How I would do it: Keep the dev team small.


Completion date: A year and a half from the start so 1 year and six months.



Gameplay: I would mimic 2d Star Control 2 somewhat, only with an unlimited space map where you can actually run away by pure speed if possible. No speed caps other than light speed... but fuel won't let you do that anyway.


The second mode of gameplay would involve a type of visual novel point and click, purely for role playing.


You can visit many worlds but only select ones have NPC's to interact with.

Plot: You are in command of Wintertide's ship as Wintertide. And her subordinates when gameplay requires she stay aboard while sending crew to get things done.

Objectives: DON'T get blown up at the naam battle, and assist Stillstorm's fleet.


How would you do an outsider based videogame/computer game.

[Arioch]

$15K is not enough to develop a computer game, especially not in a year and a half. I developed Stars in Shadow with a development team of 2 people (one programmer and one artist/writer/designer), and it took a great deal more than a year and a half and $15K.

A senior programmer where I live earns between 100-200 thousand dollars per year.

[icekatze]

hi hi

With a real budget, I would think something based on either Master of Orion 2, Homeworld, or both would be fitting for Outsider.

But for $15,000, I think you might be able to make Loroi chess if you've already got the rules figured out.

[Bamax]

So I goofed the numbers.


Let's say the budget is more realistic... then what?

The time frame is 5 years of development.

[Werra]

Amateurs, you can get a bunch of games made for that money. Make it a competition of who can make the best Outsider themed video game. 5k for the winner, 2,5k for second 1k for third and 1,5k on rewards like game vouchers for other quality entries.

[Cthulhu]

For this money, the best you could do would be to crowdfund a total conversion mod for an already existing game. If you want a real game with good graphics, then the budget would be around a million, at the very least. Big titles can reach insane budgets, 316 million for Cyberpunk and for the (in)famous Star Citizen, over 320!

[Bamax]

Some independent devs run on less and make good games, but development is often a bit long.

Best free independent games I ever played was Our Perspnal Space (the original, not sequel) and Grey Plague (sad endings are too easy here though, best ending is epic hard)..

My point is overalll that good gameplay, characters nd story do not require lots of money and high end grsphics.


For example, Staer Citizen is in such development hell that while they have been at it for about a decade, a billionaire named Elon is already test launching real reusuble spaceships in less development time.

Elsewhere some joked that he will land on the moon before Star Citizen is completed lol.


Others joked further that by the time Star Citizen is finished, our space tech will already BE like Star Citizen or otherwise make it obsolete.

[Keklas Rekobah]

Let's say you are given 15,000 USD (about the price of some economy cars) to develop a computer or videogame based on the Outsider universe.
With only $15000 you must:
1. Hire game designers and graphic artists ...

$15,000 only?!  I would need ten times that much for just a single workstation!

Given a more realistic budget, I might be able to bring in "The Siege of Seren" ("Part 1 of the Soia-Liron Saga") in under 3 years if I could hire away some of the original Mass Effect team.

[Bamax]

Let's say you are given 15,000 USD (about the price of some economy cars) to develop a computer or videogame based on the Outsider universe.
With only $15000 you must:
1. Hire game designers and graphic artists ...

$15,000 only?!  I would need ten times that much for just a single workstation!

Given a more realistic budget, I might be able to bring in "The Siege of Seren" ("Part 1 of the Soia-Liron Saga") in under 3 years if I could hire away some of the original Mass Effect team.

So third person characters?

Loroi would be like glass cannon superheroes.

Teidar,: Lots of telekinetic power and variety, less precision with it.

Mizol: Less telekinetic power but high precision. Also uber telepaths.

Listel: In game they could be useful as an NPC information source. But not much more you can do with them for video game mechanics that is unique to them.

[Demarquis]

No, no, an RPG. Make the wrong choices, hang out with the wrong crew, and/or be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and you die. Make it a very hard game with about a thousand different story choices the player could make. Who do you trust? What info do you share, and with whom? And the player's goal isn't personal survival, important as that is, it's protecting the human race.

[Keklas Rekobah]

Each of the castes would start out with 300 character points and the basic Loroi template (base on the GURPS model).  No two Teidar would be exactly alike, for example, but each Teidar would have similarities with the others.  Same for the other castes.

Loroi:
Telepathic (Power 5)
Early Maturation (age 9)
Bad Reputation
Enemy: Umiak
Health-1

An alternative would be "The Siege of Terra", wherein you play a Terran in the company of three others, who could be all Loroi, a mix of Loroi and non-Loroi (i.e., Barsam, Terran, et cetera), a squad of TCA misfits, et cetera.

In any case, the game would likely be reviewed as just another FPS.

[Keklas Rekobah]

No, no, an RPG.  Make the wrong choices, hang out with the wrong crew, and/or be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and you die.  Make it a very hard game with about a thousand different story choices the player could make.  Whom do you trust?  What info do you share, and with whom?  And the player's goal isn't personal survival, important as that is, it's protecting the human race.

You have just trebled the required budget.

(Imho) RPGs are best played out with real people and in situ.  Otherwise, you end up with the video game equivalent of "Rule Bloat", where there are so many rules (or algorithms) to cover every possible decision that the books (or software) becomes unmanageably large and slow, and where every character ends up being an over-equipped poster child for abject munchkinism.

Think of AD&D 1st edition versus the latest "revision" of WoW.

By the way, there is no "Human Race".  We are a species.

[Bamax]

No, no, an RPG. Make the wrong choices, hang out with the wrong crew, and/or be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and you die. Make it a very hard game with about a thousand different story choices the player could make. Who do you trust? What info do you share, and with whom? And the player's goal isn't personal survival, important as that is, it's protecting the human race.

That actually sounds quite good of a premise.

If your character dies just switch to another POV character.

If all die game over, although it is possible to still win the game even if all characters die if you save your race in the process.

[Arioch]

Sven (the programmer I'm working with on Stars in Shadow) and I talked briefly about what kinds of games we'd like to make. One thought was to do an "Outsider mod" with ships and factions from the story. I suppose that could be fun, but it wouldn't represent a very good simulation of the Outsider setting; despite its roots in Master of Orion, the movement and communication rules of Outsider are very different. The map would use starlanes (which many gamers hate, and for good reason), and it would be difficult to get intelligence on the enemy, since you don't have any access to his territory.

What I think might be fun is a game that has a tactical combat module that uses "Newtonian" rules but is simplified in a similar way as XCOM's combat system. Sid Meier tried to do this with his "Starships" game, but not very successfully. The strategic level could be fairly light, like XCOM, or just a framework of campaigns, sort of like Panzer General or Homeworld or the original Age of Wonders. I think an Outsider setting could work for this, having the user take the role of a fleet commander rather than an emperor, and fight through the key battles in the story while trying to keep her ships alive while managing limited supplies and reinforcements.

[spacewhale]

Having a fixed scenario would have a bunch of advantages over RNG galaxy generation though (give more depth behind each little dirtball you can take, since each system presumably could have some world building behind it), and certain systems could have great strategic significance as chokepoints (think LOTG's Phezzan). Could have more talking heads in general since you'd presumably need to add more 'diplomatic' choices than SiS. Might get a minus to replayability, unless you were banking as letting players play as any number of factions (i.e. try to take known space as Humanity). As far as courier communication, what would you consider the consequence of it being severed? Units operating independently? i.e. auto-resolving battles? Or would just just hand-wave that specific aspect away and say if you can reach a spot with combat units, you can send couriers back and forth and that a turn encompasses a time period for that to occur? I figure if you already have an engine in SiS, might as well largely re-use it. As far as a selling point to said game, I'd wonder if the audience for Outsider (at least the subset that'd buy a SiS reskin) is bigger than the general SiS player base.

[Arioch]

Having a fixed scenario would have a bunch of advantages over RNG galaxy generation though (give more depth behind each little dirtball you can take, since each system presumably could have some world building behind it), and certain systems could have great strategic significance as chokepoints (think LOTG's Phezzan). Could have more talking heads in general since you'd presumably need to add more 'diplomatic' choices than SiS. Might get a minus to replayability, unless you were banking as letting players play as any number of factions (i.e. try to take known space as Humanity). As far as courier communication, what would you consider the consequence of it being severed? Units operating independently? i.e. auto-resolving battles? Or would just just hand-wave that specific aspect away and say if you can reach a spot with combat units, you can send couriers back and forth and that a turn encompasses a time period for that to occur? I figure if you already have an engine in SiS, might as well largely re-use it. As far as a selling point to said game, I'd wonder if the audience for Outsider (at least the subset that'd buy a SiS reskin) is bigger than the general SiS player base.

The XCOM games have a predetermined storyline, but the missions are randomized and your base and forces are very customizable, and I find it to be vary replayable (I have more than a thousand hours in XCOM2). I think there are some good examples there to follow. We could have a fixed map, with the player representing a fleet commander rather than the emperor, and the player could choose from available scenarios, and choose and/or customize his forces from an available pool. The player would always have direct control over his forces, as he's presumed to be there along with them (the player could be represented by a unit in the game, such as with AoW). The player would have no control over what's going on in systems other than the one he's currently in. The "strategic" layer would be fairly minimal, perhaps mostly choosing missions, allocating supplies, and customizing units.

There could be a "story" mode (as there was in some of the early KOEI games) which could play more like a linear campaign, and a free form mode in which things are more randomized. It could be possible to play as either side, though that would probably add cost to the production. Maybe that could be an add-on.

It would ideally be a new game engine to support 3D graphics in the tactical battles (even if the battles aren't 3D). That would obviously make the assets more expensive, and so we'd have to have enough of a budget to hire additional people beyond the two of us. Which is why this is mere dreamwork and unlikely to happen, at least any time soon.

[spacewhale]

Yeah, I doubt you'd actually want to write an engine, it'd just be pick Unreal or Unity and roll with that (oh and the whole making said engine do the things you want). Obviously I imagine asset creation alone would consume your soul. Unless you can farm it out to an Umiak sweatshop.

Meanwhile the (okay, some) fans just want a Cloud dating sim. "Shoes? How thoughtful."

Have you played and been frustrated by Xenonauts yet? (specifically elevation, it's terrible in that game)

[DevilDalek]

I'd go the Mass Effect RPG route

[Snoofman]

Here's a crazy idea: an rpg-game that employs both first-person point of view and real-time strategy. Essentially the player assumes the simulated role of a commanding officer who starts off within an armed Citadel/orbital fortress. But circumstances force the player to assume the role of a ship's captain.

As the game progresses, the player builds up their rank by completing objectives, winning battles and/or even by building diplomatic bonds and alliances. The player also would have the chance to climb rank and expand their fleet. All while still commanding from their assigned ship. But the player never leaves the point of view of the main character. Throughout the whole game, they experience everything that is happening within the moment and receive information/intel from surrounding characters and channels. The playable character would even have to battle through an enemy boarding party if it happens to get aboard the player's ship.

In addition to said simulated captain's role, the experience could be enhanced in which the player assumes the role of a loroi Torrai who, every time they converse with loroi/alien characters, they see (thanks to sanzai) the story and memory of those characters. This could open up the way for new subplots in which the player temporarily assumes the role of these interviewed characters. Except for humans, who must omit their stories audibly. In which the loroi captain must decide which humans are trustworthy.



I think another good game idea would be to assume the role of the loroi Emperor, in which you play as commander and chief as you defend the empire and choose how to rule. This in turn affects how the story plays out and what sort of friends/foes you make and what sort of policy you impose which in turn influences what sort of culture/society you cultivate.

[Arent]

Let's say you are given 15,000 USD (about the price of some economy cars) to develop a computer or videogame based on the Outsider universe.

With only $15000 you must:

1. Hire game designers and graphic artists and make a deadline for game completion.
2. Decide what gameplay will be like.

How I would do it: Keep the dev team small.

Completion date: A year and a half from the start so 1 year and six months.

Gameplay: I would mimic 2d Star Control 2 somewhat, only with an unlimited space map where you can actually run away by pure speed if possible. No speed caps other than light speed... but fuel won't let you do that anyway.

The second mode of gameplay would involve a type of visual novel point and click, purely for role playing.

You can visit many worlds but only select ones have NPC's to interact with.

Plot: You are in command of Wintertide's ship as Wintertide. And her subordinates when gameplay requires she stay aboard while sending crew to get things done.

Objectives: DON'T get blown up at the naam battle, and assist Stillstorm's fleet.

How would you do an outsider based videogame/computer game.

For Outsider, I would usually do a strategy game. But since there are only 15000$, I would just do a simply Visual Novel of the storyline, 3-5 decision points & 2 endings (+bad ends), using a standard engine.

If I had 30000$, I would just hire a Visual Novel studio to create the game for me.