I Shall Commit To This Idea, Tell Me What You Think Thread

Hey IndieDB,
I recently come up with an idea I really like and I think I am going to start prototyping soon.

Main Mechanics:
-Overworld System similar to Mount & Blade, sending your ship/fleet on courses via drawing a path with mouse
-Dock at ports and discuss trade, hire crew members( see Crew Members below), perhaps a gambling mini game or two at the local tavern wherever you dock at, violently take over other ships if you wish( aka Be a Pirate! )
-Perhaps the game could give some sort of reward for exploration other than new trade experiences, however I am unsure what and look for aid in that department.
-3D overworld mixed with 2D menus and 3D battle zones

Story:
-Screw stories

Managing Fleet:
-Manage and Maintain your ships and fleets.
-Keep food stocked and entertainment for your crew (perhaps lovely ladies )
-Upgrade guns, ship size, hull strength or buy a whole new ship for an extraordinate price
-Assign Ship captains to other ships in your fleet (as one cannot captain them all!)

Hiring Crew (In Depth):
-Would include detailed information on crew members, almost as if it were a city management game where your city is your ship/fleet and your civilians are you crew members and other ship captains
-Adjust wages individually, make "ship edicts" (such as "Banning Alcohol","Forcing Alcohol","Setting Up A Top Deck Fight Club" and stuff like that. (Just nailing out simple ideas here))
-Keep crew entertained, well fed and their morale high for battle and smooth sailing.
-Watch individual skills of crew members grow as they fit in to their own roles.
-Train crew members specifically for ship roles, (ex. Navigator, Deck Hand, Cook, Skipper, etc.)

These are just some ideas I'm throwing around and I'm looking forward to hearing what you guys think.

I plan on prototyping basic menus tomorrow (November 4, 2013) and trying to get a feel on how I want everything to look like. Please, if you like my idea or even just want to try and help make it better. Please reply, but keep in mind that staying simple is key to good games and throwing even more useless junk in just ruins the experience more than the useless junk I've suggested. (ex. Minigames and gambling, lol while fun it wouldn't be necessary for gameplay.(unless you can bet ships...Oooooooooooooooooooooo))

EDIT:
I forgot to mention to time era of the concept, silly me.

It would be in 1600-1700s time era in a fantasy world based off the Caribbean Islands.

Edited by: Ausländer

Continuation of the reply on my thread:

As far as I see our concepts are pretty different. I have en emphasis on roleplay and you on management. But please don't use the same graphics source as mine, if we have different graphics we will have less competition with each other. My thread has a link on Steam page with a few screenshots you can check.

Why not discuss your ideas and maybe do a project together? You have obvisously been thinking in the same directions.

Sjonsson wrote: Why not discuss your ideas and maybe do a project together? You have obvisously been thinking in the same directions.

It's amazing how often this could happen and doesn't. It's really hard to make sacrifices and work together to create something different than what you planned instead of supposedly doing it all yourself exactly how you like. The latter rarely works out, but the former is so hard to submit to. For your average stubborn creative type anyway. I'm definitely one of them. I have a hard time letting go of my ideas, even if they'll never get made.

A more general reply, I love the idea...I'm unaware of similar games (such as mentioned by Edreyn), so I have a fresh perspective on it I guess. The only game I've played that seems a little similar is Sid Meyer's Pirates...which had a lot less emphasis on crew management and more focus on the ships and minigames and stuff. It was the minigames that I wound up not liking...I hated having to do the stupid sword fighting one whenever I tried to take a ship. So, to me, your concept sounds awesome.
As for exploration experience...why not have a simple fog of war type deal, where you literally just gain experience for clearing it away? Perhaps one type of crewmember would be a cartographer, and as you explore he makes much more accurate maps than those that are available? I'm not sure what point there would be to him beyond that (was map making really lucrative back then? Did people have to make their own often? I don't know), the fog of war thing should definitely exist at least.
Would be particularly neat if all you ever get are cheapo vague maps, and if the main game mode isn't default this way, I'd love to have an option to play without shittons of waypoints and stuff going on all the time. Make exploration a real thing. (Some people hate not knowing where they're supposed to be and would get lost easily...so a side option, rather than no choice, might be better here).

Edreyn wrote: Continuation of the reply on my thread:

As far as I see our concepts are pretty different. I have en emphasis on roleplay and you on management. But please don't use the same graphics source as mine, if we have different graphics we will have less competition with each other. My thread has a link on Steam page with a few screenshots you can check.

Alright, just wanted to make sure you knew. Thanks and as far as the graphics go. I'm not certain as to what they'll be like as that is later in development. But I'll try and steer away from what yours looks like. Thanks!

BombadeerStudios wrote:
It's amazing how often this could happen and doesn't. It's really hard to make sacrifices and work together to create something different than what you planned instead of supposedly doing it all yourself exactly how you like. The latter rarely works out, but the former is so hard to submit to. For your average stubborn creative type anyway. I'm definitely one of them. I have a hard time letting go of my ideas, even if they'll never get made.

To me, just sticking to your idea without letting anyone else's influence is something dangerous, most likely there is something wrong with your idea but you can't see it because it's your darling - making sacrifices is indeed a big deal but it's also a big deal important. If you are so much in love that they do not wanna have a discussion about it and maybe find a better solution than you ever could come up with yourself you might have to reconsider if you're not a bit delluded.

Sounds good, I was a big fan of the Mount and Blade franchise and am glad that you are aiming to create something similar. The pirate elements are a great touch!

Sjonsson has a good point - always welcome a second opinion on everything you consider obvious. You are blind to your own mistakes.

These kinds of games aren't my cup of tea as I can't really relate to the characters. So I don't want to comment on the game idea or features themselves. But what you start to describe does begin to sound unfeasible since you're making a fully 3D game in historical fantasy setting with AI and that does require a lot of artistic and technical skill but most importantly time, dedication and planning.

When you prototype try to "break in" all the areas of your game as soon as possible rather than focusing on one thing in depth. That gives you a good view of if your goals are realistic on that field.

Sounds like an interesting idea. You can reward exploration by the gathering of resources which in turn either build stuff or give you money. Since you already have commerce going on maybe it can be linked to that.

you shold take a look at the open source engine called Grit for your game Gritengine.com

The Grit Game Engine is a community project to build a free game engine
(and pipeline tool-chain) for implementing open world 3D games
While there are many open source game engines, ours is the only one that
is being optimized for open world games. We support large maps (e.g.
more than 30 square km, 50000 objects) with considerable diversity in
geometry and textures, because game objects and scenery consume
negligible memory / CPU resources when out of visual range. We also use
deferred shading, which is essential for rendering the abundance of
light sources that are needed in open world scenes.
.

• Code is open source and MIT licensed.
• Large open world maps, content streamed from disk.
• Normal / specular / gloss maps
• Heightmap-based texture blending
• Deferred shading
• Soft dynamic shadows
• 24 hour time cycle with sun, moon, clouds
• Stars at night with real constellations
• Procedural placement of vegetation and clutter
• General purpose 3D physics engine.
• Game objects are extremely scriptable via Lua.
• Planes & cars (implemented via game object scripting).
• Developing/debugging scripts is easy thanks to an in-game Lua console.
• Linux and Windows ports are available.

Edited by: DGMurdockIII