Re: [glob2-devel] Revive Glob2 with a kickstarter

[Quinn YQ Teh]

Hey Alex,

Can you give us some examples of these similar games hat have sold on steam that you mentioned?

-Quinn 

On Monday, 16 December 2013, Alex Sapp wrote:

It could be interesting to create a dwarf fortress style of reboot for glob. The idea of keeping the indirect control scheme, focus more on economy and empire level building. With military being a late game or end meta game. Think more like an anthill, less like a small army. I don't know if the task can be completed, but I think it would be a good way to get the project running. Steam would also be a good medium to shoot for and launch from, with its new steam green light and early access programs. Distribution means support. 

The type of game glob is, a "town management" and indirect control. There are a couple similar games on steam, but they are narrow and specific. None of them are multiplayer. This team has more experience putting multiplayer together than games that are selling just single player versions of your idea, and selling by the thousands for $10 a copy. 

Here is what I suggest. Buggy but multiplayer has ALWAYS been superior to a polished single player. Indie success stories such as mine craft and terraria and prime examples that multiplayer makes the difference. The best AI to fight against or interest with, unless unfairly balanced, gets boring and predictable. Multiplayer fixes that. 

A large scale town management game that you can fight against a friend in. Think about it. Far less advanced games, lacking multiplayer, based on the idea of indirect control, have sold on steam very well.

Sent from my iPhone

On Dec 15, 2013, at 6:56 PM, Bradley Arsenault <address@hidden> wrote:

Frankly Leo while I wish I had the time to complete the game, I'm struggling to get enough work done to make rent. I don't focus well at home like I did when I was a teenager. Fortunately unlike start ups, open source projects don't die nearly as easily, and its much easier to restart them.

If we really want to revive the game, I think we need to get something that carries momentum. Raising money on kickstarter would be a good start, but I don't have the time nor the expertise to run a good kickstarter campaign myself.

Part of me thinks that the concept would be better served as a freemium-style business then as an open source project. All of the popular games these days are online based. Does anyone think the concept could be converted to mobile devices? Maybe reduce the emphasis on war and more economy building?

On Sun, Dec 15, 2013 at 8:24 PM, Balajee R.C <address@hidden> wrote:

I have been quietly following this list for the past 4 years, and playing Globulation off and on. Its a great game. A novel RTS idea. I think it would be great for the game to be revived.

I am a developer experienced with both C++ (and in particular, with the Qt and OpenGL APIs which are the two things I use at work). I have also worked on Blender Python (I have one accepted patch that I submitted to Blender, albeit very minor). I cannot work full time on it. However, I would love to spend any spare time I can muster helping out with the code.

I sincerely hope you guys have success in reviving it.

Regards,

Balajee

On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 3:40 AM, Leo Wandersleb <address@hidden> wrote:

Hi informed gamer,

any help is welcome ;)

but more so, I hope to get an idea on how much help we actually could expect for
which version of globulation.

If all of a sudden people step up and fix bugs in the current game, I would be
happy, too. Most likely that would be the cheapest way to get an actual cool
game. The frustration to regularly crash unrecoverably makes the current game
pretty worthless.

On 12/15/2013 06:41 PM, Alex Sapp wrote:
> I have no coding experience, and barely some graphic design experience (might as well be none), but I am willing to help any way that I can. I am in the US, have watched countless indie projects live and die, and could say that I at least have the potential to offer advice on how to structure the game, what features players want, and possible work flow advice. I can also test extensively and can provide useful and unbiased feedback. Call me an informed gamer.
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
>> On Dec 15, 2013, at 3:35 PM, Leo Wandersleb <address@hidden> wrote:
>>
>> Kickstarter being US only should not be a problem as I guess we would easily
>> find some US glob2 member to handle that part.
>>
>> I'm more concerned about getting quality for the money. Last time I tried to
>> push Glob2 with money, I'm not sure if it even helped at all as for one I didn't
>> get half the agreed coding work for the money paid and maybe even poisoned the
>> open source spirit by bringing money in.
>>
>> I wonder how many former glob2 players we could reach with a campaign and
>> whether it is worth it, to share the funds with paypal and kickstarter in other
>> words I wonder if the usual kickstarter user might jump on supporting the
>> project if they are not former glob2 players anyway.
>>
>> About the design decisions: I am not passionate about reinventing the wheel, so
>> if we can base glob3 on another game, that's fine with me, too. (Mega)Glest [1]
>> for example has a nice game engine. I have no idea though whether their code
>> base is stuck just like glob2's. In such a case, pooling resources would maybe
>>