My attempts at Gettin’ Somethin’ Fuckin’ Workin’ vis-a-vis a board game featuring spaceships that fly and shoot things have finally hit a wall. That wall: shit got complicated!

Seriously complicated. When I found myself brushing off my C-sharp skills and starting to build a winforms application to run numbers—to try to balance some basic values—I decided it was time to take a step back from Delta Velocity. Maybe a 2-to-5-player game playable in an hour with more than just a couple of basic mechanics at its core is a little too ambitious if I’m going to ever finish. So, Delta Velocity is hereby shelved until some future date.

But, a new game is born!

The premise: diabolical machine minds have become self-aware and are competing with one another for control of the human race. Players will subjugate puny humans, then use them to infiltrate and control pharmaceutical conglomerates, military industrial manufacturing facilities, medical research foundations, and even the governments of major world powers. Mighty humans can further each machine’s cause. But watch out for Willful humans! These wildcards—John Connors, if you will—are wise to your plans and will do anything they can to disrupt them.

At its core, the game is about territory acquisition and control between two players, with a race-to-the-end trigger that initiates end-game scoring. The play spaces will be dynamic, both during a game and from game to game. And, in keeping with my deeply-held belief that players must be able to “identify” themselves within the context of the game, each player will be allowed to choose from among a small number of sentient AI personalities, each with its own abilities.

Ambitious, yes! But not nearly quite so ambitious as earlier projects. I’m excited to see where this goes.

"Because we do not know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. And yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number really.

"How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, an afternoon that is so deeply a part of your being that you cannot conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four, or five times more? Perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty.

And yet it all seems limitless..."

- Paul Bowles

reading

You buy them books, and what do they do? They eat the paper!

listening

Forget about your seat -- it's the beat.

viewing

Television will make you dumb. C'mon and get stupid!

Thursday, February 23, 2012

Subjugate Puny Humans!

My attempts at Gettin’ Somethin’ Fuckin’ Workin’ vis-a-vis a board game featuring spaceships that fly and shoot things have finally hit a wall. That wall: shit got complicated!

Seriously complicated. When I found myself brushing off my C-sharp skills and starting to build a winforms application to run numbers—to try to balance some basic values—I decided it was time to take a step back from Delta Velocity. Maybe a 2-to-5-player game playable in an hour with more than just a couple of basic mechanics at its core is a little too ambitious if I’m going to ever finish. So, Delta Velocity is hereby shelved until some future date.

But, a new game is born!

The premise: diabolical machine minds have become self-aware and are competing with one another for control of the human race. Players will subjugate puny humans, then use them to infiltrate and control pharmaceutical conglomerates, military industrial manufacturing facilities, medical research foundations, and even the governments of major world powers. Mighty humans can further each machine’s cause. But watch out for Willful humans! These wildcards—John Connors, if you will—are wise to your plans and will do anything they can to disrupt them.

At its core, the game is about territory acquisition and control between two players, with a race-to-the-end trigger that initiates end-game scoring. The play spaces will be dynamic, both during a game and from game to game. And, in keeping with my deeply-held belief that players must be able to “identify” themselves within the context of the game, each player will be allowed to choose from among a small number of sentient AI personalities, each with its own abilities.

Ambitious, yes! But not nearly quite so ambitious as earlier projects. I’m excited to see where this goes.

posted on 02/23 • blog • permalink

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