All I can say is  .

Is that a... good thing?

Exceedingly so.

I am fairly newbish and have never heard of sfxr before before this thread.

All I can say is  .

Hey, that should come in really useful! Thanks!

[/derail]

Today I made my very first fully functional and encapsulated A* algorithm, something I've been putting off for a long time for no apparent reason. Well, I suppose none of my games explicitly required it until now.

Then, of course, I tried to implement a binary heap for the open list to squeeze out a few more FPS and the whole thing fell apart spectacularly. 

It was quite awesome.

I guess for pixel perfect co-ordinates, but I'd still use generally floats and then cast to ints at the last minute.

Not that I don't do the same when I need it, but it is worth remembering that a float to int conversion is about 10 times slower (50 instructions long compared to 4-5, I forget the exact numbers) for int to float. That may not seem like much on modern processors, but it's only a matter of time before you get the chance to use it in a time-critical section of the code which executes in exponential time or something like that.

Oh yes, this game is the first one to feature an intricate time paradox mechanic. None of that Braid simple rewind time gimmick, but actually having the entire game timeline at your disposal to abuse. There is even the possibility to cause a grandfather paradox somewhere in there, although how they intend to resolve all that is beyond me.

So nobody thinks "Steam Powered Flying Battlehsips" is a good name for a steam powered flying battleships game?

Only if you call it "Steam Powered Flying Battleships: A Game About Steam Powered Flying Battleships".

Do this.

I promise to do this, but only if the game gets distributed over Steam.

This looks awesome. I like the GUI very much. To be honest it has way too many stats for my preference (Intelligence, Wisdom, Will AND Charisma?) but that's just me. Besides, I guess that means it will have a lot of different build paths and replayability.

Also,

real time combat.

So nobody thinks "Steam Powered Flying Battlehsips" is a good name for a steam powered flying battleships game?

Of course procedural generation cannot outright replace a good designer. I've seen this "PG tends to be boring" argument before.

Well, it's tricky. PG cannot create truly new content, only content within the parameters given to it by programming, and drawing from a pool of rules given to it. If the pool is too small and the PG content numbers too large, you will have relatively uniform appearance of every pool element and while random it will not feel new or exciting, which is the usual way PG is implemented in games.

Expanding on my earlier Elite example, Frontier and First Encounters had a procedurally generated galaxy. However, preventing the game from becoming boring (your mileage may vary), there was a number of very rare planetary attributes (civil war, imports radioactives, etc.) which really made all the difference in the world when you found one even though yes, they were procedurally generated. In addition to this there were non-generated, but premade star systems (Sol and its immediate vicinity, all the major stars of the galaxy such as Achernar, Sirius etc.). These two methods are a prime example of how PG can be useful as long as it is not the ONLY method you use to create games.

(awesome screenshots)

Wow, I wanted to make a game revolving around this PRECISE gradient and this PRECISE black-on-yellow gameplay mode. The only thing that redeems you from my suspicions of being a thought reader is the fact my game was supposed to be a single-screen ninja game with a Japanese stylistic touch.

Well, I don't know. You're sort of operating under the mode that all games are heroic fantasies, which is not true. Guybrush Threepwood is a weird guy: why is it unusual that he obsessively hordes discarded junk?

Monkey Island is not really an equipment management game. It is a p&c adventure virtually designed to collect items and use them in certain ways to pave way to getting more items. Inventory there is a tool, not a distraction. But I get what you're saying, that not all games are heroic archetypes; still, I can't name many such RPGs off the top of my head.

Also, in my experience, games that are like "You can carry x pounds, and also you have to personally arrange everything so that it fits in your backpack" tend to be even more micromanaging-intensive than games with unlimited inventories.

"Ugh, overburdened again. Which do I want more, the wand of eternal pants or the tome of taffy lore?"

That's true of course, but that's the point - arranging things in the backpack and picking what you want to take with you is JUST A CONSEQUENCE of the "pick up everything" approach to gaming. It's one of the ways designers try to make a flawed mule-inventory system more "realistic" by imposing limits. This backfires epically, makes nothing realistic, and manages to additionally make life more difficult for the player.

Maybe the inventory obsession isn't flawed, just... overused and obsolete, a random branch of design ideas which gradually spawned a dominant game genre where a lot of other approaches might have been equally as fun, if not more fun. Objectively speaking, beasts and enemies dropping loot and inventory management in an adventure of any medium just DON'T MAKE SENSE. I wouldn't be able to relate to that sort of a novel and I can't relate to that sort of a game. (I know there is a huge difference between games and novels but if inventory loot grind is really the best thing the games medium can come up with to be unique, then... ugh.) Even if it's a game, I'd like if it tried to suspend my disbelief. Perhaps I wouldn't mind it so much, but most such games actually try to tell a serious and compelling story, which is kinda comical when juxtaposed with inventory grind.

Well, I guess the convention is established for a reason, and who am I to disagree with hundreds of millions of copies of sold games? People obviously like seeing numbers go up. They like inventories. They would most likely prefer infinite inventories. But how much of that is because they are exposed to only such games from birth?

I'd like to see more examples of games that make weapon or inventory management good or interesting.

Taking that even further, I'd like to see a game where the "inventory" is what a normal person - well, a normal adventurer - can carry. And no more.

Luke Skywalker didn't have to manage his inventory when he went to save Princess Leia. Hercules didn't need to shuffle around items in his backpack when he set out to do the 12 Tasks. We should be asking ourselves why has gaming, of all things, taken a weird fetish for kleptomaniacal item collection?

Oh and I completely agree on the conceptually different weapons bit.

A fantastic game.

I came expecting it would be just the one boss with just the 4 starting weapons, and even that would have been a fresh take on shooters. I didn't expect the awesomeness that was modular bosses, superpowers when modules fall apart (just like in actual shmups!), a whole COLLECTION of unique bosses, and to top it all off, those pesky fighters which shoot and dodge bullets just like I did so many times when I was on the other side of the fence.

A truly, truly great game, it defines everything indies should be.

[hasn't]

"Equipment management" the OP describes is a consequence of the "loot-grind-watch-numbers-go-up" convention which is pretty deeply rooted in games today. Such shortcuts as "auto-equip" and others are merely a way to get around some of the more tedious properties of this paradigm. It is not auto-equip that is the problem, it is the underlying system which is made so that no amount of auto-equip will make it more pleasing.

Modern RPG gaming can be summed up as watching numbers go up. I used to think JRPGs were the most blatant offenders in this respect, but then the Diablo->WoW branch of games came out and popularized, if not invented, the concept for the western audiences.

I would really like to see an RPG game which uses NO numbers. But then it would not be an RPG, would it? Instead it would probably need to focus on... I don't know... plot, setting, atmosphere, characters, or some other unnecessary thing, none of which apparently isn't enough to carry a game by itself.

I mean, what kid hasn't always dreamed of embarking on a dramatic and daring world-saving adventure which would consist of meticulously comparing some obscure percentages of different weapons, carrying twenty different sets of armour in their backpack to sell later on, and having epic battles versus monsters which consist of hitting the monsters repeatedly, being hit by monsters repeatedly, and drinking potions when the incoming hits become threatening.

Atmosphere is something that has long been abandoned by RPGs. The segregation of gameplay and narrative is just too staggering.

My voice is for user-created content, but contained in the overall game's theme.
apart from that exploration will always be just a gimmick in games.

I read an in-depth article once about the economics of MMORPGs and modern games in general. As years go by the amount of media and content that needs to go into a game has skyrocketed, and with that the number of man-hours that need to go into making the game. On the other hand, games cost only marginally more than they did at the time. Think about how much more detailed textures need to be, how much more smoothly modeled and animated the characters must be today. That is why games are becoming more and more expensive to make, they need to sell more copies to break even, they need more marketing, they turn to DLC schemes. And the games themselves become shorter because a 10 hour single-player campaign requires half the assets of a 20-hour one.

This is why the industry will sooner or later inevitably turn to user-created content or procedural generation - or crash horribly.

Ever since I saw Elite with its 8 galaxies FULL OF DIFFERENT PLANETS run on my Commodore 64 which had 48 kilobytes of RAM memory, I've been a fan of procedural generation. "Guided" proc-gen with a bank of predefined objects is the way roguelikes have been doing it for 20 years now and I wish modern games would take the hint. Those that did have become huge cash cows - loot grinding in Diablo or, later, WoW, comes to mind as a prime example of "guided" procedural generation. Weapons in Borderlands qualify too.

I dunno, I guess I've been playing these types of games for like 20 years and they always play out similar.... I still think rapid expansion at the expense of your neighbors is the main way to play these games.

Do you intend this as a good thing or a bad thing?

This is important to me because I am trying to make an empire game myself. I would like to know if people think it is possible to move away from the usual "conquest = more cities = more units = more conquests = repeat until victory" vicious circle and still have a game that will appeal to empire-game lovers. Are we so used to expansionism as a crucial element of these games that we couldn't do without it?

Personally, I could make it either way. I do not wish to break convention for convention breaking's sake, I want to make a game that is fun to play, what ever that means. That's why I ask.

Exploring places in real life is fun, too. And if someone made a game that let me walk around an exact replica of, say, Tokyo, I'd find it a great experience.
so you're both wrong  

Heheh. Of course most people can't afford a trip to Tokyo on a whim, or, say, a DC-9, so simulations certainly have their place. But it always struck me as a bit of a waste of medium's potential to make simulations.

This reminds me of my sister, who's been known to play Nintendogs for hours on end while neglecting HER REAL LIFE ACTUAL DOG.  

Nice, thanks for loads of positive reactions! Like I said, I'll try to get a very very rudimentary alpha up and running as soon as possible so that people can get a feel of the gameflow and provide gameplay suggestions. It could be a month or two before it gets there, but when it does, you'll be the first to know.

the very reason they're fun to explore is exactly because they aren't as complex or realistic as the real world.

I would have thought it's because they are DIFFERENT from the real world, regardless of complexity or realism.