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[Sensei]

C# IS Microsoft's attempts at Java. More accurately, Microsoft's modification of Java. Jokes aside, they basically copied Java and changed the bits they didn't like.

Anyhoo, if you haven't done any online stuff before, you should probably just make a chat program to test it out.

[squeakyReaper]

Hopefully, starting Saturday, I'll be able to start working on random things...  like a login system and such.  Simple, "get used to everything" things.  Just some random blurby stuff in the spoiler.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Cities and whatnot can serve several purposes.  A mid-way camp sort of thing would be cheap to set up, easy to defend and you can charge those who pass by for simple board and food.  You could also have towns built around a lucrative mining industry, or for some special scenery.  A few features that you could pass on to your town to improve it, though:

• Tourism.  You could have an ad agency in your little town, and pop out gems like "Come see our oscillating hydro bear zoo!" or "We haven't had a lethal incident in at least three weeks!"  NPC civilians (people who would move in to your town) would be attracted depending on how well known your place is and whatnot.  Your advertisements could also be flown in bars and saloons, places that Players visit, to get an idea of what they can expect to find where.  I imagine a player walking around and seeing a flier stating "Chellsburrow, home of the Great Professor Chadsworth!  Inventor of the Offal-flusher!"  This would mark the town on their maps, allowing them to visit if they wanted.
• The very...  free nature of the law in the west can result in criminal activity.  You'll need to moderate this by keeping law in town, but some criminal level can be a good thing.  Smugglers tend to bring unique things cityward, which you wouldn't otherwise be able to find.  Knowing that people aren't entirely oppressed by laws can also keep morale up.  Too much crime, though, and you'll lose control.  It's kind of a gambit thing...  perhaps you could actually ENCOURAGE criminal activity in town, and then go in as an adventurer later to mop it up and acquire whatever illicit goods they took during their time.
• Mundane city upgrades are important.  Outposts don't need them as much, but a thriving city will need a sewer system...  telegraph towers, etc.  It'll cost a lot of coin to make a legit settlement, so that's where getting investers comes in.
• The very rich, very ambitious home countries will want cities in their name.  You can either request money to found a settlement, which they'll offer an amount depending on your prestige or what have you, or fulfill a mandate for a town.  Maybe Spain (or fantasy equivalent of Spain) could want a new town on the frontier before the English (fantasy English?), and will go "Here, have a lot of money, make something now."  Others would be logging outposts, to cover mineral deposits and ship some of it back home or criminal settlements, a la Australia or something.
• Local inventors can also invent SUPER UTILITIES or something.  Maybe a plant that converts waste (eww) into clean drinking water (I still wouldn't touch it), or something that lets you grow super steroid crops.  I dunno, I'll think about how to do special mechanisms later...  inventing could be a huge part of the game, where you get a representation of Alchemy, or conveyer belts, or sets of triggers and switches...  anyways, they could be planted into your town and advertised a la that advertising bureau.

Note that this is just to put pen to paper, so to speak.  I dunno, what do you guys think about the random idea things?

[Sensei]

So what I'm getting off of this is:
-Using that 'new continent' setting
-Players enter the game and create cities

Correct?

If you do that with city building being the main portion, you might be able to have expeditions (wherein you control an individual or party of characters) just be instanced.

There's another idea I had that also might be simple to implement:
You make a dungeon-crawling game, where each account has two "characters" a dungeon master and an adventurer. On the dungeon master side, you create dungeons and earn gold/xp for killing/wounding etc. adventurers who enter your dungeon. On the adventurer side, you enter instanced dungeons created by players (with at least a few NPC-created dungeons as backup) and earn gold/xp by snagging the treasure at the end of the dungeon.

There's a few options for handling the duality of playing two sides of the game:
-Gold/xp could be shared between creating dungeons and adventuring.
-Gold/xp could be cloned (so you get one DM xp and one adventurer xp whenever you gain xp) or two separate types
-Here's my favorite: Gold is earned by looting dungeons, and XP is earned by killing adventurers. XP only levels up your adventurer, and gold is only used in buying new dungeon components (including treasure to attract adventurers- note: this is not lost when an adventurer gets it, but no rewards for adventuring your own dungeon).

[squeakyReaper]

Yeah, not sure if I'll go adventurer that founds city, or city that supports adventurer... Which should get top billing?  Dunno if I want to have straight DMs, though you could have mines be very... Twisty and monster infested, hehe.

Not sure if I prefer open world adventuring, sciency close-range shoot outs or dungeon crawling.  Maybe a mix...  Want to keep it more tactical than run n gun, that's all I know.

[Sensei]

Not to be rude, but it sounds like you still have a very vague idea of what you want to make!  Keep working on basics like accounts and maybe chat, but figure out what you're making before you go on ahead.

[squeakyReaper]

Yeah, still just throwing things at the wall to see what sticks.  I'll figure out a few "definitely this" features before coding anything.  First thing I'll be doing is a login system, and then a chat/forums thing.  Figure out the layout along the way.

Hey, as a thought for your setting thing (which I might not go with), could be a bit of alternative history.  Instead of going west to reach India, Europe just went east.  They're just now discovering America, in a year around 1900s, so tech progressed very differently.  I'll probably just go some fantasy setting, but that was in my mind.

[squeakyReaper]

Going to be starting up a hosting service with In Motion Hosting on Saturday.  The guy, for some reason, is giving me 50% off the first year, so only 55$.  45 day refund if I decide I'm making a horrible mistake, so yay.  I've done a lot of brain storming, and thought of a battle system!  There is mock up art in the sense that it shows the concept, but it's obviously not going to look like this when I have art assets.  These are all just ideas, feel free to tell me they're awful.  xD

Spoiler: The Combat (click to show/hide)

Here we have a criminally simple combat scene in a western area.  Steampunk Western style doesn't always mean we'll be drawing pistols at the high noon, but it can happen.  Here we have the daring adventurer in green, and his simple opponent in red.  Our goal is obvious; bring that punk down.  This is the decision part of combat, where I pick what I want to do.  Now, the brown blobs on the left?  Those are crates, or barrels, or innovative cratebarrels...  either way, they're cover.  I want to be there.  So I left click next to the barrels.

By left clicking, it brings up the "move" menu.  This pops up a big button, and four context buttons.  I could just click the big button, which moves me to that spot.  Simple.  The other options are shown through the buttons...  the moving one means run to the spot, the mask means sneak, the jet-packy one means use one of my gadgets and the gun is to shoot while moving.  Now, thinking...  just moving would be fine.  Running takes stamina, but I want to get to cover NOW.  The jetpack shows the red bar is only half full (half empty?), and flying to the spot is extravagant anyways.  Running and shooting though is good, in the chance that it'll nick him, so I'll choose that.  Clicking on that picks it, and action starts.  My enemy, at the same time, decides to do something- everyone acts at the same time.

I don't have animation, but it'd show the action going through.  He gets out four shots, one hitting me.  I shoot two while moving, but neither hits.  Darn.  At least I'm behind cover now.  The round is over, and we get to pick more options.  I don't want to move, so I right click on the guy.

This present context actions.  Since he's an enemy, I can really only fight him at the moment.  (maybe I could allow banter to be an action as well?)  My options are then presented.  On my wrist is a sleeper gas spray, but I'm not within range.  Doesn't make sense for me to try knifing him either, since I'm way over here.  I could fire my rocket at him, but that'd be overkill and I only have one shot...  and my revolver is out of ammo, with a 0.  Yikes.  So instead, I right click on myself.

This brings up actions I can do to myself.  I only have three, so actions don't always come in fours.  I can either stay behind cover and keep guard, perform first aid or reload my gun.  I pick the one that lets me shoot someone after performing it.

Agh!  This is not going favorably.  I don't plan on having terrain damage, but barrels don't make for great cover sometimes.  One pierces through and hits me, the other two shots miss.  At least I reloaded.  Alright, so I've had enough of this guy, and I should be kicking his butt...  so rocket, here we go.

No one said 19th century rockets were accurate, so I miss...  but it still does damage, and kicks up a bunch of dust and smoke.  He spends his turn reloading, not seeing it coming...  and now he sees nothing.

Time to wrap this up.  I could just walk over there, but I don't think I can make it in one turn.  Jet pack, go!  (imagine an animation here)

I fly over to him, and then...  (He's still dazed from being rocket'd!)

One spray from my sleeping gas, and he's out.  That depletes most of it, but I think I can survive restocking later.

This may or may not be a typical battle.  You might fight tons of opponents, you might have help and you might be in melee the whole time.  It'll vary, but that's how the combat works:
o) Both players decide what to do
o) Left click on a spot to pick a way to move to there
o) or right click on an object for context items (Pull switch, throw rock at, shoot)
o) Action goes for both players at the same time, or the player and the AI

Make sense?

[Sensei]

So it's exactly like frozen synapse?

Also I don't know how this is supposed to work unless you suddenly go into turn-based mode when you see an enemy; you can'y mill about a town square with that system.

[squeakyReaper]

There's a game like that already?  Huh.  Hope it won't be too similar.

Well, you won't usually watch your character walk around.  During a dungeon or something, left click always moves and right click is context (talk to, throw thing at, pick up) but most town movements are handled by saying "go to spot".  If you run into a battle (usually after dialogue) it goes to a battle screen until it's resolved.  No need to show your man walking around the country side by foot, unless you really wanted to.

[Ultimuh]

In my opinion, I dislike the part about Browser Games that limits how much you can do each 24-hours.
games that have any turn limit at all tends to put me off such a game.

I do enjoy certain.. pet games, altough there are several that dosn't.. satisfy me.
For one thing, I don't like Neopets, I like it's idea but it's not what I want to.. play.

I do like one certain.. Collectible card game tough, Urban Rivals is it's name.
However free it may seem to play, they do offer packs you can buy and well.. Sometimes Most of the time I don't feel like spending money on such things.

Any games where you can upgrade your cards/pets is always good.
When it comes to pet games, I prefer one with some kind of.. breeding feature, where stats and certain parts are inherited to the monster thing.
I remember a certain one with theese features.. I forgot the name of tough, but it was quite enjoyable.

[squeakyReaper]

Yeah, I hate the actions a day limit too.  Buying things often annoys me too, but I can see where they're coming from.  In game (at least my plan), traveling long distances will take time, less if you have a bike or something, but that's the only time restricting thing.  I'm not worried about monetizing yet, though it'd be like...  Extra character slots or access to beta features or something.

I like pet sites because they're cute, but Neopets sets a bad example.  Very skinner-boxish, and restrictive on what you can do/talk about.  They're so paranoid about scams that I can't give my friend a virtual pizza because he might be paying me off to do it!  And card games are cool too, though booster packs that cost money are just... Bleh, not a fan.

Maybe you could have sciency pets.  Monkeyunicorns are hard to house-break though...  Maybe robots?  A gentlemanly duel in the form of a card game would be cool, especially since Western settings have a lot of card players.

[squeakyReaper]

Alright, well I seem to be getting some criticisms on how that battle system has already been done before by a few of my friends...  which is odd, because until Sensei pointed it out I didn't even know what Frozen Synapse is.  I dunno if I should worry about this, change it or leave it or what.  I haven't worked on it yet, I only have some of the layout and programming made up, so it wouldn't be too much of a problem.  Just want to make sure that whatever battle system I do end up using, it allows for creative use of the many inventions you'll be going to be making...

Also, I need a name for this thing.  No one I've asked has been able to come up with anything for it, and I'm drawing a blank too.  xD