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[Retropunch]

I agree that a 0.1 version would be a much more robust starting point than our present graveyard of map demos, but my point was that a 0.1 version is itself too much to ask for one person or even one team to code for free in obscurity. Your list is not trivial. Nor would the support you suggest would be available be particularly helpful. I absolutely accept that the existence of a 0.1 not-Chapter-Master-wink-wink would set off a firestorm of bikeshedding about how best to represent every unit and piece of wargear in 40k, but that's all you get; leaving aside how none of that can be ported back into your code, none of that is actual code development. It doesn't get you from 0.1 to 0.2 any more than tilesets help develop DF: at best, you can claim that they help provide feature requests, but every software development project has more of those than they'll ever need.

See, Chapter Master has two fatal problems that have nothing to do with copyright or money. First, all the blue-sky design work has already been done to death, so it's really hard to sell as a passion project because you're already working with someone else's ideas. If I had the time to write games, there are absolutely games I'd be more psyched to write, and that's true of everyone. Chapter Master is an idea in a field where ideas are ten-a-penny, and it comes with exceptional baggage, which leads us to the second problem: the 40k fandom is huge, and any credible attempt at a 0.1 version would be swamped by tons of people. As with any group of fans, most of them are not going to be helpful but all of them will be extremely opinionated, and the resultant bickering gets exponentially louder as the group gets bigger. That drives useful people away just because it's such an unpleasant environment to work in, and it also inhibits the few things amateurs are actually good for.

Not-CM 0.1 is a big project, but unlike other games of comparable size, all the most fun parts are already done and thousands upon thousands of perennially angry people stand ready to suck the fun out of the rest one flame war at a time.

I think you're exactly right if someone wants to make Chapter Master 2, however if someone wants to create their own deeply moddable 4x war game then I believe it'd be a different scenario - part of the joy of having the w40k bit be a mod is that the 40k-uber-fans can flame themselves to death and create their own mods with slightly different coloured bolters and stats without impacting core development - sure you'd get people say 'I demand you create xyz' but you get that with absolutely every software project, and you just have to say 'if you want it so bad, make it yourself'.

More than that, a deeply moddable 4x would also get fans from Stargate, Mass Effect, Star Trek etc. who would all want to create their own mods and potentially contribute. 99% of them would just create re-skins, but as with CataDDA and the like, some people do transition over to actual coding because they *really* want ship boarding or different planetary bombardment modes or whatever. There's a lot of clever nerds out there, and when it comes down to only a few lines of code between them and finally getting a showdown between the Cylons and the Goa'uld then they suddenly start being helpful.
 

[ZeroGravitas]

...I'll just point out that Orcs with a C aren't copyright. Space Orcs with lotsa guns who like to fight can be pretty much directly translated with a single letter changed.

Although watch out for the specific accent and the various silly words (some of which are even trademarked or are product names, like "gorkamorka").

[Cruxador]

Regarding Trekkin's pessimism, it's all logical and well-reasoned, but it was also all true when Duke picked up the project too.

The basic things you need are factions, units, sector maps, systems and planets, planetary battles, and ships which can move around and interact with those things. Wargear and particularly significant artifacts would also be good, for the player at least, and some manner of infrastructure and income to build ships and wargear, recruit, organize, and promote units. In terms of interface, King of Dragon Pass was one of the big inspirations for Chapter Master, and having your subordinates as a council or otherwise in the interface is a good way to make immersion work. Then just support for a random event system, and it should be primed to become something huge and amazing.

I'd agree, but I'd say most of that is 'step 2' (especially artefacts, promoting and organising, sectors etc.) - it's definitely what makes it chapter master, but it's not needed for a version 0.1.

The thing is, as soon as you get it up to 0.1 level it starts becoming way more attractive to people - the hard work of deciding what language to use, how to do movement and basic graphics, how to do turns etc. is all taken care of and people can get to doing the 'fun stuff' like factions and equipment and stuff.

A sector map is pretty necessary, you can't play without a field of play. Without a map, your "able to move a ship full of marines from planet to planet" is going to feel artificial and meaningless, and would only hinder elaboration on location mechanics going forward. Promoting, organizing, and equipping are an important part of the appeal, and more importantly are important data structures to have from the get-go before you have lots of other mechanics that are built on a system without them.

I don't think people get that attracted to a "game" which only has turns and map-less movement. There has to be something to catch people's attention too, or else it's one of the many thousand projects that dies unremarked. And having in place structures that allow people to contribute without too much coding skill (so, data-driven content such as units, gear, and planets) is a good way to foment community and encourage people to learn your system one bit at a time.

[Trekkin]

Regarding Trekkin's pessimism, it's all logical and well-reasoned, but it was also all true when Duke picked up the project too.

This is entirely true, but there are two things that I think make it more likely that his attempt will remain unique:

1. Duke burned out, and the reasons he gave for burning out will still be true of any new attempt -- and accessible by anyone considering trying. In a larger sense, every failure is another reason to try something else, and there are a lot more of those now.

2. Duke started with a design document, not working code. Anyone who succeeds now is going to have to contend with all the folks who liked Duke's version better, or at least their memories of it, and even in isolation there's still the sense that much of the development is going to be retreading old ground. It's not exciting or new anymore -- and at least when I code for free, I'm far more excited about solving new problems than re-implementing old solutions.

I think you're exactly right if someone wants to make Chapter Master 2, however if someone wants to create their own deeply moddable 4x war game then I believe it'd be a different scenario - part of the joy of having the w40k bit be a mod is that the 40k-uber-fans can flame themselves to death and create their own mods with slightly different coloured bolters and stats without impacting core development - sure you'd get people say 'I demand you create xyz' but you get that with absolutely every software project, and you just have to say 'if you want it so bad, make it yourself'.

That's certainly more a more workable plan than CM 2.0, although I worry that the minimal feature set is not only ambitious but multipartite to a discouraging extent -- but then, it's well established at this point that I'm a pessimist.

In an attempt to lower the bar, I think one could potentially get people at least appreciative if someone could just generate a 2D tile grid with relatively smooth height values (read: set corner heights and interpolate), stick two actors on it, and have them shoot taxicab-pathing bullets at each other and move around randomly until one got hit. Write the grid to the terminal after every time step. Then try to write AI for both of them. Adding stats to that is easy, and letting the player edit one of the AI scripts is a game sans GUI.

That's comp sci student levels of simple, and it'd at least give whoever did it a sense of how hard it would be to expand to multiple actors, inventory bookkeeping, etc.

[Tunje]

sooo, um, has anyone done a collection of all error codes Duke got on his version? I’m just looking through the files to see if I can do anything with them and that would help, it took a while to dig them up from this chat so if anyone knows of such a list that would be nice....

[sprinkled chariot]

sooo, um, has anyone done a collection of all error codes Duke got on his version? I’m just looking through the files to see if I can do anything with them and that would help, it took a while to dig them up from this chat so if anyone knows of such a list that would be nice....

In theory, easiest way would be asking duke, he is probably still making this princess game.

[nenjin]

I know some of them were posted to the thread.

[E. Albright]

I have a question - and before I ask, let me be clear that I do not mean to suggest that anything would come of me asking, but... what would you lot consider to be the core features needed in a CM clone? Aside from enough moddability that enterprising souls could replace "generic space empire" with "specific space empire" if they so chose?

[Trekkin]

I feel that the best thing that could happen with this is someone made a really, really basic, version which was open source and well commented. From that, I'm sure there would be more people willing to actively take up the mantle

What minimal feature set would you want in that version?

For the minimum viable product, I'd say:
 - able to move ships full of marines from planet to planet
 - different planets would be filled with different enemies and battle would commence when a ship attacks it (in a text based log, no need for graphics).
 - enemies would spread to other planets per turn(s).
 - periodic or action based events with some choice (going to planet Balthazar might give you the choice to enter a tomb and potentially get loot, but you might lose soldiers etc.)
 - marines could be equipped with different gear which would affect their stats (this could be pretty broad to start with - the equipment could be set per ship rather than individually for instance).


If you had that, along with the things to go with it (an inventory for each ship would be needed for instance) then it'd be pretty easy for others to build on - events could be created, enemy races could be built, battles could become more nuanced etc.

The key would be to have it super well commented, and with as little spaghetti code as possible. I'd also suggest it be done in a more global language than Gamemaker - python, C# or similar, as gamemaker can be a bit restrictive and isn't really suitable for githubbing etc.

This, apparently.

[Cruxador]

I have a question - and before I ask, let me be clear that I do not mean to suggest that anything would come of me asking, but... what would you lot consider to be the core features needed in a CM clone? Aside from enough moddability that enterprising souls could replace "generic space empire" with "specific space empire" if they so chose?

Well, back in the old days when Tellurium from the BroQuest team pitched the concept, it was basically "King of Dragon Pass:, 40k edition". It picked up some Dwarf Fortress attributes and other elements even before the first attempt at making it, but for a bare minimum, I'd say that the thing to do is go back to the original concept without getting too into the more 4x type things Duke added.

That means that there are basically three things you need. First and most foundatiobal, you need a management screen, or set of screens, where you interact with important parameters of your chapter. For this segment to be worth it, you at least need ways to organize and replenish your troops and ships to some degree, although managing your fortress worlds and sources of recruitment would also be fun. Duke's version allowed a lot of individual customization of units but I don't think that's strictly necessary. I don't think having a numerical economy like his is strictly necessary for this either. You can have ships be a lot more unique, get them from narrative sources for example.

The second thing you need, which Duke did first if I recall correctly, is a sector. The sector should have systems and planets (which should know which faction controls them) but that's pretty much all it needs. Even having your fleet be at a specific place on the map isn't strictly necessary, you can abstract it to just launching missions from the fortress world.

Which brings me to the third and most important of the main things, and the one in which Duke's game was most lacking - but also the one with the greatest potential for a coder to say "okay, this is the format for this, other people make stuff and post it if you want". That was the core premise for the first attempt at the game, but that one got nowhere because nobody ever coded an engine. Anyway, I'm talking about events and missions. Maybe that's two systems, but that's on a lower level of design. Basically, there needs to be the possibility for an event to happen (presumably on a turn resolve) and for the player to respond to it. In its simplest possible form, the event is "xeno scum attacked world x" and the response is "load infantry company y into ship z and go there and kill them". Now that I think of it, pretty much the same gameplay loop as XCOM.

But that's just at the basic level. Setting aside the high levels of numeric detail that Duke went into, other key ideas (not necessarily the first playable build, but ideas that buids should be written in a way that allows for) are non-combat events of as many types as possible, the ability to have a council of named characters who give you advice (as the nobles in KoDP) and cool shit such as relics, extra tricked out ships, and especially badass characters (who would presumably also be the named characters for the council).


Also, if we're talking about the minimum requisite features.

- able to move ships full of marines from planet to planet

Not necessary at all. Ship location can be implied.

- different planets would be filled with different enemies and battle would commence when a ship attacks it (in a text based log, no need for graphics).

Yeah, this is pretty basic.

- enemies would spread to other planets per turn(s).

Not strictly necessary.

- periodic or action based events with some choice (going to planet Balthazar might give you the choice to enter a tomb and potentially get loot, but you might lose soldiers etc.)

This is the most important gameplay feature since such a system can also define enemy behavior.

- marines could be equipped with different gear which would affect their stats (this could be pretty broad to start with - the equipment could be set per ship rather than individually for instance).

Not strictly necessary. Consider that KoDP has carls, thanes, and that is the entirety of the combat distinctions. Having a few more unit types would be better, sure (and if the pie is in the sky anyway, I'd like Dominions-style tactical battles, but it's not the bare minimum. One unit type and some dice rolling behind the scenes is enough to function. It works for Risk, it can work here. I'd like it if it were possible to define a unit type by specifying exact loadout, and then equip (or re-equip) units to that or any unit type you come up with, but this kind of thing is very much not the minimum requisite.

an inventory for each ship would be needed for instance

It really wouldn't be. The minimum requirement for a ship is the same as a crusader kings ship: It needs to know how many troops it holds. If ships are assumed to be at your base when not in use, then they don't even need to know who's in them. You just sum up the capacity of all the ships being dedicated to the event, and that's the maximum number of marines that you can use.

  I'd also suggest it be done in a more global language than Gamemaker - python, C# or similar, as gamemaker can be a bit restrictive and isn't really suitable for githubbing etc.

A language doesn't have to not be terrible in order to be suitable. You could meet the basic requirements in Twine, including moddability. I'm not recommending that, mostly because it's awkward for geographic stuff and gets terribly bloated terribly quickly, but it's sufficient to the minimum requirements.

[Trekkin]

That was the core premise for the first attempt at the game, but that one got nowhere because nobody ever coded an engine. Anyway, I'm talking about events and missions. Maybe that's two systems, but that's on a lower level of design. Basically, there needs to be the possibility for an event to happen (presumably on a turn resolve) and for the player to respond to it.

This is both the most necessary and the most utterly thankless part of any attempt at this project, in part because the sensible ways to do it also impose a learning curve on modding it. You may, for example, want to implement something like schema validation to more informatively identify errors in the text files describing all the things in the game -- and they will be text files, because too few people can understand anything else. Your modders will not want your schema format standing between them and their content, and there's a limit to how much frustration people will endure for free, even self-created frustration.

See, anyone attempting to resurrect this would have to learn how to speak Amateur. What an actual programmer would consider "well commented" is totally opaque to them; their constant demands for "a clear step by step guide" for exactly whatever task they think they want to do today cannot be met by anything short of someone effectively ghostwriting their code for them.

I suppose the problem could be ameliorated by only making a small group of disposable friends aware of the project at first, so that everyone not driven to bitter hatred of each other would become adept at handling the constant queries of the modding hordes.

[Cruxador]

That was the core premise for the first attempt at the game, but that one got nowhere because nobody ever coded an engine. Anyway, I'm talking about events and missions. Maybe that's two systems, but that's on a lower level of design. Basically, there needs to be the possibility for an event to happen (presumably on a turn resolve) and for the player to respond to it.

This is both the most necessary and the most utterly thankless part of any attempt at this project, in part because the sensible ways to do it also impose a learning curve on modding it. You may, for example, want to implement something like schema validation to more informatively identify errors in the text files describing all the things in the game -- and they will be text files, because too few people can understand anything else. Your modders will not want your schema format standing between them and their content, and there's a limit to how much frustration people will endure for free, even self-created frustration.

See, anyone attempting to resurrect this would have to learn how to speak Amateur. What an actual programmer would consider "well commented" is totally opaque to them; their constant demands for "a clear step by step guide" for exactly whatever task they think they want to do today cannot be met by anything short of someone effectively ghostwriting their code for them.

I suppose the problem could be ameliorated by only making a small group of disposable friends aware of the project at first, so that everyone not driven to bitter hatred of each other would become adept at handling the constant queries of the modding hordes.

I think you're overestimating the level of what needs to happen from modders. People who want to add features can either learn to do it themselves, or just whine for someone else to do it and either be ignored or not. Making modding available to the masses should focus on providing support for content creation, not holding the hands of idea guys. For that, something like the event system of Paradox's Clausewitz engine would be cool, but I reckon it could also be done nearly as well (and much more easily) with an xml system.

[E. Albright]

Whether engine generation is thankless depends on the person. The Dominions modding project I'm involved with (NationGen) has had almost as many people glom onto it to do engine refactoring or optimization as to develop new nation templates. Some of that may be related to the learning curve of the data syntax for nations, though - the original author has expressed sincere regret they didn't go with XML or crib Paradox syntax way back when they devised their format. So yeah, that's definitely something needing considered by anyone looking at something like this.

[Retropunch]

I don't think it matters if it's difficult or not - as long as it's possible to mod and reasonably well documented (as in, 'here is an example and here is a bit of an explanation') then people will either work on it or not. Sure, you'll get people whine and moan but they do about absolutely all projects. I released some free software a few months back - it's incredibly basic and just fulfils one niche use-case. Even so, I'm bombarded with emails with 'add this feature now' and I just have a stock email I send back most of the time.

However, I'd strongly suggest whoever picks CM up needs to do so in a language which is relatively well known and document it as best as they can because whilst there will be a lot of moaner who contribute little, there will be a few people who can actually help and you're more likely to get them on board with a mainstream language.

[Sir_Madijeis]

I don't know who will hear this plea, but f*ck it it's not like I have any other choice. I have encountered a crash bug that is destined to kill my game no matter what, and I have no idea how to fix it. I will try to get an old version of GS, then see where my heart leads

Code: [Select]

___________________________________________
############################################################################################
FATAL ERROR in
action number 1
of Alarm Event for alarm 0
for object obj_turn_end:

Variable obj_turn_end.current_battles(103172, -2147483648) not set before reading it.
at gml_Object_obj_turn_end_Alarm_0
############################################################################################
I think what's happening here is that some force (most likely traitors) is attacking a planetary garrison, killing some of them. However, the game couldn't conclude the battle or something. I don't think I'll make it by myself, but by the Emperor I'm going to try