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[Sowelu]

http://pc.ign.com/articles/132/132191p1.html

...What's that?  They canceled it almost ten years ago?  FFFUUUUUUU--

[mainiac]

damn you for getting my hopes up!

[Sowelu]

For what it's worth, "Space Colony" seems like a vague cross between this and The Sims.  It's not great, but at least it's alright.  Worth getting from a bargain bin.

[Djohaal]

Blame the sims for it being cancelled... that scourge!

[Sir Pseudonymous]

Well, that's just... really fucking depressing.

[Sowelu]

I dunno, look at some of the game design issues they were trying to figure out in terms of timescale and, well, spatial and social scale.  I'm not convinced that their design would have worked very well--sounds like they couldn't decide if they were making Outpost, Moonbase, or Space Colony.  And face it, all of those games were average at BEST.

It's not easy to make a game where your population can grow exponentially, and your industry gradually moves from money-based imports to a self-sustaining industrial sector.  I don't think The Sims killed it off.  I think "Wow, this isn't very fun" did.

Seems like most genres have a few early games to really kickstart 'em, and prove that the concept is viable, even if the game itself isn't great.  Colonizing-other-planet games have never even had a single successful proof of concept.  Maybe it just doesn't work.

(If anyone with coding experience comes up with a solid design that they need another coder to help implement, YOU HAVE MY AXE, and normally I NEVER volunteer to help code things.  But I ain't leading the team.)

[Sir Pseudonymous]

Space colony was ok, it was just horribly designed, and put together like a cross between <anything> Tycoon and a more limited The Sims.

I played outpost as a kid, except I was a kid and had no fucking clue what I was trying to do, and I don't remember anything but its basic premise.

It probably is a hard thing to get right. If you're going for a hardcore peaceful simulation of developing means of agriculture and industry, then it's just something like SimCity, only in space with gimmicky, alien building blocks (you can relate to a highway, or a block of housing, but a bit less so to hermetically sealed tunnels linking blocks of similarly sealed flats). If you go for a more militaristic theme, trying to colonize a hostile planet, then it's... what? Probably just one out of a number of different archetypes, but TOTALLY IN SPACE WITH ALIENS AND SHIT! :/

As compelling fucking awesome as the basic idea is, there are only so many ways you can take it, and they've mostly been done before, and even if you managed to outdo them gameplaywise, it would still be seen as gimmicky and derivative, in all likelihood.

I have ideas on it (as does everyone and their mother, presumably), but they all fail the above problem, and I have better ideas for other things, in any case. If only I could be bothered to concentrate on them long enough to actually ever do anything...

The SimMars thing was depressing because it showed what Maxis was, which stands in stark contrast to the pile of shit they've become under the heinous leadership of EA. Kind of like looking at what Relic's become, or Bioware. I hear Blizzard used to be good too, before Satan himself took the helm.

[PTTG??]

(If anyone with coding experience comes up with a solid design that they need another coder to help implement, YOU HAVE MY AXE, and normally I NEVER volunteer to help code things.  But I ain't leading the team.)

I intend to learn C++ to make my magnum opus The Sparta Project, which will be in some ways like Harvest Mars and Mars Station 13 plus a little bit of Mars Fortress. Go on and guess what planet I plan to set it on.

Of course, that's all waiting for me to have time to learn C++. Someday...

Back to the axe:

Sir Pseudonymous strikes the Code in the subroutine with his *Iron Code Axe*!
It is broken!
The Code annoys Sir Pseudonymous in the head with a bug!
It explodes into gore!

[LordBucket]

They canceled it

I believe SimEarth had a mars terraforming mission. You might try that.

[Sowelu]

I believe SimEarth had a mars terraforming mission. You might try that.

I did at the time, and it was one of the most interesting missions in that more-simplistic-than-you'd-think game.  But there still wasn't any human aspect to it (besides the ability to place very abstract cities), no tech tree, no mining, etc.

[Muz]

Heh, I saw the trailer for this back a long time ago. It was between this and The Sims 1. I thought SimMars would be a better game. I was so wrong.

Yeah, Outpost is still a good game if you want a simulation of building a colony on another planet.

[Il Palazzo]

Oh, and I was thinking you're talking about Mars-Sim, not Sim Mars... silly me.

[Sowelu]

Oooh!  Thank you, Il Palazzo-sama!

This thread is now about Mars-Sim, which I will have to download and play the hell out of when it's not 4 AM here.  Looks like it's even still being updated, which surprises me a lot.

(For the record, Outpost is pretty close to the bottom of the barrel in the genre, even if it did kind of kickstart it all in, what, 1995?  Outpost 2 is a significantly playable RTS with civilian-managing aspects.  Alien Legacy is thematically awesome if you want to colonize worlds and explore for resources in a somewhat more sci-fi atmosphere.)

Edit:  DUDE, it even tracks the Meyers-Briggs personality types for all your scientists?!  HARD CORE.

[Shades]

This thread is now about Mars-Sim, which I will have to download and play the hell out of when it's not 4 AM here.  Looks like it's even still being updated, which surprises me a lot.

I suggest updating topic title

[Deon]

Probably I play DF too much, but I've tried Mars Sim before and it felt like a Mars DF with more text/tables and less visualization and no burning nobles. I liked it for some time but then stopped to play it, I don't remember why, probably I became bored or something else.