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[Matz05]

I've always liked customization in my games, but lately I've become more and more genera-savvy and the feeling of "Yeah, I built that. Watch it kick your butt." of sticking lasers on a Mechwarrior 4 Mercs MP3 'mech has been fading.
I've played Roboforge, but being that it is a): a crashy, glitchy old Java game, b):pretty much dead, and c):too... I dunno, impersonal?... and less deep than it seems (physics are a lot simpler than they look for such a sword-fighting/etc-based game)
I was excited for Spore, but after I got it I was quite disappointed at   how only cosmetic changes are really made, and how the response I get   from my practical, helpful brother when showing him a creature is "you   could hide a pair of minimum-size wings here. All creatures have similar capabilities.
I've tried Garry's Mod, but being based on a FPS engine, all the objects are either fragile crates, made of explodium, or made of indestructium and even with Wiremod/Spacebuild/etc., there just isn't much room for improvement. You either use a premade spaceship weapon that damages tanks/ships/bases or you work hard to make something twice as large, half as reliable, and only effective against players/NPCs.



So I was wondering: Can any of you name a game where equipment is truly "Design-it-yourself"?
I don't mean "tech-tree", and the modular build systems of Warzone 2100 and some mech games are still not uniquely "yours".
I mean something where ingenuity can come up with weapons that your opponents can't defend against until they figure out how the heck they even work! Where you can spend lots of time looking at the way another player's equipment solves the same problems as yours, but by an entirely different principle.

I would really love to vent some of my mad-scientist ambitions on something like this.




<P.S. Sorry about all the TVTropes WikiWords, just escaped a WikiWalk and have to deal with a TabExplosion>

[C4lv1n]

There's Aurora, the forum topic is on the second page, it's pretty complicated though. But considering this is Bay12 that shouldn't be an issue.

Fake edit:: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=47678.0

[Shades]

So I was wondering: Can any of you name a game where equipment is truly "Design-it-yourself"?
I don't mean "tech-tree", and the modular build systems of Warzone 2100 and some mech games are still not uniquely "yours".
I mean something where ingenuity can come up with weapons that your opponents can't defend against until they figure out how the heck they even work! Where you can spend lots of time looking at the way another player's equipment solves the same problems as yours, but by an entirely different principle.

No, you'd need a pretty impressive physics engine to manage that. I don't see it happening any time soon either.

Modular systems are easier, some games have taken this as far as a load of times you can combine in weird and wonderful ways like those old incredible machine games, I think a sufficiently detailed version of this is there best your going to get, but they are still modular, they don't really model how things things react to the world.

[Leonon]

Have you tried Robot Arena? It has some pretty extensive customization.

[Rilder]

Have you tried Robot Arena? It has some pretty extensive customization.

Robot Arena 2 was fun as hell I need to play that again some day.

[yamo]

http://fold.it/portal/info/science

Real as it gets...

[Matz05]

Oh yeah! I remember Robot Arena 2! Where did I put that disk... Thanks for the Aurora suggestion, I'll try it now!

About physics: I know the problem of doing anything like that in real-time would be nigh-impossible in 3D, but if you had two or three z-levels of "falling sand game"-like substance interactions on a small enough grid (maybe having a "technology level" that would make stuff that needs more simulation more expensive)... hmm... Too bad GameMaker really can't handle many simple objects, it needs only a few, very complex ones for any sort of efficiency.

EDIT: Whats this? Custom MIRVs? Am I in love?

[ThtblovesDF]

Maybe try space station 13?

http://www.byond.com/games/hub/Exadv1/SpaceStation13

[Sowelu]

Corewars.  Anything that makes you write actual programs.

[Matz05]

I haven't played SS13 in a while, but yeah, I like it. Play mostly virtually exclusively on the BS12 servers. Got a new computer, don't have BYOND. Might have to find the server address again.

About Corewars: I remember reading about that. A bit too abstract for my taste (I never was a very good programmer, too impatient. Allways sacrificing efficiency to "make it work" sooner.) I used to play around with Darwinbots 2... I wonder how that's going...

Having a few problems with Aurora, but WOW! What a range of options. Too bad its pretty much "drop the newbie in the pile of buttons and don't tell him how they relate"... Tutorials insist on cheating up all the research it looks like, too.

[Sowelu]

Gratuitous Space Battles kinda, sorta, almost qualifies.  I guess.

[Sensei]

Battleships Forever kinda counts. You can create your own weapons that behave basically however you want them to, but there's nothing balancing it (you can just give a weapon 999999999 damage and be a douche) and the campaign doesn't let you use custom ships. Most of the fun comes from pitching ships you've made against eachother in the sandbox and mission creator. Multiplayer was planned but I'm not sure if it was implemented, although you CAN create missions and send your friends the files, kind of like doing a DF succession game.