I have an idea for a video games based off Ender's Game. It would be a pure military game where you control the human race and fight the Buggers. it would be based on the simulations that Ender went through for three weeks. The game would not be open-ended, but it would be extremely difficult and take a long time to complete. Can you imagine fighting the last battle, where your forces are outnumbered 1000 to 1?
Do you think this games will ever happen? Once the Ender's Game movie comes out, I'm sure a video game will come out too. I just hope it's like the one I described.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
I think Jake Lloyd should do the voice of Graff. Posted by Puppy (Member # 6721) on :
If a movie comes out, a game is inevitable. If a movie doesn't come out, getting a game franchise established is still a major interest of OSC's. So keep watching for it, though since a game project has not yet been begun, you can expect a minimum of several years before it could possibly appear Posted by NotMe (Member # 10470) on :
Let's think for a bit about what it would take to implement such a game. First, it will have to be played on a high resolution display. Probably a minimum of 20" in order to show enough of what's going on. Next, the actual graphics. That should be trivial. There will only be a few types of fighters to implement, and at any given moment, there will be only two types in play. That means that the graphics card will not require much ram, just a reasonably fast geometry processor. Any 3d card on the market now should suffice.
The AI will be tricky. Things are made much easier by having a homogeneous fighting force. That reduces things down to a purely tactical issue. It is pretty straightforward to compute what spaces have higher concentrations of forces. The goals are also mercifully simple: wipe out the enemy completely. The problem comes in deciding how to throw around the massive amounts of firepower. When the buggers are outnumbering the humans by several orders of magnitude, they don't need to use their forces efficiently. But in a more matched battle, it will be hard to make an AI that can keep most of its forces engaged in something useful.
The biggest hurdle, by far, is the user interface. I don't see any way the game could be done in real time without speech recognition. A keyboard and mouse just aren't flexible enough (or fast enough). Speech recognition is much easier when you have a known, small vocabulary to deal with. From what I've seen, the speech recognition included with Mac OS X would probably suffice to identify commands. But how do you program a good response to "A team, pull back"? More importantly, how do you allow the commander to define even the simplest formations?
I think a few good developers could probably pull together a working prototype over the summer, but refining it to a marketable game would take a couple of years.
Posted by Puppy (Member # 6721) on :
Have you played Homeworld?
Posted by C3PO the Dragon Slayer (Member # 10416) on :
Mac OS X has speech recognition? (Jots down yet another reason to buy a Mac)
Posted by NotMe (Member # 10470) on :
I did find the time to check out Homeworld. I had heard it was good, but I never bothered to check it out. I downloaded the demo for Homeworld 2, and it seems to be a pretty good game. The UI seemed a bit cluttered, but that can probably be cleaned up. The problem is that the control scheme is still essentially planar. There doesn't seem to be a way to alter which way is up. So while it is a 3d game, it is not a space-based game at heart.
And, yes C3PO, OS X has speech recognition built in. Its primary purpose is as an accessibility feature, but it is very easy for programs to define their own vocabulary.
Posted by Dog Walker (Member # 8301) on :
I have always wanted a video game that was more of an RPG battle school game. The story line could either be from the pre-Ender era, or it could follow the story line of the book. The way I invision the game is to be a smaller version of Oblivion. With a smaller map there can be more interations with fellow battle schoolers.
Following the pre-ender story line you could start as a launchy and work your way up to a comander. The gamer could make his character have various personality traits and physical characteristic that would determine what type of leader he would become and how others would interact with him.
I dont have the mind for creating a game but i think the battle school RPG could be a great.
Posted by C3PO the Dragon Slayer (Member # 10416) on :
Or they have the Fantasy Game. Imaging poking the Giant's eye out with your mouse and then going to Fairy Land...
Posted by NotMe (Member # 10470) on :
The idea of a Battle School RPG is interesting. These days, something like that would probably be done online. I think Battle School could be a very fertile context for creating a MMORPG, but there would have to be more than just what was describe in the books.
The Fantasy Game would be really cool. It would take a lot of work, though. The procedural content generation research required for that game would be good for somebody working on a doctorate. Probably the same for the psychological aspects. But once it was done, there would be a lot more than just a game to come out of that kind of research.
Posted by C3PO the Dragon Slayer (Member # 10416) on :
Yeah, we can get a "real" Jane.
Posted by TL (Member # 8124) on :
I'm praying for an online multiplayer Battle Room FPS.
(I still miss Unreal Tournament. (The good one.))
Posted by LargeTuna (Member # 10512) on :
no way a battle room game could be first person. it could be a command game where you give overall commands and can controll toons or half toons at a time. mabe if you did good, you could leave part of the battle up to the seccond in command, and cotroll your superpowered commander in controll mode.
Posted by LargeTuna (Member # 10512) on :
Great Names Dogwalker was a sweet read
Posted by Puppy (Member # 6721) on :
I could see the ideal Battleroom game functioning a lot like Brothers in Arms. You're on the battlefield, fighting, but you're also commanding your men.
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