Epic halts development

Always sad to see a project end unfinished. So, just out of curiosity, what's next on your agenda GrandpaTrout? One usually abandons a project in favor of another. Will you be working on any smaller projects? I'd hate to see all that talent and knowledge go to waste.

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The Ultimate Guide To Modding: I-War 2 - Edge Of Chaos
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Well, long story. The core ideas behind Epic were these:

1. There are Faction leaders more powerful than the player making plans that shape the world.
2. Those plans were made ahead of time, so the player could discover them (like a spy) and then try to help or hinder those plans.
3. There are ethical choices. Faction leaders have ethics. The course of history is thus changed by who is leading.
4. The player is a small fish in a big world, but the things he/she does have a measurable impact (say by preventing JFK's assination).

Good ideas, but a star cluster was just way too big. Way too many ships. Way too many factions and stations. The size of the economy was huge. Far too many plans and actions happening all over the cluster (thousands). It was just out of control. And no real programming tools to support this size of an effort. Or debug it.

Hot4Darmat had loaned me a copy of this old board game called "Belter" by Games Design Workshop. The same people who did the RPG Traveller. That setting is much, much smaller. About 150 asteroids max (5% of middle states). A small number of competing companies. The economy is simple and well defined. There are even rules for "corrupt" behavior, so faction ethics is supported. Yet only 3 kinds of ships. Very simple.

So my next plan is to learn how to write an AI to control each of these "Belter" companies (in C++). And keep flushing out the rules until I have something that implements the main points Epic was aiming towards. (the player would take the role of ship captain, not CEO).

I doubt I will translate that back into EoC. The reason is that I just don't find trade all that fun (time spent mostly flying on autopilot). And X2 does a nice job of empire building (without combat). And EricMan already did a great mining simulation.

So instead, I think I will focus on building a political game. Where the player takes the role of a spy. And the main routines for the player are small scale combat (between spies) and some kind of hacking simulation. Both need to be fun. Leave the trade out. Leave the large combats with multiple wingmen for other games.

Once I know how to write the AI planner, I will have a better idea if I can use the EoC engine. Or if I need to look wider.

Between now and the end of April I am just focusing on getting some of these pieces out. A little trade. A little reputation stuff. The Middle States with all the new textures and sounds.


-Gtrout

Nice one buddy. Good luck with that. I've been trying to write various space elite like games for years, but I just don't have the time. One day, one day.....

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There is no enemy. Anywhere.

*sob* - was really looking forward to epic. Loved the concept. On the code front are you thinking in terms of providing some "clean" packages of functionality created to date and a "here is everything" drop as well? The approaches made in the code would likely be valuable resources for others to spring board off as well as provide good instructive material.

Cheers,
Joco.

Just another thought on AI systems. This site might be of interest: www.memeticai.org/

Cheers,
Joco.

Hi Joco,
Thanks for the link. It looks pretty interesting.

It looks like the trade based features are forming up into almost a complete mod of thier own. Not exactly Epic, but pretty nice.

I would be willing to put out the total code tree for where Epic was going. And the (incomplete) supporting documents. Are there any lurking POG programmers out there?

-Gtrout