The death of a computergame?

[The Joker]

It is really hard to start this thread. But we are all seing it, and we need to figure out what to do about it.

OpenCiv3 is dying. Fewer and fewer people post here, and us who still do usually just make one post with some great idea that we could use once we have gotten the design process well underway. But we can not use any of those ideas untill we have gotten the basics of the design settled. And that work is only very slowly proceeding.

If it takes this much time and effort to design a map, how will we ever manage to make an AI, or a population model? I have come to think, that we simply do not have enough mass to create a computergame. There are only two things to do about that.

The first is to have the excisting team do a much greater efford to get the game done. But as we all have lives outside of Apolyton this is really not a good solution.

The second is to get more members. This is by far the best of the two. But all our previous attempts to get more members have failed. I am wondering whether there is room for yet another opensource civ game. Isn't it possible that all the people that might have been interested in joining our project have already joined Clash or FreeCiv? If so, do we have any chance of survival?

Another problem is, that we do not just want to survive. We want to prosper. We do not only want to make a game, we want to make a great game. But if we have trouple just staying afloat, how will we ever fly?

At this moment I am seriously thinking about joining the Clash team. I would rather be a small, and perhabs rather insignificant part of a team that might actually succeed, than be an important part of team that is already doomed. If we do not manage to change the situation here I think that we might all just emigrate to Clash. It may not be everything that we have wanted our project to be, but it has a lot of similarities to it. And it is surely more similar to our vision of OpenCiv3, than a project that never managed to get off the ground is.

No matter what happends now we need to talk about the matter, and possibly get to a conclusion that we can all agree on. This may be joining Clash, it may be simply giving up, and it may be to put the design on hold and focus on some serious PR work.

[RonHiler]

If you'd like my advice...

I don't think that aquiring more members is going to do you any good at this point. Indeed, it may be counterproductive, since, as the number of members increase, time and effort has to be expended in team organization rather than in game programming.

IMO, Large teams != successful game programming, at least not necessarily. Consider Manifest Destiny for a moment. The team consists of two members, one coder, one artist. OTOH, Clash has a fairly large team, and it is doing pretty well. But it also has a clear organizational leader (Mark), someone to make final decisions where needed so things can move along, something which I percieve OC3 to be missing.

Decide who is in charge, a person you trust with the direction of your game, and give that person dictatorial powers. For his or her part, he/she must agree to listen to all opinions and thoughts, condensing them into a final form which will be handed to the model designers/coders. But in the end, one person must make final decisions to move the project forward, or nothing will ever get done. This person will be harried, overworked, underpayed, underappreciated, and generally stressed out, so make sure the person you pick for the job understands what's involved, and has something of a passion for your game!

As for coding organization, I would highly suggest, as a first step, a design doc. Make it reasonably complete, but not too rigid. This will require some amount of discussion between the group, and decision making by your leader.

Once a DD is reasonably complete, pick out your objects from it (you are using OOD aren't you?). More discussion will be needed here. If you're not aware of it already, you may want to check into the UML, which is a graphical method of program organization dealing with objects.

From your objects, design your class hierarchies, and make sure each class has a specific set of function/variables which relate to a particular object. Don't worry about implementation, just design the class interfaces. Document the interface functions as needed.

Then you just hand a particular class design to your coders for implementation of the member functions. This is the point at which you can safely add new members (ie coders), for the organization is inherent in the class designs and hierarchy.

Of course, your design doc, objects, and class hierarchies may (probably will) change as implementation progresses. But if you're implementors are working on the object level, this should not really be a big problem. If they're working on the procedural level, this will cause havoc (which is why you need to be using OOD techniques).

Just my experiences coding MD. Take em for what they're worth F_Smith will probably have further thoughts on OOA/OOD, for he is better at it than I am, so you may want to ask him about it when you get to that point (I just love volunteering other's services, hehe).

Ron

[heardie]

I think that this post is a bit before hand. OCIV3 is not dying. We are building a good design plan and we already have good programming docs (see the official website)

[The Joker]

Hi Ron.

Thank you for the advice. But I am not sure if I agree with you. If you are only 2 people working on MD you must really spend an enormeous amount of time on the project!

The current designers for OC3 are Amjayee, Heardie, Guildmaster, Victor and myself. On average we propably do not use more than 1 hour per day on the project each (it might be significantly lower), which means that combined we have less than 1 full time designer. And we have even fewer programmers.

The point is, that I am not sure that this little combined efford could ever develop a good game. Firaxis may have 10 or 20 times more manhours per day than us, and they are taking more than 2 years for the development of their game. And we are trying to make a game that should be even more revolutionary than theirs! Is this possible?


Heardie:

We may have a lot of great ideas for the game. But if you think about it, how much design work have we actually completed? Not much, right! If we are to get this project off the ground we need everybody to participate in the development of our population model, as without this we have nothing. The map and terrain thread is also crucial, but for some reason this thread does not work. I hope that all our posts there are not completely lost...

To summarize things, I didn't mean to say that OC3 would necessarily die. But without any change it will. Therefor we need change. the tricky part is to figure out what to change.

------------------
"It is only when we have lost everything
that we are free to do anything."
- Fight Club

[amjayee]

I don't see the things as hard as you. We are just progressing slowly, which is understandable for some reasons;

a) it is summer. I never get as much things done on summers as during terms. Plus, I have been working this summer, which takes most of my time, and great part of my free time I have used playing golf. In a week or two my work will stop, I will move to my new apartment, and start my term in the university; that gives me more time, hopefully, since I'm studying programming. You others have possibly similar situations.

b) we are just starting; beginning is always the most difficult, when you are trying to figure out the whole of the project. Much effort is used for pondering different aspects of the game, without producing much visible results, but this is the most crucial part of any project. When we have laid the groundwork for the design framework, and decided the most fundamental and abstract issues, we are well underway. In this phase of the process, it is only good we are not too many. When we have complete structure for the design, we can start figuring out the code architecture, and then we can get more programmers and more designers.

c) all these kinds of projects make slow progress. We have to face the fact, that it will take at least two years to make some kind of game. About big game factories, they use much time for FMV's, and other look-and-feel aspects, which we don't need to care about. Also dealing with publishers and such takes much of their time.

So, let's not be so pessimistic. We are in a critical phase, where our success is not measured by how quickly we produce visible results, but rather what kinds of ideas we are able to gather together. We are lucky; we don't have very much people arguing on trivial aspects (which seems to be the problem with clash) and the few of us share the same visions of what the game should be like. Plus, we are interested in different things, so we are not stomping on each other's toes. So I think we should benefit from those good things, and give ourselves some time to lay the foundation for the game. Of course we could use more time on it, but I think everyone can do as much as he can. The more the better. I'm sure we have bright future ahead, if we don't let ourselves down by our minor difficulties. Beginning is always the hardest part, as I have said.

One more thing to remember; Before the commercial computer games actually start the development, they have been planned and designed for some time, which doesn't show in the figures. We are now in that phase.

[The Joker]

I hope you are right, Amjayee.

I guess my biggest concern is, that although we have tryed, we have not gotten any more members for the team. We are actually fewer members now than we were when we started back in march. Many of our core developers have left us. And if this continues we would be lost. At this moment we have reached a level where the loss of one single member might be what will destroy the project. Think about it: What if Amjayee suddently left us. We would collaps! Or what if Dan did so? We would then have lost 1/3 of our programmers. Could we survive that?

What I am saying is, that when every single developer is this important, how can we survive? Especcially since noone are joining the project. This is by far my biggest concern. If we could overcome this we would be alright. But our previous attempts have shown that it is not an easy task.

[Guildmaster]

Well I don't think it't dying, and I don't think we have too few people working on it. If anything we could use a little more organization, but so far it's quite alright I think. As far as manhours, tell me how many manhours did you spend playing Civilization? How many hours did you spen playing Civilization2? How many hours on SMAC? How many on AOE? Or how about CTP how many hours did you spend playing all these games? All that is hours and hours and days and weeks/months perhaps even years of research we have all done as part of the development process for this game and as a result we all have a pretty good idea on exactly what we all want. As for the actual design process, take a look at some of the threads, we're getting a little ,ore detailed as we go on, we start with what we want and then we work to get that and figure out how to go about doing it.

I think we're alive and well, and prospering. =)

[dan ward]

Thanks for the advice Ron I think you hit the nail on the head. The project needs a leader, will someone stand up & take charge?

[RonHiler]

I hope I'm not coming across like some big fat know-it-all It's just what has helped us get through the tough parts of coding our project. Your mileage may vary.

Joker:
I think you should ask yourself, "how will having more people on our project help". Be specific. If you can come up with a fair number of items that will be better solved with two or more people versus one, then by all means, add more people. But keep in mind that team organization is critical, and someone is going to have to spend time on this aspect rather than on game design. The more people you have, the more time they will spend. The advantages of a large team have to outweigh the disadvantages, or you may as well stick with a few core members for now. Just keep in mind, a large team is not a magic bullet to solve all problems!

To be sure, having multiple coders to implement pre-designed classes is very nice, since the coding will go faster. Same is true to for artists once you have some kind of art spec. But in the initial phases of game design, it is my opinion that a large team is more a hindrance than a help. Too many cooks, and all that.

Ron

[heardie]

quote: Originally posted by amjayee on 08-10-2000 10:30 AM a) it is summer. I never get as much things done on summers as during terms. Plus, I have been working this summer, which takes most of my time, and great part of my free time I have used playing golf. In a week or two my work will stop, I will move to my new apartment, and start my term in the university; that gives me more time, hopefully, since I'm studying programming. You others have possibly similar situations.

Lucky bugger. It's winter here and freezing too.

anyway I'd like to nominate amjayee for leader of OCiv3. Anyone second this?

[amjayee]

I have no offense for being the leader, though that has to be a mutual agreement. Also we need to decide how much power the leader has over things; personally, I'd like democratic discussion, but the leader could decide matters that are not clearly voted out.

Joker: It doesn't make us collapse, if we lose members; it just makes us make slower progress. As Ron said MD is being done by two persons. Our project will collapse, if everyone leaves it. I don't know for others, but creating a civ game has always been my dream, and I'm looking forward to become a programmer, so I will not quit, even if I need to do this work alone. As Ron said, we don't get other direct advantages for more members, other than faster progress. It is the quality of the members that matters; and as I said, we are lucky to have very good team members.

Ron: Don't be ashamed of giving us advice. You are more experienced in making games than anyone of us, so we are grateful for all your words.

[The Joker]

I hope you guys are right.

I guess the best that happened from starting this thread was, that I became convinced that you are all as enthusiastic as I am. That is great.

I am still a bit worried about having few members on our team. But I guess Ron must be right. He has, after all, more experience than the rest of us.

I am happy that this thing is settled.

[axi]

In spite of your name, you're a pessimistic fellow, aren't you Joker?

Although I may be a little bit late to participate in the discussion, I feel that my experience of Clash is needed, in order to break some myths.

Myth #1: Clash has an enormous team.

For the last 2-3 months, only the following people post regularily in the forum:

Mark_Everson (Project Lead - coder)
F_Smith (coder)
roquijad
Richard Bruns
Lord God Jinnai
Toobabo Koomi
axi (but I don't count; I know I'm useless )

...at least one of which is bound to be out of access at any given moment. (I should be on vacation now, but I got sick )

I must also admit that we have 2 more coders (Laurent Nal and Garth_Blore) who are working behind the scenes on the econ and tech models respectively.

Comparatively to April-May, this has been a quite busy period; back then, the last 10 days list of posts was less than half what it is now (I wouldn't know about the people though; I had dropped out then)

Now, there are more than 20 people registered in the Clash Team and many more have come and gone. Mark could recite you very sad stories about them, full of broken promises.

So the Clash Team is not much bigger than the OC3 one.

Myth #2: Clash is making progress.

My first contact with Clash has been in December, somewhere between demos 3 and 4, which was the most glorious period Clash has ever known. Demo 5 was planned for end Febuary; now we are planning for sometime in fall. Development is totally dependent of the time and energy individuals can spend on the project; continuity is an unknown word. Coding is slow (even with F_Smith's RAD approach) and so uncoded models are forever discussed and rediscussed. Some of them I must admit have reached a marvellous level of refinement, but only in theory which can be dangerous. The project seems like marching on the same spot. As for the AI, even mentioning the name would make clashers roll on the floor with laughter. And consider that Clash must be more than 15 months old. Can you imagine how many times Mark must have thought to give up? But there has always been some fellow, eager to do work, who would be deeply dissapointed if the project would die. So it goes on and time will be the only judge of it's fate.

I have made a personal vow that I won't officially register myself to the Clash Team until Demo 5 comes out. I hope you'll see me there soon.

Btw, (as Mark would have said ), If you think you have anything to contribute to Clash development, feel free to join us! Due to unexpected member losses, we are currently in need of a Webmaster and a Military model duke. Coders are, as always, desperately needed!

[The Joker]

quote: In spite of your name, you're a pessimistic fellow, aren't you Joker?

He he he.


You message makes me both happy and sad. Happy since it shows that we are not that small compared to Clash, and sad, since this questions the success of any opensource web based game development group.

I actually knew about the standstill of the Clash development. From the forums I have skimmed through it seems as if you are discussing some small, insignificant details and using vast amounts of time doing it. But I really didn't know that Clash was such a small team.


This makes me think about something:

Maybe we should once again try to discuss whether we should team up together. Our visions for the games we are developing are vitually identical. We have some minor disagreements about the openness of the projects, but if we wanted to we could figure them out. The main issue is by far the fact that Clash is coding in Java, where we are doing it in C++. I am not a programmer, so to me this issue is completely unimportant, but the programmers on both teams seem to be rather interested in coding in the language they prefer.

Could we overcome these problems?

And more importantly: Would it do us much good to overcome them? If combining the projects would only create even more bureaucracy it would be pointless and harmfull to both projects. But if we could somehow divide the responsibility, so just a few people work on each model, doubling the amount of developers could very well boost the development of the project(s).

Or maybe I am just being my good old insane self.....