A french project on the net

[steph.dz]

A new project was born on the Internet : Humanité, Le 4è Projet. As you can see it, this is a french project. But it contains a lot of interesting ideas.

I suggest you to visit its web site : http://www.humanite.fr.st
Well, it's in french, but I think some of you can be interested in this project !

[LDiCesare]

Hi a quick reply, though I could e-mail if you want more feedback (in French even ).
It is not clear where you are on this project looking at the web page:
Is there a demo planned? For when (I know that is a silly question, even Moo3 can't get a date and the game was supposed to be out 1 year ago)? What is the current level of maturity of the project? When did it start? What are the main differentiators with f.e. Civ or SMACS or MoM (considering the ideas about combat, MoM seems to be close???)? I think these are important to know at first glance on the site and I can't find these pieces of information.

Could you maybe give a brief descrition in English here for those who are unlucky enough not to speak French?

Also, the site has a Project section which is quite empty. It is very hard to have an idea of what the game will be like, since we know only about science, projects, and there are hints about there being cities and squares here and there, but... what will make that game different or better?

Anyway good luck.

[steph.dz]

More informations about Humanité : Le 4è Projet

Thank you for your interest, LDiCesare,

I will try to answer your questions as simply as possible, in English, which is not a little job ;-)

First, our poject has began about 15 months ago. We started with the basis of the game : the rules. It's the first creation phase, which, I think, is very important for this kinds of games. We have lot of ideas, and, so, we try to organize this ideas in a text. This text is entitled "Texte bilan" and you can download the version 1.0 on the site Download page. We've just finished the version 2.0 with about 40 pages of text. But, we're not going to distribute it, because, the scenarist ( my cousin ) doesn't want his ideas to be stollen. It's not my point of view ( I'm a linux and GPL addict ! ), but I must continue like this. So, you can imagine that we've worked a lot between the v1.0 and 2.0 because about one year separates the two texts.

To resume our ideas, our goal is to create a game, realist as most as possible. So, we have thought of innovating systems, like hidden progess, which appear only if you make research on a specific domain and have a lot of experience on this domain. Our text is full of this kind of ideas. But, we don't want the player to replay the story of the Earth : we want him to rebuild it like what he wants. So, we give him lots of liberties. It's not only a Civ clone, but, almost a new game.

As you can see on the site, the project is not very advanced : we don't have a lot of code. I am the only programmer of the team ( we're two ) so, it's hard to make all this job alone ! But I've finished some modules of the game. For exemple, you can download the program whit which we're going to build the Technologies Tree : the TechTree. I've started a random map generator : it's on the site. Recently, I've also started the programmation of the Graphical User Interface. But, the biggest job I've done is on paper : I've thought of all the architecture of the game, and I've just to code it when the rules will be finished. The problem is that I've not a lot of time to do that : I'm student in Engineer School, so, it's hard to find time. But, we have no date fixed ! We want to make a cool game, it's all !

The site is quite empty because my cousin have decided not to put his ideas on it. So, the site contains the first ideas, but not the news. It's the big problem of this site : I've worked a lot to make it good, but, I can't put lot of informations. I still upload my programs but it's not the great part of our job.

I see you work on the Clash of Civiliation project : it's an interesting project. The AI seems to be powerfull : it will be hard to play against the CPU ;-)

[Mark_Everson]

Re: More informations about Humanité : Le 4è Projet

Bonjour, and thanks for posting on your project! At the surface level it sounds very similar to Clash, although Clash lacks the civilizing influence of French .

Originally posted by steph.dz
We've just finished the version 2.0 with about 40 pages of text. But, we're not going to distribute it, because, the scenarist ( my cousin ) doesn't want his ideas to be stollen. It's not my point of view ( I'm a linux and GPL addict ! ), but I must continue like this.

IMO you should tell your cousin that his notion of secrecy is not appropriate or practical. Good ideas are of virtually no value by themselves in the game industry. It takes great amounts of work in implementation, testing, and tweaking to see if an idea is great, or doesn't work. You can come up with several excellent concepts in a day, but implementation and testing takes months.

I believe his approach will Harm your project much more than it will ever do it good. The reason is that by showing your design to the world you can get opinions and maybe find out that some of the cherished innovative ideas just won't work for whatever reason. Then you have saved critical implementation time, which is much more valuable than the raw ideas. I am not afraid of people stealing the ideas in Clash because it takes a lot of hard work to go from the idea to a game implementation.

As you can see on the site, the project is not very advanced : we don't have a lot of code. I am the only programmer of the team ( we're two ) so, it's hard to make all this job alone !

Please forgive me for being blunt, but you will never get anywhere in less than a decade the way you are proceeding. To do a clone of an existing game with a single programmer who has a fair amount of time (~20 hrs/wk) can be done in something like a year. But as soon as you try to do a lot of radical new things with design the implementation time increases by at Least a factor of ten or so IMO. Unless you can attract several more programmers with significant amounts of coding time you are in for a very long development time.

I think you and your cousin should join a bigger existing project if at all practical. I realize the native language barrier is potentially a big issue in your case, and that may invalidate my point. My arguments that members of smaller projects should consider joining a larger already-producing project are discussed in: Starting a New Project vs. Joining an Existing One.

Anyway, please do try hard to convince your cousin that all his secrecy is hurting your project. And please also consider banding together with another group to increase your "critical mass".

Bon Chance,

Mark

[steph.dz]

Hello, Mark, thank you for your reply,

First of all, I'd like to correct a little French mistake. In French, you say "Bonne Chance", because you accord the adjectives with the nouns. It was sympatical from you to speak french, here in this forum : it make it much familiar to me !

I read your arguments concerning the publication of our ideas, and, I was surprised by the fact that they were the same as the ones I used to try to convince my cousin. So, I can say you it's imossible to convince him. He agree with me that we must put some ideas on the site, but he doesn't want to put all of them. He will certainly explain it to you in this forum. That's not a problem for me : I will work with him, sharing my code with all the networkers, but not the ideas.

You say that it's quite impossible to realize this project with only one programmer. I don't really agree with this. Yes, it will take time to finish the project, it will be hard. But, I think that, with some time, I can succeed in this task. But, if it's required, I will try to find some help.

I've also read the thread "Starting a New Project vs. Joining an Existing One". I read that, finally, RonHiler said that the persons who start a new project have two ways. In the first one, their project abort, and they take profit from their experience to join another team, which is a great benefit for them. In the other, their project continue and become one of the interesting alt-civ. In the two cases, you will be happy : you will play another good civ game ! So, let us make our own project, and, later, we'll see what happen !

Thanks

Steph.dz

[Mark_Everson]

Originally posted by steph.dz
First of all, I'd like to correct a little French mistake. In French, you say "Bonne Chance", because you accord the adjectives with the nouns. It was sympatical from you to speak french, here in this forum : it make it much familiar to me !

Well, my French was always terrible! That's why I gave up and am now an ugly American with no language skills other than English.

Thanks for your response. It is what I expected to hear. I will have to contradict that assertion of Ron's at some point, because I don't think its true. But anyway, its not my place to debate that here. . .

Good luck with Humanité, Le 4è Projet!

[RonHiler]

Originally posted by Mark_Everson
I will have to contradict that assertion of Ron's at some point, because I don't think its true.

Ha! Bring it on! I will crush you like a small wingless insect!!

Hehe, just kidding. I don't even remember what it was I wrote. I'll have to look back at it and see if I still believe it myself

Good luck with your project Steph! I hope it is going well. I agree with Mark on this one. Secrecy of concepts is a very bad idea. No one is going to steal them, and even if they do, so what? It's all about the implementation, not about the idea. Ideas are a dime a dozen

Hell, we even go so far as to publish some of our algorithms and data structures, hehe. And if someone takes them and uses them to create an awsome game, good for them!

Ron

[steph.dz]

Yes, I agree with you : sharing our ideas would be a good solution. But, the person who creates the major part of these ideas doesn't agree with it. So, if I want to continue the project ( which is very important for me, of course ;-) ), I have to follow him. We can't put all the concepts of the game on the site, yes. But, all the algorithms I can put on the web will be there. Only a part of the project will be hidden, but, the rest will be public.

I don't care for my algorithms : anybody can use them like he wants. It's an honour to have my algorithms "stollen" : it means that they work pretty well !

[LDiCesare]

You should still find a way of attracting people to your site, and have them be interested in the project, and having an idea of what the game will be like remains the best way to do it. At least, explaining in what the game will be different from the rest, and maybe allowing for a few design discussions/polls (should fights be implemented this way or that, etc., relatively minor things but things that players know so they will be interested in looking at the project).

Also, you could point out MoO3 as an example: A professional team showed to everybody on the net most of their concepts. They retained a few secrets (like what do Harvesters look like?, and the background story is not known in any details) but the game mechanics have been shozn to everyone. And this is a major commercial project. If it was all about ideas, another firm could have stolen the ideas and made a game out of it before Moo3 (which is still one year late at least).

[steph.dz]

Thanks for your advices, LDiCesar,

I think this way of doing a project is very interesting : sharing our ideas, our algorithms, etc... The exemple of MoO3 shows that it's possible to hide some features of a game whereas sharing the rest. I'll think about it !

I've read a few things about Clash : this project is really interesting, and, it's true, it has some common ideas with my project. But, Clash is most developped, and it's coded in Java ( bah ! ) which, in my opinion, is not a very good language to make a game. But, it's a good idea : you can make a portble game very simple, only coding once !

Good luck for Clash which is one of the most exciting project of the net for me.

[Nebula]

Looks like a nice project. I checked out the site a couple of times and was able to find the screenshots. (My knowledge of french is zero btw)

The terrain generation looks very neat. Also the other screenshots look good to.

Good luck with your project.

[steph.dz]

Thank you Nebula,

Yes, I think my MapGen is quite good today, but, I don't think it's perfect. I'm interested in working on a new algorithm version using the plate tectonics, but, it seems to be quite hard, and I'm not sure about the final results. I hesitate quite a lot, but I must find the solution quite fastly !

I've attached a little screenshot for the curious ;-)