Some recent Java MOO screenshots

[Ray K]

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[vmxa1]

Looking very good Ray.

[Ljube]

I downloaded and tried the game. I experienced a bug where I couldn't send some of my fleets orbiting some of the systems on a certain turn, but could do it the next turn. Odd.

Also, my mouse would freeze from time to time. I can be more specific if you're interested.

[Ray K]

It's not finished yet! You can report any bugs in the bug forum on that site.

[Ljube]

Anyway it sure looks great! Does the MP work? If yes I'll try it out with a friend of mine this weekend.

[Ray K]

Originally posted by Ljube-ljcvetko
Anyway it sure looks great! Does the MP work? If yes I'll try it out with a friend of mine this weekend.

sorry, no multi-player!

[siron]

Screenshots looks great.

But wtf? No multiplayer???

I cant believe it.

Lets face it. You will improve the moo1-ai in several ways. But an average mooniac will kill your AI easily after 1-2 months. (It is a strategy game. Impossible to have a "good" strategy-AI nowadays.)
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So it is nice work. But after 1-2 months the replay value is almost zero.

[Ljube]

Originally posted by Ray K


sorry, no multi-player!

Can you make multi-player? Just like siron said, any AI can be beaten and then the game would be forgotten unless there's a multi-player and you can play the game against your friends which can never become boring. I still play civ2 MP with my friends every weekend but haven't played single player in many many years.

[Ljube]

I started a game and got stranded on an isolated system on the very edge of the galaxy. No hope of redemption there.


EDIT: Attachment deleted.

[Ljube]

Another screenshot of the entire galaxy.


EDIT: Attachment deleted.

[Ray K]

Originally posted by Ljube-ljcvetko



Can you make multi-player? Just like siron said, any AI can be beaten....

We disagree on this point.

There are very good reasons why the AIs for 4X games are so easy to beat and it's NOT because a good AI is impossible to write.

1. there's no time to write a good AI -- AI programming requires a stable feature set and most commercial games are shipped before that point.

2. there's no financial incentive to write a good AI -- what sells games today is eye candy, not strategic depth. It does not make financial sense for a company to divert resources away from graphical design to AI development

3. most players do not really want a good AI -- they want a game that they can beat. I know that MP is as much for the socializing as it is for the challenge. How many MP games are successful without a chat feature?


I have spent too much of my spare time getting Java MOO to the point where I can start focusing on the AI to just throw up my hands and say, "This has never been done, I give up"

[Ray K]

Originally posted by Ljube-ljcvetko
I started a game and got stranded on an isolated system on the very edge of the galaxy. No hope of redemption there.

See my reason #3 in my previous post.

[Ray K]

So it is nice work. But after 1-2 months the replay value is almost zero.

So feel free to not download the game and to not play it!

Let me know when you write a MP game and I'll make sure to complain about the AI in solo mode.

[Aabraxan]

I never played the original MOO, but this looks great. Good work, Ray.

[Brutalisk]

Ray: good work. I have yet to download it but maybe soon. One thing though. As I am a jav programmer myself, I hate seeing that GREY background, I really do, LOL. In your first screenshot for example, the select the new tech part, while the gun looks ncie that rgey thing kind of puts a dump on that screen

I am a gaming enthusiast and ironically that's why i got into programming in the first place only to discover that the 80s are over and in the 00s games require huge budgets...

"3. most players do not really want a good AI -- they want a game that they can beat."

TOO TRUE. A friend of mine was complaining about C&C being "too easy" and I asked him, what difficulty mdeo he had it on and he said.. "easy"! I told him why teh heck he wouldn't put it on hard or even normal and he complained that .. that was too difficult. Err duh!

You are rigth in general that people don't want true difficulty. They jsut want the SATISFACTION of beating the game. So the trick really is to find a way to let the game get beaten without making you feel "IT LET YOU". Puzzle games in particular have a way of making themselves unpopular if the tasks are too hard. Strategy games do need better AI, but i tend to support everyone else's view. The AI is always easier than the human opponents... In FPS games they cane make the AI never to miss, but so what, you'd sitll be able to outsmart it. In strategy games they can make the AI ultra aggressive but i'm sure in the end the true strategists will find a way to reliably beat it.

Anyway carrying far too long... Great to see you making the javamoo. But as for the players' suggestions, multiplayer is simply the way to increase the game's longetivity. Whether easy or difficult, eventually the AI does get boring. Don't be insulted by players' suggestions, they mean well.