The OpenMoO Project

[Urban Ranger]

Is there anybody interested in The OpenMoO Project? Can we get a team together to write an open-source version of MoO? There are already a number of such projects for Civ and there seems to be quite a bit of interest in MoO itself.

[Zoetrope]

I'm very interested, but what will we use for graphics?

Also, i do all my programming in unix. Is OpenMoO intended to be portable?

[Urban Ranger]

Thanks for your interest

Yes, it's supposed to be portable across the major platforms. It's good that you're a programmer, since I am somewhat rusty in that area. I think we need is a graphics artist and we can start to discuss the top level design aspects.

I am not too sure about your question on graphics. Can you be a little more specific?

[DaveV]

Interesting idea (you are talking about the original MoO, right?). The strategy guide contains a wealth of information about the algorithms used for various aspects of the game. This is a major undertaking, though.

I'm a long-time C programmer, but I wouldn't be able to contribute more than a few hours in most weeks.

[dexter4dxm]

i completely agree with everything DaveV is saying.

i might be interested. i know C/C++ and DirectX

[Zealot]

I can test the prototype!!

Sorry, I only know a little of Visual Basic.

Look, the idea is GREAT, but MoO1 is very different from MoO2, wich seeems to be very different from MoO3.

So wich of them are you going to choose?

[Urban Ranger]

What I am thinking is, we take the original MoO, add the bits we like from MoO 2, and throw in some extra ideas we have. Stir the mix thoroughly. Bake until done

It looks like we have enough people to form the original team. All we need are a few people to brainstorm and to analyze any ideas we come up with. I guess we can start the brainstorming session. The are two guidelines:

• It doesn't matter how crazy your idea is, we want to hear it
• Please don't criticise and/or analyse ideas. That's for the next stage.

What I like about MoO 2 (these are the bits we want to add to our game):

- Multiple planets per system
- Ability to create outposts

New ideas:

- Outposts/starbases in deep space

[catullus]

For maximum portability, you could consider Java. Should be possible to develop program very fast, and with that language's modularity, it would be easy to distribute the task of programming to more people. Developing tool is free, and program will run on any machine immediately.
Of course, I know some Java, but suck violently when it comes to C. So I may be a bit biased.

[Zealot]

catullus, did you ever heard about C# (sharp)? It's just Microsoft's way to kill Sun's Java. Windows XP won't support Java anymore. If you want IE6 to read java pages, you'll need to download a patch of 5MB to get the Java VM present on Win98. Because there will be a new Java VM, but Microsoft won't upgrade its VM the way Sun want's. There's legal stuff in the way.

So, I think it's better that "we" stick to C/C++/C# (when it comes out).

[open air]

me too!

i know VB... and delphi... most recently delphi...

and could probably easly learn C... i have the software and books... just havent gotten around to it yet...

and am very interested in helping with this project...

[Urban Ranger]

Wow, look at the interested people we have. Great

Okay, as I was saying, lets begin at the top and work our way down. I think we need to put some ideas before the coding can start

So, what do you like in the game?


zealot,

It doesn't matter. A player can always download the Java Runtime Environment from Sun's website That's what happens with Windows users right now.

[Zoetrope]

By graphics i mean how will we draw the races, the maps, the ships,
and the battles?

[DaveV]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
So, what do you like in the game?

I never played MoO2, so I'll list my hits and misses from MoO1. Although I have a lot of complaints, I don't want to give the impression I didn't love this game.

Liked:
1. AI diplomacy. This game was the best I ever played at making the AI players seem to have a real personality.

2. Racial characteristics and bonuses (although the racial abilities weren't very well balanced). Gave a good flavor to the game.

3. Tech tree and ship building. Lots of tough decisions to make in equipping ships with all the goodies you discovered.

4. Spying. Good flavor, without too much micromanagement required.

5. Planetary management. Again, some tough decisions to make, but not too many details.

Disliked:
1. AI tactical combat (especially retreating from a single nuclear missile). The AI was so weak here, it required:

2. Outrageous AI production cheats. At Impossible level, the only way I could ever win was to play defensively for almost the entire game, since I couldn't match up to the AIs' fleets and missiles. I think there must have been some overflow/underflow bugs in AI ship maintenance costs, since I've seen AIs with 32K+ large ships in a fleet on a medium map...

3. The High Council victory. If I play as Humans, it's way too easy to win this way. Otherwise, the AIs' production advantage can lead to me being outvoted in the midgame. At that point, I can't fight all the other races, so I have to abandon a game I've already played for a few hours (and that I probably could have come back to win).

4. Assorted bugs, all relatively minor.

5. The up/down method of dividing fleets. I'd love to be able just to type in the number of ships I want to detach, instead of having to hit the down arrow six times (and then not being able to select the number of ships I really want).

6. The stack limit on ships. Why not allow the player to put a million small ships in a stack? And why not display how many ships are really in that stack?

7. I think you shouldn't know the alien leader's personality type (erratic, honorable, etc.) until you've spied on him. I always used this information at first contact to plan my strategy vis-a-vis a particular race.

8. Random events. In something like a hundred games, I never got the ancient derelict, but it seemed like I always got the asassination event (against the key race that I'd spent the whole game cultivating). In a related complaint, it would be nice if you could spend some money on counterespionage to prevent other races from framing you.

[dexter4dxm]

i got addicted to the first MoO when i played it, and the same thing happened with the second one. i agree that we should take parts from different ones, as each has its own strengths and weaknesses.

now, as far as actual coding, even if we did decided on java, i could port it windows/directx pretty easily. this game is not graphically intensive, it shouldn't be too hard. i don't know how much time i will have to program, aside from work I am already programming an Alt-Civ game. i am however interested in this project, and with a reasonable amount of people working on this, it should come along good.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Zoetrope
By graphics i mean how will we draw the races, the maps, the ships,
and the battles?

Are you asking for specific algorithms, languages, or something else?