Lovecraftian horror games. There have been some games in recent years but I think there’s definitely a larger design space for this kind of thing. This could mix with other genres as well like survival and potentially rogue-like stuff.
I think that Lovecraft’s setting is actually virtually the only fictional setting where you’re spoiled for choice, because Lovecraft permitted other people to use his setting. Like, you only get to do a Star Wars game if Lucasarts licenses it, because they leverage their copyright on the setting. Most people and companies who create a setting don’t allow other people to freely use it, and copyright law permits them to make that restriction. But Lovecraft was unusual in that he specifically encouraged other people to build on his world.
Maybe Robin Hood or a small handful of others from history, like Greek or Norse mythology, that developed before copyright law had really become the norm.
I dunno. Maybe there should be some kind of Creative Commons license that permits use of setting and maybe characters, while still keeping an individual work copyrighted, to encourage creation of collaboratively-developed settings like that.
This could mix with other genres as well like survival and potentially rogue-like stuff.
One of the top entries I see on Steam – though I’ve never played it – is an Overwhelmingly Positive-rated game, Disfigure, that appears to be a Lovecraftian action roguelike that just came out a couple of months ago.
I’ve actually looked into this a little bit, and it seems that the best strategy is to have a lot of money. It doesn’t actually decrease the rent at all, and in fact makes it worse in the long run, but it keeps it from becoming a problem for YOU.
I think that if we’re doing real-history FPS games, I would like to see other conflicts. Give me a War of 1812 game or let me play as a Chinese soldier during Japan’s mid-1900s occupation or something.
People brought this up at the time, and the go-to problem with it is if you go too far back, like your 1812 example, you have to deal with reloading a gun being one of the most time-consuming actions you can perform. WWI was taboo for a while due to chemical and trench warfare, and for the most part, devs still shy away from it.
If you’re going non-fantasy (in which case you can put in whatever), I think that one factor is also that in, say, the Napoleonic era, using soldiers in formation in warfare was an important multiplier, and that’s not super-friendly to FPSes. I mean, a lot of the game would be following orders to move into a formation or move in formation.
As for weapons, you could do archery, I suppose. There have been a number of games (Thief, Skyrim, etc), that have an archer running around on their lonesome, though that probably wasn’t historically all that accurate. Well, not that having a solo character going Rambo on a World War II-and-post battlefield was necessarily all that common. If it did, it was pretty unusual:
For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty. Staff Sergeant (then Sgt.) Hooper, U.S. Army, distinguished himself while serving as squad leader with Company D. Company D was assaulting a heavily defended enemy position along a river bank when it encountered a withering hail of fire from rockets, machine guns and automatic weapons. S/Sgt. Hooper rallied several men and stormed across the river, overrunning several bunkers on the opposite shore. Thus inspired, the rest of the company moved to the attack. With utter disregard for his own safety, he moved out under the intense fire again and pulled back the wounded, moving them to safety. During this act S/Sgt. Hooper was seriously wounded, but he refused medical aid and returned to his men. With the relentless enemy fire disrupting the attack, he single-handedly stormed 3 enemy bunkers, destroying them with hand grenade and rifle fire, and shot 2 enemy soldiers who had attacked and wounded the Chaplain. Leading his men forward in a sweep of the area, S/Sgt. Hooper destroyed 3 buildings housing enemy riflemen. At this point he was attacked by a North Vietnamese officer whom he fatally wounded with his bayonet. Finding his men under heavy fire from a house to the front, he proceeded alone to the building, killing its occupants with rifle fire and grenades. By now his initial body wound had been compounded by grenade fragments, yet despite the multiple wounds and loss of blood, he continued to lead his men against the intense enemy fire. As his squad reached the final line of enemy resistance, it received devastating fire from 4 bunkers in line on its left flank. S/Sgt. Hooper gathered several hand grenades and raced down a small trench which ran the length of the bunker line, tossing grenades into each bunker as he passed by, killing all but 2 of the occupants. With these positions destroyed, he concentrated on the last bunkers facing his men, destroying the first with an incendiary grenade and neutralizing 2 more by rifle fire. He then raced across an open field, still under enemy fire, to rescue a wounded man who was trapped in a trench. Upon reaching the man, he was faced by an armed enemy soldier whom he killed with a pistol. Moving his comrade to safety and returning to his men, he neutralized the final pocket of enemy resistance by fatally wounding 3 North Vietnamese officers with rifle fire. S/Sgt. Hooper then established a final line and reorganized his men, not accepting treatment until this was accomplished and not consenting to evacuation until the following morning. His supreme valor, inspiring leadership and heroic self-sacrifice were directly responsible for the company’s success and provided a lasting example in personal courage for every man on the field. S/Sgt. Hooper’s actions were in keeping with the highest traditions of the military service and reflect great credit upon himself and the U.S. Army.[4]
That’s a pretty unusual MoH citation out of Vietnam, and that’d probably be about par for the course for a single – maybe part of – a WW2 FPS level. I mean, if you want realistic World Wars fighting, the largest chunk of characters would probably just be killed by random artillery fire, not pulling off 100:1+ kill ratios in infantry combat, which…isn’t all that much fun as a first-person game.
A skilled longbowman could shoot about 12 shots per minute. This rate of fire was far superior to competing weapons like the crossbow or early gunpowder weapons…
So, as to the hail of arrows, archers shooting heavy warbows confirm that releasing twelve arrows in one minute is possible, but that such a rate cannot be maintained subsequently. Practical experience argues for a shooting rate of about 5 to 6 arrows per minute being feasible over a period up to 10 minutes.
That’s definitely a lot slower-paced than a modern FPS, but it’s still a lot faster than nearly all 18th century firearms.
Skyrim kind of ignored fatigue and let you lug around a huge store of arrows and blast them without regard for your arms getting tired, so it’s not hard realism, but I think that people enjoyed the archery aspect.
Genre peaked at, like, Red Alert 3 or Starcraft II, either-or. And the only notable title in the past (N) years has been like… Age of Empires 4. Which is good but also… It’s AoE. It’ll always be more of a multiplayer oriented game yanno? Give me my cheesy campaign stories with cool hero units and/or cheesy FMV uwu
Tbf, deserts of kharrak had a cool mp mode, too, and it’s a shame it died out immediately. It is a fairly novel and unique rts in a lot of ways, and very pretty to boot, so not sure what happened. I guess the maps are all very samey
The Homeworld Series (1+2 at least) comes Info mind in general.
OP ist right though. A masterpiecish RTS ist nowwhere to ne found. I think, it has something To Do for other genres innovating out of the RTS Framework (DotA, LoL, even Pikmin).
All can be played without the mechanical sweatfest traditional RTS turn Into, but instead focussing in Player knowledge and engagement.
However, there ist the new Company of Heroes Game, though…
I’d like multiplayer shooters that put emphasis on clean visuals designed to transmit information as well as more emphasis on movement.
Even with all the hats, visibility in TF2 is a masterpiece compared to 90% of games. One team always bright red, one team is always bright blue. The maps aren’t full of noisy scenery and still look great.
Yeah… Diabotical looked like a promising update to AFPS (which is what I’d say you’re describing), but it didn’t change enough of the formula (I blame the weapon design choices) and it launched on EGS instead of steam.
Yeah, I kind of intentionally avoided saying AFPS because unfortunately these days that tends to mean (like with diabotical) games which are desperate to be the most hypercompetitive aspects of quake. Duels or FFA aren’t really my thing, give me teams and objectives!
Perhaps unsurprisingly UT2k4 is one of my favorite of all time
Diabotical did do teams and objectives. I think what really needs to happen to bring the genre back to life though is for there to be a really good campaign tied to a really good multiplayer experience that brings in some new weapon design instead of the Quake meta weapons with minor tweaks.
UT4 was looking promising in terms of multiplayer before Epic killed the project.
You might like roboquest it’s a very recent game that’s not PvP but has a lot of AFPS characteristics.
IDK, kinda feels like we need idSoftware to do a new Quake with new story and new weapons even if they don’t call it Quake (or to release a DOOM multiplayer experience that is actually fun).
Well, there’s another Quake 3 clone attempt every few years and every time no one cares. Diabotical made me especially sad because it shook the forumula up in some very smart ways and the Wipeout game mode needs to be stolen by pretty much everyone (and won’t be).
Have you raised taxes? How is your demand for those sectors? I have found if you have high demand and aren’t building, it pushes up the rent for them instead - more demand = increased rent. Low cost equivalent won’t make a difference if the demand is for say low density instead.
If I recall correctly this is also the “trick” to get demand increasing for medium and high density. If low remains high rent / in huge demand, eventually it prices a lot out and they start demanding medium or high instead
Yeah I meant just taxes generally for residential etc. You have lowered them, which should alleviate some amount of it.
Rent goes up due to demand and how “nice” the area is, access to healthcare etc. You should be able to drop rent simply by building more of that density residential. The same with just building more industrial
Wait a second, they take how nice the area is into account for rent? Does this mean I could also try to deal with too high rents in a given part of my city by like, removing the local park?
I think the problem is that they try and drive to school but they get stuck in traffic for a week. Traffic flow in the city is really bad. I’m working on public transport networks now.
I suspect it might be meant as a proxy for tax brackets based on income, I don’t think (could be wrong), that the game keeps track of each citizen’s salary, but they want to represent the phenomenon of better paying jobs generally requiring more education, and it does track education level
I play this game and was horrified when I saw that. Seems like a mistake. It’s really taxing them by income level, as education is what determines income level.
Turns out i’m gonna buy a steamdeck with them using linux and thinking of things like this.
I just need to wait a bit as the most expensive season is around the corner, i’m just glad our Dutch black friday doesn’t outdo any regular discount making it a near necessity to wait for black friday.
I mean, you got my upvote already, but one big reason is that Robertson wanted to control all the manufacturing of the screws and the bits. Phillips licensed his patent out and let anyone make them just taking a tiny licensing fee. Made a fortune on volume. Robertson: good engineer, bad businessman.
Because hexagonal screw drives are superior, they can transfer more torque and last longer. What I don´t get is why slotted, cruciform and square screw drives are even still around when there are much more reliable alternatives to choose from, like Hex and Torx for example.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about Immersive Sims because, like, in theory they’re a lot of people’s dream games, right? Yet their actual audiences are small. Part of that has to be down to setting, for the same reason Blade Runner was never big, but… that can’t be it, right?
And why did people start calling Tears of the Kingdom an Immersive Sim? Is… Are classic Roguelikes immersive sims? Is Dwarf Fortress an Immersive Sim? Obviously not, but the definition we’ve given ourselves is too broad and what we actually consider a “reall immersive sim” seems too limited.
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