PROJECTS & IDEAS
Warning: This page is out of date
Around the beginning of December, 1996, people on the java-games alias
wanted to get together to develop a game. This effort was started by Bob Troia who collected ideas
from people in the group and put them out for a vote on what to work
on. The ideas were:
-
"...a multiplayer map tiled Ultima-style game (which could
ultimate evolve to a Syndicate Wars 3D environment using
raster-graphics..." - Linh Ngo
-
"An online NetRunner/Neuromancer flavored game. Players play
thepart of hackers in 'the net'. Their goal is to become the NetGod. To
become the Net God, you need to take over control of all (or most) of
the net resources. I see this as being somethinglike a game of Risk,
where players can gain bonuses by acquire the right groups of
resources. I'm still undecided whether thisshould be turn-based or
real-time or what the interface should be, but it's definitely a
multi-player game." - Trevor Bechtel
-
"...simple 3D spaceships with few polygons and minimal decorations
a la Elite for the BBC/Commodore 64. Planets, satellites, and stars are
simple circles, with your ship's motion through space depicted as
simple moving points of light (tiny stars). We're talking wire-frame
with hidden line removal. This level of detail is sufficient to depict
a 3D space environment, yet not so CPU hungry hopefully as to prevent
meaningful networked game play. And ambitious programmers could add
bitmapped light-sourced textures later if they wanted to. :-) But the
level of detail should always be configurable to allow gameplay by
non-JIT & non-Pentium Java browsers." - Linh Ngo
-
"A real-time, multi-player, rogue-like game. The interface could
either be minimalistic (top-down 2-D, just like in nethack), or
something fancier like in Loaded (top-down 3-D view, reminiscent of
Gauntlet). The challenges here are the performance of the real-time
interaction over the internet and the 3-D view." - Trevor
Bechtel
-
"A strategic fantasy combat game similar to conquer (without the
bugs). This would be a turn-based, 2-D graphic game. This game includes
building armies, cities, navies, farms & other structures, trading
with other players, combat, magic, races, monsters, and general
resource management. " - Trevor Bechtel
-
"Some type of sports game". - James Boorn
The results of the vote were:
Final tallies:
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game # | 1 2 3 4 5 6
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# votes | 2 3 2 6 4 0
As reflected in the results of the voting, the current project is the
'real-time, multi-player, rogue-like game' called Hero's Tale.
This project will be starting up in full swing in January, 1997.
Correspondence regarding this project is done using the java-games alias with "[Java
Game]" in the subject line.