Re: [Pybem-developers] boojum

[Adrian S. <fo...@ii...>]

On Mon, 17 Jun 2002, Anthony Briggs wrote:

> >>  * big thought - we should try to support TWO of everything,
> >>  from the outset.  ie.  two different game worlds, with different
> >>  attributes, orders, coordinate system, output display(?)
> >>  Basically, for everything that we plan to make customisable,
> >>  we should start off supporting two versions of that option,
> >>  to force us to generalise.
> >
> >Absolutely. Every time I've heard from a person who's said "Oh, I
> >can't code" or "I don't know Python", I've said "Well, come up with
> >a design for a game that you'd like to play". Even if it's just
> >something for us to think about, it's valuable to look at the
> >problem from a "non-Atlantis" point of view. Hence that whole post a
> >little while back on the sorts of games we might want to think about
> >doing. eg. MOO, MOO2, Civ, even chess ;)
> >
> >That said though, I think it'll be easier to do/convince people to
> >do once we've got some basic classes up, like items and skills, plus
> >a parser to read in all the config files. At the moment, it's pretty
> >sparse, and you need to be a python hacker to tinker with it. Plus I
> >think Boojum's starting to stretch it's initial design somewhat.
> >This is where the RAD aspect of python comes into play - it's pretty
> >easy to modify stuff on the fly, so if someone comes up with
> >something we hadn't thought of, we can just alter items, or skills,
> >or units to fit. I suspect armies are eventually going to be a
> >sub-class of Unit.
>
> Another thing -- in the TODO file in the most recent version of
> Atlantis are a whole bunch of different suggestions for features,
> including some I hadn't considered.  Might be a good idea to go
> through it before we set the skills/items design in stone?
>
> Ant
> --

Good idea.

I think supporting Legends as a second game would be a good test,
because it has a lot of feature richness but is limited by how it
is hardcoded. A more flexible Legends would be amazing.
One thing that it does do fairly well is separate the engine from
the game (module).

Another game you might want to have a look at is Eldritch,
which Mark Thomas wrote after playing Atlantis, as basically a
better Atlantis. I think he has succeeded in many ways, though it
is more complex and basically a headache keeping track of all your
stuff (to train a knight you need to have heroes with a variety of
skills - sword, riding, manoever, armor, shield; plus magic to
enchant up your knights; then to make the gear you need to gather
iron, coal, make steel, hides -> leather, hors -> warhorse,
oak -> make lance, make armour, make sword, make shield, make ...).

I like what you say about RAD Python, it's great that you can throw
something together to flesh out the design, then keep refactoring it
continuously.

Adrian