Hi Zenfur and all,
I am very late with this answer, but the end of year 2014 was super busy
for me, now it is holiday and I finally have the time to read all your
nice emails, think about them and give a feedback.
First, as Leo I feel very heart-warming that you are interested in
reviving Glob! I will help the best I can, considering that I have
limited time. Maybe at some point, I might have some student work force
to contribute, but it is uncertain so for now let's not count on it.
Reviving Globulation through a Glob2+ or a Glob3 is also a dream of
mine. With Emmanuel Eckard, the person who drew the buildings in Glob2,
we started to do some concept drawing for a Glob3 game [1]. The idea
illustrated there is to have globules living in the clouds of a dense
atmosphere planet (for instance Venus), allowing interesting
construction activities (platforms and bridges) and interactions with
the environment (wind, etc.). Think about "dwarf fortress in the
clouds". This is a long term dream, but maybe these drawings give "food
for thought" ;-)
At a shorter term, Emmanuel and I thought about improving the economy of
Glob2 to make it less linear. I have put the preliminary result of that
brainstorming in attachment. The idea is to improve the dynamics of the
game with minimal changes in the engine. One thing I would change is to
script the unit behaviour, as the current system based on C++-coded
hierarchical state machines is unmaintainable. As discussed by others,
Python would be a language of choice (but Lua and Javascript should be
considered too). The idea would be to use continuations (i.e. generators
in Python, or a hack in the VM embedding code) to allow to code the
behaviour of units very easily and implement that behind the hood using
co-routines. In the context of robotics, I made a prototype for C Python
demonstrating the concept [2]. A challenge with Python is to ensure
proper sand-boxing and deterministic execution. There are tiny Python
implementations [3,4] which might help. TinyPY seems the most promising
approach after one hour investment in looking around. More thoughtful
search might change that.
At an even shorter term, I agree with Leo that as a community we could
"prove" our interest by fixing the bugs in the existing game. By the
way, what is the main repository, is it [5]? What is the latest state,
is the tip of the master branch in hg 0.9.4.4? People also started to
post issues both there and on savannah, savannah is the official
tracker, isn't it? I recently re-read parts of the code base, and I
think it would be worth trying to port it to mobile devices. That would
mostly imply UI changes and maybe using hi-res graphics (twice the size
of the current ones).
At the level of monetization, why not having a fully free version for
single and local game, and a paying version for YOG games on mobile? As
a first step, it will help to pay for the server.
So, maybe the following first tasks are reasonable for a revive of the
existing version:
1. fix bugs
2. compile current version for android
3. try to embed a proper scripting language for the behaviour of units
and maps
4. explore improved economy system, thanks to scripting
What do you think?
Have great holidays!
Stéph
[1] http://h.magnenat.net/~steph/glob3-concept/
[2] http://wiki.ros.org/executive_teer
[3] http://www.tinypy.org/downloads.html
[4] https://code.google.com/p/python-on-a-chip/
[5] https://bitbucket.org/giszmo/glob2
--
http://stephane.magnenat.net
* Economy
Current primary resources:
- wood growing/harvesting
- stone non-growing/non-harvesting
- wheat growing/harvesting
- algua growing/harvesting
- fruits x3 growing-on-tree/harvesting-on-tree
New basic resources:
- papyrus growing/harvesting
- fresh water underground water table
- salty water infinity
Future new resources
- healing plants?
New intermediate resources:
- book to create constructors
- armor to create melee warriors
- canon ball for towers
- construction stones for advanced constructions
- plank for advanced constructions
- spear for ranged warrior
- jam advanced happiness resource (counts x2)
- bread richer food (satiation + 50 %)
- tartine richest food (satiation + 120 %)
- candy advanced happiness resource (counts x4)
- alcool for healers
- baloon for explorer
- rocket piece to get the hell out of here
New resource creation path
- papyrus + wood => [book, armor] in paper workshop
- stone + water => [canon balls, construction stone] in career
- wood => [plank, spear] in wood shop
- fruit + water => [jam, alcool] in sugar workshop
- wheat + water => bread in bakery
- jam + algua => candy in bakery
- jam + bread => tartine in inn
- algua + payrus => baloon in laboratory
- wood + algua + jam + ... => rocket piece N
Updated resource behaviour
- root allows resources to regrow
* Buildings
New buildings
- well (deplete water table) and provides fresh water
- paper workshop
- career
- wood shop
- sugar workshop
- bakery
- laboratory
- armory (stores alcool and spear)
* Units
- Branching based tree:
basic unit --> constructor in school requires book
|-> healer in school requires book
|-> basic warrior in school requires book
|-> melee warrior in barracks requires book +
armor
|-> ranged warrior in barracks requires book +
spear
|-> explorer in barracks requires book +
baloon
- Units consuming
- healer consumes alcool
- ranged warrior consumes spear
- Behaviour
- war flag holds a mix of units
* Behaviour change
- warriors consume more food than before
- water table evolves
- inn requires water to provide food
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