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XCOMUFO & Xenocide

Web-browser Game


Dereknor

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Hi,

 

I havent been around here for a while. I was amazed that this place still exist :)

 

At the moment I'm planing to develop a web-brower game. Actually I plan it for over a year and always start at the beginning again cause I got new ideas. One day I had the idea to make an onlinegame like X-Com (I always was more the X-Com fan then UFO-Enemy unknown) where you build your own base, buy resources and soldiers, train them, expand your base and so on. And you send out your troops to intercept alien forces. Or you play as the Alienside and try to "do some evil things on earth". But I always dropped that idea again, cause there is no good way to bring the X-Com atmosphere through a web-browser without the real turnbase game. There were only the two ways: make some X-Com like engine for web-browsers where you move your troops around, but just a very very bad copy of X-Com. Or just do statistic battles where you just get the final data who won. But both ways are bad.

 

So I remembered of this project and thought about a web-based onlinegame where you organize your base, and when you intercept or got intercepted, you start the UFO2000 engine and do that battle online, with your soldiers, weapons and so on.

 

Of cause there are many problems that appear by such a project. For example: how to manage to bring two people onlin at the same time. When I intercept someone, how to tell when he is online to do the battle? That is a really hard question.

 

This idea is just a try to combine the game with an online-game. Or to make it easier, everyone have an online base (alien or human) and just organize it and can do online games like usually, but just can use his equipment and units he got. That would be the light-version, but much more realistic.

 

Maybe it could also be a unique game, with new Aliens and storyline (just in case to hurt any copyrights)

 

These are just ideas, just want to know if you can do anything with it ;)

 

Dereknor

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  • 2 months later...

That's actually a good idea. I think the Geoscape would be suited rather well to browser-based gaming.

And it probably wouldn't be that hard to link it to Ufo2000.

 

As for the online thing - maybe you could say that when a player is logged out, a 'mind shield' is erected that makes their base invisible, and they can't be attacked. Or maybe their soldiers are taken over by a difficult AI. Or it's a statistics battle.

 

The focus of XCOM is, however, the battlescape - everything you do is based around shooting down UFOs more efficiently (thus going to the battlescape more often) and getting better stuff for when you are in the battlescape.

 

Any massively multiplayer XCOM game should reflect that. In other words - people play Xcom to shoot aliens, not to micro-manage everything and calculate statistics... (usually)

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Hmm, before you make this game, you should try making a game of Risktego. It's like regular online Risk, but instead of a dice roll at every battle, there's a game of Stratego. It's the same kind of concept as Xcom (Risk = geoscape, Stratego = battlescape) but a LOT more simple to program, plus you'd get an idea about how to go about setting up web-based Xcom.

 

For the simple example of Risktego, I would have a bunch of Risk games going. There is always a list of Stratego battles to be fought, but if you decide to fight one, you don't know which battle it is, which game it is for, or which side you are playing for... you just play to win. Thus, your "stratego score" is independent of your "risk score." In this way, on average, everyone ends up playing everyone in stratego, so all the skill differences eventually even out, and you would play your Risk game the same way as if it were dice being thrown (albeit a bit more slowly).

 

Granted, Risk would take a lot less time to play than 100 Stratego battles, you need a certain critical mass for this game style to work, etc., but figuring out these problems in a simple game would probably make it easier in the long run if you continue on to make Xcom.

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