Re: New Standard Game?

[Stan Shebs <shebs@cygnus.com>]

   Date: Tue, 22 Jun 1999 16:32:53 -0400
   From: "Ari Rabkin" <asrabkin@twcny.rr.com>

   > I've been thinking about the standard game.  While it's very familiar,
   > and has more depth than is at first apparent, it's also, well, a
   > little *too* familiar.  The fundamentals of the game design haven't
   > changed in literally 10 years, and if you've played it a thousand
   > times, there's not much left to learn about it.

     There are always new users, and it's worth playing, if not a thousand
   times, at least one hundred times, so please don't delete it entirely.

Heh-heh, anybody who's followed Xconq development for awhile knows I
don't easily throw away things, even when they ought to go... :-)

   [note that I currently have only used the macintosh interface, so I
   perhaps do not fully understand the importance of the standard game;
   it isn't special on the mac.]

Even on the Mac, it shows up at the top of the list.  The AI also
tends to be more tuned for the standard game, interface details work
better, etc.

      Instead of having one 'standard' game, you might consider having a
   small set of dissimilar games, and call it the "core scenarios", or
   somesuch.  A.N.E. would also qualify, and perhaps 'space'.  I envision
   a dialog box comparable to the one in the mac UI, but for all interfaces,
   though the X11 interface could perhaps have command line flags for the
   Top 3 games, e.g. -n for [Ancient] Near East, -s for space, etc.

It's always hard to choose what should be the "core" - it partly depends
on people's interest.

   > So, what do people think?  I can supply more detail on the new design
   > if anyone's interested; it's currently residing on three pieces of
   > paper, nothing's been tried yet.

       I'm interested.  As I am on summer vacation, I'll have the time free
    to work on it.

Cool!  I'll send you the list of unit types that I was thinking of.

       It might be a good idea to have a file for new scenario ideas--scenarios
   are in the projects file, but it might be a good idea to separate gdl coding
   from C -- many, for instance myself, can easily understand a short, simple,
   gdl file, but can't quite follow the ... grandeur of the Xconq sources.
   (although I'm trying!)

:-)

       This file should be distributed with the final releases as well--there
   are likely many users who would be happy to develop scenarios, but who are
   unwilling to invest the time to work on Xconq proper.

That's a good idea!  To me it's all the same :-), but my viewpoint is
biased.  The whole point of Xconq is to be able to have different
kinds of games for it, so anything to encourage people to work on new
game designs would be good.  In fact, I've been thinking about setting
an interactive mode for game design, instead of requiring people to
learn the mysteries of GDL... it wouldn't have the full power of the
textual language, but it would be a lot more accessible...

								Stan