Okay I have had this idea for a while now and now I have decided to put it out there sink or swim. I used to and still do play a game called Spore. Those who have played this may already know where this is going, however for those who don't here the basic idea/question. The game was based on Evolution of a species from cells to space. Would it be possible to make a mod that adds an evolutionary aspect from like a Tribal type stage up to where the machines are created and rise sometime in a advanced Information era stage and then moving to space? There is more however I figure just throwing this out there would bring in much needed feedback to see how this would be received. JUST TO BE ABSOLUTELY CLEAR THIS IS A MOD IDEA.
Just think, how would multiplayer Spore work? How can someone be in the tribal age, when someone is still in the cell stage? I don't think it can work.
That seems to me like they've simply out-teched you. A carbon copy style mod of spore may not work, but certaily a spore inspired mod would.
I gotta be honest; like Raevn said, a copy of spore wouldn't work. But... Like spore? Actually, its not a bad idea. Lets be honest. Spore sucked. I waited five years for that game and it was a complete disaster. But some of the concepts, as in all games, were rock solid. So if you leave out the whole biological era thing (cause that's a huge undertaking, switching from the different game types) its just a progression based RTS. Yaknow, like AoE or 0AD. Why yes. Yes I would be interested.
hahaha i waited forever for them to release Spore as well then was majorly let down when i got the game and it was nowhere near the quality of the Development video's i had been eagerly watching for 5 odd years, they did things like omit the 3d underwater part of the game, after you evolve form from a cellular organism you were meant to swim round in the ocean to evolve more before heading to land (this was Scrapped and i was cut deeply), also the combining of animations was scrapped (i wanted to drag the carcass i was eating around but that too was also omitted from the final release... agggh). In the end, in my opinion spore was nothing more than a polished Maxis turd! Those things aside, im sure the tech running the game spore was quite amazing and most probably part of that tech or the ideas running that tech is what jon's using to make the planets in this game, I think Spores planets are generated the same way and use CGS too, which allows players to paint and edit planets in the space stage sim in realtime.
Also calling spore an RTS is a bit of an overstatement. The only rts elements are when your in the Tribal and Civilization part of the game, otherwise its just a walk along and gain items game, Almost like a RPG with no need for EXP farming, just find bits and evolve. In space its the same, no real RTS there, just go here, go there, buy this, buy that.... Boring.. lol
It would be good to have fun evolving a nanite into a commander tho. I could almost imagine it now, "You found - Directional booster's" then "You found - A Discarded rusty laser assembly" and so on Then you could choose,, hmm bulky armoured legs or skinny mobility stilts maybe even "tank-tread's of doom" Then you could do silly things like "Ah hahaha i wanna put his nanolathing arm on his Butt and have a laser for a nose!!"
It does sound like an interesting idea, but thinking about it sounds like Godus in its concept with the idea of starting with humble beginnings and getting to space exploration, which is no bad thing. The key thing is though how the progression of the species is played out i.e. Do you have research points? A passive system? Building prerequisites? Resource discovery? The other thing to consider would be how fast it plays in multiplayer and whether you have game options to start from a certain period.
First I'd like to say thanks for the feedback and I am aware of the difficulty of a multiplayer setting for this. Also I like Spore. Sure it could have been better but it was enjoyable for me. Now the cell and creature stages would not be part of this. You "command" the species from tribal stage and up. For multiplayer the only thing I thought about for trying to make it fair is that the servers that run the mod would do two things. A roster of sorts would be formed and then a time set for it to start by the server admins(this would mean different servers for different time zones.) and all who were playing would start at the same time like normal and the match would be a day by day thing then the server goes off after say 9hrs OR it is balanced in a way for the matches at a slower speed (Note: ajustible speeds) would take at most 10hrs. Lets face it the way this game looks there may already matches that could take longer even many days of save/load or drop in/drop out I also would like to put in a major diplomacy system and a Galactic law (like how blowing up a planet in spore worked) and some kind of penalty for breaking it. I know that this idea isn't without it flaws and would need work but I think that there is a way to get it right or even make multiple versions and let the server admins decide what they want. NOTE: I have never done a lot of modding. I've done some in a few RTS games but not enough to be called a great one. If there is a mod author that is interested in this Idea I would love to talk it out with them. You can just PM me and I'll get back to you. Maybe even talk on voip program like Raidcall, Teamspeak etc etc.
