What game modes should we start with?

Oh, I still remember Zone Control

Also, one of my favorite game modes from Age of Empires was the King of the Hill scenario. But instead of a hill on the map, perhaps make it a certain planet, moon, or technical wonder. You have to hold it for a certain amount of time to claim victory.

I am also a fan of assassination mode as well. Age of Empires had it as well but it was called Regicide. Supcom of course had it as well. Good fun.

Assassination - Kill the Commander - Because DUH.

Supremacy - Kill engineers and Structures - For people who can't handle protecting the Commander.

Sandbox - No Win Condition - Again, DUH

Tech/Wonder - Build Gate, Charge Gate, Send Commander into Gate - Sounds cool as hell.

Replace 'Hill' with Metal World!

Mike

So, Murder Party is a terribly lot like a common college/university game called Assassin.

As someone who has played many games of this whilst at uni, I can say that a common tactic is just to hole-up, hide, and let everyone else kill each other. The problem is, when everyone is holed-up, nobody kills each other.

The real-life solution is to have something that rewards Assassins that take risks. Namely, information on who is after you. There's a more punitive option of eliminating players that don't take risks. The risky action in this case was; go to a specific location, collect a piece of information as evidence that you've been there, and then submit it the website that manages the game.

It goes without saying that being forced to go to a specific location while someone is trying to kill you can be a bad idea, though conversely you might bump into your target.

Apocalypse race. The player who does the most planetary damage wins. Might need a resource bonus or really cheap doom weapons to help get things going.

I always liked Phantom over Murder Party. It was a slower game but the tension and false accusations were exciting.

Murder Party is a more action oriented game since you always know who to attack and can expect to be attacked at any time. But I still found the methodical play of Phantom to be more exciting.

For modding I really like a ""no initial victory conditions" option. if we are going to be writing our own game rules you don't want a match randomly ending because the wrong thing blew up.

Imagine you were writing a tutorial with no enemy players on the map (because you are getting people used to the camera controls and what not) You don't want the game launching and then thinking to itself, "Well there is only one person on the map left with units or buildings.... You win! Back to the lobby with you!"

Speaking of modding......

Editor mode
I was thinking of how to do a map editor for a while now. And while I can't think of a cheap way to sculpt the landscape after the planet generator finishes up. I did think of a cheap way to plop down buildings and units.

Basically you start up the game paused, and one player (or your entire level design team) gets an interface that lets them add entities to the paused game state. Then when you are done you hand off that saved map to whoever is going to be playing the level.

things editor mode would let you do:

1. Place any entity in the game world; buildings, units, trees, explosions, anything). Also for any item that has ownership (buildings and units) you need to be able to assign ownership to any player.

2. Draw out "detection areas" on the map. So you could draw out a giant box over a specific part of the map and call it Area_01 or something. Then in your code you could write a statement like "If Player[0] gets 10 bombers in Area_01 Then run some other code"

3. Modify the properties of any entity. Set the amount of health a unit has left, change the amount of nukes in a silo, etc.

4. Give initial orders to units and buildings.

5. By default you'd see everything with no fog of war. But it'd be nice to switch perspectives to tell what each player can see.

You know I always thought that the experimental units were originally supposed to be like a tech/wonder/economic victory. You pump massive amounts of resources into a thing without really getting much out of it. And when it's finished you shout "Done!" and use it to smash up everyone else on the map.

You had the gist of it.

I don't thing anything mentioned so far is outside the realm of the technical design we worked out today.

Don't worry, I'm sure as soon as you guys lock in we'll come up with something! ;p

Mike

Dominance: control X% of the system's available resources

Attrition: first to cause X resources in material cost to be destroyed wins

KotH: hold location (or planet) X for Y minutes

And of course Assassination victory, as classical Last Man Standing, and/or as X frags wins (with or without respawn, new players joining, etc).

The first game mode should be sandbox. Later, I would like an additional option settled between annihilation and assassination to give units like commander double or support commander more value. Maybe call it assassination light with the objective to kill the commander and all doubles/backups.

Locust: no planets, just asteroids. hop from asteroid to asteroid to expand your base.

Locust race: ring of asteroids. each asteroid has a small, varying army. first to get to the last asteroid (while capturing asteroids in their way) wins.

KotH sounds awesome, we need gamemode where all players start somewhere else and need to hold one main planet for X time. And theres case, how to control it, some special points to capture?

A very fun victory in age of empires 2 was to build a wonder and protect it during 15 minutes. It is a normal game, you have to kill the other side, but, with a large amount of resources, a side can start the construction of a wonder. The other side receive the message (and the location, I did not remember) "a wonder in construction" and a count down popup.
The fun part is that one side will do everything to destroy the wonder in time. If they success, the game continues.

King of the hill is awesome too

viewtopic.php?f=61&t=42879 - there were some ideas in this earlier thread, more scenarios/mods than win conditions per se.

Exponential decay - all units have a low negative regeneration rate - encourages you to use them or loose them.

Extra health - all units start with extra health - more drawn out battles

Exponential increase - prevents spamming, encourages variety - a unit becomes 1 metal/energy more expensive to build each time you build one of that type.

Snooker - get points for sending asteroids to point x. Bigger the asteroid the more points. leads to a fight over asteroids and shooting down asteroids that are no threat to you.

Tug of war - opposing teams have to build planet engines to move the same planet in different directions. first to move the planet over their respective 'line' wins.

hunger games - FFA - start close to each other in a circle, bonuses in the centre - get the bonus or run and set up a base?

space race - who can get an asteroid the furthest away before the timer runs out.

These ones are not my ideas, but I remember they garnered support when they were originally posted:

Assimilation: Standard assassination except you can take control of your defeated enemies' army. The dead commander(s) is in contact with the commander who killed them.

Hidden: Standard FFA except no one knows who they are up against.

My ideas now. These can be bad, so tell me if they are:

Race: First commander to reach a moon/planet wins.

Armageddon: All players start on the same planet. An asteroid, piloted by enemy AI, is on course to impact the planet. Players can either work together to stop the asteroid or fight to be the last commander before the asteroid hits.

Bowling: A silly game mode; players utilize KEWs to destroy 10 moons arranged in bowling fashion. The player with the most points after an x amount of rounds win! Standard bowling rules apply unless changed.

Assassination

Yes, if it all boils down to one condition, make it assassination.

Sandbox
Assasination
Supremacy