The Song of the Moon

[woodelf]

Man the makers of this game is slow like a grandma on updating this game. Even Sevo is faster then you! Try updating your game once in a while so that we don't suffer from crashes that i just recieve after researching a technology from the neosysthesis tech line.

Don't insult your Grannie!

Yeah, we're in the process of a complete overhaul. This version was never meant to be played beyond the 2nd era. (Why did I spend 50 hours on the tech tree then? WHo knows...)

We're more than willing to take on new helpers...

 

[Chammadai]

I guess you should specify what skills are you looking for - and even though I'd love to help I don't think I'd be useful in any way... Still, it would be easier to find new helpers if you specified what you intend to do and what do you lack.

Cheers

 

[woodelf]

I guess you should specify what skills are you looking for - and even though I'd love to help I don't think I'd be useful in any way... Still, it would be easier to find new helpers if you specified what you intend to do and what do you lack.

Cheers

Good point.

From the main Rallying Call thread I know what we have so far is:

Belizan - Python dude
Warsong - working with Belizan on main ideas
Matthewv - map script, some graphics, some python, some of everything. (After school is done)
Geomodder - Ideas and nagging me.
smjames - not sure
Myself - XML crap, odd jobs
*If I forgot anyone I apologize.

We basically beg for graphics from the CFC and that's our main need I think. I have a friend who did some nice audio ambient stuff, but we don't have a set Audio person either. Ideas, playtesting, bug removal, ect are always needs.

 

[thamis]

Song of the Moon is now also hosted on Planet Civilization.

 

[smjjames]

Good point.

From the main Rallying Call thread I know what we have so far is:

Belizan - Python dude
Warsong - working with Belizan on main ideas
Matthewv - map script, some graphics, some python, some of everything. (After school is done)
Geomodder - Ideas and nagging me.
smjames - not sure
Myself - XML crap, odd jobs
*If I forgot anyone I apologize.

We basically beg for graphics from the CFC and that's our main need I think. I have a friend who did some nice audio ambient stuff, but we don't have a set Audio person either. Ideas, playtesting, bug removal, ect are always needs.

well, anybody can submit ideas and I'm pretty good at it just need to wait and see what there is before I can really think of any ideas to improve on it. I'll also help with the playtesting.

over summer vacation I might learn a little of the python code or xml, I dunno. maybe I can help with some of the text entries and all.

 

[woodelf]

Song of the Moon is now also hosted on Planet Civilization.

Thanks thamis.

@smjjames - anything is a big help. Making sure everything has pedia, strategy, ect makes the mod look more polished and professional IMO.

 

[Belizan]

Thanks Thamis.

At the moment, SotM is in a sort of limbo. The history at this point is a little convoluted, but, basically... We made the decision about two months ago to come up with a new design, as our old project lead, JBG, hadn't been around for quite some time. To that end, I had to court and enlist the aid of a friend of mine who is particularly knowledgable in the area of real-world lunar colonization technologies and issues (an area about which I knew very little at the time). He and I spent weeks going back and forth on what could be done, what had been done, and what we might want to do. What there was to model and how to model it. We had just finished thrashing through everything and were starting to go back to take all our disjointed conversations and piece them into a detailed design document when first I got buried in taxes, then he got buried in a product release cycle at his place of employment. Theoretically, he should be come free of that next week, although I have some concern that he may not really free up until the end of May :/.

Until our new design document gets done we have the problem that while Woodelf and I have a lot of ideas of things we would like to change or improve, we have no coordinated plan. We surpassed the level of detail in the original design long ago. This left the mod careening directionless, which compelled us to create a new direction. The crafting of that direction takes time. Neither Woodelf nor I want to put in a lot of effort making changes to the mod that we're just going to wind up throwing away.

Now, there were a number of feature ideas I had that I wanted to test out, which I haven't been able to, because I can't seem to get anyone to provide me with the things I need (buttons and features and the like). In that absence I've started working on other projects, and waiting, as I think has Woodelf.

As for crashing after getting a particular tech, I've never heard of that bug:/.

 

[woodelf]

Always bringing up the damned buttons!

I mentally reserved time and space in my modding for this mod when it restarts, but yes ---- I've branched out a bit.

 

[Belizan]

Always bringing up the damned buttons!

And yet, never receiving them .

IVZanIV was going to help me make some dialogs, too, which are laborious, but he never got past some initial teaching lessons I gave him :/.

 

[woodelf]

Dialogs? What kind?

We really need to redo the civs. Are you and Warsong tackling that? Generic simply doesn't work after playing FfH and seeing the backstory for each leader.

 

[Padmewan]

To that end, I had to court and enlist the aid of a friend of mine who is particularly knowledgable in the area of real-world lunar colonization technologies and issues (an area about which I knew very little at the time). He and I spent weeks going back and forth on what could be done, what had been done, and what we might want to do. What there was to model and how to model it. We had just finished thrashing through everything and were starting to go back to take all our disjointed conversations and piece them into a detailed design document when first I got buried in taxes, then he got buried in a product release cycle at his place of employment. Theoretically, he should be come free of that next week, although I have some concern that he may not really free up until the end of May :/.

I'm hesitant to raise my hand for a new assignment given the lack of time I have for my own mod, but if Woodelf is involved I should at least poke my head in

I have always thought that this project was exciting if you could find a way to model realistically the dynamics of colonizing the moon. Part of the issue I have with balancing realism with excitement. To me it seems a little hard to swallow that the competitive dynamic on the moon would involve a "hot" war between competing interests. Certainly war is always possible, but about as catastrophic and undesirable as war would be among any of the terrestrial nations that have the resources to conceivably engage in lunar colonization.

However, a pure conflict between Man and Environment would also be boring, something akin to SimCity in space.

I would be interested in engaging in a discussion about this if that's the direction you may be taking this (that is, the hard science rather than science fiction/fantasy route). As you may have seen in some of my main forum posts, I'm always seeking ways to make non-violent conflict just as exciting as the battles that games like Civ seem to favor.

 

[woodelf]

I think with Belizan's random events the colonists will be dealing with them more than enemies, at least until it becomes realistic that people could actually fight others on the Moon instead of worrying about survival.

 

[Kael]

Thanks Thamis.

At the moment, SotM is in a sort of limbo. The history at this point is a little convoluted, but, basically... We made the decision about two months ago to come up with a new design, as our old project lead, JBG, hadn't been around for quite some time. To that end, I had to court and enlist the aid of a friend of mine who is particularly knowledgable in the area of real-world lunar colonization technologies and issues (an area about which I knew very little at the time). He and I spent weeks going back and forth on what could be done, what had been done, and what we might want to do. What there was to model and how to model it. We had just finished thrashing through everything and were starting to go back to take all our disjointed conversations and piece them into a detailed design document when first I got buried in taxes, then he got buried in a product release cycle at his place of employment. Theoretically, he should be come free of that next week, although I have some concern that he may not really free up until the end of May :/.

Until our new design document gets done we have the problem that while Woodelf and I have a lot of ideas of things we would like to change or improve, we have no coordinated plan. We surpassed the level of detail in the original design long ago. This left the mod careening directionless, which compelled us to create a new direction. The crafting of that direction takes time. Neither Woodelf nor I want to put in a lot of effort making changes to the mod that we're just going to wind up throwing away.

Now, there were a number of feature ideas I had that I wanted to test out, which I haven't been able to, because I can't seem to get anyone to provide me with the things I need (buttons and features and the like). In that absence I've started working on other projects, and waiting, as I think has Woodelf.

As for crashing after getting a particular tech, I've never heard of that bug:/.

I know Im not a part of this project team so I hope you don't mind me pitching my thoughts in here.

Just make it fun. Everything else is secondary. You have amazing ideas and the talent to make them work, my advice (not that anyone asked for it) would be to dig in, create, and play. Most likely you will tear apart everything you have written later on anyway, even if you had your final design. But for now find some aspect or feature that you know you want, something that is fun to you and go ahead and make it work.

Momentum is important to a mod, especially one that is as ambicious as this one. And to my mind, the more ambicious, the better.

 

[smjjames]

well as a community member and mod creator, your input and anybodys input is welcome

 

[Belizan]

Dialogs? What kind?

We really need to redo the civs. Are you and Warsong tackling that? Generic simply doesn't work after playing FfH and seeing the backstory for each leader.

Actually Warsong wanted to and I shooed him away from it. Honestly, I don't see it as being... a priority is the wrong phrasing. I'm not sure detailed specific faction backgrounds are a good thing for the mod in the first place. A certain level of distance is required to allow one to make up one's own scenario in one's mind. It's precisely that which I dislike about FfH. I don't much care for the backstory, and therefore the entire mod is kind of pointless for me :/.

Conversely, I love TAM, although 1.71 seemed better then 1.8. Why remove lumberyards? *shrugs*. Have to get a chance to play it more.

 

[Belizan]

I know Im not a part of this project team so I hope you don't mind me pitching my thoughts in here.

Just make it fun. Everything else is secondary. You have amazing ideas and the talent to make them work, my advice (not that anyone asked for it) would be to dig in, create, and play. Most likely you will tear apart everything you have written later on anyway, even if you had your final design. But for now find some aspect or feature that you know you want, something that is fun to you and go ahead and make it work.

Momentum is important to a mod, especially one that is as ambicious as this one. And to my mind, the more ambicious, the better.

I disagree, really. Specifically with the dig in and create part. You need to have some consistancy in mind with how you are representing certain things within your mod, or it will never come together. Worse, we have no concrete vision. I haven't spent the time to think through an intelligible near term future/colonization oriented tech tree. This wasn't my mod idea :/. Woodelf has ideas too, but like me, no complete vision. Nothing that works as a whole or makes a great deal of sense. Our current tech tree is basically Woodelf and JBG's brain child, and he'll be the first to tell you that it's a mess. There have been a number of well intentioned people with varying degrees of knowledge who have chimed in here and there with pieces of the puzzles. "Try this", "Do that", "Have a tech for this or that and this other thing". What we lack is not ideas. I dare at any point if Woodelf, myself and whichever iteration of the rest of the team had sat down and just poored out ideas we'd have more ideas then we could ever fit into a mod. But we wouldn't have a mod. Because we'd have no flow, no unity, no sensical relationship or development of game dynamics or game play. We'd just have a random collection of interesting ideas that didn't make much sense together. Like a Hollywood film with too many rewrites and producers with no sense.

What we need is a framework within which to build the mod. A clear model for how we are going to represent resources, water, lunar dust, nuclear and ICBM missiles, satellites, innovations, space craft, armed conflict, happiness and health, social unrest, immigration, colonial relations, radar and other technological edges, etc., etc. The frustrating thing for me is that I've worked out myself or discussed these issues and many, many more at great length with Warsong and I'm quite happy with a great many of our models. But I can't put together a complete design draft without his help, because the key part, what I really needed from him, is still missing. Tech flow, resource designations and dependencies, and the economic infrastructure bootstrapping steps. I don't know the issues well enough to do better then a hand wavey job at it. Warsong does, he's just tied down for the nonce.

Honestly, though, Kael, we haven't had a full team for a while. I've tried doing piecemeal iteration of features, etc. to test ideas, as I've stated many times before, but the team basically wants to see the new design before doing anything. So we wait. S'all good. I have other coding projects to work on .

 

[thamis]

Conversely, I love TAM, although 1.71 seemed better then 1.8. Why remove lumberyards? *shrugs*. Have to get a chance to play it more.

Because building them everywhere would have overpowered the "barbarians" of the north, as they have lots of forest.

My advice on Song of the Moon:
Try to make the mod work with changing as little of the original game as possible. Once you got a version that works, you can go about fiddling with the game mechanics. Starting completely new game mechanics from scratch simply takes too long in my experience.

 

[Kael]

Actually Warsong wanted to and I shooed him away from it. Honestly, I don't see it as being... a priority is the wrong phrasing. I'm not sure detailed specific faction backgrounds are a good thing for the mod in the first place. A certain level of distance is required to allow one to make up one's own scenario in one's mind. It's precisely that which I dislike about FfH. I don't much care for the backstory, and therefore the entire mod is kind of pointless for me :/.

Conversely, I love TAM, although 1.71 seemed better then 1.8. Why remove lumberyards? *shrugs*. Have to get a chance to play it more.

I actually believed exactly as you do when I was doing FfH1, which is why all of the civs in it were designed by Haarbal and they were a seperate download from the main FfH1 files for a long time.

But if you want to distinguish the civs from each other some style may be needed, the magic is finding the balance between providing flavor and not beating people over the head with generic archetypes (and making the game run on rails because of it). FfH is a fantasy mod so the flavor is cranked up well beyond what may be desirable for a sci-fi mod, especially one that is as realistic as I believe you are going for.

Its interesting to see Thamis's thoughts on design, he is definitly an incredible mod maker but we take very different approaches toward the same goal. I read the TAM thread all the time and Im always impressed with his work and methodology but I tend to work from the fun stuff (meaning the big game changing flashy stuff) backwards rather than in a more conservative approach. I know that means FfH will probably never be as well balanced as TAM is (and we will probably have more crashes too). Either approach is fine, wahtever works for you.

I know I've gone off on a tangent, I could babble about game design all day.

 

[thamis]

I actually believed exactly as you do when I was doing FfH1, which is why all of the civs in it were designed by Haarbal and they were a seperate download from the main FfH1 files for a long time.

But if you want to distinguish the civs from each other some style may be needed, the magic is finding the balance between providing flavor and not beating people over the head with generic archetypes (and making the game run on rails because of it). FfH is a fantasy mod so the flavor is cranked up well beyond what may be desirable for a sci-fi mod, especially one that is as realistic as I believe you are going for.

Its interesting to see Thamis's thoughts on design, he is definitly an incredible mod maker but we take very different approaches toward the same goal. I read the TAM thread all the time and Im always impressed with his work and methodology but I tend to work from the fun stuff (meaning the big game changing flashy stuff) backwards rather than in a more conservative approach. I know that means FfH will probably never be as well balanced as TAM is (and we will probably have more crashes too). Either approach is fine, wahtever works for you.

I know I've gone off on a tangent, I could babble about game design all day.

Haha I'm actually doing my MA on game design (well, on how to make wargames more realistic, it's an MA War Studies), so I'm all with you there... talk all day!

 

[Rabbit, White]

What we need is a framework within which to build the mod. A clear model for how we are going to represent resources, water, lunar dust, nuclear and ICBM missiles, satellites, innovations, space craft, armed conflict, happiness and health, social unrest, immigration, colonial relations, radar and other technological edges, etc., etc. The frustrating thing for me is that I've worked out myself or discussed these issues and many, many more at great length with Warsong and I'm quite happy with a great many of our models. But I can't put together a complete design draft without his help, because the key part, what I really needed from him, is still missing. Tech flow, resource designations and dependencies, and the economic infrastructure bootstrapping steps. I don't know the issues well enough to do better then a hand wavey job at it. Warsong does, he's just tied down for the nonce.

If you don't mind me chiming in here...

I think you're taking on too much at once. Having all those things as part of the "design document" is all fine and well but only when you're talking about a team of developers, not two or three people. You'll spend so much time on designing this complete vision and by the time you're done the inspiration will be gone. What's ironic about it is that, at least in the gaming industry, design documents never survive in their original form, they keep changing throughout the project.

What I think would be a better approach is to try to separate things into discrete parts. Figure out the priority of things - what in your mind is more important for making it feel like the mod you're trying to make. Is it the civics, or the tech tree, or the look of the game, or something else. Then try to limit your work on that part. Now obviously you can't completely ignore the other stuff since all is related, and at some point you will need to start working on all the elements together, but for starters just do the first important part, with minimal work on others, then move on to the next stage, and so on.

You mention stuff like resources, water, lunar dust, nuclear and ICBM missiles, satellites and so on. All important evetually, but perhaps terrain changes, other than graphical (and even those) can wait till you got a more solid foundation.

Tech tree too, that's like a huge job. Now, I never tried redoing the whole tree but perhaps if the tree follows the other stuff as opposed to the other way around it might work better. What I mean is, instead of sitting doing redoing the tree and then adding buildings and units to it, instead you add to and modify the tree as the need arises, based on units, civics, etc.

Anyway, the important thing in all this is that you start working on stuff instead of spending too much time on the design. Just the process of making stuff and adding to the mod and seeing it grow will keep inspiring you to continue the work.