The scale of those games was already nuts, but that would 10x things.
The mechanics are old school, as with basically all RTS, but the openness allows for far more experiments than one would assume in a proprietary game.
I don't think the main game would encourage that - the more obscure the protocol, the less bot in the actual game (even though I don't think it's hard to find protocol documentation or just plug into an official client). OpenRSC, a revival of RuneScape Classic do have botting worlds, but personally RSC is not "fun" for me.
There are programmer games like Screeps (which the new Arena version just launched at the end of last year), but those game usually do not allow manual play or only indirect play. I tried Screeps, but I'm not good at strategy games, so once I get the runtime working I lose interest and none of my friend would want to help me strategize in game that they do not understand.
An API? An SDK? An in-game editor? Tutorials? Or is this more a "I want a factorio-like"?
I've been building economic engines and simulations for the last few years now and over the last 3 months in my off time I've been getting increasingly in the weeds about how to design a game that fits this
I've specifically been exploring using a voxel game as a base (think minecraft-like) however because I'm deeply interested in minion management / design I've been looking at how to create a programming / play experience that actually is fun and makes sense
What I'm trying to understand is what is the fun overlap between these
I have some opinions / ideas of my own and what I've been trying to do, however I'd be really interested in what other people are looking for to see where the overlap is and whether it fits the shape of what I'm building and whether I want to really commit the time to prototyping some things to see if there is interest to support this type of playstyle
Just to be super clear, what I've built so far specifically is targeting multiplayer
The reason I'm comparing it to factorio is because that game though still top down is designed specifically with a player in mind automating their labor and then slowly taking on a complex logistics game as they go and doing so fully in the game, the play is in laying out structures within the game
Satisfactory for example has different choices that lead to different gameplay as it's first person 3d, the play is in setting up and managing logistical structures and hitting production targets
That is interesting, however for my tastes both of these are a little too static an experience for what I want to build
I'm still working out the details of what I'm putting together, but I have a decent high level idea of what my goals are =)
What I want to know is, if people play this kind of game, what are they looking for / wanting?
What's a good "MVP" or minimal gameloop that would feel satisfying?
I want to quickly work out if I can serve either the gameplay desire or the gameplay fantasy or if it is just too hard to provide a fun experience for this kind of play in which case I should table this and focus on what I'm currently doing
However I'm still engaging with this because I would like to create a fun playspace here I just don't know what other programmers would want especially in the context of what the GP was asking, which is a mix of manual intervention and programming / automation
It's what I've been doing, I'm asking what I'm asking to see if it surfaces anything that I've been missing / not thinking about and trying to work out what people would see as table stakes
In the same way that I know that playtesting reveals flaws and gaps in my design and thinking, this is a earlier version of that process that has in my experience helped me when building non-game related things
It may very much be the case that this is not the kind of thing that I should do when focused on building a game, but I don't think it hurts to ask
My take was that it’s easier to trace who is doing what (and what the agent hierarchy looks like) when agents’ locations are fixed.
bob1029•1h ago
What would stop us from making it multiplayer and having two or more human players compete over common resources & goals?
Folcon•49m ago
I've been getting increasingly interested in trying to work out what this would look like
MattRix•8m ago