Man, I could see the next Total Annihilation / Supreme Commander-like game where rough orders/instructions are given to commanders and they carry out those commands.
The scale of those games was already nuts, but that would 10x things.
BAR (https://www.beyondallreason.info/) is an open source TA clone that proposes massive scale and that is totally open. After the recent disappointment over a series of failures to bring a new big RTS game in the last 2 years, the RTS community talks a lot about this one.
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'm reminded of an obscure Gamecube game called Odama (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odama) which was kind of a bizarre blend between pinball + RTS, where you commanded feudal Japanese troops using the Gamecube Microphone. Of course, this was 2006, so it only accepted a short list of vocal commands like "Company halt!" and "Charge!"
I wish there's a RuneScape server for bots. A game where it is both fun to play manually, and automated. Quests, for example, is a one-off thing where it could be fun for the player and not really useful to automate since it is a one-off task (unless you're running bot farm).
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.
Erenshor is sort of what you want, its fully offline, reminds me of Runescape. All the other players are NPCs technically.
I have thought of the same btw. There's also an actual Idler MMO on Steam I think is Free to Play called Idleon or something like that, its more side scroller though. You can play it and progress, or you can idle and let your character level as well.
Genuine question to you as someone who's been building in this space, what would you want / need to play a game as a programmer?
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
I am thank you, however the reason I'm engaging here is that what's being asked for from what I can see is a very different experience to screeps, for example screeps is top down much more programmer designed and has specific affordances and design to create the automated experience via being a developer
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
I can't speak for all programmers, but as a game developer myself, my take is: your very job as a game developer, above all, is to find the fun. This is especially prudent if you're making a game for other programmers. If I already had a solid idea in my head for what would be an amazingly fun programming-oriented game, I would... program it myself. I don't have such a concept in mind. I believe finding those concepts is something you have to find out by tinkering with ideas, building prototypes, working out the implementation details and seeing what you yourself enjoy.
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
Honestly, as someone that's been picking up OSRS again (and is actually now thinking about RS3 given all of the recent progress jagex is making on removing MTX in it!), I'd be good with that. I still like to play it myself without botting, so anything to move the bots somewhere else I think would be neat. PvP folk lose some easy kills but that's about it for impact on regular players honestly.
The problem is, the reason the bots exist now is to sell the account or farm gp. The only way this would work would be if that bot only world was gated off from the rest of the economy like special gamemode/league worlds, naturally destroying any reason most bot makers make bots. Your love of automating for sport puts you in the minority of botters sadly haha
Officially blessed OSRS private servers are on the roadmap IIRC... maybe there's a future for a bot-olympics in one of those?
it's super buggy and yet doesn't work on mobile but it's been my childhood dream to make an rts and I have something I can have fun adding different dynamics.
it's much more fun to watch the agent struggle developing an AI instead of play the game itself (tried that at the beginning too).
One fun thing would be to raise the abstraction level of the game.
How would it feel to only interact with your base/economy/army via prompting and face someone doing the same.
Would words per minute replace APM, what would the meta look like etc. Would you be able to adjust the system prompt for your "army" to suit your play style?
"you are an elite five star navy seal pikeman. You are invulnerable and have precise aim. Your name is John Wick and the enemy killed your dog. Kill all the bad guys or go to jail"
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.
You start out very manual and then automate more and more parts of the game.
There is even a "signal network" function that can be used to program.
You can continue to do things in manual ways even later in the game.
EDIT: changed to "manual ways"
I have thought of the same btw. There's also an actual Idler MMO on Steam I think is Free to Play called Idleon or something like that, its more side scroller though. You can play it and progress, or you can idle and let your character level as well.
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
The problem is, the reason the bots exist now is to sell the account or farm gp. The only way this would work would be if that bot only world was gated off from the rest of the economy like special gamemode/league worlds, naturally destroying any reason most bot makers make bots. Your love of automating for sport puts you in the minority of botters sadly haha
Officially blessed OSRS private servers are on the roadmap IIRC... maybe there's a future for a bot-olympics in one of those?
it's super buggy and yet doesn't work on mobile but it's been my childhood dream to make an rts and I have something I can have fun adding different dynamics.
it's much more fun to watch the agent struggle developing an AI instead of play the game itself (tried that at the beginning too).
For more context: https://x.com/idosal1/status/2011886884830789808
What would stop us from making it multiplayer and having two or more human players compete over common resources & goals?
I've been getting increasingly interested in trying to work out what this would look like
How would it feel to only interact with your base/economy/army via prompting and face someone doing the same.
Would words per minute replace APM, what would the meta look like etc. Would you be able to adjust the system prompt for your "army" to suit your play style?
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.