3D RoadWar: Rogue-like/Wargame Project - Any Interest?

[Human Shield]

I have been debating a RPG/Wargame type game that would:

1. Be simple but effective in polish.
2. Have modular and extendable depth (as in start small and be expandable).
3. Be recyclable.
4. Have an interested audience.

I have considered a zombie-survival type game (which is getting overcrowded and a stress simulation feature to make it good would be too complex) but an old game caught my attention again.

Roadwar 2000

It has cool features and design but its interface is terrible.

It is simple but effective. It would be easy to start, models of cars are easier then people to animate and the rest is all graphics and text for management and strategy. Tile based map for the world and battles. Like Jagged Alliance 2 with cars.

The game would be made in modules, as in first tactical combat would be released and expanded from there in parts. Tile-based turn-based combat framework would be open-source

A good version of this would sell. Is there any interest? I would work as a programmer and could try by hand at modeling, but I need a more experienced programmer to get started.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Roadwar 2000 is one bitchin cool ass game. I had an idea for an updated version of it a long, long time ago. You take statistics of various cities in a given year and make a 4X like game out of it. It would be more of a 4X than something like civilization because towns would already exist, much like planets in Space Opera 4X games, with their own resources and advantages/disadvantages.

Things like population, industry zoning, ag zoning, etc. could be used to generate how much food was stored in the town at the beginning as well as the production later on. The same thing goes for factories in terms of the initial resources for a town versus the production of items you might need down the road. The one thing about Roadwar 2000 that never made sense to me is that if you own towns, why the hell can't you get a cut of the food production?!

Furthermore, you could set up trade between towns you own. You could funnel food from rural towns to more industrialized towns in order to support larger populations. You could export factory equipment, chemicals, and such from larger factory towns to rural towns to up the food production. Population, of course, would be a slow gain for the overall map with a dead and birth rate, and migration to and from towns based on levels of basic needs being fulfilled. Towns with low food coming in and high populations would have death rates climb and people moving out of them, for example.

Cars would be more like battletech style things. They'd have armor over certain areas, as well as internals in certain areas. Gunfire on a highly armored front end of the car would chip away the armor and eventually eat in to the vital engine. You could make this modular to do things like buses and such where it would have multiple sections which are made up of middle, left and right. The middle would be the large area, the left and right are primarily just sides but can hold things like the tires. The middle section can hold things like seats, engines, cargo storage, and what not.

That way you can make a mide sized car out of three sections each with three modules of left, right, and middle. The front middle section would be the engine, front right would be the steering tire, front left would be the other steering tire, middle middle would be the driver and passenger area, and so on. The bus would just have more sections with more passenger only sections through the middles of the sections. Later on, you could take the bus and up it's speed or power by removing some seats in the back and adding more engines. Likewise, you could convert the bus to a hauler vehicle by removing seats and adding cargo space.

Trading of goods with towns would require vehicles with lots of cargo room in order to run those routes.

 

[nikpalj]

Does anybody here remember Activisions Interstate 76 game from around 1997? It was a fantastic game, one of my all time favourites / could pick up a lot of ideas from there...

 

[denizsi]

Indeed, Intestate '76 fucking rocked. None of the newer games (with combat with cars) gave me the thrill that game has. The music was marvelous as well.

A shame that Interstate '82 sucked so bad, especially compared to '76.

There's a recent game titled Hard Truck - Apocalypse, which looks like what you're asking for, but really don't know much about it other than that it's craving to be an RPG.

 

[crufty]

I'm not super interested personally--I76 is still good enough for me!

There's an opensource clone of...Final Fantasy Tactics?? that's written in python that I bet you could munge into a playable demo to test out >gameplay< ideas.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Roadwar 2000 isn't anything like Interstate'76. Roadwar 2000 was all about building up a post apocalyptic road gang and saving the world from a big plague that wiped everything out. Combat was turn based and tactical from an overhead perspective based on the stats of the vehicles themselves.

 

[nikpalj]

Quote:
"Roadwar 2000 isn't anything like Interstate'76. Roadwar 2000 was all about building up a post apocalyptic road gang and saving the world from a big plague that wiped everything out. Combat was turn based and tactical from an overhead perspective based on the stats of the vehicles themselves."

Actually I76 was based directly upon Roadwar 2000, but only the auto combat part, just like it's sister game Mechawarrior 2 also from Activision was on Battletech (they actually share the same designer team and graphics engine).

The designer tried to keep the road gang aspect of the original by implementing an amazing story (you actually get to be a kind of a character in a trashy 70tees era TV series) into the game with some of the greatest writing and voice acting I've ever seen in any game anywhere, right there with the first two Thief games and Planscape Torment... No, really - this stuff is deep, you can't figure this out from reviews.

There's a a lot of strategy involved in configuring your car. You have armour on all four sides of the car (can change the amount of it lb by lb) that stops incoming fire, and special chassy reinforcements that protect the car from various impacts caused by rough driving.

You can choose from 4 various sizes of tires which all affect handling, larger engine sizes give more power but drastically affect handling characteristics...

And don't even get me started on the weapons... flaming weapons bypass all armor and damage car internals directly but you have to get in close and then you can burn your own car... the heavier the weapon the more powerful but it makes the tend to skid more etc.

The favourite of mine regarding strategy is that you can fool the turreted weapon guiding systems by shutting down your engine (you really have to think about this because both you and the opponent are skidding and turning wildly all the time - if you don't use your handbrake to turn around you're basically dead, cause the aI sure does)and hitting the enemies with the back firing weapons in the middle of a wild skidding, 180 degrees turning fight is a sort of an artform and very satysfying when you manage to fry them with larger variants of flamethrowers or cannons...

 

[crufty]

haha. I too have fond memories of loading up the pinto with a massive overpowered engine, no armor, a few lt mgs, and going kamikaze on multiplayer.

I'76 really was all that. It's one of the few games I still own.

Note--I'm not saying the project shouldn't proceed, I didn't find rw2k that interesting either...not my cup o' tea mang! But don't let it hold y'all back. Don't forget to look at car wars, autoduel and Dark Future for tactical inspiration! Dark Future was my favorite of the three.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Actually I76 was based directly upon Roadwar 2000, but only the auto combat part, just like it's sister game Mechawarrior 2 also from Activision was on Battletech (they actually share the same designer team and graphics engine).

I think you're confusing Roadwar 2000 and Auto-Duel or Car Wars. In RW2k, cars didn't have any weapons mounted on them. The people in them had the weapons which were either crossbows or rifles.

 

[LlamaGod]

Kar Warz is better