1) Be totally open - Ive ranted about it before and Im going to do it again: nature abhors a vacuum and game development is exactly the same. We all know what any new chapter or remake in the Outpost Universe should be like, the trouble is the details. Nobody in this community (past or present) is a professional game developer and thus no person or group has all the assets necessary to create good game content. The only way this can be overcome is with lots of input. More thoughts, ideas and concepts being thrown into the pot, stirred around, reshaped and molded to provide the necessary creativity. None of us has the ability to summon our creativity on-demand and temper it with the wisdom that can only come from experience. Letting the community build the knowledge base and let the developers know what people are looking for is very necessary. It helps guide development, promotes new features and ideas and lets those in charge know when they've made a bad call. Pretending to be 'Mr. Video Game CEO" is all well and good if you can back it up with substance, but nobody here can. Therefore, we have to take on the challenge as a team - all of us, the entire community. Locking a project down while expecting community support dooms it immediately. Theres nothing anyone can do to get around that, its just how things are. Get over it and get on the right track.
2) Be professional - I dont mean the pretend kind like some of us are used to seeing; I mean REAL professionalism. Know when to cut your losses, when to drop an aspect of dev for something more vital. Never push your own ideas or agendas through at the expense of others. Dont promote yourself. This is a community and your game lives because of it. Respect that fact and never forget it. OPU is your lifeblood and the community as a whole will make it live or die. All game content is to be professional quality. If you dont know how to make it that good - learn. If it doesnt look up to par, admit it. Dont release your content if you arent sure its the highest quality possible. Take criticism and work with it. Invite criticism. Embrace it. Learn to love it. Think of it as a cure for sloppiness or oversight. One day your critics could be the ones touting your work so treat them well.
3) Have a robust game engine - We want to see dust dancing across the terrain; boulders, rocks and pebbles; normal mapping, bump mapping, shaders 2.0, DX9! We want to zoom in to see the rear-view mirrors on a convec and zoom out to planet-view! We want an advanced game economy, not more chassis named after cats. If youre going to make it with anything less, let it be known. If you insist upon using a "game-in-a-box" engine (think Ogre, Spring, or Garage Games), the benefits and feautres must outweigh the serious offense of using such an engine. Yes, it is an offense. Using someone else's watered-down code is lazy and limits the possibilities of the game. Come to terms with that and accept it. Know that if you must go that route, the engine must be superb. There are acceptible options out there, so dont be lazy and settle on whatever comes op on Google first.
4) Not rip off ideas from other games, movies or shows - Outpost 1 and 2 have more than enough material for any sequel or remake and if those arent enough, a direction for new content can be easily seen by simply paying attention to the ideas and intention of the original developers. Its obvious the colonists in OP2 are not anything close to anyone in Star Trek. Theyre just highly educated people using technology inspired by NASA designs. Follow the f***ing story. Pay attention to it. Theyre not on Corouscant. Theyre not Terrans. Theyre colonists fighting to survive themselves. The story is about how no matter what happens, the ultimate threat to humanity is human nature. Run with that concept. Evolve it. Dont add an alien race just because you cant write a decent story. It only embarasses yourself. The blight is the closest thing to alien in the series but if you insist on having aliens, make it fit! Dont have the new Starship pull up to a Hive ship launching missiles, ffs! Any alien human beings are likely to meet will be unintelligent, statistically they would be bacterial or possibly plant and most and even rarer would be simple animals like insects or fish. Face it, the colonists are never going to meet E.T. so get over it and right a damn story.
5) Have no stupid ideas - ... And a rigid system to prevent them from making it into a dev cycle. Yeah its really easy to add another chassis named after a cat to hide the fact that you dont know how to model or code, but its just not good for the project or your reputation. The colonists will never have walkers. The arachnids are the most they will ever have, and they were only created because they can navigate rough terrain better and have swarm tactics. The colonists are fighting a pivotal war with few people, they wouldnt expend the resources to build towering war machines when they could spend pennies to let simple computers drive small, fast, all-terrain legged robots. I clearly see arachnids being phased out in a sequel since they fit a very specific niche on New Terra, so they likely wouldnt even appear in an OP3. Thats practicality. Understand it. Learn the difference between games, real life, whats fun and whats practical and the knowledge to differentiate between them. Dont go for all realism by requiring convecs to get repairs after a certain amount of use but dont go for all fun by giving Plymouth nukes or blight warheads. Most people dont see that the actual realism is that people always go with the simplest solution for the least resources, both in terms of effort and materials. That can be tempered with practicality and reason: would it be fair to have that in the game? Would it fit with the story to have it in the game? Having something fit in the story doesnt mean "The blight is in the story, therefore bligh warheads fit, so its okay." Sorry, thats not true at all. It has to follow the flow and direction of the story. Plymouth doesnt fight that way. Thats their position. Thats what they are. If plymouth suddenly changed ideals to be closer to Eden, then youve defeated the purpose of having two factions entirely. The story and the game prove Plymouth doesnt fight that way. They could have easily fitted their missiles with explosives, but chose non-lethal EMP blast instead. So think about weapons and features that follow that line of thought.
6) Be totally free of charge - Youre getting free development help and advice, so it damn well better be free. Having an entire community pour their thoughts into a game only to have it sold back to them under someone else's name is bulls***. Nobody in this community should be making money off such a project unless it is returned to OPU. If money is required, then the proceeds should go toward supporting OPU by paying for hosting, servers or other features. Youre never going to be a millionaire and you cant have you cake and eat it too by using your favorite game to be one. Get over it. Suck it up. If you wont make an OP game for the sheer pleasure of doing so, you shouldnt be doing it in the first place. If you need to license something or pay some sort of legal fee, do it yourself. If someone stood up and madea pro-quality OP game and paid for the entire thing on their own, they would be regarded as a god at OPU. That should be the goal of anyone hoping to make an OP game and if it isnt, stop dreaming now.
7) Not use community or OPU resources - If you need a server for some reason, fine. Use what is currently allotted. If thats not enough, step up and pay for it yourself. Yeah I know its nice to get a dedicated server under the guise of OP3 development, but its bulls***. If the community as a whole has a part in making the game then it has a natural right to its own forum section, but if you and a lackey decide to make Outpost - Pinball, host it on your subdomain or buy hosting. If you want a chat channel, fine. Thats your right, but having anything more than an admin, coding and general/lobby channel is stupid. If you need to create a new channel every week just to keep gossip a secret, youre doing something wrong and need to re-evaluate your motives, your team members and the project as a whole. If its just an excuse to gain clout and talk s*** about people, you dont deserve to be working on an OP project. In fact, you dont even deserve to be at OPU. If you need to talk to someone (or about someone) do it in a PM. Dont be noob and create a "Super-secret leet-only channel" just to make yourself feel important. If you wanna be an op, suck it up and show the admins youre op material. If you need higher rank just to feel better about yourself you should probably push your chair back, hit the power button and go make some friends.
8 ) Respect the community and the project - You arent Mr. Wizard. You arent Donald Trump. Stop pretending and get real. Youre some kid in his room who wants to make a video game. Come to terms with it and accept who you are and where youre coming from. Understand that for the most part, the rest of OPU is in the same boat. Respect the community and dont treat us like s***. This goes hand in hand with points 1, 2 and 5. You need us. We dont need you. If you decide to be a dick and act like "Mr. CEO of OPU" your support and project will shrivel and die. If youre a good modeler, sweet. Make some models and stop sucking c*ck. If you can code like burning, kickass. Get to work and stop talking. If you just have an opinion but cant really do anything else, make it heard and take it with a grain of salt that people probably dont give a s*** (For example, I doubt anyone has read this far. I fully accepted that fact when I began writing) and will most likely call you a dick simply for disagreeing with them. Dont flame to get back at them. If theyre pissed off enough to think youre a dick, they probably just want to kick your ass for showing them how stupid they are. Think of it as a public service, but dont be a jackass. Be productive and tactful as the situation demands. If you cant respect your project enough to continue working on it, you might as well give up before starting. Spitting out pages and pages of concepts without any forward motion (sketches, diagrams, development of any kind) is useless and just makes you look stupid. Eventually people will stop listening to what youre say until anything said after your nickname reads as "woot woot woot woot woot woot." Trying not to be noob is the most noob anyone can be.
9) Follow the story - Ive gone over this before, but it needs to be said until everyone understands. Outpost has never been comparable to games like Starcraft or CnC except in the fact that they share the same game genre. Outpost 2 is split on simulation and combat, with a stress on simulation. Most of the work involved in playing OP2 is in running your colony, not in charging up your queue with a dozen lynx and waiting for them to crank out. The story reflects this. The events in the OP2 affect gameplay and the same should hold true for any remake or sequel. Dont suddenly make it so you just build a power plant and factory and go kick ass. The game wouldnt be fun if it were like that and none of us would be here talking about OP2. The game is a colony simulation with some combat. The object is to use what little you have to defend yourself with to its maximum potential through cunning and strategy. The types of units and their features should reflect this. So should the story. Nobody is going to play a "reimagined" version of OP2 or OP1. If your wet dream is to combine the matrix with OP2, you should throw away your computer and never speak of making video games ever again. The story is clear and there for you to work with, so use it! Would the colonists suddenly change if they land on a new planet? Would they stay the same? Would something new brew to divide them? Would a new threat arrive? Do the options follow in the vein of the novella? Place the last paragraph of the novella next to the first paragraph of your story. If it is noticable that youre looking at two seperate stories, you need to go back to the drawing board. Would LOTR: The Two Towers be any good if the book or movie picked up with Frodo and Sam deciding to head off to a nudist commune? Hell no. The fact is, taking leaps and bounds with the story is bad. Its bad writing and its a symptom of the inexperienced. Plot/story developments are subtle. Changes are subtle. Events can be huge if you like, but the way people change or develop in response should always be subtle. Think about this: if the sequence in Aliens where Ripley is found by a salvage team was cut from the movie so that shes just sitting in a hospital at the beginning, would the story make as much sense? Would it be as acceptible as it was? No. Just adding a bit more connective tissue between the novellas can make all the difference. Make that effort.
Thats my meandering treatise on making games in the Outpost universe.
EDIT (leeor_net): fixing list number for 8
