I'm back (Sort of)

[Yitzi]

So I left the forum and modding project as the job search got to be too much for me, and then once I got a job it took up too much of my time for assembly-level modding to be viable, plus at that point I had moved on to other things.

Now I'm back.  First, the bad news: Assembly-level modding is still not viable for me any more, so I will not be continuing with my patch as such.  However, I am still interested in "Mandate: Build", which can mean one of two things:

1. Hop onto the remaster that afwbkbc recently started, first to build it out and then to add the modding aspects from my patch and other patches, and then to extend them further with some of the modding ideas that we've never gotten to yet.  I am not really comfortable with front-end stuff, but C++ back-end stuff is what I do professionally, so I'm very comfortable with it.  (This does, by the way, assume that the remaster will not attempt to replicate bugs from the original; I have no interest in working on an intentionally buggy project.)

2. I have some ideas for a successor to SMAC* (tentatively titled Alien Sky), and think I have enough to write up a rough outline to be further fleshed out, and then built, by the community.  I definitely want to do this eventually, the question is whether it should be now or after more modding of the original.

So my questions to the community are:
1. Which would you rather I do?  Work on the remaster and building mods on top of that, or get started on a successor?  I'd make this a
2. If you are interested in a successor (or if you'd rather I work on the remaster but want to hedge your bets in case the successor wins): What features characterize SMAC such that any successor worthy of the name should include them as well?  The notable things I have in mind are:
-Certain key story elements.
-Factions divided by ideology rather than nationality (and this will impact on the game in a more fundamental way than in SMAC).

*And, I suppose, SMAX, but it feels like SMAC is tighter in many ways.

[Buster's Uncle]

We're curious about the job, you know, and whatever else you've been up to all these years...

[Yitzi]

Job's as a software engineer, been up to a bunch of stuff, I've never been good with vague questions.

[Buster's Uncle]

Well, you graduated college about the time you left us, yes?  You said you hoped your patch would help you get a job.  Did it?  Did the teaching yourself that kind of decompiling/coding at least since come in handy?

Married yet?  Yitzi Jr. in the works?  Does Mom say she's proud of you?  Like where you live now?

[Trenacker]

Honestly, I think somebody who remade SMAX but with more chassis, payloads, techs, facilities, factions, and voiced quotations would be celebrated.

Whether you'd make money... that's another question entirely.

There's room for Indie games out there, and perhaps even a game with something to say, but I'd have to hear more about your vision before I could comment.

[Sardaukar]

Loved your mod back in the day. Since then, other modders have popped up; hacking away at the exe. Many good things happening! Take a look at Will to Power mod.

[Buster's Uncle]

Hey Yitzi - how do you like the upgrades to the default theme in the root directory?

[Buster's Uncle]

Bumping for tech reasons to test something...

[DrazharLn]

Welcome back! I think you should work on whatever makes you happiest, but I dunno if afwbkbc is accepting contributions at the moment. They seem to be working really rapidly, so it might be a bit tricky right now.

[Yitzi]

Well, you graduated college about the time you left us, yes?  You said you hoped your patch would help you get a job.  Did it?  Did the teaching yourself that kind of decompiling/coding at least since come in handy?

Married yet?  Yitzi Jr. in the works?  Does Mom say she's proud of you?  Like where you live now?

The patch did help get a job, the decompiling has come in handy occasionally, the coding often.  Not married yet, not sure about the others.

Honestly, I think somebody who remade SMAX but with more chassis, payloads, techs, facilities, factions, and voiced quotations would be celebrated.

Whether you'd make money... that's another question entirely.

There's room for Indie games out there, and perhaps even a game with something to say, but I'd have to hear more about your vision before I could comment.

More stuff is something that could be added to a remaster once we have code for it.  As for my vision, there's a fair amount of detail, and a fair amount of flexibility, but a few of the major elements, in rough order of importance. are:
-Like SMACX, a story in which humanity ends up eventually being the heroes and ending, to quote  , a "tragic cycle".
-Like SMACX, factions are divided by ideology rather than nationality.
-A culture system sort of like Civ4 but more powerful and pervasive.  If factions truly are divided by ideology, culture (which, among other things, represents the ability to express your values and ideas) should be really, really, really important, and a major driver of different playstyles between factions.
-Preferring gradual changes over thresholds.  For instance, there's no population limits by hab facilities; instead, the higher your population, the more food it costs per population.
-Like SMACX, highly modular systems.
-A somewhat randomized tech tree with semi-blind research.  (Basically, you decide what to research, but you can end up getting other things as well.)

[Buster's Uncle]

I would counsel you that "Like SMACX" is key.  As Trenacker hints, if you're good enough to make a whole sequel that's good, then make it just different enough to make it your own -heavily-influenced- thing, and make yourself some money.  People have been getting away with the most blatant computer game ripoffs imaginable for as long as I remember - and I remember before Pong.  Just stay in your ethical comfort zone -this is key- and have a -profitable- party.


Me, I'd rather have free SMACX2, but this advice comes from love and respect for Yitzi.

[Buster's Uncle]

I just had an exchange with Solver about this -he works in the industry for Mohawk Games and has been around the gaming scene since puberty- and he agrees about legality.

[sanguinolentum]

I think option 1 would lead to a better 2 if afwbkbc would have you. You'd be able to have community feedback all through the process of 1 that would lend itself to 2. I think there are a lot of features locked into that assembly level programming that are the likely targets for modification. For instance, Thinker's mod has a separate ini to change some of these behind the curtain features. I'm just a player not a programmer though, so i have a very basic understanding of what y'all are even doing. induktio's ai improvements make the ai an actual challenge by making them actually play the game well instead of just giving them bonuses... I think yitzi's knowledge would really lend itself to v0.4 of afwbkbc's project forward. just got on the glsmac discord and noticed you're already talking to each other /nm

[bvanevery]

Yitzi, about your poll, don't kill yourself with $0 open source development anymore.

I'm a lot older than you.  Never married, no kids.  I've become middle aged, poor, living out of my car.  A lot of it from throwing away too much of my so-called career on $0 open source.  Cared for my dog, he made it 17.5 years.  Recently had to euthanize him, still recovering from that.  My younger self would have never believed it was possible to keep floundering so many years later.

You learned a hard lesson about getting too far down in the weeds with your ASM coded patch.  It's not sustainable.  There's a reason I didn't touch a line of code for my own SMACX AI Growth mod, and did only .txt modding.  I have all those ASM coding skills.  I could have continued with your work, or anyone else's ASM work, at any time.  I deliberately chose not to get into any of that, in the name of actually getting things done, that I could sustain. 

And I did do that.  My mod crossed some kind of soft finish line maybe a year ago.  Just kicked version 1.57 out the door yesterday, a very minor tweak after 8 months of inactivity.  It took 5 calendar years to get to that point.  15 full time person months of work spread out over that time.  Probably should bump the count to 16 person months if I do another release someday.

That's the level of labor involved, for what is basically pure game design and playtesting, no coding at all!  And that's not "from scratch" either.  Tthat's refining a game system that was already in ok shape when I started, but had plenty of glaring flaws.  I fixed a lot of it.  I can do no more, without coding.  The point is, just how huge the project is, to do a good job with a 4X game of this scope.  Huge, huge job.

I didn't hold a paying job during this time either.  I had other survival pressures, like caring for my dog as he got very old, that did chew up tons of time.  But I don't think if I had been holding a job, that I could have gotten anything substantial done at all.  When I was younger, like your age, I was never able to.  I'd come home from whatever my job was, exhausted.  The only way I actually made progress on $0 open source stuff, is I deliberately took a seasonal job.  In the off-seasons I'd work on my tech stuff and actually make progress.

Please only work on commercially viable games that can make you money from now on.  And please, learn the difference between working on "backend" down-in-the-weeds stuff, and actually shipping complete games to customers.  Either you have to figure out how to do that yourself, or you have to partner with people who will let you just take the "backend" role.  If you approach solo indie development with a "backend" mentality, you're gonna die.  You aren't going to get anything done that ever matters at all.

If you don't think my warning is enough, you might take a look at Soren Johnson, of Civ IV fame and now Mohawk Games and Old World.  He had an interview about how after he left Firaxis, and tried to do the next thing, that he nearly had a nervous breakdown.  I haven't actually looked at the entire interview because it hits a little too close to home.  He was better and more positioned in his trade than either of us, and still, he got killed by the realities for awhile.  Finally did cough up Mohawk Games and Old World though.  Definitely go learn what happened to the big boys, lest you go repeat it yourself.