Fort Wars II

[BlueBerryWizard]

Amongst your people there will naturally arise many superstitious beliefs as peasants attribute various happenings in their life to otherworldly entities. Religion is a very important factor in maintaining the overall happiness of your populace and can be encouraged by formalizing it, creating buildings or sacred sites which serve as its institutions and creating special roles for its most staunch adherents (training priests, though you may give them any title you so desire such as shaman, spirit guide, or whatever else). As your population grows and their belief grows stronger you will have the funds to invest in various religious activities more such as festivals and even establish a hierarchy (e.g. cardinals → bishops → priests).

The rituals and customs which are established can very considerably and include some things which may be problematic or quite convenient depending how you like to rule your people e.g. taboos on certain foods, sacrifices both of livestock and humans, making offerings at temples, and so on. What happens during the game influences the development of these beliefs, for example a peasant who gets sick from food poisoning from fish may not want to eat fish again and he may influence others (especially his own offspring but his influence may extend more and more to others especially if he has a special role in your society) thus forming a taboo on fish. You yourself might bring about ritual sacrifices after a war when you decree that your slaves/prisoners are to be dealt away with and some special religious meaning is put on it.

Overall religion helps make your population more content because it helps them with deal their harsh existence better. One can redirect the blame for when things go bad to supernatural forces, people may fight more bravely in battle, etc.. However there is an opposing force to consider; as the influence of religion grows your people become more set in their ways and your monarchy is less able to oppose 'The Church' (exact name can be anything here).

If you decide to change alliances, abolish religious practices, or just be a massive jerk and oppress your peasants they will get really pissed off. If you want you can oppress them very hard from the start. Your people will be very depressed, some of them may commit suicide at random, others might take to drinking, and attempts at starting revolts will be constant. You can establish a police state by keeping guards on patrol all over heavily populated areas and making visits to farmers to see they aren't rebelling either and to collect taxes.

No matter how much you might pay your guards though you have to always prevent a mass breakdown of your society to prevent a full scale rebellion or separatist movement. If things get really bad you'll have to impose martial law and kill a lot of your peasants. They have emotions though and won't forget the things you've done or be happy about this. Your own armed men may defect and children whose parents have been slaughtered will grow up to resent your regime and hate your monarch. These will be the ones who are very likely to dissent as adults later on.

Monarchs do have a limited lifespan though and you can appoint a new ruler. Your exact form of government can vary depending on your rules but generally you will have the offspring of your king & queen inherent the power, this being for many reasons. It doesn't even have to be a monarchy and can be like a kind of senate or various other forms of government. How you and your fellow allies rule with you is up to you but remember that you always must maintain control.

Players can sabotage enemies and promote revolutions amongst them by burning their fields, raiding them, killing them, stealing from them, sending in assassins to kill leaders, laying siege to their forts and waging a war of attrition waiting for their supplies to run out. Of course you could be attacked by one of their allies or they may be desperate and come out at night and kill your men in their tents. That said, depending on how skilled of a propagandist your enemy is instead of creating a revolution as you intended his people may turn their hate towards yours and you may have made a once passive enemy ravenous to destroy you.

There are many ways to wage war, grow in power, and spread your influence across the land. When you have conquered everyone the game isn't over either. Peoples who have been assimilated under your dominion do not necessarily give up their old ways completely. Even another player who you think is an ally may decide to turn on you, breaking away an entire region from your kingdom and declaring war or quietly plotting to overthrow you, maybe organizing a resistance in the countryside, who knows.

Unlike games such as Civilization there won't be any upgrades or anything like that. Rather the progression from a small tribe to a city-state will be natural, though it will be likely impeded by constant warring, disease outbreaks, and other chaos. The game will be fast paced however due to the sheer complexity and potential to continuously expand as well as to lose ground it will also be never ending.

The only way a player can be forced to have to start all over again is for every last one of his people to be vanquished and their influence to be wiped out too. If even one of his peasants survives amongst yours or in hiding he can still continue to play and his peasant may reproduce and slowly rebuild the tribe. There is something of a critical threshold you don't want to fall under though in terms of surviving peasants. He can still lose if his influence is brought down to nil aka he never converts anyone, he never has offspring, he has offspring but they are too integrated into your society and thus not loyal to him, his wife leaves him or dies, etc. You don't have to vanquish your enemies though. As king you may be merciful and let his people live under you as subjects or even just leave them be on the outskirts or something. You could enslave his people making them into an underclass and forcing them to work for you. It's up to you and your allies how you play.

Now we wouldn't want players to have to restart all over again the next time they play the game so there will be a save/load system which allows you to transfer over some of the important stuff between games. When the new game starts not everything will be the same but it will take into account things from the previous game. Every player will get a chance to load their tribe or make a new one, then the average of the overall resources from the last game(s) + taking into account the size of the players tribes will effect the quantities of natural resources randomly generated on the map.

The player may have a lot of tents, wagons, skilled peasants, and other things from their previous game which will allow them to set up their new settlement/fort quickly. They won't be able to transfer over everything but all the important stuff they can. Thus it is possible for players to progress from game to game without messing up things too much for the new players either (or vice versa). I do consider however that a player might just build himself a great empire than load that one over & over each game and discard ones that don't do well. I intend for this to not be possible because I want players to be careful not to "derank" if you will; if he is slaughtered he may have very little left to load the next game such that he may decide to just start again from scratch unless perhaps the player has developed a special attachment to his virtual peasantry and wants to start his next game off with them even though they might be worse off than if began anew.

 

[BlueBerryWizard]

I have a lot of other texts from various previous incarnations of Fort Wars as well as artwork and other things. I'll some of the texts here too and more artwork on request.

Project FW

Genre: RTS/FPS
Defining features: Dynamic flora & fauna, extreme levels of customization, genetics, physics based combat, intelligent AI, and a focus on survival, resources, building, and the establishment of settlements.
Game Engine: Unity3D
Platform(s): PC
Multiplayer: Yes. Not intended for singleplayer at all.
Started: ‎January-‎29-‎2011, ‏‎11:29:31 PM

Starting
Players would start by creating a characters genome. Most physical and mental phenotypes could be selected for, and these will determine the behaviour, appearance, and physical capabilities of their character. Clothing, hairstyle, fitness levels, and other environmentally-determined variables would be developed as they play. They then can view the map of the world. This shows the territories, if any, of pre-existing players’ clans/tribes/nations (whatever they wish to call it) as well as uncontrolled wilderness area. If there is any wilderness area, you are to select a spot anywhere you’d like in that area to spawn. It would then spawn you smartly in the general vicinity of your selected location. If there is no uncontrolled territory to be found or you wish to join into a pre-existing establishment, you can assume control of a civilian that is currently under AI control. If another player owns that character, and they have more than one character which they own, a request will be sent to the owning player to give ownership to you. Players can release ownership of extra characters they have to the AI or mark them to be up for grabs to make this process quicker.

Maps
The world map is not to function as a radar that you can abuse to spawn yourself in occupied zones to act as a double agent for your clan. It will not show you the exact locations of every human, animal, building, etc. on the map when starting off. To know of these things, you must make or otherwise obtain* a map ingame, then mark things down on it. You would not be able to view your map unless you actually had it on hand. A map will not update itself without someone making edits to it and it could become inaccurate as landmarks change due to war, migration, etc. Besides actually visiting an area, your character could gain knowledge of these things by talking with other characters and by comparing maps. Maps can be destroyed. ProTip: Keep extra copies of maps somewhere safe.

*You can copy or obtain a map from a friend with whatever marking are on it already there. If you’re making a copy, you will need the right materials, tools, etc. to make a new one.

Setting
The climate would be temperate and most of the land would consist of a forest ecology similar to the Mixedwood Plains ecozone (located primarily in Ontario). Players would start off no better equipped than prehistoric man but would probably be able to advance to a level of technology seen during the Roman Empire or the Medieval Ages. There would be no real restrictions on what they can make so long as the raw materials exist to create it. The terrain, forests, etc. would be procedurally generated.

Craftsmanship
Players would make use of an editor to design everything out of materials available to them in their world such as wood, stones, and animal parts. When a blueprint is designed, the object it makes can be used in other blueprints. For example, you may start by creating a wooden plank out of a log. Assuming you already have a tool with which to cut wood, you would use that wooden plank blueprint to make your character cut a log into planks. Really simple blueprints like these would have no physical basis and would be stored as a part of your characters knowledge, which can be shared with anyone else in the game world. The only way to lose such designs would be for your to be killed, but it probably wouldn’t matter all that much, as it wouldn’t be unreasonable to think your next character would have similar knowledge (assuming you’re taking control over a pre-existing one and not making a totally new one). Much more complex things like buildings would require an actual blueprint; otherwise the knowledge of its design would be lost as soon as you’ve finished constructing said building. Everything, including clothing, tools, walls, weapons, and meals would be designed by players. How effective their designs are would depend on physics, the skill of the craftsman in making it, the quality of the materials used, and other variables.

Gameplay
Players would have to manage a variety of needs of their characters much like you would a Sim. Their main concerns however would be not starving to death, finding a mate, and avoiding conflict with hostiles. You’ll be able to make fires, forage, hunt, and cook. If you harvest seeds and clear & plough some land, you’d be able to develop agriculture. Through inter-marriage and agreements to formally ally each other, you form a clan. Ownership over territory forms based on where you erect buildings and what areas you gather resources from. Once your group is quarrying stones you guys could build fortresses. As your groups population grows and you succeed in controlling a larger area you can form a system of government and economics thus becoming a nation. If players ever manage to defeat all their rivals and effectively become rulers of all the land, their main concerns then become sustainably managing their resources, quashing rebellions, plagues, famines, bad weather, extinctions, etc. If on the other hand everyone dies, the world goes into a time-lapse where vegetation rapidly reclaims land, domestic animals become wild again, once thought extinct animals migrate back into the region, buildings crumble, and nature basically sets everything back to how it was. Then people may once again repopulate the world, reclaiming old relics and forging new alliances.

Combat
Fighting would involve actual physics and players could sustain all kinds of injuries fighting. It would be possible to be badly maimed and bleeding to death but still crawl along the ground if you can remain conscious. Some injuries could be mended but most of the time it’ll be fatal and the best course of action may be for an ally to put you out of your misery. When you die you assume control of a surviving character and can continue fighting or doing whatever else you’d like. In general, early on in the game or whenever your clans’ population is low, it’s best for you all to focus on surviving rather than conquest. If you’ve got more mouths than you can feed or are suffering supply shortages, it’s time for war. Not all fights must necessarily be fatal. It would be quite possible for you to have fencing duels, archery competitions, boxing matches, hunting expeditions, etc. with other players. Fighting in this manner would make your character stronger. It would also make him/her more competent at fighting under AI control.

Update: ‎‎February-‎06-‎2011, ‏‎4:27:49 AM
We should consider a third person perspective instead of first person. Seems like a better fit, even though it might be hard to work out in cramped, enclosed areas.

Update: ‎February-‎06-‎11, 7:36:00 PM
This is a list of what needs to get done in what approximate order:
1. We need terrain which we can modify ingame to create earthworks, tunnels, trenches, etc.
2. We need a sky, clouds, weather, and seasons.
3. We need to generate trees, grass, and water.
4. We need to make some human male & female and make them able to walk around using the locomotion system.
5. We need a variety of animals.
6. We need to make it so our guys have physical requirements such as the need for food, water, etc.
7. We need a user interface.
8. We need some placeholder weapons to test out.
9. More interaction with the environment.
10. Around now we should have our first release / beta test.
11. Work on being able to build things.

I know there's an old Warcraft III thread for Fort Wars (the original) somewhere but I can't seem to find it. I also have plenty more write ups and other stuff but I don't know where it is and think it's probably on an older computer. I have been working on various versions of this project for years at different times.

 

[Rispetto]

Very impressive.
I'd like to see how this all turns out.
You mention Unity3D, but I thought you wanted it to be a StarCraft II mod?

 

[BlueBerryWizard]

That second post is just an older document I thought I'd include here. I'd be making this in SCII if I can get the models I need and so on.