quote:
Originally posted by Richard:
So if you know any developers 
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I have not written any code since 93, but in a year or so I might develop a new 5th generation strategy game concept which takes advantage of the capabilities of 1Ghz 256 megabyte memory machines. By the time the engines are written that size machine should be in most households. It would use text files like SE IV for all the data so that players could mod it. Back in 92 there was just not the processor speed OR memory to support run time text parsing, but the better machines have changed the landscape as much as going from teletypes and punch cards in the 70s to video monitors changed things back then.
It will be 3d galactic and lower level maps with 32bit coordinates, zoom in to see particular stellar sectors, star systems, planets, and cities, which will have astronomically and geographically correct features. Research trees can be very deep and very broad, generated from seed categories and cost curves by a configuration engine. Abilities, Resources, Rates, Facilities and Components to match will be generated by the same engine using cost, size, and ability curves. So a player could modify the seeds to be shallow and narrow, or as wide and deep as he can stand on his particular machine. Instead of going to a particular level (galactic, sector, system, planet, city) and specifying what task he wants done, the player's job will be managing his AI managers to develop broad strategy rules of his own or to vary the defaults where they are tactically incorrect for the local situation. In other words, he gets to play general/emperor instead of footsoldier the way you must in SE IV and the other current generation games. Economics would be modeled as aggregates at each zoom level based on various factors, with the possibility of localized booms and crashes....
I estimate somewhere in the neighborhood of 50,000 lines of code, same as before but at a higher level of direction. IE what is written will be code to write code, not what actually executes. The generated code would be the engines to parse the text files produced by the configuration engine.......
Edit : I will not even START work on a project like that until I can be sure of 250,000 SALES by the time it is written. Once burned TWICE shy....
[This message has been edited by LCC (edited 01 August 2001).]