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Nexus Clash :: View topic - Fears and thoughts about making a game similar to this one
Posted: Tue Jun 13, 2017 10:56 am Post subject: Fears and thoughts about making a game similar to this one
I am a programmer.
In fact I spent most of my career making web applications
Long time ago, in my student times, I even made a browser game (although it was not really popular nor balanced nor well-designed at all).
I still sometimes dream about making a game again, and my recent return to Nexus Clash re-ignited that flame even more.
So it is quite probable that I will indeed start making a browser game in next few months.
And the problem is: I feel somehow "corrupted" by Nexus War / Nexus Clash universe.
Jorm (and, later, authors of this continuation) made a really good work in "rationalizing" game mechanics as in-game lore.
How to explain periodic game-overs and resets? Breaths.
How to explain that PCs can respawn? Fighting souls.
How to explain that PC morality do matter? Angels, Demons and Elder Powers.
These are just some examples I could think of in first few seconds, I am sure there are more good, tiny design ideas lurking somewhere - and if/when I would make my own game, I would inevitably "borrow" some of them, either consciously or unconsciously. They are just so good.
Which might make my game look (at least at first glance) like a cheap clone or rip-off.
And I don't really know how to avoid it. Stop playing Nexus Clash? That's a quite extreme solution...
So... Is this a real threat, or am I just over-thinking and worrying too much?
I would work on game mechanics before worrying about lore/why things work the way they do through the lens of the game universe.
Games like Urban dead and Quarantine 2019 are both browser games about zombies but Quarantine acually has rounds where a side (humans/zombies) can win before everything is reset while urbandead just goes on forever(correct me if i'm wrong).
I would want to make my setting unique because if your passionate about something then people will be drawn to it (you need a bit of luck as well since the playerbase for these kinds of games is pretty small, but yeah).
Well, the mechanics will be different, no doubt, it is the setting that I am more concerned about - I really like the idea of "Nexus", a constantly changing, kinda chaotic world where places are born and later destroyed, and souls constantly battle and respawn in new bodies. And I would also make it a fantasy setting, with magic and higher powers... do you see where it goes? The more I think about the setting, the more it starts to look familiar... it's like Nexus universe has infected my mind and I cannot get it out of it...
Posted: Tue Jun 13, 2017 3:47 pm Post subject: Re: Fears and thoughts about making a game similar to this o
Here are my tricks:
First, hammer out the general mechanics. And don't be afraid to use placeholder names either.
Once you understand the mechanics, then worry about the flavor behind it. Almost everything we develop in the Nexus follows a mechanics first path when then asks us to explain the flavor behind what we just created. A few exceptions apply, the Fallen class, in particular, is guilty of following a "flavor first" design where the mechanics were built up to fit the desired flavor.
Perhaps the most important thing you can do is surround yourself with people whom you trust that aren't afraid to pitch their own ideas or tell you that you are wrong. A discussion is good when it is driven by reason and explanation and no one person can carry the whole of design. And believe me, one of the hardest things you will have to learn to do is to give up design control and listen to your people when you're told that your idea is not the right way to go. You have to be careful who you let into this inner circle though because one of the worst things you can have is someone who refuses to give up even an inch, and would rather argue over everything until they get their way. If you get someone who thinks that a fair compromise is for you to give up all ground and do everything their way, they're not a good fit for a team.
Badziew wrote:
Well, the mechanics will be different, no doubt, it is the setting that I am more concerned about - I really like the idea of "Nexus", a constantly changing, kinda chaotic world where places are born and later destroyed, and souls constantly battle and respawn in new bodies. And I would also make it a fantasy setting, with magic and higher powers... do you see where it goes? The more I think about the setting, the more it starts to look familiar... it's like Nexus universe has infected my mind and I cannot get it out of it...
So, throwing out an idea. It's a high fantasy setting- think along the lines of your typical D&D campaign setting -but that normal world is inaccessible to the players. That normal world is going on elsewhere and the players are dealing with these great and power entities that are, in a word, bored.
The players themselves are pawns in a larger more complicated and chaotic game played between beings which are not quite gods, but close to it. We're talking eternal beings who have lived so long and amassed so much power than the lives of mere mortals are as insignificant to them as the lives of ants are to us. Let loose upon the world they may lay waste to an entire kingdom entirely by accident. And so, one powerful being- perhaps one of the gods -saw something needed to be done and created these games. Willing souls were thrust into this for various reasons. The knowledge that their sacrifice would protect the world, the promise of power (and the plot to escape with that power), or maybe they were "willing" in the sense that they were offered a choice between this and something less desirable. A sort of immortality is given to all mortals involved (for without the ability to resurrect, the game would end too quickly).
What this does is creates a larger world, a sense of purpose to what is going on, and an excuse for why things can change suddenly. These great powers are fickle, and some of them may even cheat if they think they can get away with it. The world can be changed on a whim or just sort of accidentally devastated as one power isn't paying attention to what they're doing.
In just that short few paragraphs, I just reinvented the system with a different spin on it.
And yeah, there are a lot of elements that can be boiled down to "This is an awful lot like the Nexus" but that's where the challenge becomes making it your own thing. By that, I mean defining your own special spin on everything and make your own mechanics noticeably different while expanding on your own lore to the point where you basically overwhelm those similarities with your own unique take on it. And don't be afraid of the system sounding similar at the start. You're talking about a core system. Keep building on that as you go and eventually the differences will outweigh the similarities. _________________
Posted: Wed Jun 14, 2017 3:39 am Post subject: Re: Fears and thoughts about making a game similar to this o
Teksura wrote:
Perhaps the most important thing you can do is surround yourself with people whom you trust that aren't afraid to pitch their own ideas or tell you that you are wrong. A discussion is good when it is driven by reason and explanation and no one person can carry the whole of design. And believe me, one of the hardest things you will have to learn to do is to give up design control and listen to your people when you're told that your idea is not the right way to go. You have to be careful who you let into this inner circle though because one of the worst things you can have is someone who refuses to give up even an inch, and would rather argue over everything until they get their way. If you get someone who thinks that a fair compromise is for you to give up all ground and do everything their way, they're not a good fit for a team.
This is a really good advice to anyone, and it does not apply only to domain of game development. I will definitely keep that in mind, although I think I am more prone to not releasing control at all than to releasing too much of it
Teksura wrote:
The players themselves are pawns in a larger more complicated and chaotic game played between beings which are not quite gods, but close to it. We're talking eternal beings who have lived so long and amassed so much power than the lives of mere mortals are as insignificant to them as the lives of ants are to us. Let loose upon the world they may lay waste to an entire kingdom entirely by accident. And so, one powerful being- perhaps one of the gods -saw something needed to be done and created these games. Willing souls were thrust into this for various reasons. The knowledge that their sacrifice would protect the world, the promise of power (and the plot to escape with that power), or maybe they were "willing" in the sense that they were offered a choice between this and something less desirable. A sort of immortality is given to all mortals involved (for without the ability to resurrect, the game would end too quickly).
That sounds suspiciously similar to one of my RPG campaigns - although in the campaign the ruling powers were just a bunch of ancient mages, trapped in a world by a "real" greater power and provoked to conflict by a vague promise that the last one standing might, just might, be allowed to leave the world
Posted: Wed Jun 14, 2017 4:27 am Post subject: Re: Fears and thoughts about making a game similar to this o
Badziew wrote:
Teksura wrote:
The players themselves are pawns in a larger more complicated and chaotic game played between beings which are not quite gods, but close to it. We're talking eternal beings who have lived so long and amassed so much power than the lives of mere mortals are as insignificant to them as the lives of ants are to us. Let loose upon the world they may lay waste to an entire kingdom entirely by accident. And so, one powerful being- perhaps one of the gods -saw something needed to be done and created these games. Willing souls were thrust into this for various reasons. The knowledge that their sacrifice would protect the world, the promise of power (and the plot to escape with that power), or maybe they were "willing" in the sense that they were offered a choice between this and something less desirable. A sort of immortality is given to all mortals involved (for without the ability to resurrect, the game would end too quickly).
That sounds suspiciously similar to one of my RPG campaigns - although in the campaign the ruling powers were just a bunch of ancient mages, trapped in a world by a "real" greater power and provoked to conflict by a vague promise that the last one standing might, just might, be allowed to leave the world
It's funny you say that because it was actually a spin on something I used in one of my campaigns. I called it the Serpentine Games. It was basically a way to keep the greater Fey from screwing with the world. And that was actually a spin on a different (not mine) campaign's Kobold Alley, where the whole thing was a sort of ongoing series of games where the winner gets the losers soul to add to their own, which is how the party warlock got his powers.
Which really brings me back to this: Don't be afraid to draw inspiration from other things that already exist. All you really got to do is build upon what you start with and with enough time, it'll be so different it's basically its own thing. Don't worry if it starts off with a lot of elements similar to the Nexus or any other game. Build upon them until you've got enough stuff to basically bury those similarities. _________________
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