Foreign Relations
At some point in 2003 I decided I’d write a web-based game. Partly inspired by GNE, but mostly inspired by too much playing of [some web game I can't remember right now -- it was a turn-based space game with resources and battles and stuff] in college, I’d seen a lot of crappy copycat games pop up, and get popular. I figured I could do better. Now I play a lot of Urban Dead, which I probably can’t do better than.
The basic idea of Foreign Relations is to provide a bit of Risk, Civilization, social networking, all that stuff, while remaining simple and in-browser. No plugins. No fluff. Casual.
I never worked on it. Seriously. It’s 2007 and it’s not even at alpha-quality yet. How sad is that? I’d really like to see it, you know, come to fruition at some point though, and probably the best way to force that is to: a) put it out there, b) get people to try it out, and c) tell me how much it sucks. Brilliant plan, eh? Even if it’s a little old and crufty. Even if a lot of the code embarrasses me. At least get something out there.
So, here we go. Want to try the “alpha”? Sign up here.
Basically this version allows you to sign up, create a nation, buy different military units, communicate with other nations, and attack and defend other nations. Not a whole lot, but this is the framework on which the rest of the good stuff is built. The good stuff being: general obvious improvements to how things like attacking and defending work, make the various choices you make when you create a nation have an effect (economic system, political system, etc), formalized enemies/allies, resources that your nation creates and needs (trade), spying, maybe a United Nations type thing? But the real core of the game that hasn’t been built yet is: a random event that would occur every 2 turns, requiring you to make a decision. And your decision would obviously have consequences.
What am I looking for if you try the game? Mostly, I’m looking for ideas. What kinds of decisions would you like to have to make? What should happen? What should the economic and political choices do? Does attacking/defending work well? What could make it better? Does your nation make money too fast? Too slow? That kind of stuff. Feel free to post your comments here, or in the forums there, or email me. And if you don’t like it at all, tell me that too.
Update: The game that I played in college and couldn’t remember the name of earlier is Planetarion.
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