Re: [FT] [OT?] Has anyone considered...

On Wed, 06 September 2000, "Barclay, Tom" wrote:

> In short, other than time and money, there isn't any good reason we
can't do
> 3D FT. Of course, time and money are both often good reasons... *grin* 

To do a professional level real time computer game from the ground up
would take in the order of 100,000 person hours, including artists,
musicians, and of course coding and testing. Even if it was turn based,
limited to 2D, and an exact duplicate of the miniatures game, you're
still talking between 5000 and 30,000 people hours. 

That's a big investment for what's essentially a niche product. I'm not
sure how much time it would take using another engine, perhaps 25% of
the original estimate? More? Less? Not sure, but it's substantial.

I wonder how long it took the group to do DBA Online. For those of you
who don't know, DBA is De Bellis Antiquitatis, a very easy to play
ancient miniatures game. It's about the same level of complexity to
learn than FT (the rules are more obtusely written, though, and the game
play is, IMO, more subtle with the various troop interactions). There is
a freeware online version out on the web. You can play it head-to-head
"hot seat" at one computer, you can play for free against the
gamemasters on their server, you can play "broken" games against anyone
for free, or you can pay $10 a month for unlimited access to their game
servers (or $10 for 10 full games over a 6 month period, if you'd
rather). 

The reason I ask is that DBA Online would be a better an analogy for a
Full Thrust game. The game is free, only playing on a server costs
money. The game is well built (but not INCREDIBLY well built; I think
they need to tighten up the code as it does seem unduly slow). Finding
out the magnitude of that project would be interesting, and as I said
the same type of thing could be done for Full Thrust.
 
> ... and I'm sure we've got a purist or two who'll point out that it is
a
> miniatures game.
> 
> But it would be kind of an interesting computer project. The neat
thing is
> you could set it up to run real-time over a network, or turn based
driven by
> email. Then you could actually play PBeMs in a 3D environment using
almost
> familiar commands and weapons. 
> 
> ....Just my daydreaming 0.02.....
> 
> ------------------------------------------
> Thomas R. S. Barclay
> Voice: (613) 722-3232 ext 349
> e-mail: tomb@bitheads.com
> 
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Allan Goodall - agoodall@canada.com
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