FLOSS and the AoS Genre

FLOSS and the AoS Genre

Postby Mumbo-Jumbo » 20 Jun 2013, 16:38

Hi.
As a long time DotA-Player who changed over to Linux not to long ago (using wine atm), i searched over a long time for a FLOSS AoS (this genre was labeled as "Arts" or "Moba" lately, but since both terms were coined by great companys monetizing the gameplay, i will use the term named after the very first map with this gameplay - Aeon of Strife). This turned out to be quite hard:
-I once found a thread in the megaglest-Forum featuring an AoS-like mod. It was howwever early in the development and seemed to be stopped in development.
-ZeroK, based on Spring offers an DotA mod. I didn't make out how to play it yet.
-Engines of War, based on Spring aswell, got the last update in December 2011
-DotC, transferring the gameplay of DotA into an egoshooter (=> beeing fairly far away from what i searched for) and named on the blog here seems to be inactive for 2 years as well.
-The possibility of a mod using 0 a.d. was discussed, and as far as i understand it, the engine would allow to create an AoS.

Other than that, you see mainly people who consider to create a FLOSS-AoS, but nobody seems to "make" it. The causes i can imagine for this:
-You need a more or less big playerbase for an AoS - for normal they are played 5v5(+2 bots), and many FLOSS-RTS-Games that support so many players online have either technical restrictions or a too small playerbase.
-Great Concurrence, as the market was flooded with F2P-AoS-Games.
-Great effort since you need to balance many elements.
-Correct my if i'm wrong: In comparsion, the genre seems to be rather unpopular amongst the Free-Software-Fans: Nearly all predecessors were mods for Proprietary RTS-Games without Linux support (while especially the grand Arena-Shooters did at least run under Linux - and since Quake even made their source public, we have many FLOSS Arena-Shooters).
-Need of some sort of (server) infrastructure

On the other side, many aspects of the AoS-Genre fit to aspects of FLOSS:
-As many FLOSS-Projects, AoS-Games tend to be never finished. It is a livelong process of polishing and extending the gameplay (in both cases, this is a thing i actually like).
-Very small changes have great effects, making the AoS-Genre a good target for Forks and Mods (to example: Gameplay, Gamelength, and avaible Strategys change with the nerfing or bufing of some values from version to version of DotA).
-A good part of the community is traditionally used to play the game as a mod.
-Traditionally, AoS players take part of the creative process of creation - many contents in DotA were suggested by the players. This "culture" fits the way of participation at FLOSS-Projects.

While i would love to create a FLOSS-AoS, i have to admit that i have neither the time (beeing a student in the area of pedagogy atm) and - more important - nor the skill (i even failed at my trials to create small 2d games using SDL until now) to create or even participate much in a project as complex as this would be, mainly at the very basic things (fitting an engine to the needs of an AoS-Game - graphic and networkwise, creating 3d or good 2d graphics that are imho a must in this area, and adding features such as items to an engine). Easy scripting stuff, balancement, and to some degree content creation are things that i could imagine me to do-
are there other people interested in the genre arround?
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Re: FLOSS and the AoS Genre

Postby Julius » 21 Jun 2013, 15:00

To make it short:
- I agree that the genre would have fit to a FLOSS development approach well, but in this case we are really late in the "game" and there is no way a FLOSS version would ever gain real popularity compared to LoL, HoN, or Dota2. Back in the Warcraft3 days a FLOSS version could have probably been quite successful and would continue to do so today.
- It would also not get any popularity because in my experience the community around those games is by far the worst imaginable, dissing anything that is not exactly their preferred game
- No developer in their right mind would torture himself developing a game with such an audience unless he gets paid for that well.

Sorry for ranting in the last two points.

P.S.: Moba type games suck :p

P.P.S.: There are however a few ideas from that genre that could fertilize other game designs (like team based FPS).
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Re: FLOSS and the AoS Genre

Postby Julius » 21 Jun 2013, 19:56

To clarify my last remark:
I think something like this
http://youtu.be/FiBout6BTnA
mixed with healthy dose of Savage2 could be a great FOSS game ;)
Edit: And it would have the advantage to regular MOBA that it could be played on an Android or a console (e.g. without a mouse).
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Re: FLOSS and the AoS Genre

Postby Mumbo-Jumbo » 22 Jun 2013, 14:01

Julius {l Wrote}:To make it short:
- I agree that the genre would have fit to a FLOSS development approach well, but in this case we are really late in the "game" and there is no way a FLOSS version would ever gain real popularity compared to LoL, HoN, or Dota2. Back in the Warcraft3 days a FLOSS version could have probably been quite successful and would continue to do so today.


Since (the real) DotA is kind off dying atm and there is not a real postprocessor, i could imagine getting some people to play a floss-aos.

- It would also not get any popularity because in my experience the community around those games is by far the worst imaginable, dissing anything that is not exactly their preferred game


It is true to some degree that AoS-Communitys got more assholes then most other genres-
on the other hand, most AoS-Games got bigger Communitys then the most games of other genres, leaving enuff people who are mature.

- No developer in their right mind would torture himself developing a game with such an audience unless he gets paid for that well.


Given that there were many developers that did AoS-Games for wc3 without any payment, i hope you are wrong.

Sorry for ranting in the last two points.


NP.

P.S.: Moba type games suck :p


What is your problem with quake III or warsow? (Both are multiplayer online battle arenas)
Basically i wanted to talk about AoS-Games :p

@the second post;
AoS-Gaming on an Android? I don't like the idea. Also i don't think the game would have a chance by watering the gameplay down (DotA2, LoL, and HoN all did this by making gameplay more easy)-
a niche that could be filled would be a real core-AoS - this isn't done till now since it is harder to monetize a game that 95% of possible players are to dumb for.
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