Ideas Sketchbook 1

Friend of mine suggested doing this to add Blog content, just kinda throw out ideas I've had/are working on as side projects. I mean, a fair bit of them are underdeveloped, but if anybody expresses interest I could go on about them.

Some of them, like the one I'm gonna be talking about in a second, I'm already doing things with. A lot of them are briefly 'sketched' ideas that only have a couple of interesting concepts and/or I don't intend to really do anything with them if nobody expresses an interest. It would be great if anybody who read these and thought 'wow that's awesome' or 'wow, that' fucking terrible' would sound off, since it's hard to gauge fan reaction to ideas sometimes.

That said, I'm going to take a second to talk about Binary Warfare.

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Binary Warfare is a tactics game I had an idea for about two years ago. Sadly, nothing really came of the project, but recently I've had a chance to talk with a few friends and am seriously considering a reboot.

I had some 'cool' ideas regarding multiple interconnected battlefields in a wargame setting after a friend of mine told me about a game called 'Dystopia'. Eventually I had some crazy plans, cooked up some examples and had a solid idea for how I wanted the final game to look.

Quick, easy to understand costs/builds/armies made it fun to work with, and it taught me a lot about game design, especially in terms of what goes into publishing rulebooks/minis and publicizing the game. Unfortunately, it had some major problems in the way:

1. I had no idea what I was doing.
2. Rules for territory creation/modding were something I literally couldn't wrap my head around. A problem when that's literally half the game.
3. Differing/Multiple objectives and game types were hard to implement.
4. Different factions meant having to design/print/ship six different types of people in hopes of illusive sales.
5. Absolutely no sculpting skills.
6. No way of creating minis that wouldn't leave me horribly in debt.
7. Balance requires playtesters I didn't have.
8. Math had passed fun and acceptable levels, and was approaching 'accountants only' territory.
9. No real publicity.
10. No real talent.
11. No artists. At all.
12. No money.
13. No time, because of work.
14. I was completely clueless as to any of the above factors before jumping into it.

So in short, the entire project was a house of cards.

If the cards were also soaked in gasoline, and played by a campfire.

In gale-force winds.

Actually taking a second to be honest with myself, it's shocking it didn't go cataclysmically wrong faster. 

Now I've managed to solve most of those problems either directly or indirectly. The big one being that turn based strategy games are relatively easy to design/program helps a lot, as does the fact that I know people who I can ask for help/advice as the project continues.

Unfortunately, this is probably gonna have to wait until after I finish work on Armored, because I need the money/rep-boost from that before I can really move into video games.

Which suits me fine. I like having a huge project in the back to chip at when I'm bored and give me a vague semblance of a long term goal to work towards.

As a side note, I would seriously consider any sort of requests for elaboration and/or op-ed pieces for future updates. Just feel free to ask whatever in the comments section.