Games

We here at cybergoon.com are into games. All kinds of games, as long as the gameplay is good. We hate doom clones and highly-hyped 'marketing-driven' games. We like games with good gameplay, graphics are secondary. We still play games like Total Annihilation. We believe in the Scratchware Manifesto. We are working to create new and innovative games, if you are interested in helping or hearing more, drop us an email

News

7-21-07
A little game demo I wrote. Check out the wiki page here.

12-13-05
After playing city of heroes and world of warcraft, I got to thinking about what would be the 'ideal' MMORPG. Ideally, it would be distributed, so the players would share the costs of running the system, and people don't have to pay to play. Users would also be able to add their own content and possibly 'primitives' to the game. More to come on this topic.

09-01-05
An article on how bad the games industry has gotten, and why we need better gameplay, not graphics. Found on slashdot

05-08-05
Gurps stuff

11-22-04
With the release of the RTS kit for the Torque engine, I have decided to put the space strategy game on hold for a bit and examine the ins and outs of the torque engine with this new kit. Please submit ideas for what you would like to see in an RTS game to the forums!!

07-19-04
Aaarrrghhh!! I'm addicted to City of Heroes, also known by some as the 'level up treadmill', very aptly named, yet very addictive, still can't shake it, ask me again in a couple of weeks.

Duke Nukem Forever status: Not done yet.

04-24-04
Posted some Risk Variants, that we've been working on.

03-27-04
The gang is getting back into RPG'ing, mostly GURPS, supers (under protest by lictor) run by me (zog) & horror run by brian. Characters, adventures, history to be posted...

12-01-03
I posted a couple Game Reviews in the Reviews section on Medieval Total War, and C&C Generals

7-29-03
The Results of the 2003 Cybergoon warhammer tournament have been posted. My vampire counts got mauled, all because I decided to "try something new". A lot of fun though!

7-22-03
Added some campaign specific rules

7-19-03
Simplified the campaign rules.

7-16-03
Separated out the warhammer rules into their own page

7-01-03
Added mordheim house rules to the warhammer section.

7-01-03
Added a couple more battles to the warpstone campaign. We are still not in 'campaign mode', we are just playing battles and making up stories to go around them.

6-19-03
Added more campaign rules to the warpstone campaigns in the warhammer section.

5-25-03
The gang has been starting to get back into the new Warhammer Fantasy. The rules are a lot better. We've decided to start a little campaign! You can check it out here: The Warpstone Campaigns

8-06-02
I've been playing america's army recently. It's pretty cool (very realistic). Some links are on my homepage, below is a listing of hand & whisper gestures (found on the forums)

Here they are. Print it and have it close while playing. Live and learn these. The more people that do, the better our gameplay will be. It's my hope anyway. G01 is Gee-Zero-One.

There are Whispered team only (first time you hit G or if you hit G0) and Hand (second time you hit G) Signals. Play with it to learn more. 

Whispered Message
G1 MOVE OUT
G2 STOP
G3 ENEMY DOWN
G4 ENEMY CONTACT
G5 OBSERVING FIRE
G6 GRENADE
G7 SNIPER
G8 ROGER
G9 NEGATIVE
G01 READY
G02 COVER ME
G03 HOOAH
G04 TO THE LEFT
G05 TO THE RIGHT
G06 TO THE NORTH
G07 TO THE SOUTH
G08 TO THE EAST
G09 TO THE WEST

Hand Signals (The second time you hit G)
G1 MOVE OUT
G2 STOP
G3 GET DOWN
G4 LOOK THIS WAY
G5 READY
G6 DOUBLE TIME
G8 AFFIRMATIVE
G9 NEGATIVE

I'll be practicing using these. I feel they will be very helpfull. G5G07 would say "Sniper to the south".

Bad side of these is that there isn't ehough. I'd like to say, "I'm going in. Cover Me" or give an order to toss a Smoke Grenade (or regular one).

Also, it'd be better if it made more sense. Tribes 2 had a great way. VRG made sense because V would bring up the communications, R was repair, G was Generator. VDG was Defend the Generator. VAE = Attack Enemy.

Sooner or later we'd all learn what G5G07 means.

Good luck and hope it help

7-30-02
After writing a review about Warcraft 3, I decided to write this blurb about what MY IDEAL RTS game would be. First off, let me start by saying that Total Annihilation with uberhack and the yankspanker's demo recorder comes pretty darn close. Being able to queue any amount of just about anything, and build "lines" of just about any structure (creating walls very easily) are two of the features that no other game (that I've seen) has, which TA/UH/DR implements flawlessly. You can also "auto-group" units build from the same building. For example, I build an advanced air which build ONLY bombers, give that building the #6, then all bombers built from it can be selected by the #6. When it came out, TA was way ahead of its time, but since then, I have not seen any improvements in this direction. I attribute it to the commercialization of the gaming industry combined with the economic slowdown. Larger game companies are less willing to take risks and stay with the "tried and true" formulas in starcraft, and now Warcraft 3.

Features that are missing:

  1. The ability to create as many groups as desired, and assign symbolic names to them
  2. The ability to create "group types" and build these types (identifiers should be assigned automatically).
  3. The ability to give complex command sequences, and save and recall these command sequences. For example:
    • Advance to waypoint X, staying in formation
    • Hold waypoint X, repairing yourself with your assigned support unit as necessary
    • If you incur more than 20% casualties, retreat to waypoint Y and signal me.
    I might call this command sequence "take and hold 1", and when I tell a unit to perform this action, I would specify the coordinates of waypoints X and Y, in effect "parameterizing" this command sequence.

In short, my ideal game would not require a player at all! If someone was really good, he/she could create a series of build/movement/whatever scripts, and chain them all together with conditional clauses, then when the game started, he would just issue a single command. Of course, the game should be complex enough to make this very difficult (or effectively impossible) to happen. These features, although simply stated, may be very complex to implement, but I don't think it would be too bad. All these FPS games come with their own built-in scripting language, why can't RTS games have one? Throw a reasonable GUI on top of it so the non-programmers can create the scripts as well, and voila, a totally new genre, possibly bordering on simulation rather than game, but who's counting? If something like this is not around soon, I just might take it upon myself to do it, a good starting point is freecraft, a free RTS engine.

Of course, these enhancements may limit the audience that would appreciate the game to the more hardcore gamers, but I believe this would be short lived, as the hardcore gamers post their "command-sets" on the internet and the casual gamers pick them up and add them to their toolkit, creating a dynamic similar to the hacker/script-kiddie one. But who cares? This is the game I want to play, I will pay good money for it, and if it's not around soon, then I'm gonna write it, dang it!! (probably with a space-strategy spin, cuz space strategy games are just cool). Any questions or comments, shoot me an email, or post a message in the forums
-- mightyZog

9-13-99
We've got some stuff here about gurps-rifts conversions and the space strategy game design page, much more to come...
stay tuned

 
 
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