@CrystalD,
Awesome stuff and well phrased post; thumbs up on 63. I'm not trying to discount any of what AHC has done. My concern actually lies in the fact that a game of this caliber comes out and then we settle for saying that this is the best we can do or the best that we've done up until now. You're absolutely right, however; every title is going to serve as a drop of history by which we can establish something else, a point of reference we can work around when the next title comes along. either way, it is what it is to every single one of us differently. Because this is the case, I'm going to address all of the points in post 1 and hope that will actually get the ball rolling in the right direction. this is gonna be rather long, so if you read it in its entirety, I sincerely appreciate your attention in advance.
1. What makes this game any different to the 50000000 clones out there? I think we've hashed and rehashed this aspect of gaming quite enough where AHC is concerned; some people believe it to be a clone by virtue of the fact that the concepts are not unique; others are not entirely convinced and prefer to call something a clone only if it deliberately goes out of its way to look exactly like something else, which is a fair assessment of the word clone, I suppose. Perhaps we should use the word immitation instead?
2. What will make people want to come back and keep playing for longer than 5 minutes? In the case of AHC there are a few things. First, the game is not all fighting and not all story line. the quests are somewhat difficult and there isn't always obvious answers. The various paths one can take are also worth mentioning, even just within dialogues... see the easter eggs topic if you want further examples. Given I've only begun to scratch the surface on this one, I'm sure there's much I'm missing, so I'm willing to admit that there may be much, much more to it than all of the above, but as it stands right now, the kind of expansion i'd' like to see concerns itself more with what and how we do things. Aside from the obvious ones that might make a game like this more enjoyable to some, myself included, such as multi-player support, the ability to buy and sell from other players in a centralized location or the ability to craft your own weapons or enhance those that already exist by some means, more simplistic goals might be things like actually having to learn the spells and or skills you're dealing with, either through tomes or training, having to use a wand/staff/rod and strange mechanics/gestures to cast some spells more reliably than others perhaps simulated through the use of the mouse, possibly even doing the same with melee weapons and the like so that you have to hold down left or right mouse button and slide the thing to swing a sword or what have you, instructing a character to act as a hitter, blaster or a tank entirely through his or her lifespan/the time they're with you/any extended amount of time of your choosing. sound complicated? Fine! but I'm tired of simplistic number crunching and keypad mashing where the result is determined by setting a stat to this and putting experience into that.
3. When I sit down tomorrow and hammer out another game, will I think about the game I just made yesterday? this one is not one I can answer because I'm not a dev, but I hope other devs are going to take it seriously because it holds a ton of implications. Recycling code and even certain aspects of your games is perfectly fine; n64's Golden Eye and Perfect Dark, made by the same company are, I feel, perfect examples. The controls feel almost the same, but you can tell that PD was slightly more than GE given there are more achievements to collect, more dialogue, acted scenes, new sounds, even new mechanics! IN GE you constantly threw grenades by holding down the z button. In PD, a grenade could actually detonate in your hand if you did the same exact thing. In GE your guns only did one thing. Because PD was more sci-fi, you were given a secondary mode for practically every weapon, even those that were simplly average every day handguns. In GE every door had to be manually opened. In PD some doors opened of their own accord to showcase the futuristic aspect. In GE you could enter cheats even if you hadn't completed the game by entering codes right in your playscreen through the use of your remote. In PD you seriously needed a gameshark because screw you! I'm not letting you cheat unless you beat me first!
4. How can I get the best with my sound design with whatever limited resources I may or may not possess? (I know that last one is a very grey area). Seriously, I actually think this is an area where AHC did immensely well; I was pleased to see we weren't sticking to old 90's stock sounds all the way through just because they're there and sony and sound ideas and hollywood edge are the best and screw you! Everyone recognizes this stuff! Lets do it!
5. How am I going to market my game, should I maybe seek advice from other successful candidates? I believe the marketing strategy for AHC was exceptionally aggressive; I'd like to believe it was entirely honest as well. Some of its goals were obviously not met and the devs were clear enough on that front, saying that they pushed the game out knowing it would crash and that there would be bugs owing to the fact that they didn't test as extensively as they wished they could have because they were more eager to get this thing out to us than they were on looking like the perfect guru magicians of the ag community they knew they weren't. As I said above, I make no attempt to hide the fact that I would rather have waited another year or two for this game to meet its full potential; this is where I feel like the rest of the gaming community gets a bit too greedy and pushes devs to release games yesterday rather than allowing them to deliberate longer and without as much stress. Yes, gamers, we're all mostly to blame for that one.
6. If this a practice game, maybe state this in my thread when making it? If we look at it from this perspective and AHC was supposed to be seen as a practice run, then we can safely say that it was more than a success and those who expected better should and would, had they understood it as such, probably not be so surprised or put off by the end result, but this is, I believe, an important topic to cover. given the game was not free of charge and the devs expected some sort of financial compensation from the very beginning set a sort of standard though, a message that this was in fact, no practice and no child's play, that we are ready to go into the professional field fulltime and what you pay for is going to be a spectacular product. The word spectacular here is going to be subjective, which is where the arguments are always going to exist, because one's idea of it will differ if only slightly from the next.
7. Finally, should I perhaps implement a pre planning stage before I start making a game? It'd be hard to say whether this game was exceptionally thought out over the past 5 years without first answering question 6, but this is a no-brainer for every dev. My art is somewhat different from yours; I work with audio. Every timeI record/produce something I like to think about the end result first; it doesn't always turn out that way and the project ends up being scrapped for something better or shelved for another day. I have a lot of ideas when it comes to music and sound design; I don't always know how to make them come to life, but I toy with them in my mind regardless. Brainstorming doesn't always have to be done on paper, but some do it better that way. I work best when I'm honestly enthused by an idea; if it doesn't hold/captivate me anymore, it's time to kiss it goodbye for the next one, at least until I can come back to it again and recapture the feeling.
If you've managed to make your way through all of this rambling I salute you; I honestly didn't intend for this to be as lengthy as it turned out to be, but I haven't been able to sleep for the past few hours and figured I'd make some productive effort on this topic rather than just being the guy who sits off in the background saying I want more more more without saying what I want more of. I do not believe my aims to be unrealistic, even if I am rather crazy. the perfect game doesn't exist, but those who want it will keep trying for it because the desire, does.
When life gives you oranges, demand lemons since everyone else is obviously getting them.