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Imperialism Revived; An idea of crowd funding
Topic Started: Dec 13 2012, 10:25 AM (1,115 Views)
Silvio Richter
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Hallo, my name is Silvio Richter. I’m from Germany and I’m working as a freelancer in the IT sector.

I prepared a Kickstarter (http://www.kickstarter.com/) campaign until I realised that Kickstarter projects have to be USA or UK based. So I will show you my idea as an excerpt of my original Kickstarter text.



I’m planning to reprogram “Imperialism” (a game by FrogCity and SSI from 1997) in Adobe Flash, so it can be played in web-browsers and on other platforms, which support Adobe Flash Player. [...]

I’m in contact with UBI Soft to get a permission to use the original media – such as graphics, sounds, videos, music.


So, what’s the benefit of this project?
First of all, you can play it on any platform which has a Flash Player. Second, there are some bugs in the original game, which causes crashes to desktop. Further more, this instance of “Imperialism” will be free to play online in your browser. You can log in from everywhere, load your previously saved game from the server and start playing. If the first Stretch Goal is meet, multiplayer mode will be available and easy to use. But don’t be afraid, a special single player version of the game without the need of an internet connection will be yours if you pledge at least $5.

Languages:

  • English
  • German

Basic Features:

  • Online Single player
  • Offline Version for Kickstarters
  • Random Worlds
  • Automatic Battles

Stretch Goals: >>base goal was $2500

  • Online Multiplayer ($3.000)
  • Playable Land Battles ($4.000)
  • Scenarios and Tutorials ($5.000)


Why Kickstarter
As I understand there are some hobby projects around with the goal to reprogram “Imperialism” or a very similar game. But these projects are around for years and the progress is very slow. So, if there are people out there who love this idea, then this is the only way to go. With your pledges I can work on this project fulltime and it will be done in half a year – hopefully. Without your pledges a new instance of “Imperialism” will never happen.
As this is my first project on Kickstarter and in this sector, I’m asking of you just as much money to get along without much trouble on the financial side of life.
If this works out well, there is more to come in the future for sure. (You know: bigger, better, more ingenious)

Where are we?
Up to this moment I worked on the game itself for 2 weeks, and I’m very happy with my progress. I started this task as an exercise to get familiar with flash programming (AS3). Since all worked out so beautiful I came up with the idea to widen this exercise in to a real project. After that I stumbled upon Kickstarter. There you go!
So, I stopped programming and prepared this Kickstart.
>> I made a quick and dirty video of my progress so far: http://www.heimstatt.net/impshow.wmv

What could go wrong?
Besides the end of all times? Well, we couldn’t get the permission to use the original media. This wouldn’t be the end of the world, but it would surly delay the release. I have an artist at hand and some ideas for my self to create graphics, which should be in the same mood and style as the originals. As regards sounds and music – well, perhaps you (the community) can assist to speed up the completion.

<Rewards>
[...]




What are your thoughts about that? I think, only if someone is able to work fulltime on it, it will become a finished product in a reasonable time.
In general, are you willing to pledge $5 (or more) for such a project?

Edited by Silvio Richter, Dec 13 2012, 10:29 AM.
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Veneteaou
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I think it's way too early in the process to consider funding. Without permission from UbiSoft (which BTW will not happen, they aren't interested in selling/sharing the original assets), you don't know if you will need extra bodies to finish that stuff. The existing community is small, and we don't have enough work to show random people the project is serious.

But keep at it. I'm working on creating an alternative set of assets we can use to recreate the game, which you can look at here: https://sites.google.com/site/vennewimperialism/file-cabinet (so far I have a bunch of tiles and a piece of music). I'm hoping someone gets a finished product out there.
Edited by Veneteaou, Dec 13 2012, 10:59 PM.
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Silvio Richter
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Quote:
 
I think it's way too early in the process to consider funding. Without permission from UbiSoft (which BTW will not happen, they aren't interested in selling/sharing the original assets), you don't know if you will need extra bodies to finish that stuff. The existing community is small, and we don't have enough work to show random people the project is serious.

I agree with you, but as I said if this is done as a hobby project, I think it will never be finished. The idea was to take the original assets, contents and game mechanics and recode this game - minimum effort, great benefit. Just a show case for future projects.
Ok, it seems that I have to skip this first phase. So, I’m thinking about a more distinct game, which in essence will be a mix of Imp 1 and Imp 2 and own ideas. But at some time funds raising is inevitable.

Quote:
 
But keep at it. I'm working on creating an alternative set of assets we can use to recreate the game, which you can look at here: https://sites.google.com/site/vennewimperialism/file-cabinet (so far I have a bunch of tiles and a piece of music). I'm hoping someone gets a finished product out there.
Not that bad at all.

As soon as I have some fancy graphics to show I will prepare another “kickstarter” campaign. In the meantime I’m trying to code as much as possible.

So, the work has begun on:
Spoiler: click to toggle

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Silvio Richter
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While playing Imperialism one has to continuously switch through the screens for Transport, Production and Trade during one turn.
You can see my proposal for a one-screen-for-all in the following picture.
It's based on Imp2 and thus has a resolution of 800x600px.

Posted Image
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