Topic: Cells - Nantes 1944

I'd like to try out a game I and three of my friends from my school made. EDIT: This is an actual stand-alone computer game, not a roleplaying scenario. Here's the introduction I gave about it in a presentation:

"The Cells is a round-based, multiplayer game. The players are divided into two teams with different victory conditions: There are a set of important targets, such as German military structures in the game. The French Resistance tries to destroy those targets while the Gestapo tries to protect them.

The trick is, that to achieve their goals, the Resistance has to work together. For each target, there's a number indicating the strenght of its defences. Only if that many players or more attack the target at the same time, will the target be destroyed. To coordinate, the players have to build a network of contacts, to organize as CELLS.

At the same time, the Gestapo players must try to infiltrate these cells, to find out the dates and targets of the planned attacks. This is possible, because nobody knows on which side the other players are. If Gestapo manages to find out about an attack, they can send troops to protect that target that day, which will foil any attack, regardless of the amount of attackers.

Then how does all this information spread? Quite simple: In in-game chat sessions between groups of two or more people. The chat is the very core of the game, where a variety of trust games take place as the players try to figure out who to tell what information. In addition to attack plans, they may share their suspicions about others, try to trick spies into revealing themselves or basically anything related. All of this under the constant threat of being listened in by a third party.

To support these core mechanics, there are mechanics for spying on other people's actions, counterspying, and arresting and interrogating other players in Gestapo's name.

The game is all about team play: No individual score is kept. Instead, each player collects points for their team - the Resistance or Gestapo."


In addition to these game mechanics, Cells features atmospheric narratives by Raisa Omaheimo and Jarno Koponen, as well as great illustrations by Jukka Liukkonen. You can see some sketches here (they haven't changed much, actually):


I suggest we gather together a group to play this game on Monday 27.8.2007 at 19:00  CEST(EDITED). EDIT: We'll be aiming at a 2 - 3 hour game. Please mention in this thread if you're interested. We need about ten players, but no amount is too many! I'll be recruiting my other friends as well, and don't hesitate to tell your friends either!

EDIT: To run the game, you need Java 5.0 or higher (Java 1.5.something is the same as Java 5.0, curiously). You can install it on your operating system of choice here.

Re: Cells - Nantes 1944

18 is too early for me, but I'm in for 19.

Re: Cells - Nantes 1944

Sure I am in smile

18 is a bit too early for me as well, but if that time is set I will try my best to be there anyway. Sounds like a pretty interesting concept!

Re: Cells - Nantes 1944

I'm in.. I dont mind which time so everything goes.. I _WILL_ need a reminder though..

Re: Cells - Nantes 1944

Oh, and please note you'll need Java to run the game. It can be installed here.

Re: Cells - Nantes 1944

I guess I can try.  I'm trying to keep an earlier sleep cycle now so I'll have about 3 hours time to play if we start at 19:00 CEST.

Re: Cells - Nantes 1944

I guess I'll officially move the starting to 19:00 CEST (20:00 in Finland). Edited to original post too.

Re: Cells - Nantes 1944

btw is this game supposed to be roleplayed?

Re: Cells - Nantes 1944

It can be, but it's not mandatory. I guess since most or all the players I've managed to gather are roleplayers, we might just as well go for that. Of course, the current choice of avatars makes it a little more difficult...

Re: Cells - Nantes 1944

Just a quick note to say, I'm willing to help test this thing wink

Re: Cells - Nantes 1944

yeah just say if you need more help testing

And make sure to let us know when its more stable, I would really like to try an entire game big_smile

Re: Cells - Nantes 1944

\o/ I like this game. So I'm in for more testing anytime I'm available (that is, if you see me on IRC, just ask smile )

Re: Cells - Nantes 1944

Me too. I'm at your disposal anytime for now at least

Re: Cells - Nantes 1944

By the way, can any of you make those kinds of photorealistic looking faces? We could use some more, um, to-the-theme portraits but our artist says they have to look photorealistic (as apposed to obvious drawings). Of course, the portraits are pretty small so they wouldn't need to be very detailed. We've thought up some iconic face types of the Gestapo/resistance theme, so if anyone's interested, I'll share them.

EDIT: They'd need to be original, of course, no piracy involved.

Re: Cells - Nantes 1944

I could take just about anyone's photo, quickly re-colour it in the gimp, add period clothes and then shade the whole thing. It wouldn't be perfectly photo realistic, but it'd be better than the current ones and everyone would be in period dress. Or I could use a black and white photo, leave the faces as they are and add the clothing around them.

http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q125/coarsesand/graffisigtransparent.png

Re: Cells - Nantes 1944

Sounds good, though our artist is pretty strict about copyright. So you'd need to have the copyright for both the photos and the clothing, as well as permission from the models of the photos to use and modify the photos.

Re: Cells - Nantes 1944

If you have an artist on here who's really picky about this stuff, better to leave them to do it. Heck, just get the team members to submit photos of themselves in something besides a t-shirt, and tada you have photorealism.

http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q125/coarsesand/graffisigtransparent.png

Re: Cells - Nantes 1944

This was under consideration, but our artist also thought getting enough different photographs with different people with proper authorisations would have been too much trouble. smile At the moment the generally accepted idea is to allow users to submit their own images, but I figured a proper set of images to default to wouldn't hurt.

Re: Cells - Nantes 1944

Then this person needs to let their standards lax a little. tongue

If they want copyright for every single image, they need to go and do portraits. It isn't going to be completely photo realistic, but a portrait is the most reasonable way to achieve something close to what they want. I'll start up the tablet and try doing a portrait over the next few days.

http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q125/coarsesand/graffisigtransparent.png

Re: Cells - Nantes 1944

Did you mean you'll try doing a portrait for Cells? If so, thank you. I must say I agree with Jukka (the artist) that it'd be nice if the game was legal as it comes to materials (though he seems to be fine with illegal materials as long as he's somehow able to hide it by mixing several images together or such). Anyways, these are the characters we were thinking about:

- stereotypic agent
- bigboobs Gestapo chick / Aryan stereotype
- a stereotypic Frenchman with a barett and a French bread on his shoulder
- sailor
- sea captain
- a gentleman with an upward-bending goatee
- a Parisian lady
- smuggler or other shady guy
- regular man
- regular woman
- Nazi officer
- sweaty and dirty freedom fighter
- shopkeeper with a big apron, a butcher perhaps
- a black person
- an old man with a rifle
- a nice old granny type
- a worker class man
- a farm girl
- a teenage boy
- a teenage girl
- a femme fatale

Quite a few, I admit. But even a few in-theme portraits would save a lot. smile

Re: Cells - Nantes 1944

mixing a tons of images together so it looks like a brand new image is covered by 'fair use' i think...so that may be why smile

Re: Cells - Nantes 1944

I'm organizing another testing session tomorrow, Friday 31.8. at 18:00 CEST. Feel free to pop in on #cells at irc.seedthecommunity.org at that time, or later, since we may still have to restart it at times... though hopefully not.

Re: Cells - Nantes 1944

Another testing session on Wednesday 5.9. at 18:00 CEST. Everyone welcome! I think we'll be able to play a full-scale game this time, provided we get a lot of players!

Re: Cells - Nantes 1944

uhh..full-scale game!

I will be there for sure! Ready to blow up buildings and throwing people in jail! big_smile

Re: Cells - Nantes 1944

Well... since fate is conspiring against us (there's a freshman event that'll practically tie up anyone from my school friends from attending), I'll move this yet again, to Thursday, 18:00 CEST.