My Bookshelf
What does a game designer working on a massively multiplayer grand strategy game read anyway? Well, lots! My goal for this year was to read a non-work (i.e. "fun") book per week, I think I am on track to hit about 35 for the year (mostly thanks to a gods-aweful Weber/Flint book, Crown of Slaves, that took me 8 weeks to get 120 pages into before finally giving up). Mostly I read sci-fi with a spattering of fantasy books, really good space opera is few and far between, so pretty much anything with blasters and aliens is fine. :)
In no particular order of importance, here are a few of the recent books that either validate things I am doing in the game, or in some way inspire an aspect in the design. None of the books are even close to the "galacticus is based on X" category. No linkies in the list, you'll have to copy and paste the titles into an amazon search yourself. :)
By no means are the following reviews, mostly notes/thoughts on each book series and how it relates to Galacticus (if applicable).
Building Harlequin's Moon
Best description of world building I have come across. The book basically describes a 60,000 year layover in space with key characters being unfrozen for 5 year shifts and regenerated with Nano-tech. In a sparse system a colony ship with inadequate fuel to use it's stardrive, first task is to build a barely habitable world by smashing together small moons and comet debris around a gas giant (this part of the story takes 59,970 years, the rest is the next 30 or so). Then populate it with uneducated "moonborn" workers (that are the offspring of the "earthborn" colonists) so that they can build up enough infrastructure to make an anti-matter fuel generating particle collider. Many interesting sub plots, great characters, well described social and technical challenges.
Book itself does not really apply to Galacticus, other than tech...will empires in Galacticus ever get the chance to smash together worlds and make bigger stuff? You bet! Ring moons, ring worlds, maybe even dyson spheres or engineered planets. Other technology making an appearance in the game tech tree is Nanotech, molecular manufacturing, fusion, anti-matter, regeneration, and much more.
Dread Empire's Fall trilogy : The Praxis, The Sundering, and Conventions of War
I found a horrendous copy of Praxis at Powells books. By "horrendous" I mean it was *used* - very, very, very well used - it looked wet/oily/slimy and there was no way I was going to touch it so I kinda poked it with another book so I could see the cover. Since it was Walter Jon Williams (cyberpunk author...Hardwired/Angel Station/etc) I was on a mission to track down an unslimy copy of the book. First stop, since Powells had no other copies, I went to amazon.com (on my Sidekick, while browsing more books in the store) and discovered it was the first book of a trilogy and furthermore the 3rd book had just came out recently, and as the title/graphic indicated it was not only sci-fi (as I initially thought) but *space opera*. Being it was Williams *and* space opera I had to have them without waiting for the mail (no amazon order :) ). I drove all over town. Found all 3 new at Borders, and brought the prize home. I thought it was going to be my Summer reading and I ended up reading all 3 in ~1 week. They were that good (best space opera since Dune).
Probably one of the reasons I liked this series is that so much of it validated where I was already going with the Galacticus game design, it was great to read descriptions of events that could be happening within the game framework I was building! That and the characters/story development are really top notch. There was one sentence buried in the story, a random sentence describing some mundane aspect of FTL travel/how the empire fit together, that turned on the light about how to balance the new player regions with the established empires in the game universe. One of those "wow" moments when the most obvious thing jumps out and smacks you, leaving you wondering how you could have missed it before.
The Last Legion : The Last Legion, Firemask, StormForce, and HomeFall
Sometimes R rated. Pretty decent military sci-fi series. Follows detailed characters through their careers as the long-lived Human Confederation declines and falls. Light on the starship combat, very detailed with ground/tactical combat. Takes the first book to get comfortable with all the slang and naming/phrases.
One thing similar to Galacticus is the concept of primary and secondary races controlling a planet. Oh, and the importance of corporations to mine/farm/build|maintain|discover technology. Some interesting politics, more interpersonal than grand strategy in nature. Players who leave the game in Galacticus would have their empires turn NPC and likely decline and fall alot like the Confederation in this series, making nice targets for other empires.
Kris Longknife series : Deserter, Mutineer, Defiant, Resolute, and Audacious (coming 10/2007)
What is a rich girl who's dad is the leader of a planet to do? Join the marines. Great descriptive starship combat sequences, realistic tech descriptions, and deep characters taking part in interesting adventures. World development and politics is somewhat lacking/shallow (especially since the entire family of the main character is supposed to be politicians. Sometimes the subplot makes the reader scream "when is this overused rich heroine cliche going to end?"
The system of jump points used in Kris Longknife series is similar to the starskip in Galacticus, in the books each system has 1 or more jump points to other systems which gives strategic value to an inhospitable system with numerous safe jump points to other places. Starship combat itself is very similar in that everything is carried out in slow motion due to the vast distances between ships and reaction times of the crews.
The Lost Fleet : Dauntless, Fearless, and Courageous (coming 12/2007)
Great reads. Very good character development and descriptive battles. Stories are from the point of view of an involuntary fleet commander who got the job due to being frozen > 100 years in an escape pod (because of rank date he had seniority). Battles are over distances of light minutes using sublight (.3c) speeds with the ships so attack planning and predicting events/ship locations are tricky. Lots of interpersonal politics.
Tour of the Merrimack : The Myriad, Wolf Star, and Saggitarius Command (coming 11/2007)
United States in Space vs. Space Rome (a breakaway former colony). Sometimes star trekish, sometimes Aliens or Starship Troopers like. Very descriptive. Kinda zany humor style. At least a PG-13, maybe borderline R in some scenes. Interesting aspects of time travel and long distance travel ("catapult" device to instantly transfer ships from fixed point to fixed point between galactic arms).
Empires in galacticus could have encounters such as those with the hive. Higher tech stargates could function like the "catapult" which would allow empires to leapfrog each others territory.
In no particular order of importance, here are a few of the recent books that either validate things I am doing in the game, or in some way inspire an aspect in the design. None of the books are even close to the "galacticus is based on X" category. No linkies in the list, you'll have to copy and paste the titles into an amazon search yourself. :)
By no means are the following reviews, mostly notes/thoughts on each book series and how it relates to Galacticus (if applicable).
Building Harlequin's Moon
Best description of world building I have come across. The book basically describes a 60,000 year layover in space with key characters being unfrozen for 5 year shifts and regenerated with Nano-tech. In a sparse system a colony ship with inadequate fuel to use it's stardrive, first task is to build a barely habitable world by smashing together small moons and comet debris around a gas giant (this part of the story takes 59,970 years, the rest is the next 30 or so). Then populate it with uneducated "moonborn" workers (that are the offspring of the "earthborn" colonists) so that they can build up enough infrastructure to make an anti-matter fuel generating particle collider. Many interesting sub plots, great characters, well described social and technical challenges.
Book itself does not really apply to Galacticus, other than tech...will empires in Galacticus ever get the chance to smash together worlds and make bigger stuff? You bet! Ring moons, ring worlds, maybe even dyson spheres or engineered planets. Other technology making an appearance in the game tech tree is Nanotech, molecular manufacturing, fusion, anti-matter, regeneration, and much more.
Dread Empire's Fall trilogy : The Praxis, The Sundering, and Conventions of War
I found a horrendous copy of Praxis at Powells books. By "horrendous" I mean it was *used* - very, very, very well used - it looked wet/oily/slimy and there was no way I was going to touch it so I kinda poked it with another book so I could see the cover. Since it was Walter Jon Williams (cyberpunk author...Hardwired/Angel Station/etc) I was on a mission to track down an unslimy copy of the book. First stop, since Powells had no other copies, I went to amazon.com (on my Sidekick, while browsing more books in the store) and discovered it was the first book of a trilogy and furthermore the 3rd book had just came out recently, and as the title/graphic indicated it was not only sci-fi (as I initially thought) but *space opera*. Being it was Williams *and* space opera I had to have them without waiting for the mail (no amazon order :) ). I drove all over town. Found all 3 new at Borders, and brought the prize home. I thought it was going to be my Summer reading and I ended up reading all 3 in ~1 week. They were that good (best space opera since Dune).
Probably one of the reasons I liked this series is that so much of it validated where I was already going with the Galacticus game design, it was great to read descriptions of events that could be happening within the game framework I was building! That and the characters/story development are really top notch. There was one sentence buried in the story, a random sentence describing some mundane aspect of FTL travel/how the empire fit together, that turned on the light about how to balance the new player regions with the established empires in the game universe. One of those "wow" moments when the most obvious thing jumps out and smacks you, leaving you wondering how you could have missed it before.
The Last Legion : The Last Legion, Firemask, StormForce, and HomeFall
Sometimes R rated. Pretty decent military sci-fi series. Follows detailed characters through their careers as the long-lived Human Confederation declines and falls. Light on the starship combat, very detailed with ground/tactical combat. Takes the first book to get comfortable with all the slang and naming/phrases.
One thing similar to Galacticus is the concept of primary and secondary races controlling a planet. Oh, and the importance of corporations to mine/farm/build|maintain|discover technology. Some interesting politics, more interpersonal than grand strategy in nature. Players who leave the game in Galacticus would have their empires turn NPC and likely decline and fall alot like the Confederation in this series, making nice targets for other empires.
Kris Longknife series : Deserter, Mutineer, Defiant, Resolute, and Audacious (coming 10/2007)
What is a rich girl who's dad is the leader of a planet to do? Join the marines. Great descriptive starship combat sequences, realistic tech descriptions, and deep characters taking part in interesting adventures. World development and politics is somewhat lacking/shallow (especially since the entire family of the main character is supposed to be politicians. Sometimes the subplot makes the reader scream "when is this overused rich heroine cliche going to end?"
The system of jump points used in Kris Longknife series is similar to the starskip in Galacticus, in the books each system has 1 or more jump points to other systems which gives strategic value to an inhospitable system with numerous safe jump points to other places. Starship combat itself is very similar in that everything is carried out in slow motion due to the vast distances between ships and reaction times of the crews.
The Lost Fleet : Dauntless, Fearless, and Courageous (coming 12/2007)
Great reads. Very good character development and descriptive battles. Stories are from the point of view of an involuntary fleet commander who got the job due to being frozen > 100 years in an escape pod (because of rank date he had seniority). Battles are over distances of light minutes using sublight (.3c) speeds with the ships so attack planning and predicting events/ship locations are tricky. Lots of interpersonal politics.
Tour of the Merrimack : The Myriad, Wolf Star, and Saggitarius Command (coming 11/2007)
United States in Space vs. Space Rome (a breakaway former colony). Sometimes star trekish, sometimes Aliens or Starship Troopers like. Very descriptive. Kinda zany humor style. At least a PG-13, maybe borderline R in some scenes. Interesting aspects of time travel and long distance travel ("catapult" device to instantly transfer ships from fixed point to fixed point between galactic arms).
Empires in galacticus could have encounters such as those with the hive. Higher tech stargates could function like the "catapult" which would allow empires to leapfrog each others territory.
posted by First Citizen at 10:02 PM
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