So, there has been much debate in the forums about the direction of Desktop Wars. The purpose of this post is to clear up some confusion about what I want/wanted in this thing.
What I Want
- I want the war to be on my desktop….obviously so.
- The icons do NOT do battle. (think of how impossible it would be to create animations for the bazillion different icons…)
- The icons DO serve a purpose. Jury is still out on whether they should be just barriers, or go further into such things as turrets, healing stations, etc.
- Desktop Wars is NOT something you have to watch and maintain micro management over.
- Units can NOT be directly controlled and manipulated.
- Units and your army CAN be given general direction. (go offensive, defensive, berserk, etc)
- The battle should incorporate a lot of randomness. I don’t see this being something that requires people to hone strategies for, but rather something fun and amusing. You WILL lose sometimes.
- It’s not supposed to be serious, but rather fun and even silly.
- Battles should take a while. (preferably, an option to set the speed) “a while.
- I shouldn’t have to waste a ton of time organizing and setting up my desktop (battlefield).
- The units should do stupid stuff on their own. (i’d love to see a trooper pull out a shovel, dig a hole, and tunnel to the other persons desktop or throw a rock to distract an enemy soldier, or whistle to a fellow soldier and team up as a pair for an attack)
Anyhow, those are just a few random things that I thought up. The point here is that Desktop Wars definitely should retain the “desktop” part of the idea. Exactly how that takes place, on a live desktop or a faked desktop, well, the programmers will need to figure that out!
Another idea that would keep this thing more simple and yet still allow some fun features that have been discussed in the forums is icon badging. Icons could be labeled before a battle and then when a battle starts, they get a little badge (a red cross for healing, a lighting bolt for speedup station, etc) to indicate what they do.
Also, an option to scatter icons around the desktop restore things after a battle would be excellent.
This thing should be fun, amusing, and above all, time wasting without too much guilt! But it should never create a hassle or interruption to your ability to use your computer.
What do you think? Does this sound like a Desktop Wars you’d go for?
