Help me remake Gangsters: Organized Crime

[Quilty]

I don't know how many codexers are familiar with Gangsters: Organized Crime, but I've been working on remaking the game and am looking for input regarding its systems. After seeing several failed attempts (Empire of Sin, not to mention the older games such as Omerta or the sequel, Gangsters 2), I decided to give it a go myself, but in a somewhat reduced form that will speed up development and hopefully avoid some of the issues I (and maybe some of you) had with the original. My questions are quoted below from a post from the Codex workshop (sorry for cross-posting).

Spoiler

For the past month I've been working on a clone of one of my all-time favourite games, Gangsters: Organized Crime. Not sure how many of you are familiar with it, but it was a simulation of a crime organization set in an open, procedurally generated city with randomized gangsters you could hire and send on missions. Essentially, your goal was to control enough territory through extortion , illegal businesses or violence and amass enough money and power to defeat the other families (or be elected mayor or go straight), or you could just play as you wished, with whatever goal in mind. However, the bugged AI would become very aggressive very quickly, which often caused your plans to derail into outright chaos and violence.

The game was divided into two phases: the planning phase, when time was paused, and the real-time phase in which you watched your gangsters carry out your orders. Personally, I always found that second phase too passive for the player, with very limited options for gameplay during the working week. I much preferred planning out the actions and then browsing through my crew's reports, which is why I am planning to only keep the planning phase and just simulate the actions being carried out, after which the player receives a report on their success or failure. This would, of course, also decrease development time.

If there's anyone here who played the original, I'd love to hear your opinions: what would be your preference, keep the working week phase or ditch it? Also, which other parts of the game would you like to see fleshed out, modified or removed altogether? What did you like and dislike about the game? And would you be at all interested in playing a game inspired by the original?

Currently I have the following parts finished:

- implemented the procedural generation for the city; still need to add some of the possible types of businesses and municipal buildings that can be generated

- implemented the basics of the UI for the crew (orders, reports, lieutenant pages in the "notepad", which functions as your UI)

- implemented procedural generation of gangsters, with skills and attributes

- implemented two types of orders, extortion and collection of protection


Here is the updated version with less suicidal pedestrians and vehicles that are aware of pedestrians and each other, let me know which view you prefer.

Orthographic camera view:



Perspective camera view:




Screenshots of the older version:

 

[A horse of course]

Where's the ray tracing?

 

[Quilty]

Where's the ray tracing?

We got illegal booze and whores, what else do you need?!

 

[Savecummer]

Original game has more and better features...
Its like one of those nes game inspired shit indies...

 

[Leonard]

Original Gangsters is still the best gangster themed strategy game, you are doing a god's work here.

 

[Quilty]

Original Gangsters is still the best gangster themed strategy game, you are doing a god's work here.

Thanks, man, glad to know there's others who enjoy the game. There's something about it that evokes the atmosphere of the Prohibition era so well, and I while I'm fairly certain I can replicate most of its mechanics, really nailing the feeling of the game is something else entirely...

 

[GrafvonMoltke]

Hello based department?

(More than 8 teams pls; that was the only thing that let the original down.)

 

[sser]

I'd just keep building on the original game's concepts.

Personally, I eventually skipped the 'work week' action side of things. The UI is too mucked, the control over 'units' is pretty FUBAR, and frankly none of it is important; you can skip through to the end results pretty easily. I've wondered if maybe mixing in Majesty's AI-driven hero system with Gangsters' management side of things would work better. And to add to that, something like that 'nemesis system' in one of those Middle-Earth games; something where the characters get built up procedurally and orbit around each other. I think the personalities of gangsters, particularly their conflict between independence and working for a boss, was the #1 missing thing from the game. Gangsters OC operates more like you're a CEO of a fastfood joint, whereas in reality actual gangsters were constantly threatened by their underlings and guys swapping sides or getting pinched by the cops, etc.

But speaking to the management side of the game -- that is its bread and butter. It's a complex and rewarding game, and I think devs nowadays frequently make the mistake of dumbing things down instead of fulfilling the niche that's still there.

 

[Quilty]

I'd just keep building on the original game's concepts.

Personally, I eventually skipped the 'work week' action side of things. The UI is too mucked, the control over 'units' is pretty FUBAR, and frankly none of it is important; you can skip through to the end results pretty easily. I've wondered if maybe mixing in Majesty's AI-driven hero system with Gangsters' management side of things would work better. And to add to that, something like that 'nemesis system' in one of those Middle-Earth games; something where the characters get built up procedurally and orbit around each other. I think the personalities of gangsters, particularly their conflict between independence and working for a boss, was the #1 missing thing from the game. Gangsters OC operates more like you're a CEO of a fastfood joint, whereas in reality actual gangsters were constantly threatened by their underlings and guys swapping sides or getting pinched by the cops, etc.

But speaking to the management side of the game -- that is its bread and butter. It's a complex and rewarding game, and I think devs nowadays frequently make the mistake of dumbing things down instead of fulfilling the niche that's still there.

Thanks for the feedback!

I agree with what you said and I'm planning to focus much more on the interaction with your gangsters and the business running side of things. And while I'm certainly planning on skipping the real-time part of the work week, I did feel like adding some life to the map, so that it's not as static while you're assigning orders. I've been working on a homemade kind of pathfinding system for pedestrians and vehicles, and this is as far as I've got: it's certainly far from perfect, but it avoids A* pathfinding and is therefore somewhat cheaper. I still need to make the vehicles and pedestrians aware of each other so they stop running into one another. As things stand right now, the pedestrians are quite suicidal. Obviously, the graphics are still placeholder, but hey, we've got some life in the scene now!



Here is the updated version with less suicidal pedestrians and vehicles that are aware of pedestrians and each other, let me know which view you prefer.

Orthographic camera view:



Perspective camera view:

 

[Incantatar]

Awesome. I'll be following this.

 

[Quilty]

Awesome. I'll be following this.

Cool, thanks. Let me know if you have any suggestions for improving the original game. I will be posting further updates over in the Codex Workshop, link in my signature, a new video of the latest version was posted yesterday.