My Dream App

Hey, this is a new feeling! When the first round of voting opened for MDA, Desktop Wars was leading for quite some time. It’s now in dead last! Yikes!!

Semi-ironic that the “get stuff done” app and the “waste time” app seem to be on track to go out in the same round. ;)

After my last post, the result was one judge ringing in with comments and useful technical advice and plenty of users also leaving great feedback.

So, the final result - what Desktop Wars would be:

A passive game played out on your desktop where you battle for domination. Domination would be a different goal depending on the mode, Last Man, Capture the Flag, Capture the Base, etc.

Each army would be largely self managing. In other words, there would be no direct click-and-move type of interaction. It’s not and never was intended to be Warcraft or C&C. Control would consist of general defensive/offensive type strategies and possibly, if we want to get fancy, voice commands. “Attack North!” or “Soldier! Get your butt moving!” … haha

Icons would not fight or actively do battle in any way shape or form. The icons would be used to provide various “stations”. Using the built-in Labels functionality, icons on the desktop could get a label. Each color of label would represent a function. (heal, speed, etc) When in battle, those icons would be badged to indicate that.

Also, “act of god” type events would take place using motion sensors in laptops to cause an earthquake or blowing into the microphone to cause a tornado to spawn or a storm.

When you win, you get to randomly delete files and folder from the losers machine. Hah! Just kidding of course.

Finally, details I’ve mentioned before still apply. Such as:

“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)”

So after reading the latest round of comments from developers and judges, I feel inclined to put out a request for clarification.

Request 1:
I’m seeing a lot of “loved the original idea” sort of talk. I want to know what the original idea that you loved was. Comment here, let me know what it was that got Desktop Wars into the final 24 and what it is that has turned you off on it now.

Request 2:
I’ve always agreed this concept would be a bit tricky to pull off. But tell me what IS feasible. What sort of direction can I go to make this work as far as being doable by something less than an army of programmers. …no pun intended ;)

Next up, a new outline of Desktop Wars with the a combination of my original vision and what you the readers, judges, and developers provide here!

Voting for round 3 is almost here… Here’s some fun stuff to get more ideas and creativity flowing:

And here, for no real reason other than fun, is an animation of a very mini battle in action. :P

Last, but oh so far from least….

Yeehaw!!!

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?