I have not at all acted like you are personally attacking me. Not one bit.

Then why spend paragraph after paragraph trying to save face, asserting your authority, and generally acting insulted? :)

I don't have to carry on this line of conversation, either, but believe it or not, I actually WANT to help you fit into the community. As I see it, this is best done by addressing what I see as problems head on, and right now the biggest problem is that you don't accept criticism and are easily sidetracked into reiterating your claims of experience, presumably to save face.

You are speaking too me as though I know nothing of the subject, and you are an expert I should be listening too.

I don't feel I'm doing that - again, all I'm doing is asking questions in a bid to point out what I feel you've missed - but anyone who is reading this thread can tell that you're really bothered by my posts. You behave exactly the same way as other people I've known who were personally insulted by any kind of criticism, so it's a straightforward assumption to make here. I suggest that your generally dismissive attitude towards everyone else's opinions might be the cause of this. ;)

This isn't all in my head, I've had this same conversation for the last 20 years.

You know what they say, if you keep having the same problems with different people, chances are good the problem isn't with them, but with you. Other people with similar levels of experience in the game industry don't have this problem. I know this because I know and have worked with some of them.

I'm still trying to figure out where you feel that if what I say, with 30 years of experience at a very high level of this specific subject, does not "square with what you know" that you feel justified in assuming that I am the one that must be wrong, and you must be right.

If I can come up with trivial counter-examples (which of course you reject) to the things you say (to be specific, that space combat games don't have AIs shooting back and don't have dogfighting and that Artemis wasn't a game and hadn't been released), your experience level has nothing to do with it. If you make a statement that I think I can prove is wrong, I will attempt to do so. Why shouldn't I? Truth does not care about experience and experience is (in my experience!) not a valid measure of competence though it does suggest it. Even the most experienced people can be wrong, and sometimes too much experience with something can actually weigh you down. It can cause you to miss things because your assumptions are so ingrained, or you've become so insular that your knowledge goes out of date. A great many "experienced" people should not be given anything resembling a leadership role.

I occasionally encounter programmers with an attitude like yours - the attitude that because they are older and more experienced than everyone else, that their word is gospel and not to be questioned. A minority of them do prove their worth - but nobody likes them for it, and sometimes these "prima donnas" don't last very long as the morale drop associated with their presence outweighs the extra productivity they bring - or don't bring, if their blustering proves to be all a sham to cover up their own incompetence! Many of us with even a little experience in the industry will have met one or more of the latter. Consequently, I actually respect a person less if they harp on about how much experience they have. It suggests that they're compensating for something.

Don't be that "prima donna." It doesn't matter how right you are if nobody will work with you. If you ever want to work with video game developers - especially programmers - it is a very good idea to completely drop the attitude that being the most experienced person in the room means nobody will question you. Because they will. "Pointy-haired bosses" may prove easily dazzled by self-advertising of the type you continuously do on the forums, but programmers do not respect it (we prefer quiet demonstrations of competence), and your fellow designers will have the vocabulary and experience themselves to point out things that you miss. Don't reject that feedback out of hand!

Wow. I don't even know what to say. You clearly haven't understood a single word I've said, on any subject, and just don't even know what to say in response to this... exactly what you accuse me of which I have clearly not done... but you just did. That was practically a meltdown. I think I've tried all I can with you, you are... indescribable. So feel free to have your say, I am going to continue with constructive things for a little while longer.

From my perspective, my mere suggestion that I might actually know more about this than you absolutely enrages you... even though I have 30 years of experience studying it as a science. Arrogant doesn't even begin to describe it...

I'm simply pointing out how I see your manners here and reiterated how others have said that they see you (in other threads). You may not intend to come across as strongly averse to criticism, but intent doesn't matter much. How your words are interpreted is what matters. With careful consideration, you can choose words that best match your intent. If you feel misunderstood, you CAN try again using different words. There is always the edit button if you find you didn't word something to best effect. Go back and read my posts and you may notice that I've been using it, myself. :)

You have said that you feel like a game industry outsider, so I also told you some of the things that I know about the industry as someone who works in it, in hopes that you may find it useful. Especially if you DO end up pitching your ideas. Is that not ultimately the point of this thread? To hear advice and learn from game devs? ;)

There is no question at all that you are the one that needs to go back and re-read the posts to understand what has been said, because you clearly don't. In fact, you don't even appear to exist within the same reality with what has been said. I'm not replying too you anymore, feel free to take all the shots you want. You don't appear to be connected to the same reality as the rest of us, or have a very severe reading comprehension problem. Either way, it has become obvious that discussion is pointless because your responses have nothing to do with what has been said, and I just don't know how to respond to the randomness of it all.

Have fun blasting away at me, I'm moving on...

Ok. I am not going to turn this into a thread about Rube, and will probably stop this thread soon because I think I have the answer I was looking for. Thank you to those who have been so helpful. It seems as though, considering the entirety of my situation, there are two rational options I might try. The first is Tom Sloper's suggestion of finding a business partner to handle that side of things. I think this would be my best chance, by far... but don't know this person. And that's how that generally happens, you know the person already. So unless there is some VC like system for meeting people like this, which I doubt there is, I don't see how I would ever find this person. A random message from someone they've never heard of before won't even be answered. So this seems like the best plan, but is just another good plan that I can't achieve.

So that leaves a “prototype”. It's not what you people are expecting, but it is far more complete than the prototype you would be expecting. I might be able to actually do something with that. So is it out of the question that a complete playable game of a design document, what you would call “Alpha” (all the components are there and fully described, it will inevitable evolve and improve as the process went forward) could work as that “prototype”, or is there really no chance of anyone being able to see a functional game from a “Boardgame Rulebook”. Or this is a thing that has been lost and simply cannot be seen by your generation? It cannot exist?

That's really, I think the last question I have for what this thread was meant to be about. Nobody can think of anything better than these two options? And can it even work with a complete design document as a prototype or will that just not be acceptable?

If anyone has any advice on where I am at now, I would love to hear it. And tomorrow I will post something to hopefully clear up some of the confusion about Rube.

A complete design document is not a prototype.

A complete and playable rule-set for a table top game is a complete game, and could certainly be considered a valid prototype for a video game; prototyping with pen and paper, cards, or as a board game is actually quite a common technique in the industry.

A design document and a playable rule set are not the same thing... which do you actually have? Last time you published a design document (around 8 years ago) was certainly not a playable rule set for a table-top game, but if you have such a thing you could certainly attract attention with it.

...and yes, you appear to have the attitude problem Oberon_Command describes -- if that isn't your intent you may wish to try to refine your communication -- this is the major sources of your problems trying to have discussions.

(Note: the above is my personal opinion as another member of the community and does not represent the site itself. I am specifically not responding as a moderator or member of staff.)

If anyone has any advice on where I am at now, I would love to hear it.

You've got a SERIOUS attitude problem present in almost every single one of your posts. You are constantly pompous and self-aggrandizing when talking about your own ideas, or ideas that inspired you. You are dismissive and reactionary when talking about other's. You are defeatist and whiny when talking about your own ability to make your ideas happen.

You constantly use passive-aggressive phrases such as "you people" and "your industry". These phrases invoke connotations that you should NOT use. I don't know where you get them from, but stop it. Separating yourself from others is not how cooperation happens. "You" is acceptable. "You people" is not.

You will never be able to cooperate with anyone, business partner least of all, if you don't learn how people talk to each other in real life.

Your ONLY two options if you refuse to change are: 1. Do it yourself, or 2. Give up. Those are LITERALLY your only two options.

JB Adams. Thank you very much! I can easily make up the pieces and get some dice, write cards as flash cards. I definitely know how to do that, so that is it! That is what I can actually do. That is one of the docs I have always "left open" so it can evolve with the other games. So I can "close it" it about 6-8 weeks of serious work on it. Then another month or so to make it work on an Axis & Allies board will not be difficult at all. So that is exactly what I can do. Shift gears, come back 5 games from where I have been at lately (haha) and start to just focus on the first game. It needs to be done anyway, Thank you very much, this is exactly what I had been trying to work out with this thread. Now I at least know what to try and do.

Actually, JB, the design document you saw 8 years ago, and I can post it again now if you want, was a playable game. It's all there. SFB players could use our movement rules and structure to actually play a solar system from Pirate Dawn using SFB as the "physics" of it that does not exist in the design doc. It would be impracticale, an overload of units to the system making it take forever... but it would function:-)

Nypyren: Have you considered that maybe 30 years of intense study may have actually just led to that level of knowledge, and that is all you are detecting? As for "you people" and "your industry" you are misinterpreting my meaning. I only mean by that the two different game industries we come from. I am from the old hobbyist game industry which died in the early 1990's, where you all work in the modern game industry which has essentially forgotten that we ever existed even though all of your games are ultimately based on our (that entire industry's) work. We are where all games more complex than Monopoly or Risk came from.

And I am quite good at cooperating with people. The SFB Staff invented that form of cooperative game design, you know, we have it down pretty well. You'd be surprised what 40 years of practice with that process can teach.

Hey, are you trying to convice us that you have 30 years of experince in space combat? As far I know we humans don't have armored spaceships.

If you have no real experience how could you judge other ideas? I've read many sci-fi authors and each have different solution for space combat, and each looks ralistically.

So, let me clear up some of the confusion I have noticed about Rube. As I mentioned in the other thread, I am pretty sure I did, there are four versions of Rube. Only one of them is a functional thing that I have been using in one form or another for most of my life. Rube 1 is “Crippled Rube”. It's called Rube for a reason, and Rube 1 is “crippled” by having a “tank tread” instead of the “bottom wheel” that belongs there (like I said, it's called Rube for a reason:-). Rube 1 is the Rube I discovered in my Cold War game, or it might be more accurate to say that the simple “crippled” way it was being used in the Cold War game is what allowed me to notice it. Rube 2 is simply “uncrippled” Rube, it loses the tank tread and gets the wheel that is supposed to be there. They are identical. It's just a LOT easier to understand with the “tank tread” so I think of “Proto Rube” that way and always think in terms of the tread because it is a lot easier that way.

Rube III is the Rube that is used in my starship simulators... except for the first one that I have been describing in this thread. That one uses the same old Rube as all the strategy games do. This is actually what I have been working on recently and is a recent decision. I've been thinking about it for many years, long before understanding Rube as a physical construct as I do now, and never been able to resolve several things. Now that the time to write it down has come, I cannot write functional rules for the starship simulators as “Holodeck Rube”. It involves adding two-way communication to Rube, which is just too much for me to work out both that and the game together without either of them existing yet. If it can't be written as functional rules, I am not going to go into it assuming I will figure it out by the time I get there. That is the whole point of the design document, to make sure that is not the case ANYWHERE in the game. I am also fairly confident that once I have the game to work from, by making the first one, that the second and third WILL have “Holodeck Rube” which will make those two games far more capable than I had described them in an earlier post. And, if not, those two games can still be made the same way as the first one was with good old reliable, and simple, “Crippled Rube 1”. So this is Rube III, which I am confident would exist as the second ship game... but maybe not. I'd put it at about 80% that it will work if I had to guess.

Rube IV is an entirely theoretical “I'm pretty sure this would be possible if the technology and knowledge existed to do it, and it would actually be this thing” version of Rube. This is the Rube most of you are thinking of when I say “The Matrix”... except this Rube is actually much more than that. If it is what it appears too be, this “Ultimate Infinity Rube” sure would make one heck of a “Matrix”... but is actually a self-programming computer with omniscient communication. Star Trek level theoretical stuff that wouldn't exist for a very long time if it even could. I am not saying I can do anything like this, although I think with all 5 of Rube's different components having INFINITE CAPACITY at what they all do... this seems to me to be what ALL INFINITE Rube becomes.

But even my “Crippled Rube”, the only one that I can actually use functionally at this point, is a primitive version of the Matrix. And, it is as easy to create as any other game! Making my Cold War game would make a version of this Rube, a VERY primitive version of the Matrix. Rube consists of 5 components, one of which is that “treadmill of time”, it's cardio-vascular system. The actual component that resembles the Matrix isn't Rube itself. Rube is “god” of this cyberworld, the world itself is my “Active/Passive Map”, which is the only part of Rube that is all me as a designer and not largely based on ASL/SFB. The cold war game version of the A/P Map is, like all of Rube, VERY SIMPLE. The A/P Map is where the “Matrix like activity” takes place. When Rube needs to make something happen on the A/P Map he simply summons that thing from the A/P Map to do whatever the task is. Each individual thing is a sub-simulation. Content. And if that content “has a soul”, let's say, then Rube can plan it's future (for all of eternity in an “Ultimate Infinity Rube”). This is, I think, a key point of misunderstanding here. My primitive “Matrix” has almost no content that needs to be created for it, and only plans the future 14 “moments of time containing reality” into the future (just one and a half turns). A dozen or so Axis & Allies like military unit pieces, special forces units, intelligence agents, diplomats... not much more than that comes out of the A/P Map in this game. This “Matrix” has almost no content in it at all, and only plans into the very near future, which is why it is so easy to create. The Matrix you are thinking of... This is that same thing at this primitive level, much better as Holodeck Rube... The One True God Of The Digital World as “Ultimate Infinity Rube”... has all the content. You are thinking of a Rube with all of the content, not a primitive one like mine with only a handful of board game pieces and little capability to plan their futures. Sub simulations for everything that exists in the entire world? Well, of course, that will take a century or more to create all of that content. I realize that. But an almost empty Matrix... is still The Matrix.

Now imagine the beginnings of an "Ultimate Infinity Rube Matrix". Planning the future into eternity, in 1/10th of a second increments. Seven billion human beings, their entire futures potentially planned in advance the instant they are born... with what you know as "Will Wright's Style", and we call "Needs, Wants, & Desires", serving as the basis of a more sophisticated version of WIll Wright's system (which already exists) for those simulated humans making requests of Rube... based on their needs, wants, & desires. "Self-Programming..."

"A functioning scientific modeling simulation of a god."

I hope this clarifies exactly what it is that I am talking about. It's not magic or wishful thinking, it really does work.

Hey, are you trying to convice us that you have 30 years of experince in space combat? As far I know we humans don't have armored spaceships.

If you have no real experience how could you judge other ideas? I've read many sci-fi authors and each have different solution for space combat, and each looks ralistically.

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/MarcMichalik/787769/