TexasJack

I'm putting together an idea for a survival game.

 

Essentially, the game revolves around you being dumped in a world that consists of a variety of different environments (jungle, dessert, arctic). The world will be inhabited by:

A) Non-player animals, a varied ecosystem ranging from tiny ants to big dangerous things.
B) Other players who have also been dumped in a wilderness, motivated by survival, probably friendly, probably after your gear. Who knows.

 

Your entire goal is to survive, decide whether to set up a camp/shelter or just to go nomad. If you bite the dust, I think the game will give you a simple permadeath end message along the lines of "You survived for 4 Months - 2 Days - 10:12:32".

 

The question is, what should the players start with?

I want the game to be extremely harsh, so survival carries a sense of satisfaction, but also risk. I am thinking that the players should just have the set of overalls on their back and their wits.

 

What do you think, would it be fairer to go down the DayZ route and give them a pistol and a tin of beans? Maybe a knife or even a survival kit?

 

I don't want to doom the players (I secretly do), nor do I want an over abundance of pistols with empty magazines kicking around on the jungle floor.

 

Your thoughts.

Hi all,

 

I'm interested in the idea of text based MMOs, and their constituent cousins (MUDs etc...).

 

I've never really played any (with the exception of things like Kingdom of Loathing), but am intrigued by the prospect of imagination being used as a device to evoke huge game worlds without worrying about too much in the way of technical logistics or flashy graphics.

I'm just brainstorming really - what are peoples experiences.

 

One thing I'm keen on developing is an interface that allows for a full on sensory experience communicated through text (maybe one field to describe each of the senses? etc... - The art of playing the game could be to keep track of each).

How are these games physically laid out?

Which are the best in your opinions?

How does the player convincingly navigate large areas like a desert which would, in reality take days to cross, without it sounding like "1:30pm - You enter the Sahara from the south... ...1:32pm - You exit the Sahara from the north"?

 

Like I said - just a brainstorm, I want to blow text based MMOs open for discussion.

 

Your thoughts?

 

Hi all,

I am looking to scout for a few like-minds that I can bat around ideas for games with (generally simple 2D side scrollers ect - not Call of Duty or anything like that).

I myself am an artist, comfortable with handling the spriting, graphic design etc...

What other talent is needed to create a game like, for example; a Super Mario clone?

 

I know that there are several instances of individuals building highly popular games on their own out there - but I lack the technical knowledge, and so would be looking to form a small team (3-4 people? Admitedly, an arbitrary estimation).

 

The focus would be to build (probably free) games casually - not expensive super hi-def 3D MMOs with the intention of making a world dominating profit.

What kind of skills do I need on top of my own art input to make this happen?

Hi all,

I'm developing an idea for a game where you are basically given a top down display of your character's location, represented by a very basic symbol. The graphical elements in the game are going to be minimal.

Other characters will be represented by identical symbols, all mobs will be represented by a "mob" symbols, all items by a universal "item" symbol and so on...

The only real reason for the top down display is to provide the player with an idea of where everything is - as if the game were being played from inside a submarine, your only idea of space and relative distance comes from an abstract radar reading.

When a player hovers the cursor over other players or mobs etc... the game will bring up the attributes of whatever they are examining. Here's the beauty of it; the attributes list will be thorough enough to provide the player with an idea of what they are examining without actually needing to see it. Examples might be: Height, Weight, Colour, Build...

Alongside the attributes that the player is able to inspect, there will be a range of behind the scenes attributes that govern how the mob or item acts, or what a player is capable of doing.

The point in this is that if someone wanted to come along and customise a server, they could do so easily by filling out a description of the mobs and items they wanted. If you wanted a "Dawn of the Dead" game you could fill the map with mobs that had the attributes of "slow moving, non aggressive to other mobs, only aggressive at short range" etc... for the zombies and all the items could be "ranged weapon, accurate at short range, heavy to carry" for the shotguns.

I wanted to come up with a list of attributes for Mobs, Characters and Items. Each could be edited, and ultimately govern the characteristics of each thing. Ideally, the attributes would be numeric or number based (Eg; "Weight (lbs): 100").

Any suggestions for attributes?

Hi all,

I am currently building a website in Dreamweaver MX 2004, and because I am a print-designer, not a web-designer, I am having a lot of difficulty getting my head around some of it. Given that alot of the people on this site are scripters/coders/wizards, I thought I'd try my luck and post what I've got so far up here to see if anyone can help me out.

I am attempting to use a lightbox2 image gallery on my website, but am having difficulty coding it in to what I already have.

Basically, my website, when completed will consist of four buttons; "Graphics", "Illustration", "Photography" and "About Me/Contact".

The last button ("About Me/Contact") will simply link to another page with the relevant info on it - but the former three buttons will be connected to lightbox galleries. Clicking "Graphics" will bring up images from my graphic design portfolio in a lightbox window so that they can be flipped through. Clicking "Illustration" will display images from my illustration portfolio and so on...

If you look at the example below, you can see the clump of text within the table HTML tags, those are the images that constitute the buttons, the first one "Graphics" already brings up a lightbox view of "Graphics/Workexample1.jpg" but I can only figure out how to get one image to show up within that link, instead of a collection that you can flip through. I would also like to achieve the same with the other image links ("Illustration" and "Photography").

If you look just above the closing head tag - you can see four or so lines of script tags that I copied and pasted directly from the lightbox website (see the link above). From my basic understanding of all of this - those bits of HTML are what make the files that come with the lightbox download (which you include in your website's root folder) do their magic.

Can anyone help with this, I'd be extremely grateful as I have been staring blankly at this for hours?

Also, my sincerest apologies if this is posted in the wrong place, I didn't want to post in any programming or coding specific forums as this is not strictly game-design related.

Many thanks,

Texas Jack.

(P.S. - The images that act as the buttons which link to my lightbox galleries are themselves roll-over images. Just to make the HTML a little more crowded for you!)

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