Ok - I wasn''t going to mention what I''m attempting to do, but seeing as I just posted the concept in another thread, I might as well get some feedback / ideas. The reason I haven''t mentioned this, is that I feel there is a genuine comercial aspect here - maybe I can sell the idea to a commercial developer ... who knows? Here''s the idea A space sim, like Elite in many respects, with the trading, shootin enemies, mining and all that. That''s all reasonably standard stuff. Here''s the nice bit. I really like Quake 3 and similar. So I thought about having space stations where you can dock your ship, and walk around as in an FPS. In these stations there''d be Holo-Decks, where you can join an online Q3 type game! In fact just about any game you can imagine. These would be implemented as add-ins. But I also want to extend the idea of games within games, by having mini games you could play from within the cockpit of your space ships. Things like 2 player space invaders, freecell, well anything really. Now the overall game gets tied together by expanding upon the clan system. The Game universe would consist of 10,000 star systems at least and each clan would initially occupy one system. But a clan which jointly raises enough money can commision new space stations around unnocupied star systems, thereby expanding. The number of members in each clan would be proportional to the number of space stations owned, but players would not be able to choose they''re clans - they would be randomly assigned a clan at first logon, and remain there whilst each clan still owned a space station, or if not, they''d simply restart the game from scratch with a different clan. This would encourage individual game play, but also team play. The team play side could be expanded by having clan deathmatches, and the winning clan getting credits to add to their collective effort. The possibilities seem almost endless. From a commercial aspect, the sub-games could be sold online, for £10 each for the bigger elements, or maybe £2 for the sillier ones. This could extend the game lifespane many fold. What do you lot think of this idea? PS - If that was disorganised, it''s because it was pure braindump!!!

1. i personally don''t think ppl would pay more money to be able to play space invaders within another game, considerin gyou can get it freeware off the net.
2. it''s unlikely that someone who enjoys playing elite type games online would also play quake 3 within that game. considering you would have to load two engines possibly, and there are other excellent fps multiplayer games out there...
3. i understand your desire for a large community of ppl, but this could be pushing it over the edge - trying to combine many games into one.
4. the random allocation of clans, while is better for ppl without online friends, is really bad for ppl with online friends. they would obviously want to be in the same clans wouldn''t they?

you could just create an online community via www, and have the space station simulation entirely server driven, with stats uploaded via java or whatever...

Wasn''t this called Battlecruiser?

Y''know, it''s hard enough writing _one_ kickass game, let alone tying yourself to a concept that effectively requires you to write two or three.

Maybe it''s best to focus on one thing at a time?