Copyright infridgement has nothing to do with whether or not you make money off of the copyrighted idea. The mere use of the material without permission is a crime.

Although most likely if its an unkown and free product they won''t go to the trouble of bringing legal action against you. But that doesn''t mean they can''t.


as far the matrix stuff

when trinity said "EMP are they only EFFECTVE weapon against the machines" that doesn''t mean they didn''t have other weapons just that the EMP is the only effective after those machines guns next to useless against the machines, because of their sheer numbers.

Also I wouldn''t say they matrix movies where about going against fate, quite the opposite in fact. More then anything they where about the illusion of choice. The orcale through her prophicies manipulated both sides, so that the one would be called. That the one who create Mr smith, forcing the source to make truce with the humans to stop mr smith. Neo never had any choices he only thought he did, but in fact he was simply part of the orcales plan.

The Architect is order and The orcale is Chaos.



As far as games go, I think a matrix game in the same style as the blade runner game would be good or maybe one styled after the old tex murhpy game would be fun.



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Writer, Programer, Cook, I''m a Jack of all Trades
Current Design project
Chaos Factor Design Document

quote:
Magic Card:
Kars: That is actually a really good idea.

quote:
Iron Chef Carnage:
Kars, you''re a genius.

*blush*

You know that saying, "it''s better to keep your mouth shut and be though a fool that to open your mouth and remove all doubt"? Well, I''m opening my mouth.

I am not particularly fond of the sim city/world building games but since I got feed back that it was a good idea (thanks by the way) that I fleshed it out a bit....

You can play as, as the architect, need to equalize the great equation that is the matrix.

You can break the game into two parts, the city building part (in the matrix) and the RTS (in the matrix and out).

The city building would be prevalent in the beginning where you try to keep the vegetative humans "happy".

You would have some sort of "Reality Meter" that would indicate how much you have duped the humans. I see it as either a bar with the right side being positive (i.e. everyone gets along, no wars, Bambi running through the streets unmolested...), the left side being negative (everyone back-stabbing, gang wars every other day, Bambi constantly being hunted down...) and the center being contentment, the optimum "reality" for the humans.

You would also have some kind of Equation bar shows how balanced your world is. Again right positive, left negative and the middle perfectly balanced.

The idea being that everyone who is freed has some value in the Equation and this value is removed from the equation. You then have to adjust your Reality Meter to compensate for this. I.e. A whole bunch of tree-huggers gets freed (removing a positive), you have to shift your Reality Meter to the positive (build an entertainment complex) to balance things out.

The main idea being that if you add the Reality Meter and the Equation Meter, the result should be zero.

Population bar for the number of people in the Matrix. The larger the population the more energy you get, but the more people you could potentially loose to Zion.

You would also have an energy allotment that you would use to create buildings/agents in the matrix and robots out side the matrix.

The RTS part would come into play when when humans jack into the matrix and start causing havoc/saving other people, etc. As the architect you can modify the buildings around the humans (uses energy) and send agents (again uses energy for each "possession" of a person in the matrix) to deal with the problem. You could also have rogue programs created as a side affect if you change too much in the matrix at on time (the structural support program for city hall fails and the building collapses, the birds program goes wild and kills some humans, sun program goes haywire and it alternates night and day ever 10 minuets, etc).

Now the endgame condition is created when the anomaly shows up. For game purposes I would say this happens when Zion reaches a predetermined population. At this point the RTS moves outside of the matrix to a map of Zion where you order your machines to invade, great battle ensues, yada, yada, yada....

If you have done your job well and kept the humans pacified, you will have enough machines to wipe out the humans in Zion and re-set the matrix. If you ask me, this would be the end of the game. If you don''t like this idea of just ending the game, you could make it so that with each new re-set, the matrix becomes more unstable so it is harder to keep the humans “happy” (balance the equation as it were) which leads to it being harder to save energy for creating machines, which makes the final battle harder, etc until you actually loose to Zion. You could work agent Smith in if you really wanted to but he seems too specific for the “last” battle with the one.

On the flip side you could be Zion. Same bars as above, except now you are trying to unbalanced the equation, but you can only do that from inside the matrix. The more soutble you are, the harder it is for the agens to track you down, or just cause the agens to use some much energy containing you that they don''t have enough machines when the final battle comes.