-SHORT VERSION STORY You play the role of a high school kid customized to your liking. You go through a weekend of study in the library. Everything is fine until about noon. Invisible creatures start attacking and throwing tables, killing and destroying as many things as possible. Suddenly, your able to see one of the creatures. It attacks you and you blank out. You awake to sirens late at night and are taken home by police. Later that same night, you can't sleep and you notice changes inside and outside your body. You've become a half demon. You retrace your steps and follow clues to save the world from a threat bigger than anybody could ever have thought of. Lucifer. You must stop the Devil from completing his evil plan that involves recreating the world. Man, that's one long short version, huh. Are you up to the full version? -FULL VERSION STORY Customization: Character -Human name -Demon name -hair -color -style -length -eyes -color -shape -body mass -Head, body and limb sizes (they'll be realistic) -style -walk -run -jump -stand Weapon (you create 2 weapons) -name placement (where you put your demon name) -weapon -spear -sword -gauntlets -grieves -more -color -style -handle -blade -size Fighting style -style Select (haven't quite got these down yet. This is gonna be sort of like the Devil May Cry style system though. Ideas would help lots.) So far I have the elemental styles. They give you elemental moves, examples: -Fire Control -Metal Control -Water control -Element -none -fire -wind -water -earth -death -chaos -a lot more -Pick three Human Attacks (special techniques you'll use as a human) -Pick three Devil Attacks (special techniques you'll use as a human) -Weapon control (how your 4 attacks will be executed) -No weapon -punches -strong high, low -medium high, mid, low -weak high, mid -kicks -strong high, mid, low -medium high, mid, low -weak mid, low -Weapon -strong high, mid, low slash/shot/alternative -medium high, mid, low -weak high, mid, low You play as a high school kid customized from hair to feet to your liking. You go through a weekend of study at the library. You must walk from your house, down the street to the library. Meanwhile, in the depths of Hell, the Devil schemes to take Middle-Earth and douse it into Hell creating nothing but a heaven and a Hell to raise his armies against God. He splits his soul in half to create a weaker but still powerful twin of himself. He sends the soul traveling to Earth's surface. During this time, lunch is happening at your school. The moment when the Devil's soul reaches the Earth's surface, all human hearts sink, although they have no idea why. So your studying or doing whatever until, tables, chairs, books start flying hitting people in the most brutal way(hit in the head, stabbed with chair ends). You witness it but it doesn't seem like people see the exact same thing as you. You see one creature standing in the middle of the area. It attacks and you can try to defend yourself but it's really quite hopeless. When the creature bites you, it explodes and you blank out. You wake up dizzy and confused as sirens are ringing in the background. You look around and find police men and fire fighters everywhere. You blank out and find yourself in your bed after a police officer drives you home. You wake up and hear news of all the libraries, schools and everything else you can think of of getting knowledge from is attacked and destroyed. You suddenly can't go back to sleep. And it wasn't the news either. It was like you were hyper. Walking around town, you experience your powers. This is where the tutorial steps in. You learn you have increased strength, speed, sight, and the physical features would be you have pointed nails and slightly long k9 teeth. The changes in the inside of your body are tremendous. Your muscle tissue in a whole lot denser, along with your bone and (there's no way to see this but) You have three pupils instead of one. The other two pupils are spread around your eyes, one on the top of your eye and the other on the outside of the eye. These pupils, with your increased vision, see through you skull and tissue and give you a good 160 degree vision sight all around your body. You learn your power of strength when you punch a tree after a strange urge over came you. You learn you power of sight when you stare lazily at the moon, you end up zooming in and out(hawk eyes) and when you try to see something in the dark, it slightly brightens to seeing equivalence. You learn your speed power after given your first quest: go to your school Your speed is like a car's shift. You run but to go faster, you shift your speed up a level. Your max level goes up as you level up (obviously). For example, you normally run 20mph. You shift to level 2, your speed will gradually increase to...lets say 50mph (yes, they can run fast!) Once you reach the school, you witness a meeting. Their are others just like you. They were attacked but it seems that instead of the creature exploding, it possessed the human. So you find out that your a half demon that has gained the powers of the thing that attacked you. The group of eight stop their discussion and seven of them vanish leaving one behind. This is were the combat tutorial kicks in. You reveal yourself to the possessed student and see it's one of your classmates. It seems that if you don't have a strong enough will to live, they successfully possess you. He summons an army of demons and they surround you. The weapon you designed will appear to you out of your element. If you didn't choose an element, the weapon will shoot from the ground and fall from the sky. You basically have an attack button, three special technique buttons, a defend button, a jump button, a style switch button and a mindless activation button. Mindless is like a chance to automatically kill an enemy (which causes less attention to you), special kill an enemy(which you get more experience for), to shield break an enemy(takes away an enemy's defenses momentarily) or critical damage an enemy(which recovers your transformation bar a lot faster). It's called Mindless cause your character will be like a maniac going on a killing spree...on one enemy. Each enemy has their own unique way of getting damaged, undefended or killed during Mindless. After Mindless is activated, you need to press the keys that flash on screen with the right timing or you will sustain optimal damage from the enemy. Mindless can also be used to dodge. To attack is simple. Just press attack repetitively. To defend, just time your button press with the enemies attack. You can sometimes block with the attack button but to guaranty a block, you should just press the defend button. After you kill those summoned demons, the now called Force Demon, summons 3 more creatures. These demons are a lot bigger a require dodging. This is where the dodge tutorial starts. You use Mindless to dodge. You use the skills you've learned to kill them. Once those demons are defeated, the transformation tutorial starts instantly. You have a gauge under your health that goes up every time you get hit, hurt and ever time you hit demon blood.You transform automatically and have infinite transformation for this boss battle. You go through the next to missions and fight a variety of demons and Devils. In this game, demons are the low class as Devils are the higher class. You follow a prophecy that basically tells you to kill the guardians of elements located in seven monuments to gain the power to defeat the "holy demon" That would be the Devils half soul sent to Earth, The Ultimate. After the guardians are dead, you end up in Stone Hedge. You activate a power but The Ultimate Creates a powerful blast that hits the activated power along with you and creates a rift in time. (I know, kinda corny.) But you end up in 3000 years into the future where the war between God and Devil wage and humans successfully defend themselves in cities. (It's the future. It's not impossible) Humans scan entering humans for demon body specifics. Half demons are well populate now and are hated by most humans and hate by God and Devil. A special race of human has been created. The humans that care for the half demons. They have the highest class of technology and are evenly matched to a half demon thanks to it and are completely able to fend for themselves alone. They use needles attached to their brains from a device attached around their eyes and ears and spine to transmit specific shocks to the brain and throughout their spines for 150% faster reflexes, 300% increased strength, fight simulations, communication and sight enhancements. This is only a small tool they use from the arsenal these humans use. They were created with the help of the half demons. You find out that your part of some prophecy and you're gonna be the one that starts and ends the war between The Devil. But that's only half the prophecy. People question about the other half but no one knows. (The other half of the prophecy, you kill God and the world will be forced to run on half demon's powers.) You kill the Devil in the Future. Then you get transported back to your time and kill The Ultimate. You fall into a deep sleep, in which the Devil did. But he used all his strength to do that to you. You awake in the future again. The time where you have been transported back. God demands their must always be an evil in the world of good. So this pits you against God. God sends angels after you using incredible weapons on destruction. After killing God, The earth runs on all the half demons to keep nature alive, the core running, Earth together, water flowing everything. Yeah, I rushed towards the end cause I really don't want to type every single thing in between these things. It's ALOT!! Seriously. And I, myself, think the ending sucks. Any ideas? Anything I missed? What else should I include? Did I talk too much? Give me some tips. Edit has been done thanks to TheKrust. I'll finish the rest tomorrow. This takes forever to write [Edited by - Infinity99 on August 15, 2007 8:26:11 PM]

Quote:Original post by TheKrust

Quote:Original post by swiftcoder
Is your title really trademarked?

No... as I said to him, you can't trade mark a story. You can copyright something, but he obviously hasn't done that.

You can, however, trademark a title. The ™ symbol can be used when you are claiming an unregistered trademark for a commercial product, as distinct from the ® symbol for registered trademarks. However to my understanding unregistered trademarks only come into effect from their use in the marketplace, thus I don't think you have a very strong claim over the title of a potential game idea.

Also, you automatically gain copyright over everything you create once it is expressed in a tangible form (i.e., once you write them down or type them into a computer). However the copyright will only cover that expression of the idea; if you posted the entire script for a game you could claim copyright over the specific pieces of dialog you wrote, but not the general idea of a story about the devil attacking a high school.

About the original story: I don't see anything wrong with it, except nothing really strikes me as a unique hook. It's a fairly standard comic book like premise; not that there's nothing wrong with that, but you'll need some strong storytelling and characterisation to sell the story.

My main gripe is that your freeform game idea is rather hard to implement with a small indie team. While a story idea is fine, a game story needs to be implementable with the resources you have at your disposal.

Quote:Original post by Kudgel
In other words, this is Bully meets Diablo? Could you give us more details, like, what genre it fits into? It could be anything really, and the story seems cool but at the same time, the Evil vs. Good part is too generic for me.

I understand. But it's more like a "Digital Devil Saga" type thing. It's twisted. The game is gonna be an action/rpg. I was thinking to make it mmo but I'll save that decision for later.

Quote:Original post by TheKrust
A couple of tips here, and I'm not trying to be hard on you, but straigt forward constructive. These are some things every developer NEEDS to know.

1. One of the greatest things about beging an indie game developer is that you can touch topics that the indistry cant. Race, politics, gender, alien ideas, ect. You can go a million places with those privlages, but violence in school isn't one of them. I would highly suggest placing a blood massacure elsewhere.

Why not? That one game, "Bully" did it? Am I right? Or is it against some law or something.

Quote:Original post by TheKrust
2. Religion can be a great inspiration for origional content, because again, the closest the indistry will get to religeous beliefs is ancient mythology. You should, however, be skeptical about using the actual "god" as people belive. Maybe you're religeous, maybe not, but I feel if you focus on religeous principals, focus more on the devil. For one, it will (belive it or not) offend people less, and 2, it earns you "cool points" for your game. I seriously doubt Doom would be nearly as popular if you had God helping you fight the entire game.

God's not helping you for nothing. God's trying to kill you too!(I really should put that in there) It's like humans, Devil and God are after you. The reason: God wasn't planning on letting a half demon loose unto the Earth. So later on, he gives you warnings to "Dismiss yourself from Earth or he should decide your fate" Sucks. Man, I forgot a lot of stuff in that story.

Quote:Original post by TheKrust
3. There's nothing wrong with your general story, but the gameplay concerns me. Remember that the indie developer must use tactics that will take him above the corperations. How does he do this? By creating an experience that companies can't offer. You can create very different types of gameplay that opens new doors to fun that the industry won't even try for fear of "alienating the player". This can happen, but if it does, you know more for the future. If however people really like it, you could very well get rich off a small idea.

Hope this helps


EDIT: Also, "you find out what you really are" doesn't give us any right to tell you whether the idea is good or not. Don't worry about "ruining" your ending. By the time (and if) the game comes out, it will be long forgotten. Also, several name changes and story changes happen through the course of development, so no one will even recognize it from this post. You really need to give details from all parts of the game to get true feedback. You gave more of a "back of the DVD" description.

That's the kind of description I was going for. Glad someone noticed. I'll change it. Thanks for the Advice.

Dang. That sucks. Can someone help with my "re-plotting" then. The Devil was supposed to attack all educational facilities to rid the world of future hope and leadership. Now I need another plan for the stupid Devil. Help, Ideas.

Quote:Original post by Tom
Just wondering: if you're half-demon now, why would you be trying to stop the devil from accomplishing his plan? And if you are in fact doing that, why would God be trying to stop you? I don't mean to sound harsh, but there really isn't anything about this idea that captivates me. It could be one of a thousand weak plots to draw the player into what really matters, which is the game itself. Don't ever get the false impression that a clever idea will sell your product! Great games take work beyond work. You should focus more on describing the actual game play to us. Like, for example, what awesome powers do you get for being half-demon?

I'm typing that at the top right now. Which powers you get and such. But about the "God" in this game. He's twisted and strict. He want things going just as he plans them to. And he definitely wasn't expecting you to appear. So he plans to kill you and lock up the Devil again. Not completely done with God's personality though. Believe me though. He's not gonna be the God you guys think he'll be.