So what's YOUR idea?
Author
Many people in this forum have a secret treasure... some brilliant idea we wish was our 'ticket into the industry.'
Who knows, it might be something epic and crazy. It might just be sticking with the industry standard and making a lot of small improvements. Either way, I get the impression that we've all got some happy dream of a game in our heads.
If it's too good of an idea to share, that's fine, but If there's one thing I found out here, it's that no Idea is 100% never thought of before. Even if you don't have your 100 page design document done, just share the jist of it.
My Idea, as I mentioned in my other post: Consumable Content - The MMO that is constantly changing due to procedurally generated content. Plot generation and more social NPCs. And if that's not crazy enough: No combat. Yeah, it's going to be friggin hard to do, but it's my dream.
Everyone's got some prize idea in their head.
So, what's your idea?
Let me say first off that I admire you for admitting that would be hard (and not to mention expensive) as all hell could imagine.
Yes, I have a little scrap book on my comp full of ideas. Some of them origional and interesting, some of them crap. I classify them into 3 catagories.
Freeware / Engine Testing
Retail
Currently Impossible
Of course, the next-gen graphics ones go into the currently impossible slot, bu that's a small catagory compared. Seeing as how, unless an idea is completley new, no one will have the exact image that you have in your head to make it work, it IS fairly safe to spill your game idea on the internet. It's not like your SSN or anything XD .
I had an idea for an engine test that, of course, I could never distribute because of IP issues. It was called "Mario Tactical". It was basicly like a sidescrolling semi-turnbased war game with real time elements. A 2D super-mario style envirment where you could equip different characters with tactical weapons. Destorying enemy targets and acheiving objectives earned you money that you could use to buy new weapons, technologys, and even chemical / nuclear weapons.
Of course, this isn't very origional seeing as how it's using a stolen IP. I have several other very origional ones that I wouldn't really devulge to just everybody :)
As for no idea being %100 origional, I might cut down that number a little bit. I had a game design that I thought was so innovative that no on had ever thought of this before. 3 days later, I came across an indie game that was EXACTLY like it, style, theme and everything. I swear I had never seen it before that point.
Yes, I have a little scrap book on my comp full of ideas. Some of them origional and interesting, some of them crap. I classify them into 3 catagories.
Freeware / Engine Testing
Retail
Currently Impossible
Of course, the next-gen graphics ones go into the currently impossible slot, bu that's a small catagory compared. Seeing as how, unless an idea is completley new, no one will have the exact image that you have in your head to make it work, it IS fairly safe to spill your game idea on the internet. It's not like your SSN or anything XD .
I had an idea for an engine test that, of course, I could never distribute because of IP issues. It was called "Mario Tactical". It was basicly like a sidescrolling semi-turnbased war game with real time elements. A 2D super-mario style envirment where you could equip different characters with tactical weapons. Destorying enemy targets and acheiving objectives earned you money that you could use to buy new weapons, technologys, and even chemical / nuclear weapons.
Of course, this isn't very origional seeing as how it's using a stolen IP. I have several other very origional ones that I wouldn't really devulge to just everybody :)
As for no idea being %100 origional, I might cut down that number a little bit. I had a game design that I thought was so innovative that no on had ever thought of this before. 3 days later, I came across an indie game that was EXACTLY like it, style, theme and everything. I swear I had never seen it before that point.
An MMORPG set entirely in hell. No, not original, but it combines things like rank, an active combat system, and the compulsory player-based manufacturing economy.
Heh...both my "ideas" are MMO-games, although I don't really have all that much interest in the genre or even of making one [rolleyes]
Hell, the first idea isn't even mine, I merely stole Superpig's Zombie Nation idea after having a similar of my own.
The second isn't much better either as it isn't even a game, more of a sandbox/community simulation. I call it WikiWorld, where everyone are free to edit the world using simple editing tools and basic building blocks at will. Complete with a diff-system for versioning etc. that one can expect from a wiki-style software. Most likely a logistic and storage nightmare, but a fairly interesting experiment in itself.
While those might be my ideas, my ultimate goal is to get somewhere with interactive fiction, where I sadly enough have even less ideas...
Oh, and props for trying to get people to share their ideas, far too many seem to be much too confident in the qualities of their own ideas, afraid of them getting "stolen"
Hell, the first idea isn't even mine, I merely stole Superpig's Zombie Nation idea after having a similar of my own.
The second isn't much better either as it isn't even a game, more of a sandbox/community simulation. I call it WikiWorld, where everyone are free to edit the world using simple editing tools and basic building blocks at will. Complete with a diff-system for versioning etc. that one can expect from a wiki-style software. Most likely a logistic and storage nightmare, but a fairly interesting experiment in itself.
While those might be my ideas, my ultimate goal is to get somewhere with interactive fiction, where I sadly enough have even less ideas...
Oh, and props for trying to get people to share their ideas, far too many seem to be much too confident in the qualities of their own ideas, afraid of them getting "stolen"
I believe that keeping my ideas to myself is dead wrong. In my latest blog-post I outlined a few "unique" ideas. Most of them, if not all, are small improvements of the standard third-person-shooter concept.
My blog can be found here: http://www.sirgustav.blogspot.com/
And here it is for the lazy folks ;)
Widescreen gameplay
When playing Counterstrike, for instance, widescreen players will have a different aspect ratio than other non-widescreen players. To combat this I locked the aspect ratio to 14:9 as "14:9 /--/ creates an acceptable picture on both 4:3 and 16:9 televisions" according to the wikipedia citing the BBC.
Picture in picture zoom
Usually in third person shooters when sniping you get a fullscreen crosshair commonly seen in first person shooters. My take on sniping, or scopes in general, keeps a close view but shows a picture with the crosshair, kinda like the way chromehounds works.
Suit system
As a soldier in a field you can change suit up differently. Some suits may allow you to carry more weapons or some suits may have onboard weapons(such as the predator wrist-blade or small guns up your sleeves as seen in Aliens 4).
2 button weapon selection
Given that the player is a soldier in field I wanted to quickly select which weapons (s)he wants to use. So I designed the weapon system after various movie characters with a lot of weapons and on them and applied a simple and somewhat unique selection method(I've only seen it in use for selecting powerups/mutators in Unreal Championship 2 - it looks alike anyway). Basically you can pick up 6 weapons. 1 long(shotgun, sword), 2 medium(smg's), 2 shorts (handguns) and one mini(knife). the long and the mediums are in the upper category/ positioned at the upper body and the others are at the lower category. Scroll one to enter one of the categories and scroll again to switch or select the middle one. Right and left mouse button select the left and respective right weapons. The medium and short weapons can be dual-wielded, and this is done by simple holding either the left or right mouse button and either click or scroll once to select the other weapon.
Action attachment system
Instead of pushing different buttons, being a secondary action, using a menu the action attachment system uses a modify key and then actions such as shooting and aiming transforms into actions such as adding a silencer or adding a grenade launcher
My blog can be found here: http://www.sirgustav.blogspot.com/
And here it is for the lazy folks ;)
Widescreen gameplay
When playing Counterstrike, for instance, widescreen players will have a different aspect ratio than other non-widescreen players. To combat this I locked the aspect ratio to 14:9 as "14:9 /--/ creates an acceptable picture on both 4:3 and 16:9 televisions" according to the wikipedia citing the BBC.
Picture in picture zoom
Usually in third person shooters when sniping you get a fullscreen crosshair commonly seen in first person shooters. My take on sniping, or scopes in general, keeps a close view but shows a picture with the crosshair, kinda like the way chromehounds works.
Suit system
As a soldier in a field you can change suit up differently. Some suits may allow you to carry more weapons or some suits may have onboard weapons(such as the predator wrist-blade or small guns up your sleeves as seen in Aliens 4).
2 button weapon selection
Given that the player is a soldier in field I wanted to quickly select which weapons (s)he wants to use. So I designed the weapon system after various movie characters with a lot of weapons and on them and applied a simple and somewhat unique selection method(I've only seen it in use for selecting powerups/mutators in Unreal Championship 2 - it looks alike anyway). Basically you can pick up 6 weapons. 1 long(shotgun, sword), 2 medium(smg's), 2 shorts (handguns) and one mini(knife). the long and the mediums are in the upper category/ positioned at the upper body and the others are at the lower category. Scroll one to enter one of the categories and scroll again to switch or select the middle one. Right and left mouse button select the left and respective right weapons. The medium and short weapons can be dual-wielded, and this is done by simple holding either the left or right mouse button and either click or scroll once to select the other weapon.
Action attachment system
Instead of pushing different buttons, being a secondary action, using a menu the action attachment system uses a modify key and then actions such as shooting and aiming transforms into actions such as adding a silencer or adding a grenade launcher
I have an idea that's currently nothing more than an image I have in my head; I've not really thought it through at all yet. It's a shoot-em-up with a big emphasis on use of cover and positioning, but it's top down view point and click, with team vs. team multiplayer. I guess you could say it's like Gears of War meets Diablo.
You have a small map with say 10 players (5v5). The players can move to and from predetermined nodes on the map, signifying a point of cover. While running between two nodes you are open to fire from anybody that can see that path. Firing on a node forces a player positioned there under cover, and disables them from moving or firing for a short while. So basically, to advance on the enemy team (and position yourself so you can shoot them easily) you need some players to give covering fire so that the others don't get shot to pieces when they move forward.
As I said, I haven't really worked through any of the details yet. One issue I'll have to think about is how to generate maps and node layouts in such a way that one team doesn't have a significant mathematical advantage, and to prevent a team from having a perfect camping position (so that they can't cover all paths towards them at once). Also, I'm not too sure how the multiplayer aspect would work. If it were turn based (simultaneous turns) then I'm pretty sure it would just turn into a rock/paper/scissors style guessing game. With the simple mechanics and small number of players, there's no reason a server wouldn't be able to handle it in real-time (or quasi-real-time I guess), but latency could be an issue, as the whole game would be based around adapting your strategy to the enemies movements.
You have a small map with say 10 players (5v5). The players can move to and from predetermined nodes on the map, signifying a point of cover. While running between two nodes you are open to fire from anybody that can see that path. Firing on a node forces a player positioned there under cover, and disables them from moving or firing for a short while. So basically, to advance on the enemy team (and position yourself so you can shoot them easily) you need some players to give covering fire so that the others don't get shot to pieces when they move forward.
As I said, I haven't really worked through any of the details yet. One issue I'll have to think about is how to generate maps and node layouts in such a way that one team doesn't have a significant mathematical advantage, and to prevent a team from having a perfect camping position (so that they can't cover all paths towards them at once). Also, I'm not too sure how the multiplayer aspect would work. If it were turn based (simultaneous turns) then I'm pretty sure it would just turn into a rock/paper/scissors style guessing game. With the simple mechanics and small number of players, there's no reason a server wouldn't be able to handle it in real-time (or quasi-real-time I guess), but latency could be an issue, as the whole game would be based around adapting your strategy to the enemies movements.
H4L, thats a great idea if you could implement it well. Let me know when you come to start making it.
Yeah most of my ideas are just improvements or different ways of doing current things. As I have been playing a lot of FPS games lately these ideas are for them:
"context specific movement"-What this means, if there is a rock, when the player goes forward, his character walks over the rock, instead of forcing him to jump. If there is a climbable wall, he climbs it etc. Now this system is partially implemented in current games. Best example is ladders, most fps have a ladder system that is either automatic or easily activated. I would have this system extended, so when the player tries to crawl into vents, or over knee-high barriers, or slops that could be climbed, he automatically does these things. In games like FEAR and the Half Life series, it annoys me to no end that I have to jump onto benches or over railings. It would be pretty easy to implement, if you detect the player colliding straight into one of these objects, obviously he wants to get past it. For a railing he could swing over it, or jump, or perhaps crouch under it, whatever. Overall I think this would add much more fluid gameplay to the genre and have the person thinking about the game and tactical properties of your map if its that sort of game, instead of fighting the map just to move around.
More realistic damage handling. This is perhaps my biggest gripe with fps games. I throw a grenade at an enemy, and he takes the damage and keeps attacking. Hell no! He should be blasted back even if he survives. Same with high-powered shotguns. If I blast you at point blank, you cannot just continue your attacks on me without effect. Also location specific damage would be nice. Ie, I shoot you in the knee, you cannot still sprint towards me. I shoot your arm, you can't keep attacking with it etc. I know this is in different games in varying degrees, but I think it needs to be more prominent. And rather than a ton of specific code checking for all these things, if we make enemy actions truly dynamic, ie the body is a series of physics objects controlled by a central ai instead of state machines and pre-made animations, most of this would happen naturally. I think I watched something about the next Indiana Jones talking about such a system. Well I want to see it in all fps games, so the next time I blast an enemy in the head with a shotgun, he doesn't get a chance to deliver a killing blow to me.
No more static health bar. This is a relic that fps games seem addicted to. I have played games without it, but a vast majority still think the 100 hp with health packs is a fun mechanic. Its not. I love the games that use that recharging when not under fire mechanic. Neither is totally realistic, but the second is so much more fluid. And personally I think it'd be easier to design levels around that feature. You know the player will have full health when he enters an area because the area before it was empty so his hp recharged.
Invisible map loading. I'm pretty sure this feature is even in ultima. Basically you load the next map while still in the current one so you can traverse the whole world without seeing a level loading screen. Oblivion is a good example of this (except for towns). That is the biggest break in immersion, in a game like Hl2, where you have to wait for the next level to load for several minutes. If it was loading ambiently while you ran through the previous one, and then seamlessly replaced it, that would add so much to the gameplay experience.
"context specific movement"-What this means, if there is a rock, when the player goes forward, his character walks over the rock, instead of forcing him to jump. If there is a climbable wall, he climbs it etc. Now this system is partially implemented in current games. Best example is ladders, most fps have a ladder system that is either automatic or easily activated. I would have this system extended, so when the player tries to crawl into vents, or over knee-high barriers, or slops that could be climbed, he automatically does these things. In games like FEAR and the Half Life series, it annoys me to no end that I have to jump onto benches or over railings. It would be pretty easy to implement, if you detect the player colliding straight into one of these objects, obviously he wants to get past it. For a railing he could swing over it, or jump, or perhaps crouch under it, whatever. Overall I think this would add much more fluid gameplay to the genre and have the person thinking about the game and tactical properties of your map if its that sort of game, instead of fighting the map just to move around.
More realistic damage handling. This is perhaps my biggest gripe with fps games. I throw a grenade at an enemy, and he takes the damage and keeps attacking. Hell no! He should be blasted back even if he survives. Same with high-powered shotguns. If I blast you at point blank, you cannot just continue your attacks on me without effect. Also location specific damage would be nice. Ie, I shoot you in the knee, you cannot still sprint towards me. I shoot your arm, you can't keep attacking with it etc. I know this is in different games in varying degrees, but I think it needs to be more prominent. And rather than a ton of specific code checking for all these things, if we make enemy actions truly dynamic, ie the body is a series of physics objects controlled by a central ai instead of state machines and pre-made animations, most of this would happen naturally. I think I watched something about the next Indiana Jones talking about such a system. Well I want to see it in all fps games, so the next time I blast an enemy in the head with a shotgun, he doesn't get a chance to deliver a killing blow to me.
No more static health bar. This is a relic that fps games seem addicted to. I have played games without it, but a vast majority still think the 100 hp with health packs is a fun mechanic. Its not. I love the games that use that recharging when not under fire mechanic. Neither is totally realistic, but the second is so much more fluid. And personally I think it'd be easier to design levels around that feature. You know the player will have full health when he enters an area because the area before it was empty so his hp recharged.
Invisible map loading. I'm pretty sure this feature is even in ultima. Basically you load the next map while still in the current one so you can traverse the whole world without seeing a level loading screen. Oblivion is a good example of this (except for towns). That is the biggest break in immersion, in a game like Hl2, where you have to wait for the next level to load for several minutes. If it was loading ambiently while you ran through the previous one, and then seamlessly replaced it, that would add so much to the gameplay experience.
I'd like to add that I have trained my mind to never even dabble in the MMO section because I KNOW it's never going to happen.
Quote:Original post by Deleter
That is the biggest break in immersion, in a game like Hl2, where you have to wait for the next level to load for several minutes. If it was loading ambiently while you ran through the previous one, and then seamlessly replaced it, that would add so much to the gameplay experience.
I saw this and felt I had to comment. They already have a few methods of dealing with this. None of them work very well either. The problem is, when you load something, it loads 1 texture in 1 program loop. That makes the porgram chop, which if you ask me can break immersion just as much.
The other method is semi-streaming the files from the hard disk. This is much smoother, but can take several minutes and the game runs slower than hell. It is also extremley glitch prone. If the timing is not just right, you end up with the player seeing areas of the game that aren't yet loaded. This leads to automation errors... or worse yet... Half Life 2's purple checkered walls.
Ever wonder what those were? XD
EDIT: You also forgot that that would require the graphics card to hold TWICE the textures. For most games, that's just not possible.
This topic is closed to new replies.
Advertisement
Popular Topics
Advertisement
