i am trying to create a game sort of like halo to play with my friends on norfolk island with a proffesional game development kit called UDK (Unreal Development Kit)and i was looking for ideas to add onto it.


ps im getting the kit in a day or 2
thanks in advance!!!

If it's just you and your friends, then MMO might not be the right genre. Are you looking for a persistent world hosted on a central server that you can log into and out of? My buddies and I have a Minecraft server that we leave up all the time, and it's not uncommon to log in, play for a few hours and log out without seeing any other dudes on it at all. That's fine in MC, where I'm mainly harvesting wood, hollowing out rooms and building my unimaginatively square structures, but for an FPS game it would get mighty lonesome.

I see a couple ways to go with it: First, you could have some kind of persistent "levelling" system, where you can earn points and upgrade your guns or whatever, so you could feel like you're making headway even when you aren't playing with your mates. The problem there is that some punk will be way above everyone else, and you wind up with him either babysitting everyone while they try to catch up or just dominating in competitive modes.

You could try the Minecraft angle and have non-combat activities in the world, like building stuff and gathering stuff, but that's not very Halo-esque, and it could easily fall far wide of your audience's interest. Besides, you could just play Minecraft if you want to build houses, it's already been made.

I assume you'll be using NPCs as enemies at least some of the time, so there will be krall or whatever running around in the world to hassle players. If that's the case, how about making a world with regions and nodes that resemble a Risk map, where you can push frontiers, secure facilities and otherwise impact the persistent game world? If you're the only guy online, you can just run around upgrading the fortress defenses or patrol the border and pick off scouting parties, but if you have six or seven dudes on the server, you can form a squadron and go assault an NPC base, smashing their turrets with artillery and hacking control consoles, then mop up the stragglers and refortify it with your flag flying above.

thanks
i was trying to look for the word to describe it so thanks its not really a mmo just something i can play locally with my friends.

also i have some ideas of my own.

maybe i could add that each person gets their own AI like cortana and can also upgrade them by either getting the weakest option of data chips and also the strongest option would be some kinds of forerunner artifacts.

also you would start off as a low ranking marine recruit and by doing missions (which are either talking to your lead commander or finding a holo station to contact the highest ranking AI) you can work through various paths like ODST or spartan or up to a high ranking marine commander like johnston.

also for transport you could get a variety of vehicles and also you could get onto a big command ship to get to other planets.

That sounds like an awfully big world for just a few friends.

Ha, I remember how long it took Bungie to make Halo, and how many iterations it had. Back in the day, it was going to be a sort of large-scale RTS game, with the player not only fighting in FPS mode, but also setting up AI units for campaigns to push frontiers, obtain resources and take control of the world away from the Covenant forces. It looked so cool, and I loved that it was Mac exclusive.

So don't worry much if what you wind up with doesn't even remotely resemble what you set out to create. Just fool around with different ideas and see where it leads you.

On iterations:

Take a look at the old Starcraft Alpha screenshots. That thing evolved a LOT before it became the fine-tuned competitive RTS it turned out to be. I'd agree with Iron Chef that the final product is going to look a lot different than the initial idea. I'm still on the design document stage of my personal project, and it's already changing significantly.

To help with your original question:

You want a halo-like game that you can develop yourself. As for ideas, try making simple maps with UDK designed for team play. See if you can make a free for all (first to X kills) game, then work on teams... capture the flag... etc. But start with baby steps. Your goal is to make a game for you and your friends, so it depends a lot on what they like.

Also, the easy way out would just be to get Halo and make custom multiplayer maps.

For more perspective on the time you can spend on these things.

I've spent well over a year just trying to work out a stable design idea I was happy with. I may spend more time on it than I should honestly but I feel that I would waste more time later creating features I end up throwing out. Design 20 times, code once. (I have yet to create a single asset for this game)

I also just spent a week of fairly long hours working in a custom starcraft map. I have yet to write triggers (starcraft map scripting) or layout the map itself. This time was all spent on designing the idea and working on the visual assets to be used, (picking terrain textures, cliffs, creating a water shader, creating a lighting setup).

Serious work takes time, and you would be amazed at how many hours it takes to finish even small objectives and how many hours you can actually squeeze out of a day, or days out of a week.

Speaking of which, I need to get back to work on that map.