Hi,

I am thinking about creating a game. I've already created a simple Flight simulator (as my school project; if anyone is interested, download here). But now I need some bigger project to do.
So, I need an idea what to do

The game should be:

• Visually simple - not tons of animations, textures etc. (I don't want to make it for years ... )
• Multiplayer based - 2 and more players playing together
• ORIGINAL - that's probably the most important and the most difficult part . Most people (unfortunately including me) can only thing of classic genres like MMORPG, strategy etc. I just need something new

Looking forward to your ideas.

"[color="#1C2837"]ORIGINAL ... Most people (unfortunately including me) can only thing of classic genres like MMORPG, strategy etc. I just need something new"

[color="#1C2837"]You'll probably wind up with something resembling things, but if you approach it from a ground-up approach, you can have something decently fresh.

[color="#1C2837"]I'm about to go to my next project and I'm planning to build 4 prototypes before I decide which. I just finished a 1-dude project and am going to try something bigger than 1-dude. I'll tell you what I'm going to prototype and maybe you can take a swing at one.

[color="#1C2837"]I forewarn you that they won't all sound good, because I have a thing for challenges. Right now I'm fascinated by drawing from life, but nothing I am about to describe is a simulation. I'll skip over most details and leave the hard part - the actual game design - to you.

[color="#1C2837"]1) Cops and Robbers

[color="#1C2837"]Two player game. One person has a car and is driving, while the other person has a top view, a bit like an RTS, with all the roads and everything, and instructs squad cars and such to go around and set up traps and try to capture the driver.

[color="#1C2837"]I had an idea that if anyone crashes into a bystander, both players lose. So that both players are mindful of this. (Stopping the chase, which is inherently dangerous, is on the police player's agenda.)

[color="#1C2837"]Aside from the obvious double-challenge of production, I have a bad feeling about it but can't quite quantify anything obviously wrong. So it's on my prototype list.

[color="#1C2837"]2) Star Colony Game

[color="#1C2837"]This game has a planetarium-ish view of the sky with the Moon, nearby planets, stars, planets around other stars, moons around our planets, etc. and other civilizations.

[color="#1C2837"]You can influence this by building "drives" and sending out colonists, armies, robotic mining packages, etc.

[color="#1C2837"]The game would start in 1970 with old tech like cryogenic engines (hydrolox) and partially developed nuclear-thermal and nuclear-pulse propulsion, and you could pour resources into R&D to develop deep space flight, cryo-freezing (the only magic wand allowed in the game), etc.

[color="#1C2837"]You don't control the planet, or any colonists. You have a small organization funded by donations and colonists pay their way. Successful colonies would themselves, after up to several hundred years, develop an industrial base capable of space colonization and become spreaders.

[color="#1C2837"]No objects or information may travel faster than light.

[color="#1C2837"]This idea is far more developed than the others and I skipped over a LOT of details, but also has a glaring red flag that results occur far out from action initiation. The thinking is that it's about building ahead of situations and I don't know that this would work. So it's on the prototype list.

[color="#1C2837"]If that doesn't work, I'll just toss it. More conventional games already exist in great big piles. That's boring.

[color="#1C2837"]3) Moon base game.

[color="#1C2837"]This would actually be a second prototype, the first one is here.

[color="#1C2837"]This is by far the most conservative and easiest to turn into a game by any definition. The second version would differ from the one linked in that the second would have everything unified around a core action of assigning work units.

[color="#1C2837"]Workers can include human base staffers, construction pros, robots which can be developed, remote control robots operated by teams on the ground, etc. etc. which all amount to different "workers" with differing stats and capabilities and level growth curves and blah blah.

[color="#1C2837"]So people (or bots) can go build structures, operate machines, "do science" for grant money, cater to paying tourists, and something about space apes, I don't remember.

[color="#1C2837"]4) Wilderness game.

[color="#1C2837"]We were throwing this around because a lot of wilderness games have either a diablo, click and do it approach or an adventure game approach that makes you start a fire with sticks every time.

[color="#1C2837"]I was fascinated by the fact that wilderness survival is significantly knowledge based. If you make a game, who is responsible for knowing?

[color="#1C2837"]My idea was to use the hand-crafted puzzles found in adventure games approach as a "discovery" system, at which point then your character has a new action which can be performed with a click.

[color="#1C2837"]From there I wanted to use a sims-inspired player state and environment state and I wanted to explore the theme of the home base.

[color="#1C2837"]I was going to have the player drop in on the desert mystery island in a space capsule and have many strange things to explore and hint that human civilization ended elsewhere, but leave it open.

Not bad ... thanks.

I'd like to hear what you came up with, and b-t-w, if you're trying something novel, I heartily recommend the prototyping approach of pulling a "rough draft" from your rear in a week using a RAD tool or kit, then, if it works, starting over with hindsight. I did this on my first complete game project (and first to make a sale!) and it worked wonders.

Ok, what about this?

I have an idea of player-based MMORPG. Most RPGs are about killing mosters and doing quests for NPCs, but what about doing quests for other players?

It's just a raw idea, but it could work. Everyone would choose "profession", like lumberjack or farmer etc. and then create quests for other players in order to accomplish some goal.

Like "If you give me 20 <insert resource here>, I can create better <insert tool here> and you gain <insert experience here>".

Maybe! There needs to be another aspect to it such that the "job providers" have a gameplay reason to be doing that.

To brainstorm, you might think of it in terms of having an "organizer" or "entrepreneur" role for some players so they can organize others toward grander goals. It does need to facilitate such goals.

If you drop the first M you can probably throw together a prototype in a month and round up a dozen or two folks to play it. Then you watch play carefully and revise the game rules.

Also read through Tadgh Kelly's What Games Are, especially about loops and dynamics.

Side note. I don't know if you're interested more in game design or programming, but if it's just programming, I could go into a detailed spec if you were throwing together a prototype for me.

Of course, chopping wood all the time is not much fun. Everyone would start with "simple" work (like choppingwood) and with more experience people would be allowed to do more "advanced" work (like building houses etc.) I have to figure out details of course, but ...

Details have to wait, firstly I have to learn something about network programming (so far I only know how to program game for 2 players on LAN) and also GLSL for better graphics

Good on that, just remember to keep your projects tight and finishable. I see you've finished one so that puts you ahead of a lot of folks. (Though I can't try it right now since my PC is not handy.)