Hi all,

I'm developing an idea for a game where you are basically given a top down display of your character's location, represented by a very basic symbol. The graphical elements in the game are going to be minimal.

Other characters will be represented by identical symbols, all mobs will be represented by a "mob" symbols, all items by a universal "item" symbol and so on...

The only real reason for the top down display is to provide the player with an idea of where everything is - as if the game were being played from inside a submarine, your only idea of space and relative distance comes from an abstract radar reading.

When a player hovers the cursor over other players or mobs etc... the game will bring up the attributes of whatever they are examining. Here's the beauty of it; the attributes list will be thorough enough to provide the player with an idea of what they are examining without actually needing to see it. Examples might be: Height, Weight, Colour, Build...

Alongside the attributes that the player is able to inspect, there will be a range of behind the scenes attributes that govern how the mob or item acts, or what a player is capable of doing.

The point in this is that if someone wanted to come along and customise a server, they could do so easily by filling out a description of the mobs and items they wanted. If you wanted a "Dawn of the Dead" game you could fill the map with mobs that had the attributes of "slow moving, non aggressive to other mobs, only aggressive at short range" etc... for the zombies and all the items could be "ranged weapon, accurate at short range, heavy to carry" for the shotguns.

I wanted to come up with a list of attributes for Mobs, Characters and Items. Each could be edited, and ultimately govern the characteristics of each thing. Ideally, the attributes would be numeric or number based (Eg; "Weight (lbs): 100").

Any suggestions for attributes?

I suggest you try making a prototype with three such customizable attributes (say, speed, 'friendly to monsters' and 'only aggressive at short range') to get a feel for what kind of underlying design your game would need to be this modifiable by the end user.

Ideas for mob attributes:

Sense range (m)
Sensitivity (affects probaility of noticing an enemy within sense range)
Aggressiveness (affects probability of attacking an enemy. Combined with some sort of threat evaluation/'aggro' AI)
Cowardliness (affects probability of fleeing combat)
Restlessness (a 100% restless mob will wander around constantly, while a 0% restless mob will remain motionless until an enemy is detected)