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Game Idea

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Atariangamer:
Here's a slightly disorganized, hefty read about a game idea I had. IDK where else to put it, so here goes.

Start off in a dark room, the place is structurally intact, but a huge mess. Desks overturned, lights burnt out, signs of fire and water damage, and absolutely no people. In fact, the game should be mostly silent. It should have ambient noise, maybe some ambient strings (especially to react to events, such as getting more intense when you discover something), but no true music. Possibly, have a radio or two you can turn on, but make the music kinda cheezy, so that you wouldn’t want it on for too long.

Somehow, make it very clear to the player that help is NOT on the way, and that they are effectively trapped where they are. There also needs to be very little help to the user. No prompts as to where to go, or what to do. Their main interface with the world is reading stuff, picking objects up, and placing them down, and a little data entry. It’s a slight puzzle game, some suspense, and a lot of slow action. I don’t want to turn this into a fps shootemup, but I don’t want it to be boring, either. There’s a lot of critically acclaimed games that are mainly puzzle solving. In fact, take the Lucasfilm Games point and click adventures for example. They eventually incorporated a little action, but were mostly just puzzles. This is a first person extension of that kind of mindset.

Now, the player is in a research facility. I’m almost thinking about a 3 story building with rooftop, courtyard, and the place is otherwise locked down tight. It will be night time the whole time, mainly due to the time travel element. Yes, time travel. This will make both writing the game and playing it VERY hard. I have my mind set on 5 semi difficult quests. 5…out of maybe 20. You only need 5 to finish the game, and you will have a sort of time limit. Imagine it being like a doom meter. If too many bad things happen, your chances of winning are shot. But if you manage to do good things to lower the meter, more events can occur, and change the outcome at the end. Really hard to keep track of, so maybe the first thing to do is…ah, a PDA.

Now, I know that nowadays, PDAs and such are traded out for phones, but I think that this will be an exception. I also know that most people hate these types of organization systems. But it can help the player keep track of his objectives and stuff. And if possible, I plan to make the PDA fully free. No automated stuff. If you see something you want to keep track of, you gotta either download the whole media (limited storage space), or write it down yourself (lots more space). The PDA will be the only thing the player will be told how to use. Upon opening it, one single email will exist, and it is one welcoming you to the science facility, and possibly some basic instructions on how to use the computer systems and possibly a map. The map could be useful, or maybe we’ll corrupt it, making the map only useful for a certain part.

So, you got this PDA. I may give way to automated objectives. Just very vague things. All the details will either have to be memorized, or written in the notes section. You could also go scouting through the facility to find a larger SD card to hold your precious downloads. In fact, that could be a challenge. To transfer a file to an isolated network in the facility. This could provide a fun mini game for DX3 styled hacking, or a hunt for a storage device and then a maze to get to the desired location.

Now, I’m talking about all these things and you might be all “zuh?” on what its for. So here’s the main story line, no details.

It is the near future. Scientists in a remote facility have finally discovered a localized timetravel method. They’ve begun to apply it, but due to a systems failure, the entire facility has been plunged into an alternate timeline, and the rest of the world with it. You are the sole survivor in your timeline, knocked out by the time wave just as you entered the building. Just before the accident, the automated systems initiated a lockdown, trapping you within the walls. But something strange is happening. The computers are still working, the labs still in operation, and research and data are streaming towards the time device codebase. The scientists’ efforts in the alternate dimension are yielding results in yours. But they’re making mistakes. Affected by the time travel, equipment is mismatched, numbers scrambled, and only you can discover this and fix it in time. If you succeed, you can reactivate the timewave and prevent the incident from happening. If you fail, the time device will be destroyed, and your timeline along with it.

Now, that’s a lot to try and grasp, so this is the rundown of the gameplay.
You wake up, nobody is there, but as you explore, you realize that things are happening, experiments going wrong, and somehow, all is ‘well’ scientifically. But there are problems. As you explore various labs, events happen before your very eyes. Explosions, fires, computer crashes, power surges and blinks, and other various phenomena. These have an adverse effect on the time device, which can only fully operate again after certain research succeeds. If these events aren’t prevented somehow, the device will never be fixed, and it spells doom for you. But you may be wondering “how am I do prevent something that I see happen?” And that is where the time travel aspect comes in. After an event, you can search the area for bits of information. Notes, books, equipment, computers, or you can use your PDA to observe the status of people. Say after one fire, a quantum physicist dies. You go search his office, his computer, and read his notes and then compare it to the ones in the actual lab, and you realize, a calculation was off. Or the wrong equipment was used, or a file was missing. Then you can run and use the time device to rewind (not very far) to it previously. Your changes are permanent after one run, so make sure you do it right! But also be careful, the device can go only an hour or so back at the moment, so if you take more than that to discover the prevention method, you can’t actually travel back to prevent it!
Now, you will only have 3 active at a time, and only rarely will they be dependent on each other.  Except for maybe once, it’d be nice to throw a wrench into the works. But that said, I think I like Dead Rising’s sort of mission style, where only a few ones are actually key, and the rest are just helpful. As I said, 5 quests are the minimum to advance, but which five? If you manage to do the first five, maybe there’s something you missed, something not right. Maybe its an experimental build of the code, that depending on one last mission, could be the difference between winning and losing the game. Or maybe make it a points game. Have some reason to be as quick as you could at as many tasks as you can. Or, even better, multiple endings other than pass/fail. Maybe 2 wins and 3 fails. 1 win is flawless, everything back to normal, another win would be that the timelines kind of just merge slowly, and stuff starts coming back to normal. A fail would be that the timelines merge, but then everything collapses into a singularity or something, then another fail is that they switch. Everyone else is in the wrecked world and you are alone in the best world for humanity, yet you’re alone. The epic fail is that the device explodes and all life as we know it ends.

Fun game, huh?

IDK, I’d like some feedback on this.

And as far as engine…I was thinking, for the computer interfaces, either Deus Ex (original) or Doom 3. But then I think. Both of those are rather old, Deus Ex has a lot of things I *don’t* like about, but has the benefit of being a well documented engine and devkit. Doom 3 isn’t very well documented, and requires WAY too much modeling and stuff. Source has VERY little to offer in the scripting and computer interface deparment, as its designed to be much more of an interactive engine. But its an option simply because its otherwise very easy to dev for. Then, Xbolt brought two things: Unity 3D (free, advanced, highly portable game engine), and the Unreal DevKit, which is free to get and develop for, but costs a bit to actually publish.

Unity 3D looks nice, and is, again, portable to both internet, Windows, Mac, Linux, Mobile. So is UDK, but probably a lot harder to distribute than Unity. Both are probably VERY hard to learn and make stuff happen in them, and another downside is art. We have no modelers, no level designers, no art guys, and basically, nothing to make the game look like I’d like it.

But its an interesting concept, I thought I’d pitch it.

Atariangamer:
Here's another one: though a warning...literaly just a mashup of Halo and Doom, and I think Halo 4 has addressed much of this.

A futuristic space FPS that makes use of a wide variety of weapon options with a limited inventory, designed for compact and quick matches of either DM, TDM, or CTF.
Basically, Halo. But a little more Doom in it, and multiplayer only.
There would be a wide variety of alien and human weaponry, with a similar weapon in each category. There would be some differences where alien weaponry (based more on plasma and energy) couldn’t do the same things human weaponry (bullets and explosives) can do. The differences in these properties would be the upsides and downsides to each weapon, making it balanced. Players shouldn’t be rushing to the biggest, baddest alien weapon on the map, there should be more of a playstyle choosing. But unlike TF2 or other class-based FPS games, you can change playstyles by simply picking up another weapon on the fly. Dual wield should be possible, but without the Halo 2 action of dropping your second weapon to melee. Melee is a 3 hit kill. Full shield takedown and then two for the health. This would encourage less beatdowns, and make them more of a trophy. There would be a much quicker recovery, though, so that weapons could do what they need to do and you’re not a sitting duck waiting for your character to rehold his weapon. Maybe make the aim less accurate after doing a quick flip. It could work.
Another thing to carry over from Halo is the jumping. High, floaty jumps so that bunny hopping is not a good thing. Hang time increases visibility, and if someone’s got a scope, they’re dead for jumping in the wrong place. No prone, though. The geometry of the maps should make crouching (a little more than one third height) perfect for keeping out of sight. But a pull from doom? Running. More modern styled running, though. You should be able to run and be decently fast, but the drawback is your weapon is disabled. When you stop running, you have less accuracy. Now, pulling from halo again, your player is in a very hefty armor suit. This has a shield system that can take good bits of damage. The only one hit’s are a particular melee only weapon, and possibly only from the back (plus side is that you have silent steps now). Lack of shields should be audibly and visible noticeable, and your health should then appear as an obvious bar. Back to doom: health pickups. No regenerating health, but very rare (rarer than halo) health kits. Also, damaged shields. Shields can regenerate, but after several discharges, it won’t charge up fully. This helps balance things by ending kill streaks unless they’re deserved. Now, I don’t think it’d make too much difference, but say after 5 shield drops, you lose a block of recharge. 3 more, another block. 2 more, another, one more…you get it. 5 shield blocks total, then you’re running on health. In this mode, maybe your health would increase a bit to give you a little more time to decide, but this should give you at least 10 good encounters on one life that you have a great chance to survive from. On a default slayer match, its what…25 points? If someone is good enough to get 10 kills without dying, they could roll the server if not stopped, and by the time everyone figures that this guy is killstreaking, he’ll be more vulnerable and they can not only more easily stop him, but upset his groove.

alex_theman45:

--- Quote from: Atariangamer on February 02, 2012, 06:42:42 PM ---Here's a slightly disorganized, hefty read about a game idea I had. IDK where else to put it, so here goes.

Start off in a dark room, the place is structurally intact, but a huge mess. Desks overturned, lights burnt out, signs of fire and water damage, and absolutely no people. In fact, the game should be mostly silent. It should have ambient noise, maybe some ambient strings (especially to react to events, such as getting more intense when you discover something), but no true music. Possibly, have a radio or two you can turn on, but make the music kinda cheezy, so that you wouldn’t want it on for too long.

Somehow, make it very clear to the player that help is NOT on the way, and that they are effectively trapped where they are. There also needs to be very little help to the user. No prompts as to where to go, or what to do. Their main interface with the world is reading stuff, picking objects up, and placing them down, and a little data entry. It’s a slight puzzle game, some suspense, and a lot of slow action. I don’t want to turn this into a fps shootemup, but I don’t want it to be boring, either. There’s a lot of critically acclaimed games that are mainly puzzle solving. In fact, take the Lucasfilm Games point and click adventures for example. They eventually incorporated a little action, but were mostly just puzzles. This is a first person extension of that kind of mindset.

Now, the player is in a research facility. I’m almost thinking about a 3 story building with rooftop, courtyard, and the place is otherwise locked down tight. It will be night time the whole time, mainly due to the time travel element. Yes, time travel. This will make both writing the game and playing it VERY hard. I have my mind set on 5 semi difficult quests. 5…out of maybe 20. You only need 5 to finish the game, and you will have a sort of time limit. Imagine it being like a doom meter. If too many bad things happen, your chances of winning are shot. But if you manage to do good things to lower the meter, more events can occur, and change the outcome at the end. Really hard to keep track of, so maybe the first thing to do is…ah, a PDA.

Now, I know that nowadays, PDAs and such are traded out for phones, but I think that this will be an exception. I also know that most people hate these types of organization systems. But it can help the player keep track of his objectives and stuff. And if possible, I plan to make the PDA fully free. No automated stuff. If you see something you want to keep track of, you gotta either download the whole media (limited storage space), or write it down yourself (lots more space). The PDA will be the only thing the player will be told how to use. Upon opening it, one single email will exist, and it is one welcoming you to the science facility, and possibly some basic instructions on how to use the computer systems and possibly a map. The map could be useful, or maybe we’ll corrupt it, making the map only useful for a certain part.

So, you got this PDA. I may give way to automated objectives. Just very vague things. All the details will either have to be memorized, or written in the notes section. You could also go scouting through the facility to find a larger SD card to hold your precious downloads. In fact, that could be a challenge. To transfer a file to an isolated network in the facility. This could provide a fun mini game for DX3 styled hacking, or a hunt for a storage device and then a maze to get to the desired location.

Now, I’m talking about all these things and you might be all “zuh?” on what its for. So here’s the main story line, no details.

It is the near future. Scientists in a remote facility have finally discovered a localized timetravel method. They’ve begun to apply it, but due to a systems failure, the entire facility has been plunged into an alternate timeline, and the rest of the world with it. You are the sole survivor in your timeline, knocked out by the time wave just as you entered the building. Just before the accident, the automated systems initiated a lockdown, trapping you within the walls. But something strange is happening. The computers are still working, the labs still in operation, and research and data are streaming towards the time device codebase. The scientists’ efforts in the alternate dimension are yielding results in yours. But they’re making mistakes. Affected by the time travel, equipment is mismatched, numbers scrambled, and only you can discover this and fix it in time. If you succeed, you can reactivate the timewave and prevent the incident from happening. If you fail, the time device will be destroyed, and your timeline along with it.

Now, that’s a lot to try and grasp, so this is the rundown of the gameplay.
You wake up, nobody is there, but as you explore, you realize that things are happening, experiments going wrong, and somehow, all is ‘well’ scientifically. But there are problems. As you explore various labs, events happen before your very eyes. Explosions, fires, computer crashes, power surges and blinks, and other various phenomena. These have an adverse effect on the time device, which can only fully operate again after certain research succeeds. If these events aren’t prevented somehow, the device will never be fixed, and it spells doom for you. But you may be wondering “how am I do prevent something that I see happen?” And that is where the time travel aspect comes in. After an event, you can search the area for bits of information. Notes, books, equipment, computers, or you can use your PDA to observe the status of people. Say after one fire, a quantum physicist dies. You go search his office, his computer, and read his notes and then compare it to the ones in the actual lab, and you realize, a calculation was off. Or the wrong equipment was used, or a file was missing. Then you can run and use the time device to rewind (not very far) to it previously. Your changes are permanent after one run, so make sure you do it right! But also be careful, the device can go only an hour or so back at the moment, so if you take more than that to discover the prevention method, you can’t actually travel back to prevent it!
Now, you will only have 3 active at a time, and only rarely will they be dependent on each other.  Except for maybe once, it’d be nice to throw a wrench into the works. But that said, I think I like Dead Rising’s sort of mission style, where only a few ones are actually key, and the rest are just helpful. As I said, 5 quests are the minimum to advance, but which five? If you manage to do the first five, maybe there’s something you missed, something not right. Maybe its an experimental build of the code, that depending on one last mission, could be the difference between winning and losing the game. Or maybe make it a points game. Have some reason to be as quick as you could at as many tasks as you can. Or, even better, multiple endings other than pass/fail. Maybe 2 wins and 3 fails. 1 win is flawless, everything back to normal, another win would be that the timelines kind of just merge slowly, and stuff starts coming back to normal. A fail would be that the timelines merge, but then everything collapses into a singularity or something, then another fail is that they switch. Everyone else is in the wrecked world and you are alone in the best world for humanity, yet you’re alone. The epic fail is that the device explodes and all life as we know it ends.

Fun game, huh?

IDK, I’d like some feedback on this.

And as far as engine…I was thinking, for the computer interfaces, either Deus Ex (original) or Doom 3. But then I think. Both of those are rather old, Deus Ex has a lot of things I *don’t* like about, but has the benefit of being a well documented engine and devkit. Doom 3 isn’t very well documented, and requires WAY too much modeling and stuff. Source has VERY little to offer in the scripting and computer interface deparment, as its designed to be much more of an interactive engine. But its an option simply because its otherwise very easy to dev for. Then, Xbolt brought two things: Unity 3D (free, advanced, highly portable game engine), and the Unreal DevKit, which is free to get and develop for, but costs a bit to actually publish.

Unity 3D looks nice, and is, again, portable to both internet, Windows, Mac, Linux, Mobile. So is UDK, but probably a lot harder to distribute than Unity. Both are probably VERY hard to learn and make stuff happen in them, and another downside is art. We have no modelers, no level designers, no art guys, and basically, nothing to make the game look like I’d like it.

But its an interesting concept, I thought I’d pitch it.

--- End quote ---
I could make a game about that, also cube 2 might be a option

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