heheh sorry about the confusion.

It is NOT a MMORPG.

It is NOT an action-RPG ala Diablo.

It is a (mainly singleplayer) RPG which will feature:
- Pausable Realtime (whenever you want and when the computer thinks you want, the game will pause and wait for your action) similiar to Baldur's Gate.

- A lot of combat moves, which I hope will allow for more tactical combat.

- A damage system that I hope is quite realistic and, of course, fun!

How I hope it will play:
Let's try an example (this seems to be the only example I can think of, but it just illustrates so well how I would want it to be ).

Ok, so you're inside a building. You need to get inside a room, with two guards inside, and do something (let's say you're supposed to save someone they're supposed to interrogate.).

The area looks like this

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX   X               XX   X               XX   X               XX P D         1     XX   X       G       XX   X    CCC 2      XX   X               XXXDXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX 

Where X = wall, P = you the player, D = door, 1 and 2 are guards, CCC is a couch and G is the guy they're talking to.

Of course there are lots of ways you could solve this problem but let's try this one (where T = Time in seconds) :

T=0 : you draw your pistol
T=2 : you kick the door open
T=2.3 : the "kick the door open"-action is done.
T=2.5 : the game pauses and allows you to take a new action. You decided to shoot guard 1. Your character start aiming.
T=2.6 : the guards get their first reaction (since they were surprised. In this case, their reaction time is 0.3 seconds.) They start drawing their guns
T=2.8 : Your character fires. He hits the guard in the head, and he dies.

T=2.9 : The game pauses and lets you decide a new action. The second guard has finished his "draw weapon"-animation/move. At this time you can either just step aside to the right behind the wall, or start aiming at the second guard. Let's say you try to shoot the second guard.
T=3.0 : The guard may now either dive behind the couch for cover, since you killed his friend and is now coming for you; or hope that he can manage to kill you before you kill him.
T=3.3 : You fire, but the bullet flies past the guard's head! The guard fires to, but hits you in the arm. Now he's probably got an advantage over you since according to the damage rules, your aim just got worse.
T=3.4 : The game pauses. New decision.... And so on.



Adding a slowmotion-function to this game would probably not only look cool (as it does in Max Payne), but it could likely be of some tactical value.



Like I said, this is mainly designed to be a singleplayer RPG, but it's not hard to vision a Cooperation mode:
Two players, you place yourselves behind different doors leading to the same room. Using some game interface, you decide to kick the doors in at the same time! Major advantage over anyone inside, plus it'll look cool when you use the replay function (hehe, no I'm not saying there will be one, but I sure hope it will )


Also, imagine a more tactical/strategic version of Counter-Strike. Each player could have a certain amount of times or seconds they could use the pause function; you could see what your friends saw all the time from an overhead perspective, and coordinate attacks and so on. It's not what I intend the game to be, but if I make the rules free and advanced enough, it shouldn't be THAT hard converting to these games.


Sorry, long post again

Oh, and well I don't really like giving away my Design Doc, but after all, if someone steals my idea and makes an übersuccessful game, I can just sue them and earn tons of money!

http://www.dtek.chalmers.se/~srekel/real/Real%20Design%20Document.shtml




"Kaka e gott" - Me

[edited by - Srekel on March 31, 2003 2:34:53 PM]

this acutally sounds really fun, strategy for slow people game

This is a really neat idea. With the super-frequent pauses to think, it''s almost like a board game. I''d like to see it set up so that you go through it the step-by-step system, and when you make it through the scene, it plays back in real-time to show you how badass you were. It would be cool to spend twenty minutes on a level and then watch the two minutes of action that you caused.

Of course, what do you do if you lose? you can''t make the player go back to the beginning and go through it laboriously, step-by-step. I''d come to your house and choke you.

Really, this could almost be done with a multiple choice menu. Just build a huge-ass tree of possible actions and outcomes, and let the player follow it through. Mix it up a little by having enemies do some different things each time, but try to keep it simple from a control standpoint. That''s a monstrous task, of course, but what you propose is easily a match for it. I hope your system works out, it would be revolutionary.

"This is a really neat idea. "

Heh, thanks . I happen to think so too :D


"With the super-frequent pauses to think, it''s almost like a board game. "

Well, I wouldn''t say board game, but I''ll try to prove all the people that say "realtime => no tactics/strategy" false.


"I''d like to see it set up so that you go through it the step-by-step system, and when you make it through the scene, it plays back in real-time to show you how badass you were. It would be cool to spend twenty minutes on a level and then watch the two minutes of action that you caused."

Yup I would love to add that feature (being the fan of action that I am)



"Of course, what do you do if you lose? you can''t make the player go back to the beginning and go through it laboriously, step-by-step. I''d come to your house and choke you."

Lol!
I haven''t thought about the saving/loading part yet. Hopefully I can come up with something new, imaginative and fun. But if I don''t, I''ll just use the old "save and load whenever you want"-technique.

Maybe I''ll limit the amounts of saves and loads per ten minutes or something like that. Or per half-an-hour. Or per ten minutes of actual game real-time. I''ll think of something. When I play games like Fallout, Splinter Cell and Jagged Alliance 2, I like to be able to save anywhere, so that when I load I know that the guard on patrol has just walked past the door I''m trying to sneak into. Having to wait one minute each time you load because you saved at the wrong time would NOT be fun.



"Really, this could almost be done with a multiple choice menu. Just build a huge-ass tree of possible actions and outcomes, and let the player follow it through. "

This sounds like you don''t want any AI, just scripted events for every action that the character might take, and that at different places in the game, only some actions will be availible because I (the designer) only want the player to solve a problem in just a few ways. I definitely want to avoid this.

One of the reasons I believe that the (more than average) amount of moves will be fun is that it will lead to a high level of tactics and planning. A character should be able to do basically anything that he WOULD be able to do in that very situation (that is a logical thing to do I won''t implement moves such as "Jump on one leg" just for the heck of it. Actually I might )

I don''t want the player to think "ok, so how does the designer want me to solve this problem", I want him to think "ok, I''ve got a problem I need to solve here. Which skills should I use, how should I use them, when shuold I use them, and most importantly of all, where can I use all these cool action moves so that I can view an awesome slomotion playback of it later?"

Ok, maybe that isn''t the REAL point of the moves, but it sure is a cool biproduct.



"Mix it up a little by having enemies do some different things each time, but try to keep it simple from a control standpoint. That''s a monstrous task, of course, but what you propose is easily a match for it. I hope your system works out, it would be revolutionary."


Yes, I hope to be able to design the AI so that the enemy never chooses the same action two times in a row (except when it''s VERY logical that he does that precise move of course). Not that I''ve programmed any AI, but how difficult could it be.



Like I said, what I think will be the most difficult thing to implement, is all the moves and programming the AI so that the enemies can use them and appreciate their value.




"Kaka e gott" - Me

Okay I get it now thx. Then might I add, that it might be nice to have a slow mo replay after a sequence like that? Perhaps an option in the menu to hit a button after its done and see it playing out without the pause. Just sort of sit back and enjoy the view.

hehe well like I said that would be a really cool feature that I would really like to implement. It''s not the most important thing though

"Kaka e gott" - Me

If you would make a list of those three and asked which one didn''t fit, which one would it be?

"Ranged combat, body, mind"

lol - ranged combat

Ok so it sounds a bit weird, but... can you think of better words?

"Kaka e gott" - Me