This Survival Horror Game is going to be like no other. Its going to revolutionize Survival Horror Games all over the world. The game is a mix between them old regular survival horror games with the zombies (resident evil), the creepiness (silent hill) and then it will have free roam ability ( like grand theft auto). When your walking down the street and you see a building that you can't get into you might break a window to get in it. So then once you get in the building a hole new creepiness will take effect. If you all want to help with character design or level design or just plan ideas then you are more then welcome. Just IM me.

If you're asking for opinions (which the thread title implies), it's a little difficult with so little information. Maybe tell us more?

Quote: Original post by Silent_Darky
This Survival Horror Game is going to be like no other.

Isnt the game you're describing Dead Rush?
Oh nevermind, it got cancelled. your game is now like no other.

Yes, i agree with Karelian, you should be a bit more descriptive, or are you looking for other people to help work on the idea with?

Wow. That sounds really creepy.

[wow] [looksaround] [tears] [oh] [dead]

Your idea sounds promising --- like a million other ideas that have never seen the light of day. If you're making progress, I would love to see some concept art, screenshots, whatever. Otherwise, this lack of information leaves me unimpressed.

Problem is the reason horror games like this arnt like what you describe is that its a ridiculous time sink to make every building and place free roamable AND take the time to give it a genuinly creepy aspect.

Take a look at the making of Silent Hill 2 (bonus disk came with SH2 PAL) those guys where amazingly creative is SO many ways, the music was throught about down to the note, every sceane was a visual implimentation of thier horror "theme" (Desire clashes with Repulsion, or some such). The thought process around how the mosnters looked and moved was startalingly(sp??) indepth.

Now if that level of creepynes and horror was as easily splashed about random freeroamable loactions dont you think a highly professional games dev team would have done so?

Im not trying to scupper your idea if you are capable of this then all the luck in the world to youid LOVE to play your game.

BUT you are talking about having more freedom to roam than GTA and more horror than silent hill your basicly taking the main features 2 different proffesional dev teams where soley focusing on as the selling point for thier games and trying and then making your game better at both of these with a rag tag buch of indie games coders.
I really dont want to piss on anyones parade here but you have your work cut out for you in a BIG! way.

EDIT/ also avoid Zombies thier way, way, way too cliche.

[Edited by - JDUK on December 16, 2004 9:50:32 AM]

to avoid work you can make building templates, i believe monolith does this with Matrix Online

for example, apt building has 1st floor, then 2nd to 10th are identical, then 11th is roof

if you make hierarchical templates, you can squeeze more outta your work, but it will look generic so be sure to make some tricks to avoid that.

Also, free roam can be bad in horror, because once you get bored you're no longer scared. Toss some goals and point the player to them and let him *think* that he has total freedom. thats good enough.

Note: Silent hill 2 had free roam, just not GTA scale. Entering buildings however, was restricted by your inventory. So its directed "free" roam, and thats what works best in horror.

Zombies may be cliche, yet people still enjoy movies with em. So no worries.
Just run a theme trough it (and don't make it OMG! ZOMBIES) and you'll be fine.

I was thinking about this very idea a while back. I'm not like OMG I'll do it, because it is a lot of work. But I think it will work if you can pull it off.

I think there is a gap in the games industry and that is multiplayer co-op. Games that you can play at lans, or with friends that don't require direct competition. Sven co-op was great, and I would very much like to play something similar. (If anyone knows any multiplayer co-op games like this tell me!). I think it would be great to have co-op in this type of game.

I was thinking about making a simple game (ie not gta roam) just about survival. Basically you have some sort of area (smallish map), with weapons and ammunition. Zombies or whatever attack, and keep coming in larger and larger waves until eventually you die. The aim is to survive the longest - you could have some sort of online highscore. The game can also be multiplayer, with more players your team will be able to last longer.

So if you want a game that can be created with a team smaller than the great developers at Rockstar Games, discard the gta bit. If you think you can create a gta zombie survival then by all means go for it.

As Madster said it would be quite good to have a template building system. You could take it even further and have the entire city generated randomly from template type things. Even with gta, if you left an area - instantly the cars and people are not simulated, but after a while - your changes to it dissappear as well. It is too much to keep all this information in memory at once. If you could have some sort of random seed that allowed you to at any time to re-generate a part of the city, I think it would be great.

I've heard that the most important aspect of these roam engines is effective caching. If you want a roaming system, you need to be constantly loading and caching the bits ahead.

It sounds that you are still in the design stages, so I will leave discussion of the details. I think it is enough to say that the creation of such a game would be an impressive task.

Edit: That Dead Rush game looks promising.

That Dead Rush game Looked promissing. But it got cancelled, and I died a little inside. Everyone should engaged in this thread should go to that link i supplied at the top, and read the preview on the game. Its basically a fun version of what this thread is about.