Sorry had to steal the Subject since it gave me a jumping point for another idea...again its going to be UT-based but it will be a somewhat slower paced game. For right now I'll call it "Survivor the FPS" :) The island For a FPS multi-player..the world is pretty huge. It should also be pretty varied. Huts, mountain, caves, canyons etc. Ideally it should have enough room for 64-128 players to both fight and explore. (alot I know) The game The game is a variant of Capture the Flag, but with some major differences. Think of CTF meets Hide and Seek. There are 4 teams and each team has a relic (flag) that they must protect. There are two phases to the game the first is Hide, the second is Seek. In the Hide phase, one player from each team hides thier teams Relic somewhere on the island. There is a set amount of time (agreed upon at game creation)to hide the relic. Different rules can be set up to determine how, if at all the island is divided up amongst the teams. The person holding the Relic is invisible to members of the opposing teams. While the timer is going down, the rest of the team starts setting up defences and making a base camp( Setting up equipment terminals, defences,including the Altar; and exploring.) Once the Relic is placed the player hiding the relic can then return to base and help set it up. (Relics will remain invisible to opposing teams until the seek phase. If the time runs out on the Hide phase before a relic has been hidden, it will fall to the ground where the player hiding the relic was standing at the time. Once the game enters seek phase the FPS action starts. Players must now explore the island, and attempt to find the opposing teams Relics. Once found the players must then return the relic to thier teams altar. Once every other teams relic is in one teams posession, the team must then pick up thier own relic and return it to thier altar as well. Once all 4 relics are on one altar...that team wins. Should a person carrying a relic be killed, the relic is dropped. Anyone can then choose to pick it up and attempt to run. If anyone from the relic's team touches it, it returns to the hiding spot. Ideally I picture this game played with simpler weapons (Aka pistols, rifles, shotguns, snipers, shotguns etc) But More futureistic weapons could possibly be used. What do you think?

It's creative, but you'll have to go through hell to actually execute the idea. Just create a basic shooter or two before even attempting something on that scale.

I should probably state that unfortunately i'm not a Code-writer...so no making of games for me at the moment.

However,

As an undertaking...i don't think the game needs to be built from scratch. There are many engines out there that I think could support the basics of the game.

First Person Shooter wise, its not much different than Unreal, Halo, or Tribes.

The rest of the changes are rule-set changes. Change relics to flags, and its the same basic concept, only you get to choose the original placement.

The biggest change is the initial hide phase...where no shooting is allowed, and item placement is done...but this can be done using "deployables" like in tribes.

The biggest headache is going to be level design. The level needs to be alot bigger, and more intriquite than most FPS games. The trouble will be balancing the size of it to make the game big enough for exploring, but not to big to slow it down tremendously once things get heated up.

The tools are out there to make a game like this right now, but no one has...(except for maybe bandwidth and players)

Mod Farcry. For simple gameplay, there is nothing too difficult about your idea. Without modifying the FarCry weapons/visuals you could make it quite easily. However, I would prefer this style of gameplay with in a post-wartime city, with burn out buildings and crashed pavements.

The actual gameplay idea is good. But I think that the hide mode, everyone should be invisible. Perhaps then you could have intreresting times when two people hide their stuff enxt to each other, you would need to be creative to solve this problem.

One thing though - you would need to design your levels carefully to make it have hundreds of hiding spots, as if you had several good ones, they would get used all the time, and people would get bored of hiding in the same spot.

An island, A burnt out city, a canyon complex, a cavern complex, etc. Definately agree that maps need to be varied.

As I said earlier, map design might just be the hardest part of the game. This definately is not an idea where a game map could be whipped out in no time at all.

I've had a couple of ideas that i'll toss out as rule variations.

Hider invisibility...different options (To all, To oposing teams, and then an option for hiders to be able to see eachother...)

One other option is for hiders to be able to carry a small amount of deployables, so that after they place the relic, they are able to set up some defences around it. Not to many, maybe one or two sentry guns.

I want travel speed to be some-what slow. I don't want one person to easily be able to grab a relic and make a mad dash. Though possible, I think it should be almost squad based combat...hence why I want upwards to 128 players. That would be 32 players per team. Enough to do some major planning and such.

Action being slow at first as people explore the island trying to find the enemy teams and relics, with just small skirmishes as teams run across eachother. But then ramping up into mass action as relics start getting found and stolen left and right.

Personally I think things could go very well.

I'd worry that your innovation would be unappreciated. Wouldn't it be best just to "hide" the relic in your home base? You'll respawn close to it, you'll be better able to defend and check on it, and you'll be able to place it immediately when you've collected all the others. Ultimately, it'll just be CTF.

And how will you get all four in your base? What if someone else already go it? You'll just wind up raiding other teams' altars anyway, so why not start out like that?

ICC
I expect that each match will eventually end up being a CTF game. The key here is to have a system where the action slowly evolves from nothing into an all out battle royal. The evolving action is one of the main objectives.

As for just hiding the relic near the base... The base is going to be easy to spot. If you send someone out to follow opposing teams, then it will be relatively easy to find it. If you're base is also the location of your relic then you'll be defending from the get-go while at the same time trying to find someone elses relic.

I have a couple of other ideas that could increase exploration while playing. Scattered throughout the maps are things that can increase base defences. Chain-link fence to create a bottleneck, Sand bags for defensive positions, etc.

Another idea might be having things in the environment that can be used for traps and ambushes...boulders that can roll down hills, provided you have the charge needed to get it rolling.