This is a thread for ideas. Lots of ideas. Ideas that are not fully formed, not fully thought out, but little seedlings that could grow into fun games if someone likes them enough to really think about them. I hope that the ideas will be unusual and original, but we'll see how it goes. Edit: Removed rule 6, because it wasn't a good idea in the first place, and people don't like it. The rules (because this type of thread always has a 'rules' section):

1. Ideas must be technically possible, with current technology, although there is no requirement that they be technically easy, or that the technology has been used before (if you aren't sure whether it's technically possible, then go ahead and post, although it might be a good idea to mention that you weren't sure)
2. Ideas may be complete, but they don't have to be (most probably won't be). An idea may be specific (ie, an idea for a particular game), or it may be more general (an idea that could be extended in many different ways to make completely different games; maybe even a new genre)
3. If you want to suggest an improvement to an idea, state who posted the original idea, and then give a complete copy of the idea statement, either with your addition at the end, or with your addition integrated into the main text (the point being that people shouldn't have to try to track their way back through the thread to get the complete picture)
4. Try to keep the idea description down to three (fairly short) paragraphs at most - if you want to expand the idea more than that, then go ahead, but people should be able to get the main thrust of your idea in the first three paragraphs.
5. If you post multiple ideas, make sure they are easily separable, so that if people do comment on them, it's easy to see what's what.
6. Cancelled.
7. If you happen to know that a particular idea has been implemented before, and you want to point that out, then please be polite and brief (polite because whoever posted the idea probably just didn't know that it had already been done, and brief because otherwise you'll pull the thread off topic)

Some ideas:

1. Design a set of specifications that define a network protocol, and things like underlying map structures, and then write a whole set of games (preferably not all in the same genre) that all use this common protocol, and can be played online together. From a technical viewpoint, this would require a common library to deal with the underlying world, with the games themselves sitting on top of that to provide the interface and any game-specific mechanics (this certainly wouldn't be easy to set up, but I don't see any completely show-stopping technical problems...)
2. (This may be a cliche "unusual" idea, at least in part...) You play a dog (or a wolf). The graphics are surreal and colourful, but also somewhat ghostly: The world is a dim, grayscale backdrop, but scents in the air appear as vivid smears of colour on the world. You can see the smell of a fearful, sweating human. The audio is distorted - tones are all shifted to be lower, because the pitches that humans are used to hearing are much lower in a dog's hearing range (because its range extends much higher - nb: this sound idea stolen from, iirc, Charles Bloom); various other sounds that humans can't normally hear are audible now. Why do you play a dog, and what is your purpose in life? I don't know, I didn't get that far. Maybe you're a canine detective. Maybe you're the leader of a pack. Maybe little timmy fell down the well again.
3. You play the leader of a small group of pre-civilization hunter-gatherers. The game is set in a semi-mythical Africa (semi-mythical because that's a good excuse for all kinds of cool stuff and also historical inaccuracy.) Your main tools are some rocks, javelins and axes, and the latest invention: Fire. Your group (not really civilized enough to call it a tribe yet) is facing new hurdles as they roam the plains under the burning, HDR rendered power of the African sun (a bright world is very important here; preferably with some caves so that you can see how bright it is outside them). You must use all your skills as a plainsman (cavemen? huh! we're not cavemen!) to lead your group to success and the beginnings of civilization, against all the odds (for example: famine, disease, occasional dangerous animals, and the greatest threat of them all: other humans) From a genre point of view, this would be a cross-breed between a fairly free-form (ie, only very weakly story based) RPG, and an RTS. You would be the leader of the group, and would have the reponsibility for making the decisions, but you would not be an all-powerful eye-in-the-sky; it's a first-person game. No idea what the background story could be, or what the interface would be like (except: minimal; practically not there, most of the time, so you can get the full effect of that beautiful, bright world), or what you, as leader, would actually get to control.

This thread is not official, nor is it endorced by the gamedev.net staff or moderators... but has that ever stopped anyone before? John B [Edited by - JohnBSmall on September 18, 2005 10:34:34 AM]

(This may be a cliche "unusual" idea, at least in part...)
You play a dog (or a wolf). The graphics are surreal and colourful, but also somewhat ghostly: The world is a dim, grayscale backdrop, but scents in the air appear as vivid smears of colour on the world. You can see the smell of a fearful, sweating human. The audio is distorted - tones are all shifted to be lower, because the pitches that humans are used to hearing are much lower in a dog's hearing range (because its range extends much higher - nb: this sound idea stolen from, iirc, Charles Bloom); various other sounds that humans can't normally hear are audible now.
Why do you play a dog, and what is your purpose in life? I don't know, I didn't get that far. Maybe you're a canine detective. Maybe you're the leader of a pack. Maybe little timmy fell down the well again.

Go to google and type in "Its a dogs life computer game" and youll see this idea in a fully released game.

Siolis :)

Quote:

Original post by Siolis Go to google and type in "Its a dogs life computer game" and youll see this idea in a fully released game.

Well, of all the games I should've known about, I should've known about that one; seeing as I downloaded Frontier's dog animation tech demo (years ago). Oh well.

Anyone want to post any ideas of their own?

John B

Quote:

1. Design a set of specifications that define a network protocol, and things like underlying map structures, and then write a whole set of games (preferably not all in the same genre) that all use this common protocol, and can be played online together. From a technical viewpoint, this would require a common library to deal with the underlying world, with the games themselves sitting on top of that to provide the interface and any game-specific mechanics (this certainly wouldn't be easy to set up, but I don't see any completely show-stopping technical problems...)

No ideas myself right now, but just so you know this has been attempted. Google 'Silent Hunter 2' and 'Destroyer Command'. I'm not sure if it's working; I remember that it didn't work right out of the box.

A few ideas that I've already posted on my website:

..:: Rage ::..

..:: MMO RPG ::..

..:: User Control ::..

I'd like to see a game with an NPC who is the PC's imaginary friend. Something like Calving and Hobbes, or Harvey the Rabbit. I think fascinating literary and gameplay things could be done with that setup.

Id like to see an FPS that has a small 3d transparent version of your character so the player can easily tell if theyre laying down, climbing over something, sitting, limping, running, walking, etc.
Possibly, if theres an enemy within melee range, it would show up next to it to simulate percipual vision or that 'feeling' everyoen gets when they know someones standing right behind them.
Also, if you got splotch of red that flashes a few seconds thats painted onto the mini-model where the character gets hurt. It'd help with loweirng the confusion of "whered that bullet come from??" and "whos hitting me?!" I mean, in real life, if you got shot in the leg, you'd KNOW it.

By the way, Nice idea for a thread. Also, I dont care for rule 6. I think that feedback and short discussion might be nice to see. Sort of getting an idea of how decent of an idea you've got.

Neat thread.[smile]

How about a speech training/recognition/alife game? You're an assistant to a mad scientist who happens to be mispending Federal dollars on a dimensional warping machine. One night, everything in the lab goes haywire and you find yourself in an alien world. If that weren't bad enough, you're so injured that you start out completely crippled (arms and legs). Fortunately, you're rescued by a tribe of aliens.

The game begins in the hut with you trying to learn to communicate with the aliens in Simon Says fashion. When you learn their rudimentary language, you can start communicating with them and sending them out on quests. As you get stronger, you can go out with them and help.

At the end of the game, you have to direct the whole tribe in a stealthy mission to sneak into the castle of the evil despot who has kidnapped the mad scientist. You do so by communicating with the aliens using the made-up language you've learned.

(Hey, it's fun to be imaginative when you have no intention of trying to get the resources to do a project!)

serveral games acting as a singe Persistent world or parallel worlds.
IF you have 2 MMORPGS, you can use the player input of 1 MMORPG as the control
for the monsters/NPC of the other. This way, the ramdom monster battles are against actual players from the other game.

Then lets say you have a browser based game like risk that controls the enconomy, politics of the MMORPG. Then you have farming, and sim-type games to control the resource development of the world. turn based strategy, RTS will handle big fights with FPS players acting like hero units in Warcraft (except the RTS player can not control the FPS player). The FPS player can log on and join a side or battle and see the commands (move here, attack here) by the RTS commander.

This is to make the world more human controlled. The point is not to make 1 game with many subgames but make many games thar complement each other by sharing data. The games need not have the same graphic design or even the same name. A browser based space empire building game could be the political input of a fantasy type mmorpg

Hey. First post.

After now (finally) tiring of World of Warcraft, along with many games before it, I tried to figure out what I needed in a game. Sounds easy, but usually isn't. I've been playing Final Fantasy since the 7th one, and it's easy to say "Yeah, the story's good" or "Yeah, the combat's good". But really, what *is* good about them?

Going through a load of previously played games, I came to the conclusion that I needed interaction. Deep, deep interaction. If I want my character to attack using a sword, I don't want to press a button. It doesn't require anything of the player. If he want's to cast a magic while jumping around, parrying an enemy's stike, he'd have to fight for it and not let all the math do the work.

// Actual idea starts here

So, I remember this really old, but brilliant game. It's called Silver. I think. Had such a cool way to fighting. No more wimpy press-a-button-style. At least that's how I remember it. With a UI that was next-to-nonexistant, you had to like hold a mousebutton while moving your mouse to do techniques. That was cool.

Yeah. So, imagine that system. Holding down the right mouse button would move the end of the sword/club/whatever. WASD to move around. A and D to look. Hold middle button to use A and D to strafe. Moving mouse while holding middle button would look around.
Abilities would be divided into three categories. Physical, acrobatic and magic. Physical would be things like whirlwind, pierce and uppercut, acrobatic would include bouncing off of things, flip-dodging and rolling. Spells would be nothing complicated - fireballs, meteors, ice shards, et cetera. When one of these were selected via hotbars with keys from 1-0, a 'track' or silhuette(sp?) would pop up on the screen, and using the mouse to follow these tracks would in the end finish the technique/spell.
Now I'd love to make this a MMO, but I imagine that would not be possible. These things would have to be so exact that lag would pose a huge problem. Besides, time magic would only be possible in single player.

And that's pretty much it. Loosely. I do intend to some day finish this, but I can't see why it's not possible. Anyone knows if there's an idea like this already? If so, where?