The Completely Unofficial Seedling Idea Thread

intransigent-seal · 2005-09-28T10:14:41

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): 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) 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) 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) 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. 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. Cancelled. 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: 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...) (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. 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]

Game Design and Theory Game Design

Started by intransigent-seal September 15, 2005 04:04 PM

30 comments, last by Thermodynamics 19 years, 4 months ago

The Completely Unofficial Seedling Idea Thread

This topic is closed to new replies.

Popular Topics

Recommended Tutorials

The Completely Unofficial Seedling Idea Thread

This topic is closed to new replies.

Popular Topics

Recommended Tutorials

Reticulating splines