What design idea would you throw at a game-engine that displays 5,000+ characters per scene? The engine would be a top-down (or 3/4 view) 3D engine using 2D Sprites for characters. Technically pretty easy (a similar idea was used at one of the GameJams), but the question is how you can utilize that for new game-play mechanics. How would the player control work? - Do you control a large chunk of the crowd using RTS style controls? - Do you control a single, hyped out, individual (swordmaster, or giant mecha?) - Do you set abstract goals which the mini-ai's aim for (rally points, attack vectors, etc) Tactical / strategic / arcade mode - Is YOUR fight the main event, or are you just a sideshow in a full-scale war (like the amazing last level of Myth 2) - How do you maintain tactical control? (stopping it from degenerating into a click-fest) What other cool stuff can you do with it? Two different ideas to kick it off: The Last Stand: Player is the Castellan of a great medival fortress. You're entrenched inside the fortress with a small group of defenders, and the Wast Hordes of Barbarians outside. Actions you can do: - Place rally-flags of different priority to call troops to defend a given spot in the fortress. - Build, place, move and fire siege equipment. Gigamech On a distant planet, your anatomically improbable humanoid robot is fighting an outpost of the Hive. The robot has a huge arsenal of weaponry and armour, but there's SO MANY of them. Will you survive the onslaught? - Ikari Warriors style control - Hordes of monsters - Big explosions Surely there must be 100s of unused ideas for something like this? Allan

Cool concept. Here's a couple of ideas.

Fire!
A tortuously designed theatre with thousands of people in it has just caught fire! You control a team of ushers trying to guide the panicky crowd safely out of the building. You need to guide the crowd away from burning areas and crumbling passages, but if they feel trapped and think you're in their way they'll flatten you like a pancake. Use the stop sign to keep people out of dead ends, the flashlight to guide people after you... and in a pinch, use the big scary-looking gun.

Have lost visual contact with the rabbit
One hapless drug mule; twelve DEA agents; a million kazillion innocent bystanders. Surveil the guy to find out where he's going, but if he thinks he's being followed he'll split. You'll need to keep safely back, to rotate agents in and out of his line of sight, to anticipate his moves (the tracker you never suspect is the one who's walking ahead of you) and to keep out of sight entirely for periods of time when he gets extra suspicious. But don't lose track of him entirely, or you'll never find him again in the throng. You control one agent at a time--whoever's closest--and specify strategies and waypoints for the other eleven. (Multiplayer would be much cooler.)

Crowd Control
Congress has just overturned the 21st amendment of the U.S. Constitution and a drunken mob is forming at the foot of Capitol Hill! Commanding your small squadron of riot gear-clad police, walk the fine line between allowing the protesters to harm the senators and injuring those in the crowd itself. Use tear gas, foam bullets, riot shields, truncheons, mounted officers and other equipment to protect the congressmen and break the crowd into manageable pieces to be taken in - should you let them get too unruly, they may hurt your officers and/or force you to open fire on them. Mr. President will not be happy!

yes, millions of ideas.

Why not give the player the option of how many chars to control?

Picture the Illiad: the player can be achilles (the lone hero), odysseus (controlling his own men) or agamemmnon (RTS-style controls over the entire fight). Of course, from a "general" perspective, it might be more fun if the orders you gave weren't directly followed, but were taken more or less as "suggestions".

Yeah, I'm not as creative as the last guys, but we all know an excellently executed mass battle would be more fun than herding people out of a theater (no offense, snef). carnage rules, everything else is a puzzle game.

Abstract Immersion: I definetly think there's a space for a 'subset of a huge battle' style game. What could be quite cool is to start as a single Hero (Achilles style), and then slowly build 'leader' points that allow you to control and improve crowd. Add a simple RPG, so you choose whether you want to be Achilles (the One Man Battle Machine, maybe with a couple of hundred hardcore Myrmidons), or Hector (who, while no wimp, spends most of his time commanding Huge teams of semi-competent cannon-fooder). Irregardless of WHAT you do, the main battle will still rage on (and on), with armies beyond your control pursuing the long term goals.

This was how the original State of Emergency was supposed to play, but I suspect the game-design fits better in a top-down PC game than over-the-shoulder PS2 game :)

Here's another one, playing with an unusual game-mechanic.

Ant Commander
Your hive is going on the offensive, and the Queen has given you command of her Royal Army. You don't have direct command over the army, instead you 'draw' signals on the field using little kamikaze Phermone Ants. Recreates the WWI feel of incompetent arm-chair generals drawing little arrows in the sandbox, and sending millions to die, except in this one, you can see the sandbox change on the fly.

Available commands:
- Rush along this line (all Ants that get close to Line turn and rush along it)
- Hold this line (creates a Battle Line, Ants that get to it stop, ready to defend, and attack any opposition Phermone Ants)
- Push / pull front (starts a movement along the normal of a line, used to advance a battle-line, or sound a general retreat)
- Phermone Bomb (create a high-intensity rallying point that causes all ants to rush towards it)

Tactics:
- Crossing someone else's phermone trail causes disruption in their line of command; but a Kamikaze Phermone Ant can (and will) be attacked by opposition ants)
- To avoid pure rushing, Ants are highly vulnerable to attacks from the back/sides of their formations. Attacking into the back or side of a battle-line or rush-line causes 4x or 2x damage, respectively.

Allan

Actually, the more I think about it, the more I like the Troy idea.

TROY

Abstract:
You're a Hero of Athens or Troy, chosen and groomed by a God or Godess. You arrive on the battlefield, only to find you're a bit of wimp. Before you can open up a can of Woopass, you need to get a lot stronger. Imagine a wast Defence of The Anchients map, with 30-50 'sectors'; each sector with a goal (destroy/create fortification, destroy/create resupply camp, etc). End goal is to destroy the opponent's base-camp (no messing around with wooden horses allowed).

Basic Character control would be Diablo style (move, click, kill).
You can split your followers into teams (tied to 1-10), and give them simple orders (attack, defend, move to, hold) similar to an RTS.
Get XP + loot for killing The Evil Followers of Troy/Athens [delete as appropriate]
Basic action-RPG progression tree; gain special powers, and boost skills:

Powers:
Combat skills (damage dealing, attacks)
Leadership skills (allow control, and give bonus, to control of certain units)
Favor of the Gods (i.e. Buffs, permanent stat bonuses)

Skills:
- Power (damage dealt)
- Endurance (health)
- Favour (of the gods; used to power most of your special powers)
- Leadership (control of units)
- Reputation (chance of enemy breaking when facing you. chance of allied mobs rallying around you)

Followers
You can control any number of followers; limited by your 'Leadership' skill.

Followers are picked up back at the beachhead / city gates, or at resupply camps. Camps generate followers at a fixed rate.

Different camps have different followers, and the elite followers all need you to have a skill to command them.
i.e: Myrmidons (Athens); need Myrmidon Liutenant to recruit Myrmidons to your team. Can be upgraded to Myrmidon Commander (all Myrmidons you command become stronger) and Myrmidon Lord (Camps generate Myrmidons faster. All Myrmidons you command become a LOT stronger).

Each follower type has an upkeep, so while commanding 40 'Green Recruits' [1p] would require a leadership of 40 or higher, commanding 40 'Myrmidons' [10p] would require a leadership of 400 of higher. You can mix and match (100 greenie, with some Elite Guards to give them backbone).

Goals
You start in your base-camp. Troops are continuously streaming out of the recruitment tents. In the background is the Shrine to Zeus, Atena and Aphrodite (where you upgrade skills, teleport to, and are resurrected if accidentally wiped out). If your shrines are destroyed, your side lost (no points for guessing what YOUR side is trying to do).

Between you and rape/loot/pillage lies a number of sectors. There are different sector types (open battle-grounds, choke-points/river crossings, Resupply camps, towers, etc). There's a couple of different base-patterns (showing how sectors are connected), but what sectors go where is randomized each game. There are 2-5 'versions' of each sector type.

Sample base-pattern for a small map         [R]--[R]     [R]-[R]-[R]<br>         |       |       |       |<br><span style=font-weight:bold;>-[C]-[T]-[R]-<span style=font-weight:bold;>-[C]-<span style=font-weight:bold;>-[R]-[T]-[C]-<span style=font-weight:bold;><br>         |       |       |       |<br>        [R]-[R]-[R]     [R]--[R]<br><br><span style=font-weight:bold;>: Base Camp<br>[C]: Choke Point<br>: Supply Base<br>[T]: Turret<br><span style=font-weight:bold;>: Open Battleground<br>[R]: Random sector<br><br></pre><br><br>If you're responsible for destroying a Supply camp, you can choose to start re-building a new &#111;ne in it's place, and choose what kind of camp it should be. Same goes for turrets. Each sector should be able to hold 500-5000 characters at any time; around 2-5 Heroes worth. Heroes are 2-3 times larger than an average mob, to make them stand out. They also have an 'aura' the grows with their power/<br><br><i> AI </i><br>Since the game will always stay centered &#111;n you, the AI will be doing some cheating. &#79;nly the sectors you can actually see will be simulated; the rest will be packed to basic equations (flow in, power in, transform, flow out, power out). Pathfinding will be very simple (no complex obstacles in sector). Mobs won't actually respect each other space, but instead use a basic repulsor sum from the closest set of mobs. <br><br><i> Game Modes </i><br>- Story mode (basic introduction to game; shows the player the ropes. 1-4 hours play)<br>- Quick Fix (small map, designed for lunch-break gaming, quick levelling)<br>- Epic (medium-large map, designed for 2-8 hours gaming. variable levelling speed).<br><br>Feedback? (good, bad and ugly all wanted).<br><br>Allan<br><br>[edited for clearifications]

Pied Piper

Navigate the rat infested town whilst playing a tune. You must guide rats away from populated areas. If you play the wrong note then you could loose rats or worse they attack innocent by-standers. Different tunes maybe necessary different vermin.

This is the game jam in question: http://www.indiegamejam.com/igj0/

One that I found very inspirational. Especially the "Dueling Machine" one, which is a really original concept and one that could probably be expanded into something more substantial.

Custer

Although if you win this one you should probably get your money back.

Just sayin'...

Quote:

Original post by __ODIN__ Actually, the more I think about it, the more I like the Troy idea. TROY [...] Feedback? (good, bad and ugly all wanted).

I really like this idea and it's pretty close to my dream developement game. Of course each time I design it the time period changes and some features are added and dropped but the key components are always: 2d top view, build-a-base, everything destroyable with the right gear, start as a simple soldier with direct control, and end up being a commander controlling an army in large scale battles.

I didn't think of adding randomized maps. I always thought hand made maps were more strategical because the map maker could do test runs and balance the choke points. Plus, players feel a little more accomplished saying that they defeated the enemy at Deadmans Pass and discussing their strategy with friends who can play the same map and see if they can try something different. On the other hand, a well generated map could save lots of time and provide a nice mix up in strategy. Maybe a combination of the two?

Divine favor is another interesting idea. I guess it could be considered an extension of a magic/power system. Buffs and special attacks come to mind but maybe it could alter the game play. Perhaps if your deity is hades you must capture a certian number of souls per battle before using his abilities or if your deity is poseidon you must protect/attack from the sea.

Followers were something I thought were either trained out of a barracks (RTS style) and equiped by your choice of gear or random walking people in towns that you must convince to join your army. By having followers at random camps throughout the map, I picture there will be a lot more troop movement and more strategy overall because the player has to determine whether their army is capable of defeating the enemy or should they go and try to recruit the Myrmidons. A Black & White system of influence would be an interesting way to try and get followers but it may take away from the combat/tactical side.

I'd like to see a fully developed design document for this idea. If you plan on doing it, keep me updated, as I'd like to hear about.