I've had this idea for quite awhile, even wrote a lot of stuff about it and had it started as a HL2 mod entitled The Hour Before Dawn, complete with a site and 4 mod members before I realized I didn't have enough experience to do it. I'll probably start it back up again somehow since I am in a game design degree. Here it is though: First off, co-op in this idea would be my wet dream, but there's so much stuff to consider, so I'll say singleplayer for now. Anyway, the concept behind the game is the main draw/attraction, but my ideal setting would be an alien invasion of Earth. Here is the concept, taken (and edited a bit) from the About section of the original The Hour Before Dawn website: The Hour Before Dawn is a story-driven singleplayer modification for Half-Life 2. Spanning multiple accounts of ordinary people retaliating to an all-out alien invasion of Earth, survivors find themselves picking up whatever they can to fend off the unrelenting attack on our homeland. Through a complex storyline involving many compelling characters and many interesting twists, these same survivors uncover that they aren't the only ones fighting for survival- banding up with other people- and find their lives intertwining with others' lives in unexpected ways. That's where the player comes in. At the beginning of the game, players will choose which party to play as, and then, branching out to the character selection screen, which character to play as. Although many parties will come across the others during the game, each group, and subsequently each character, will have a different experience, thus giving the mod a unique replay value. Taking from games like Final Fantasy VII, music will play an important part in illustrating each character's background, and will help emphasize cutscenes and important parts of the story. Gameplay will be similar to games like Halo, Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem, and the original Half-Life. I just wanted to know what people thought. I have storylines in my head that are Quentin Tarantino-esque, i.e. satisfyingly coincidental (I think at least, as writing is another passion of mine, despite not caring one bit about grammar in this post), and a few (not all) character bios and personalities thought up, yet the "hard copy" of all of this got ruined when my hard drive got formatted accidentally, Also, back to co-op, the reason co-op would be cool would be because you wouldn't start out together, like normal co-op games. You'd actually follow the storylines, as would the other players. There's one glaringly obvious reason this wouldn't work, or would be hard to do, and that is what if one player lags behind. I'm sure there's some way around this, but as of now I'd have to think about it. Also, I used to be wary about people stealing this idea because I thought it was so good (I guess I still do), but now I actually wouldn't mind as I'm half-lazy and I'd love to see someone pull it off. Still don't though, haha. So yeah, I'm just seeing what you guys think. [Edited by - RandomOck on July 28, 2006 2:08:46 AM]

it sounds great

i always like a good alien apocalypse story. but with the groups do you plan on having levels or that all the groups exist within a massive environment?
It sounds like some of the scenarios in the lord of the rings, where one group could be somewhere trying to take out an alien headquarters. Then coincidentally another group may be attacking at just the right time to draw away fire. such as when arragorns forces draw saurons forces away to help frodo

and how are the humans going to fight the aliens? with normal weapons or will the humans find some kind of weakness with the aliens and exploit that