The game (well, mod technically but there's no need to split hairs at this point) I'm working on begins with the player character working as a repair man. A number of scenes occur before the first main turning point in the story which all centre around the main character at work. I was just wondering if anyone has any ideas of how to make some scenarios that wouldn't be as tedious as doing the job itself. It's got me a bit stumped. The game is along the lines of a 3D 'point n click' game such as Fahrenheit so the scenarios need to be based around puzzles or dialogue, though perhaps a bit of action can occur.

Uh...Could you explain better what your game is about?

Sure, sorry, I rushed that a bit.

The game is set in a future that has been crippled by global warming. The chosen elite were protected from the harsh environments by populating advanced cities with atmospheric processors, allowing them to breathe the air as normal.

These cities are now governed by authorities (currently unnamed) who utilise a network called the Nexus of Cognition and Apperception (the NCA) to monitor crime and civil obedience. The NCA is a vast electronic database. Every day, every citizen is required to plug themselves into the NCA to upload a digitalised summary of their daily experiences and emotions.

The story focuses on a regular repairman called Compton, who one day experiences intense visions and out-of-body experiences when data from the NCA somehow leaks through into his own consciousness.

This causes the authority's security forces to pursue Compton, though he doesn't know why at this point. The story plummets into a web of corruption and conspiracy, but I don't really want to give that away at this point.

Okay,

If he is a general repairman I am guessing that means electronics or does it mean repair to NCA itself? Anyway if he is a repairman of the NCA maybe include FPS shooting bits where you must blow away viruses etc. Tom Clancy Net Force style. While if he is a repairman make the job a simple mini-game of wire connections for example, to fast it electrocutes you; to slow and the entire block loses power.

Just some thoughts but it is really up to you, it is your game

~Matt.

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Original post by Godlikeman If he is a general repairman I am guessing that means electronics or does it mean repair to NCA itself?

Yeah I had electronics in mind. He repairs the 'capillaries' which are the specials ports people use to upload their data.

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Original post by Godlikeman While if he is a repairman make the job a simple mini-game of wire connections for example, to fast it electrocutes you; to slow and the entire block loses power.

Yeah I like this idea actually. A mini-game would definitely be appropriate for repairing the capillaries. There could be a few variations on this aswell depending on the job Compton is doing.

You could also adapt the concept of an existing popular 'Old School' arcade game to your own game, giving the gameplay a familiar feel, while retaining your own style and environment. Things like Space Invaders, Asteroids, Tetris, etc.

Not sure of the legal ramifications of this, but if falling "chip wafers" (e.g. asteroids) need to be "remote-reprogrammed" (e.g. blasted) by the technician's "multi tool" (e.g. laser turret), I'm not sure that Atari would really be offended.*



* take this with a grain of salt. Litigation seems to occur at the drop of a hat nowadays. If you're not making money off the game, it might be a different story.

If you go for a minigame approach, then make sure it's a fun minigame and not just a time-filler. And if it's a fun minigame, I'm sure people will appreciate it if it appears more frequently throughout the game.

Or just have our hero go looking for some spare parts, that his monkey pet has hidden across the level (again, darn pet!)... ;) A nice moment to explore an area that you'll have to run through later on perhaps, as well as an easy time to get used to the controls and some of the game mechanics.

I'm new around these parts but a big fan of making work fun.
Heres my thoughts:
You could make it fun like captain p suggests - maybe you have to find bits you need. Maybe you forgot your toolbox and have to get resourseful.
Orrr. you could do what people actually do. Have the player boot up his laptop and forward on a few forwarded crap jokes, maybe repeatedly throw and fetch a screwed up piece of paper at the bin until it goes straight in.
Maybe the work he's doing could start off straightforward but then go catastrophically wrong - then he has to bodge the job with duck tape and walk off whistling hoping that it will never come back to haunt him though it inevitably will. (Oh god, I hope no-one heavy sits on that chair - lord forgive me).

It sounds like he's repairing fairly complicated systems. You could represent the repair jobs as puzzles.

A good example is the generator puzzle in KOTOR (I think it was KOTOR. Either that or Neverwinter Nights) wear the player had to move all the electric rings from the first bar to the third bar, but low rings would never be placed on a bar that already had a higher ring on it (an adaptation of a childs puzzle who's name I can't for the life of me remember!)

Or he could be decyphering technical notes left by the previous repairman (or three repairmen, all using their own abreviations and notations).

You could use item puzzles, where he has to hook up elaborate contraptions with every day items to fix complicated machinery.

He could trick someone else into doing the work for him through dialogue. He could reroute the devices monitoring software to make it report that it was under another repairman's juristiction.

He could have to trace wires back, or figure out how to get people to leave rooms so that he can cut the power to them in order to work on them (eg, stink bomb in the ventilation shaft, strobe the lights to bring on a migrane), he could spy on people in air vents, he could eliminate rodent infestations.

Just think of fun logic or mathmatical puzzles and shoehorn them into a machine for him to fix, think of ways other people can make his life harder or easier, or think of fun things for him to do/solve with items. You're going to be applying the same principals to every aspect of your game, might as well start from the beginning.

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Original post by CIJolly A good example is the generator puzzle in KOTOR (I think it was KOTOR. Either that or Neverwinter Nights) wear the player had to move all the electric rings from the first bar to the third bar, but low rings would never be placed on a bar that already had a higher ring on it (an adaptation of a childs puzzle who's name I can't for the life of me remember!)

It was KOTOR and the game is called the Towers of Hanoi. The game is often used in introductory Computer Science courses.

I personally dislike mini-games in the middle of serious games. It makes me very aware that I am playing a game thus breaking the immersion. Also, you can anger parts of your audience who don't like arcade/puzzle games. For example, the math puzzles in KOTOR pissed my sister off.

I would go with Captain P's suggestion and use it as an opportunity to intorduce controls and such to the players.

BTW your story sounds very good!