Hi all,

I think every one of us here has a dream game that they really wanted to create when they were starting out. This might have been the killer MMO, or the 'better than call of duty' FPS, or the 'better than final fantasy' JRPG.

After a few weeks or months of trying to produce this goal most people then realise that they lack either the time, skills, money, or other resources to produce this game, and put it on hold to move on to other more approachable projects.

I'm curious as to what these original lofty goals were (c'mon, we all have them).

I'll go first:

When i first came here i was writing an online roleplaying game which was huge in scope. The idea was that it was to be an isometric base-building and combat based RPG set in a dystopian future on a prison planet from which there was no escape.

I shelved this project when i found that it would take me years to get all the graphical content finished, as i am no artist and there was very little offer of help. Instead, i moved on to my current project which i still continue to this day in the little time i have available.

So now, it's your turn. Where in the clouds did you place your own heads? :)

For anyone who hasn't realised yet: http://yourgameideaistoobig.com

Not counting the "an MMO based on real life whete you can do anything" "idea"...
Mine would be a faction based MMOFPS witg permadeath and RPG-character growth elements in a massive persistant world, overlaid with an MMORTS where player corporations fight for control over regions, where battles in the RTS mode generate "maps" for the FPS mode to fight on, overlaid with an MMO-city-builder where playets develop economies inside the currently-not-warring areas to generate funds the RTS mode. It then comes full circle as the FPS players fight in and damage the city-buider's work. With an optional web-client for building/RTSing casually as well as a desktop/console version...
Now if only I had several hundred million dollars to throw away...

For anyone who hasn't realised yet: http://yourgameideaistoobig.com

Woah, demoralising. Not because my game is too big, but because i put my current specification into it and it told me i should be done in 3 weeks. I've been at it for months. Bummer. lol.

Ha, good idea, this thread could be fun! Mine wasn't, and still isn't, anywhere near as far-fetched as some answers will be:

I wanted to make a game similar to Millennium 2.2 or Deuteros. These were sort of four-X space sim type games, dating from the 16-bit era. They had strong storytelling but no missions, or at least the illusion of no missions. There wasn't a campaign mode or anything, you just played until some event occurred, which advanced the story and expanded the gameplay with new technologies and new goals to go with it. The events were triggered by your actions, but there was rarely an obvious link, making the storytelling suspenseful and well-paced despite being pretty much completely linear. The gameplay was quite slow, and user interaction rarely extended beyond clicking icons on static screens, but if anything that added to the experience.

A goal like colonising your first planet was a long-term activity that involved many smaller steps - research a long-range probe, build it, send it to the target planet, find out the planet isn't worth colonising, repeat, meanwhile build up a mining fleet and mine asteroids to gather rare resources needed to build colony sections, of which you need eight, plus the ships to transport them. Oh, and halfway through this get contacted by some untrustworthy aliens that aren't openly hostile but you'd better start researching some defence lasers... etc. It sounds like a chore, but you lose yourself in the detail. For a little kid like I was, with posters of rockets and planets on the bedroom walls, these were intensely satisfying and gripping games.

So yeah, I'd still like to recapture that feeling: the mystery of space and the danger and sheer effort required to explore it. But I don't have the time to do it justice.

In 1999 Homeworld was released.
In 2000 Ground Control was released.

Some time in 2000 I had the idea for a game which was a persistent Galaxy with Homeworld-like fleet battles to control the skies above planets combined with Ground Control style ground combat to control said planet to gain its resources for your empire.

Fortunately I realised pretty quickly that this game was clearly insane and never started on it ;)

A remake of xcom apocalypse with all the missing features added, and more depth to the cityscape, scaled up for much larger combat.

Since about 1996 I have been wanting to create: (( I have some parts of this concept working - believe it or not ))

Open world 2D MMO that has endlessly procedurally generated land and biomes.

Each biome has resources that regenerate over time.

Players start off not knowing anything, and have to build up their "knowledge trees" over time. Each branch leads to different areas, discoveries and skills.

All skills have to be discovered and learned independently - assuming the player has high enough knowledge in the correct branches.

Everyone starts off with stone--age tech, and can move up to space-age with enough time, knowledge, and discoveries.

Players are what builds the game's story lines, and " societies" . Alliances, factions, guilds, kingdoms, or any kind of government the players can think up.

Players are responsible for creating everything that is on the map - towns, cities, nations e.t.c. (( with enough tech knowledge, they can create helper robots ))

TL:DR

I want to create a 2D version of an old school MUD were players are what created the world and ran the narratives it has.

Minus the obligatory MMO or lolomgsuperhugeworldwhereyoucandoanything thing:

A "delegation-based" RTS where you can assign squads or regions to players on your team to move or build up. Think of it like StarCraft with distributed micro. Better players could fight against worse players simply by providing a team-size handicap. Sort of a more structured version of the "multiple people as one faction" approaches in some strategy games. It's got the added benefit of allowing crazy things like WarCraft 3-style "RPG" units at Supreme Commander scales (because you can delegate squads to not get crushed by all the micro).

I'm pretty sure it's technically feasible (though I've never made a RTS and don't know the CPU requirements for such a beast) but RTSs aren't really one-man projects.

No Man's Sky.

It's not precisely the game I dreamed of building, but it's so damn close I can almost taste it... All those years of Sean O'Neil, Ysaneya, myself, and many others building procedural planet after procedural planet, and none of us had the vision and drive to actually build that.

On the one hand, I'm sad I wasn't involved in building it. On the other, I'm overjoyed that somebody went and built it anyway

My ideas have actually gotten bigger over time rather than smaller. Among other reasons for this, when I first tried to design a game I hadn't played any MMOs yet. But anyway, my first game idea was a sidescrolling arcade combat RPG, pretty much a cross between Golden Axe and E.V.O. - The Search For Eden, though with more story. Actually I'm not 100% sure whether that idea came before or after the idea for the Myst-style adventure game plus dating sim elements, they were around the same time...