Sulphur on 9/5/2009 at 08:32
Greypatch, those are some excellent concept you have there. The first one reminds me a little of The Lurking Horror with its general idea. Except written by Steve Meretzky? :D
Also, the haunted house one sounds great. I'd love to help but I don't have an artistic bone in my body either, heh. Couldn't draw a straight line even if you gave me a ruler. :erg:
Quote Posted by greypatch3
EDIT: Went and read the rest of the thread...Sulphur, I've actually been bouncing the last idea about the house thingie as a text adventure, and I've yet to learn how to use Inform 7 correctly (I tried creating a prologue and bungled that pretty good), but I've always loved those games and wanted to make a huge, epic one of my own. I understand those games are nowhere near popular these days, but it doesn't mean there isn't a market for 'em if done right. Besides, it's probably the only game I could make on my own without a talented team helping me.
demagogue makes some good points. Inform 7 works to an extent because of how approachable version 7 was made (natural language et al.), but for more complicated work it can certainly get complex. TADS has always been a bit more user-friendly and flexible in writing IF. It should also be easier to use when it comes to implementing things like the mechanisms of your haunted house.
And while IF isn't as big nowadays, it still enjoys a lot of popularity. The annual IFcomp can attest to that. There's still loads of excellent work being done by a lot of talented people every year.
If you need any help with writing IF, rec.arts.int-fiction is the newsgroup to go to; it's been around forever, and a lot of the more famous IF authors hang out there. You can even ask for beta testers, if you like. People are usually more than happy to help.
stormbringer_951 on 13/5/2009 at 13:34
Hospital at night. Points for creative violence. Medicine balls etc. Yes, that's crass and tasteless.
Toxicfluff on 13/5/2009 at 21:02
Quote Posted by Angel Dust
One of the developers at Ice-Pick Lodge, makers of
Pathologic, had an idea I thought was quite intruiging. The basic concept is a survival game where most, or perhaps all, the resources you are going to get are given to you at the beginning and you have some objective to accomplish. Think of a journey through some hostile and barren area much like arctic exploration. It would be horrendously difficult to pull of the balance but an interesting idea I thought.
Hah, I once played a Doom wad like that. A megahealth, blue armour and your weapons and ammo in the first room that you could never return to IIRC. I liked it, although as you say decent balance, rare to begin with, is even harder to find with the amount of adjustment further down the path so limited.
Quote Posted by Chade
While low-level and indirect choices can be combined in interesting ways, I can also imagine situations where a well designed game presents climaxes with a discrete choice that either solves the game or doesn't. Making the choice more discrete (and less emergent) increases the importance of that individual choice, making the moment more climatic.
This is a real problem for the sandbox type design, IMO. Much like real life for most of us, it ends up pretty amorphous and routine at the same time, when what really gets us going is drama. Drama needs structure and a sort of directedness over time that I find it difficult to imagine generating effectively.
Personally, I'd love to see an RPG in a modern-ish city setting, focused mainly on the verbal side of character interaction. Loosely riffing on that there'd be a timelimit to the game, maybe a number of in game days before something nasty happens either to the city or your character and the game ends (there's something ominous afoot, and you're trying to uncover it -- if you want to. It would, predictably, involve some sort of cult in the city so that there'd be a decent amount of people involved and thus more angles to explore). Hence it would actually be structured for any number of relatively short games, with the real detail and variety provided by the game world reacting to luck, the combination of player actions, events in the world and the character relationships affected, rather than the usual progression manifested in new ground and new weapons.
I actually started to try to do something like this in Doom, long ago, but it became quickly unmanageable due to the shitearse scripting language and other foibles of the port I was using. Watching characters (picture, Doomguys) pop out or more often than not get stuck bouncing around doorways with other NPCS trying to get out of their homes to go to a job/a hangout/get some milk at certain times with the drunken zig-zag Doom movement was funny beyond belief.
That they did it at all was incredible, given my AI system was basically: here is a barrel 100000 units away out of the playable map at this angle that you want to shoot. Once you get to the waypoint I want you at, the barrel will then swing over to 100000 units away somewhere else and you'll chase it in that direction instead. When you reach your destination, the barrel will blow up by itself. OK, they just stopped targetting the barrel.
What was also funny, although not in the right way, was trying to convey meaningful dialogue with some amount of weight when faced with the visage of impassivity personified:
Inline Image:
http://icons-p1.imeem.com/LMcJBl.jpgYour wife is dead.
Hahahahahahahahah
nicked on 14/5/2009 at 12:40
I had an idea for a game that is a musical.
It'd be set in medieval France or something (like most serious musicals) and each level would be a sword-fighting action-adventure-type thing, BUT each level would have it's own music and if you performed your sword swings/attacks in time with the beat, you'd do more damage.
Then at the end of each level, where there would normally be an expository cutscene, you would have an expository song, with DDR/Guitar Hero rhythm action. These sections would be optionally interactive, so if you're crap at rhythm action games, you could just watch the song and dance number.
TF on 15/5/2009 at 02:01
Quote Posted by nicked
I had an idea for a game that is a musical.
It'd be set in medieval France or something (like most serious musicals) and each level would be a sword-fighting action-adventure-type thing, BUT each level would have it's own music and if you performed your sword swings/attacks in time with the beat, you'd do more damage.
Then at the end of each level, where there would normally be an expository cutscene, you would have an expository song, with DDR/Guitar Hero rhythm action. These sections would be optionally interactive, so if you're crap at rhythm action games, you could just watch the song and dance number.
This could be so great, especially if it involved syncing more than just sword slashes and almost everything could have a different outcome if it was done 'on cue'.
Koki on 15/5/2009 at 09:57
Quote Posted by dethtoll
So, basically, SimFallout?
I can hear the fanboys pissing themselves in rage at the mere thought. Yes, I can
hear it.
I'm pretty sure they all don't care by now. How can you possibly get any worse than Fallout 3? System is already dumbed down to console level, combat is atrocious, dialogues are utter shit and game locations make no sense whatseover.
It's not like it can even be fixed with mods, because even though Bethesda fanbase(As they're only people who play the game in the first place) is famous for it's (
http://img33.imageshack.us/img33/2691/vg5290screenshot52.jpg) talented modders, they just can't get the direction right.
Matthew on 15/5/2009 at 12:11
Y'know, you could probably get an awful lot worse than Fallout 3. Just sayin'.
nicked on 15/5/2009 at 12:47
Yeah, just wait for F4llout...
Sulphur on 15/5/2009 at 19:29
Kokes is from a different kind of (
http://img.4chan.org/b/imgboard.html) wasteland, methinks. (Obligatory Obviously NSFW warning).
But I agree and will support this petition 101%.
