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What would you do with an engine?
Prohass
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
If you could take any games engine, and make your own game out of it within the games existing universe, what would it be? I'll give you an example of what I mean.
While I've always enjoyed Halo, and especially Halo 3, ive felt that its hollywood save-the-world-by-pressing-the-reactor-button story muddied and distracted from the purity and fun of its combat sequences. It shines in outdoor skirmishes, and basically I would make a game that focussed entirely on this aspect.
Basically, the Chief, on a human Frigate, crashes onto a planet largely covered in snow and ice, after being pursued through a jump by two Covenant cruisers. All 3 ships go down, and are strewn across a large stretch of land. This simple stretch of land would comprise the entire game. Your ships systems are toast, but one of the covenant cruisers is repairing itself, and its up to the cheif to get the surviving marines and crew to that ship, take it over, and fly off the planet, before the covenant reinforcements arrives.
This is similar to Halflife Episode One's '1 objective' approach to the game, ie "theres going to be an explosion, get out of the city". Simple, and allows for greater focus on characters and situations that are relatable and immediate. A removal of cutscenes and a simple drive and energy to get off the planet, would also lend to a greater focus on larger scale outdoor combat, with indoor combat including a climatic battle through the Covenant ship, perhaps even a battle out of your ship at the beginning of the game as it's harrassed by Covenant after the crash. Your basically trying to drive the covenant back into their cruisers, despite being outnumbered 5 to 1.
I crave that sort of simplicity in game narratives, which all to often go for the big epic hollywood storyline, with erroneous plots that clutter until i find myself just not caring anymore. Plots that cutscenes, at their current technology, just do not justify. Sparing use of cutscenes would be fine. It would be interesting see what the freeing up of resources like that could result in with action and combat focussed games like Halo.
I realise that this would largely omit the central focus of the Halo games, ie, the halos. But really i dont care, let me shoot some hilariously screaming grunt while my marines cheer me on.
While I've always enjoyed Halo, and especially Halo 3, ive felt that its hollywood save-the-world-by-pressing-the-reactor-button story muddied and distracted from the purity and fun of its combat sequences. It shines in outdoor skirmishes, and basically I would make a game that focussed entirely on this aspect.
Basically, the Chief, on a human Frigate, crashes onto a planet largely covered in snow and ice, after being pursued through a jump by two Covenant cruisers. All 3 ships go down, and are strewn across a large stretch of land. This simple stretch of land would comprise the entire game. Your ships systems are toast, but one of the covenant cruisers is repairing itself, and its up to the cheif to get the surviving marines and crew to that ship, take it over, and fly off the planet, before the covenant reinforcements arrives.
This is similar to Halflife Episode One's '1 objective' approach to the game, ie "theres going to be an explosion, get out of the city". Simple, and allows for greater focus on characters and situations that are relatable and immediate. A removal of cutscenes and a simple drive and energy to get off the planet, would also lend to a greater focus on larger scale outdoor combat, with indoor combat including a climatic battle through the Covenant ship, perhaps even a battle out of your ship at the beginning of the game as it's harrassed by Covenant after the crash. Your basically trying to drive the covenant back into their cruisers, despite being outnumbered 5 to 1.
I crave that sort of simplicity in game narratives, which all to often go for the big epic hollywood storyline, with erroneous plots that clutter until i find myself just not caring anymore. Plots that cutscenes, at their current technology, just do not justify. Sparing use of cutscenes would be fine. It would be interesting see what the freeing up of resources like that could result in with action and combat focussed games like Halo.
I realise that this would largely omit the central focus of the Halo games, ie, the halos. But really i dont care, let me shoot some hilariously screaming grunt while my marines cheer me on.
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There'd be ideas from all over the place - get out of the house and to the police station before the killer gets you, get out of the burning building, navigate debris to get to the airlock before your suit is destroyed. No high scores or anything like that (but maybe some hidden stuff to find) and each stage would use generally the same controls with slight deviations to account for the situation.
Engine would probably be some flexible third-person engine that's heavier on speed and navigation as opposed to precision shooting and the like. Support for extensive scripted sequences.
Probably wouldn't work, but eh.
Zelda RPG. Link needs some backup in taking down Ganon (well, I'd probably invent a new big bad) so he recruits Zelda and a posse. You control one character and the others are on autopilot to help you out with healing, crowd control, etc. The Z-targeting system could work great for issuing on-the-fly battle strategies. I'd also like to see a Battalion Wars-esque means to switch active characters on the fly. Basically, I'm thinking along the lines of Battalion Wars meets Tales of Symphonia meets Zelda, at least when it comes to combat.
With all the material (races, worlds, etc.) covered between all the Zelda games, they'd certainly have enough to make several workable characters; they already did something similar in Majora's Mask, what with the 4 different forms Link could take. Make each of those their own character, add in a couple more for good measure, and you've got the cast right there. I'd also find some way to have different weapons with different fighting styles, like axes and spears along with the boring old Master Sword.
Oh, and the Goron will *definitely* be packing the Megaton Hammer.
Wow. That's a cool idea. Would love to see a game like Left 4 Dead in this vein. Multiplayer co-op heists, break-ins, etc. Couple guys in a heli, three on the ground, one rappelling, etc. Nice.
This game must be made.
Well, heists were attempted twice...
But if made more tactical, detailed, and it was pulled off the way beardo descirbes, it would be awesome.
Wanna' be a bandit, killing for fun and profit? You can do it.
Wanna' pledge yourself to a feudal lord, and affect the results of a coming war? You can do it.
Wanna' become the personal bodyguard to the bumbling son of the Samurai who saved your life? You can do it.
I also thought it'd be neat to have permanent damage on the character. Like if you lose an arm, you have to train yourself in a one-armed fighting style.
Perhaps it's too big in scope to be done well. But in my head, that's the game I want.
Not familiar with 25toLife but Kane and Lynch is exactly what I had in mind in terms of being a "swing and a miss" at what I have in mind. Avoiding cliche' (just look at that fucking box art, ugh) is half the battle.
What would really be neat is if there were enough freedom to the game to where you could evolve your crew any number of ways. Such as you could do your jobs in the ice cold, super professional, but never hesitant to start shooting style of Deniro's crew in Heat. Or you could do them Ocean's 11 style, where nobody gets hurt, nobody carries a gun, and the jobs are pulled off with a slapstick type of misdirection via con games. Or you could go completely psycho and have the Joker's gang, where you kill your own men off at will and you start to draw the crazies into your ranks. Or you could go completely non-confrontational and put together a crew of prowlers/cat burglars.
I think that would be the biggest challenge, that the game would need solid RPG, tactical, FPS and stealth elements to deliver. Ubisoft certainly has all of these in its collective toolkit from Splinter Cell, R6, GRAW, and crowd behavior from Assassin's Creed.
There is no reason this game couldn't be made.
Hitman: Blood Money has these kinds of wide-open, sprawling levels with multiple Dynamic NPCs going about their business. We know current-gen can do amazing, convincing crowds (Assassin's Creed, Dead Rising). There have been plenty of games that combine action and stealth gameplay. Lord knows a decent team could manage to pull off something pretty good in the AI department (especially with alot of developers now starting to get to grips with the multithreading/multicore aspect of current-gen consoles).
The main reason this game couldn't be made is because it would require a massive budget and dedication of resources and the only games that require that much effort that can still get greenlit invariably revolve around grizzled grey-haired soldiers wearing grey armour firing grey guns at grey enemies in grey corridors, occasionally ducking behind a grey box to reload their grey gun that fires grey bullets while they let their fucking health recharge.
LEGO: Total War
You ought to try out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disaster_Report
Definitely sounds like Ocean's 11 meets Thief meets Rainbow Six.
That would SO be my kind of game.
Let 'em eat fucking pineapples!
Grey'd for increased realism!
Can trade TF2 items or whatever else you're interested in. PM me.
Pffft. No. Grey is the colour of gritty sci-fi. Realism is varying shades of brown, with bloom.
I'm sorry, I was just watching some videos of Killzone 2, shaking my head in dismay. It's just...so...drab...
Like Killzone 2. It fits.
I'm still wary as hell of that game though. The first one gave me hernia. In a bad way.
Now, who played FFX-2? Well, again, I did. And the battle system saved it from being a complete mess.
This isn't exactly my idea since I've heard it from quite a few different people as well, but there's no reason that FFX-2 shouldn't have been about Braska, Jecht and Auron, and not three bitches.
It kind of was. Google "Heist" (might want to add "PC" or "game" to it). There was a sort of tactical top-down game that spun the concept. I tried it once, couldn't figure it out, gave it to my cousin.
All superjumping up into the air, grabbing helicopters and throwing them for miles.
Tall-Paul MIPsDroid
I've thought of something similar. A graphical roguelike where your home is invaded by a killer. The layout of your house would be randomized. At the start you can spend points on things like your self defense training and the presence of guns or a safe room in your house. The tools, abilities and number of the assailants affect your pool of points in a positive way.
It could use Havoc physics to handle thrown objects and the barricades you can build. It would be interesting to make good use of a physics engine in a turn based game. If you have enough time before the thugs come, you might play it like a current day version of Trapt (or like Home Alone :P).
Another idea I have is a mix between Space Station 13 and Dwarf Fortress. It would be an MMO where you can set the daily schedule of your character, who is stranded on a strange humongous space station. Your character is a persistent being in the world who has to eat and sleep, much like a DF dwarf.
When a player is offline, their character can be given a schedule to run by the player or a group leader, like Fortress mode in DF. When a player is online, it's like Adventure mode. The time frames needed for skill training, crafting and research is a matter of days, and best handled in offline mode. When in online mode, groups can set out to explore unknown parts of the station and clear out monsters from the trade routes between settlements. Securing the resources needed for offline activities requires adventuring into the unknown.
I wouldn't use an existing commercial engine for both of these, because they need complexity on the simulation side, not on the graphical side. For the second one a good MMO server framework suited to a large amount of simple characters in a large world would be nice though, maybe like the EVE server?
Think Twisted Metal with Forza driving physics and checkpoint races.
I've been mulling over a game based around pure exploration for some time now. One of the things I like most about open world games is the exploration aspect. I love going off the beaten path and finding things the developers hid here and there. Things to see, spotting a peak and saying, "I want to climb that," and so on. Trying to get on top of a building or rooting around at the edges of the map or whatever. That's fun to me.
Yep, exploring in games like Grand Theft Auto, Oblivion, and even Skate is great fun.
So my idea is this: Take one of those engines -- the GTA IV engine, maybe -- strip away much of the combat related stuff, and make a game based around pure exploration. There will be goals, yes. And a story, and obstacles, and enemies, and side quests and all the rest ... but exploration is the key aspect of the game.
The story: Your spaceship crashes on an uncharted planet. Portions of it break up during entry, scattering the pieces across a vast alien island. So naturally (duh), you've got to find those pieces in order to get off the planet. Let's say there are eight of them. The game will have, say, 24 or 32 pre-set places in which the pieces could be. It's random with each new game. That's to encourage replayability.
Each pre-set place should play out like a level all its own, but in an open world way. They should require some degree of exploration to find. While I like first person, a third-person mechanic would be best, which is why I go with a tweaked GTA IV engine. We'll want some Tomb Raider-style climbing, rooting around in dark caves, scaling cliffs, and so on. There will be a hidden valley or two accessible only with some creative exploration. Maybe some sunken ruins of a dead alien race. And lots of OTHER ruins from this dead alien race. The ruins will be all over, and varied, and will be fun to explore, like small ruined, empty cities.
All of these locations, and more, are possible spots for the pieces you need to finish the game.
There will be some platforming, inspired by Tomb Raider: Legend and Prince of Persia. Long rotting traps and ruins and whatever from this dead alien race.
There will be enemies, too. alien wildlife, mostly. Not combat heavy, though. I think I'd prefer that environmental puzzles and/or stealth got you through. I wouldn't want to lean on combat. Exploring is the thing, so maybe you set traps for creatures or try to evade them or have very limited weapons with very limited ammo.
And of course, this planet would be scattered with other stuff to find. Alien artifacts, collecting lifeforms, maybe the journal pieces of another crash survivor through which the planet's story can be told. Stuff to encourage exploration and keep you going and keep the game replayable. "Found 76 or 100 alien artifacts," that kind of thing.
The land should be VAST. Like, super huge. And varied. Lots and lots of variety. It should take you a good long time to walk from one end to the other in real time.
Maybe you have a vehicle, a land rover of sorts, that you can use to cruise over the open areas. It can't go everywhere, though, forcing you to get out and explore on foot.
Supplies from your ship are also scattered across the island. That's how you'd get health packs and other supplies you'll need for your exploration, such as flashlights and telescopes and parts for traps and ammo and whatever.
This has been on my mind. I want to play this.
I'd play the hell out of a game like this.
And naturally, I'd want and expect a few references to the work of the director who film you're wearing, just because.
I could be wrong here, but you are describing Pikmin.
PSN: theIceBurner, IceBurnerEU, IceBurner-JP | X-Link Kai: TheIceBurner
Dragon's Dogma: 192 Warrior Linty | 80 Strider Alicia | 32 Mage Terra
The combat would be a refined version of JKA's system, but there would be a much greater emphasis on movement and positioning, using force-exaggerated versions of AC's acrobatics stuff.
In a similar way to how TFU is putting all the focus on mad force skillz, this game would be about impossible feats of agility. Think of how Jerusalem etc were represented in AC, but imagine it's Corescant, and you're scaling buildings thousands of stories high.
:drool:
Kinda, yes.
But it focuses on exploring from your crashed ship to find parts you need to rebuild it and return home. It's not combat intensive and focuses more on getting around obstacles and you can avoid enemies most of the time.
It pretty much fits the bill of what you were explaining, except that it also includes hundreds of little alien plants that help you.
A space combat simulator, where you are in a competition to become the best space combat ace. You have to travel to different systems and use different simulators to complete objectives with or against humans and against simulated alien races. The feel for the character and non-space environment would be similar to that in Perfect Dark-Zero.
What you find out at the end of the game is that mankind has secretly been engaged in a war against an alien race, and you've been leading missions against the aliens and rogue humans.
See "Ender's Game"
I always thought it would be cool to play that kind of game from the perspective of the badguy. Designing monsters and leaving them around for the goodguy to fight. In reality I don't know if it would work, and it WAS the idea of me at 10 years old, so it isn't fully developed, but there it is.
Even if you want to use one of the big commercial engines you probably could, as all of them offer extensive modding support. Couldn't sell the game but that's besides the point.
How about this:
You and your crew are scattered around this big penthouse dinner party with something to steal. You have a certain amount of time to complete your objective. You start out playing as one character, and you can switch at any time to a different character, only when you switch you start out back in time to when the first character started playing. And you can watch the things you did originally play out in real-time, affecting your other character now.
So you start out as the suave debonair guy and you strike up a distracting conversation with the countess so she doesn't go into the display room to check on her giant emerald. You switch to the girl who simultaneously causes a disturbance in the parking lot, calling the security guys away from the main booth. Then you switch to the technological dude and wait around for your past self to make a scene, watch the security guys go running for the elevator, and you cut the power, locking them inside. Finally you switch to the lady thief and watch your original self lead the countess away from the emerald, and sneak inside.