Tom Foolery

Hahaha, this more or less what I'm thinking.

Artemis! I don't know how I forgot to mention it. Artemis actually had a lot to do with generating some of these ideas. I've only played it a few times, and only with three other guys, but it was a lot of fun. Thanks kirrus. And thank you Keepbro, I can definitely see your points, it would be quite difficult to pull it off in a way that kept players immersed and interested. Pacing would be difficult to get right, balance would be another nightmare. You're absolutely right that standing in a room with not much to look at wouldn't exactly be a hell of a lot of fun. And I also realise a game like this would require a very sizeable team of programmers, not to mention an astronomical budget. I'm really just dreaming here and was keen to see if anyone else would be interested in this kind of game haha. On another note though, I've downloaded Unity and have started teaching myself how to use it. I figure I may as well try my hand at it right? I have a friend who is doing his second year in a programming course (mostly C++), another friend who is studying character animation (using Mya for the most part), and who also illustrates/co-authors a comic book, and another friend with a strong background in coding who at the moment builds and programs flight simulators as a hobby. So I figure I have a fairly decent starting point. Obviously the game I'm describing is WAY down the road, if even at all feasible. Anyway, I appreciate the input.

First off, thanks for bringing this game to my attention, it looks really cool. Admittedly, I didn't watch the entire video all the way through, but I watched a lot of it, and I got quite a good idea of what the game is about from reading the YouTube comments actually. Sounds very interesting and I definitely intend on watching it later when I have a bit more time. Do you play this? I'd love to know more about it. To answer your question though, from a purely artistic/graphical standpoint at least, this isn't what I have in mind, although the basic premise of the game and the underlying systems/mechanics look similar to what I'm thinking (from what I can understand of SS13 so far). I'll try to give a clearer idea of what I mean. I see this as being a fully 3D universe, played from a first person perspective. Think FTL except each crew member is individually player controlled. Mojang AB were developing a game a little while ago called 0x10c, which has since been cancelled, but is supposedly being revived by fans of the project, (I'm almost certain you've heard of this already , but if not..) anway this is roughly what I would imagine the game to look like. I guess if you could imagine playing FTL, mixed with a little bit of Minecraft, and a dash of Rust, with a 0x10c type look and feel, a focus on PvE, PvP, mining and crafting, survival, the building and operating of ships, and a big emphasis on player to player interaction. Games wouldn't be played in 'matches', but rather, each server would be it's own procedurally generated and entirely individual persistent universe, where games are played over long periods of time. A sleeper system similar to Rust where even when you're logged out, you still exist in the universe, can still be captured or robbed, and can still be killed. You would need to either invest in automated security systems, or have guards posted around the clock. This would mean having a diverse team of players from around the world would be greatly beneficial due to time differences, and would encourage a wider range of interaction rather than just grouping with people from your own country or in your part of the world which often seems to be the case, at least in my experience anyway. Lately I've drawn a lot of inspiration from Rust as far as the some of the gameplay elements are concerned. It's kind of hard to convey what I mean by this, as Rust can be a very strange game. I think 90% of players found themselves in either hacker or abusive admin territory in most of the servers, which was a shame because if you were lucky enough to find a good server to play on, it was a truly unique experience. Servers would have their own sort of 'lore' so-to-speak. People would tell stories of epic battles that had taken place, or warn you about infamous murderers on the server. And this was one of the things I loved most about the game, it seemed to forge it's own twisted, lawless form of politics and diplomacy, and trust and deceit were very real in the world of Rust, "This guy wants me to follow him to his camp, he says he has weapons and kevlar for me. Can I trust him? Is it worth the risk of losing what I already have?" "I'll give 6 c4 to any player who leads me to Luigi52s hideout. And anyone who helps me raid him can have anything inside his base, I just want his blood. He and I have unfinished business" I would love to see situations like this where say, a player could just lie outright to other players in order gain a position on their ship, then sabotage them from the inside out, moments before their own allies coordinate an attack. Or to slowly gain their trust and seep information out to allies, relay battle plans, the location of weapon stockpiles etc. "We're looking over this guys apllication for the open shield bay position, what do you know about his background? Who is he affiliated with? Who has he fought for in the past? Can we trust him? He is a very skilled shield operator. Just keep him in the dark for now, don't let him know too much" Permadeath to some degree would be a must, the punishment for death should be severe. Obviously there would have to be a way to re enter a particular server, other wise this would be a major deterrent for a lot of people. Maybe if your crew has researched and built cloning bays they could bring you back, but for a hefty price and a with a huge hit to your stats and experience. Otherwise you'd have to start a completely new character, wake up in the stasis chamber of your small cramped ship drifting out in the middle of space somewhere, and have to push out a distress becon in the hope that your crew gets it so they can come and pick you up. (Or so hostile raider/bandit ships can intercept it, seek you out, and strip your small ship for it's few resources). Time should pass slowly, travel between territories should take days if not weeks. The environment and travel should themselves present danger. Sufficient fuel for the journey, hull strength to withstand possible asteroid bombardments, systems to shield the ship in pockets of high level radiation. The universe is a hostile place. You would need to plot out routes, stop at planets or space stations along the way to refuel and gather essential resources, where who knows what could happen. A planet could have hostile inhabitants or a harsh environment, space stations could be overrun by other players who've lost their ship but have managed to find sanctuary on the station, waiting for a crew like yours to dock so that they can commandeer yours. The idea is to allow for a large amount of player freedom. To encourage real player interaction. To make it extremely difficult or virtually impossible to go it alone. For the larger scale combat to be a deep, strategic, and coordinated affair. Targeting particular systems to disable vital components like weapons or oxygen supply, or sending out invader parties to board an enemy ship to try and kill off the crew, resulting in a higher amount of resources gained when breaking it down for scrap, or smiply taking it and scrapping your own.

It was more of a tech demo type project for a game engine I've been developing over the past couple of years. I guess it was a kind of 3D tile-based procedurally generated city/landscape browser, but working from a limited tileset and with nothing but kind of end-goal images of it in my head. The concept itself might be tossed aside for now, but I ended up with some valuable tools made with it - a basic 3D model creation toolset (to build models optimised for the engine's native data structure), and various procedural generation snippets which would all be viable with a larger or more precise set of tiles to work with. Think Carcassonne-esque environment creation before your eyes, merging into an interactive and explorable landscape. That's pretty much what it was in my head, but you can't produce anything procedurally that doesn't look like the work of a million ants without some more guidance and restrictions on tile placement (some kind of 'higher plan'). Ahh yeah I think I follow (to be honest a little bit of that went over my head ), but I'm familliar with Carcassonne, and an emergent, explorable world in the same light as that is definitely an interesting idea. So with your original concept doomed to impossibility, what does the future hold? Are you still developing at all?

Shhh man, don't get my hopes up haha but it would be nice to have someone with coding skills jump on this idea. I'd love to play this game.

Also, thank you Realmkeeper. Here's hoping . And just out of interest, what was your concept?

Thanks for the feedback guys. I love the idea of combat being a coordinated effort, but from a gameplay perspective, I can't see it being very fun to be in a windowless weapons room pressing a button whenever your teammate radios down to you. Wouldn't really be satisfying, imo. Having players be members of the bridge crew would be more fun, though I'm sure everyone would gravitate towards weapons officer or security or pilot as opposed to, say, communications officer or catering or whatnot. xD This has definitely crossed my mind as well, from a gameplay perspective it would be extremely boring to just sit in a room pressing a button. There would have to be a lot more going on to keep the people in these types of roles entertained. Things like onboard fires, damaged or malfunctioning systems that need repairing, and more importantly, enemy invasions. Crew members would (or wouldn't) be trained in combat. Maybe the pilot is also an excellent cook, people would be able to specialise in multiple roles, though obviously sticking to a single specialty would have its perks like levelling up faster, or opening up abilities that say only someone who is solely a pilot has access to for example. And as far as the actual operating of systems side of things is concerned, it would need to be more complex than just pressing a button. I'd like to see things like the potential for weapon jamming/misfiring etc. The difficulty is trying to think of a way to do that without a cheesy, tacked on "press x when the moving line enters the green area" type mini game, which is something I'm not too fond of. Also, you mentioned catering, which would be a role that would need to be filled, albeit a tedious and not a very rewarding one . But there would be hunger/thirst aspects to it, as well as sleep and exercise. Your character would definitely need to feel like a real person with regular human needs. I'd like to see things like sanity and sleep deprivation take a toll on your ability to function properly.

Ok, so I've had this idea knocking around inside my head for a long time now. And a few games (FTL and Space Engineers in particular) have sort of hit on the same kind of concept. I guess this would be a sort of hybrid of the two, with some other elements. Basically, it's a mmo about spaceship warfare, but rather than just piloting the ship directly, you play the role of a single crew member, be it the pilot, an engine room technician, or an armed guard specialising in combat to fight off enemy invasions. The game would be played from a first person perspective, and would have some FPS elements to it, as boarding other vessels would be possible. The way I imagine it, you would start out in a very small, modest sized ship. One small enough to run on your own (with a single engine and no weapon/shield system to operate, basically just a cramped box with a single thruster), but it would lack firepower, the ability to travel very far, and it would travel at a very slow pace. The idea would be to seek out other players, form alliances, and together build better, faster, and stronger ships. As the ships become bigger they require more man power to operate the various systems, and each player would become more proficient in a given specialty the more he worked a particular job. Much like FTL. A more experienced pilot would be able to manuvure a ship better, pull tighter turns for example, or use less fuel when travelling. A better weapons operator would be able to charge weapon systems faster and deal more damage, or use less power for energy based weapons. As these guys are killed, less experienced crew members would need to take their place. Combat would have a heavy emphasis on teamwork and communication. The guys in the weapons room wouldn't be able to see the enemy ship, so it would be up to either the pilot or perhaps someone manning an observation deck to issue fire commands. It would be possible to disrupt an enemy ships communication systems, bringing down all forms of radio communication and leaving only proximity based communication, so that they would have to shout down corridors or have someone running around relaying commands to crew members. I am by no stretch a developer/coder/programmer, and this is pure fantasy. I will not, and can not make this game, or any game for that matter. I just thought I'd put the idea out there, and if anyone is interested and/or has the means to bring this to fruition, then I'd love to discuss it some more. There is a lot more to this, I just don't have the energy to get it all down right now (It's now 8:58am and I haven't slept because I've been trying to fortify my base and survive zombie hoardes all night ), just thought I'd get the basic idea down. (I'm not sure if I'm allowed to post this here if I'm not actually developing a game, and if not then I apologise) Edit: Ok, right, this is in the wrong place sorry guys.

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