Let me make your game (with some conditions)

Game Engine Game Engine Support and Discussion
1

I’ve just finished the game I’ve been working on for the past few months (Neon ball, not yet downloadable), and am now hunting for new ideas of what to do.

I’m not looking for game ideas for FPS’s RTS’s or any of the familiar game types. They’ve all been done by far better men than me, and I see no reason to repeat them.
So I’m looking for experimental gameplay ideas. You imagine a game that’s never been done before, if I like it, I’ll try to make it!

How to make me like your ideas:
Advertise it, sell it to me. Describe it in full.
Create some concept art, diagrams or other flashy things.
Simple is best. If I can make it in a week, I’m more likely to pick it than if it would take me a year.
(On a side note, I prefer Science Fiction to Fantasy, so you may win some points that way)

Things to get your creative juices flowing:
These are ideas I’ve considered and rejected, but may serve as inspiration:

  • Playing as a AI house in the future, where you can look through your different cameras, microphones and interact with any computer-enabled devices. Why not: No objective, potentially not fun.
  • A game with no graphics (or very little). Instead it’s about listening. A racing game where you can’t see the track, but can hear the other cars, and some other way of representing your location on the track. Why not: No idea where to start.
  • Gates: A strategic racing game. You play from RTS-style, and instead of a track, you just have to get the most points by passing through ‘gates’ within a time-limit. Why not: I don’t know, I may do this unless you can give me better ideas.
  • Dodge: Fly a missile towards a space ship, having to dodge anti-missile flak and other such things. Why not: How the heck do you display flak in a game engine? No idea how to make it not easy, but not impossible. To much either a you can or you can’t game, no learnable skill.
  • LEO cleanup: Use a long robotic arm on your spaceship to pick up debris in space. (ie dead satellites) Why not: Just sounds silly.

Revamping these ideas and pumping them back to me is perfectly allowed.

Liscencing and extras
I’ll discuss it more with whoevers idea I pick, but:

  • I’m fine with what licence you want the game to be under, I just want to make a game.
  • I don’t care if you want to be involved in the making of it or not.
  • I’ll try to finish it, but it may take a long time depending on the game.
2

I don’t want to steal your thunder, but just share a few thoughts. I hope that’s okay?

IMHO a good idea is only a good idea, if it resonates with the creator - do you feel a rich inspiration coming to you when you enter the arena of the idea? Not really, but how do you do that? In the world of writing there is a saying: write what you know about. I guess the familiarity with a subject gives you not only a richness, but also an instrument where you know the sound of each key that well, that you can put those elements together in new and inspiring ways. I’ve been a filmmaker for many years, and the main reason a project typically suffers exhaustion is when the idea doesn’t truly resonate with the creator and eventually if the project is finished it will end up like yet another dull genre rip off. This tendency has IMHO bleed into the world of game-making too.

So in a way the starting point shouldn’t necessarily be what would other people think might be a good idea, or what games do I like to play(and therefore copy), but maybe more interesting games would emerge if the starting point would be the creator asking him or herself - what do I fell passionate about outside the world of computers: what challenges me, what makes me upset and what engages me? And use those answers as a source of inspiration? How do you make a game that only you personally could have made? Not necessarily easy questions to answer but, I hope this approach would lead to a much needed boost in originality and personality of the game play and aesthetics of computer games.

3

Sorry but my game idea is a firstpersonshooter.:frowning:

4

I think he’s just using an advertiser’s approach, and asking for ideas, which is a fine thing. I have several, which I may type up and share. Definitely different. Maybe not games, in the traditional sense though. Interactions.

5

Wrectified is getting to the point where it could use your help Geoff,
I have been waiting on Kevin for his rendition of the “snap” code…
after this is done, we are going to start coding components and then the demo,

Just putting it out there,
You are talented, and driven, and I could use your help.

6

You could make a simple yet addictive top down view action adventure-rpg low poly game where you slash,jump,collect and find secret passages.
You can get some ideas from Nintendo Land,Skylanders or the old legend of zelda games.

But if you are aiming to make something more simple and easy you could make a side scrolling game which you will have to dodge obstacles,jump on enemies,discover and find new ways to finish the level and lots more.

7

This is more of a suggestion rather than a request to do a game, but I once wanted to create a game that was slightly similar to the crash bandicoot/Pac-man world games. It was originally based out of the Nina Cimmeron universe though right now, I’m tempted to keep her limited to animation/comics. I could come up with another story perhaps and have it be used under the same style.
And again, this is mainly just a slight suggestion of something you can do.

8

Hehehe I am a creative guy. Check out these ideas.

  1. A zombie FPS. (BUT WAIT. KEEP READING.) The player plays as the zombie, but instead of eating brains, you have to try to convince the survivors that your not mindless and to stop killing your zombie pals.

  2. Your a poltergeist that goes around a town or city possessing humans/objects to trolling the crap out of people.

  3. A RIPD type game (Like the movie. Undead Cops that kill demons).

  4. A football game but instead of being the coach or players, your a food vender.

  5. A lawn mowing simulator. You are a kid working to try to earn enough money for that new toy and the game makes the player deal with getting jobs from the neighbors (using a dialog system that causes you to loose a job if you don’t use the right replies and such) and then the player has to mow lawns and pay for gas and oil and such causing the player to really think about their spending, after all, the point is to get that toy. The mowing system could be the player mowing and how much grass was left unmowed determines how happy the neighbor is with the job you did and how much pay you get. Maybe even make a hiring system so you can hire your buddies. (This is a neat idea I think)

  6. A space game where you play as an astroid trying to get as big as possible by slamming into other rocks.

  7. A taxi driving simulator where the player is the taxi driver.

Welp. Those are some pretty crazy ideas.

9

A videogame where you try to get characters to do bad things.Like for example fighting other characters, getting drunk and stealing.There could be others.

10

I actually like the Idea of a Game with no Graphics, where you have to follow the Sounds – but not, NOT as a Racing Game, that would be horribly frustrating! It sounds more like something that could work in a calmer Scenario, where you can take your Time to investigate the Sounds of your Environment – like, a Jump’n’Run (I think of LIMBO) or a First Person Game (that is NOT a Shooter). That could also work greatly for some Sort of a Horror Game, emulating the Fear of being blind.

11

What I would like to see, some day, is a Google Glass game using GPS to overlay alternative world elements onto the real world.

As simple as “follow this arrow to a hidden pirate chest (real or virtual) in the woods near where you live”
Or, as complex as “overlay a virtual reconstruction onto this real-world Roman/medieval/17th century ruin when you are visiting it (in real-life)”.
Virtual pirates, knights or Romans with puzzle or combat elements can be added at will.

However, I am afraid that the time is a bit too early for this idea, maybe in a year or two.

12

Wow, some good ideas coming through now.

@Crossbit:
I like #6, perhaps you start as an asteroid, in a newly formed solar system, and have to bump into other asteroids until you are large enough to be a planet. Then you have to go and find a stable orbit or something…

@C.A.ligari:
The fear of being blind hey! I put some thought into this since you posted, and came to the conclusion that it could be done, but is hugely complicated. I spent a few hours walking around listening, and was amazed at how much I normally miss out on. You can hear the size room you are in, you can hear the location of any sound. Turns out, that with a few weeks of training, it’s possible for a person to learn echolocation.
Most games we make are visual representations of the world around us. But what if a game could be made that emulates the sounds we hear well enough that people can learn echolocation through playing.

Let’s say that you start with some vision, not much, you can just see the sources of light, and use those to give you a sense of orientation. Then, as the game goes on, you lose even that and have to rely on hearing.
The idea of a 2d game is interesting, because hearing is a 3D thing. You can locate a source of sound to a few degrees accuracy. Perhaps you could do a game allowing 2D movement, but include the 3D component purely in an aural way.
I like this. I’ll put a little more thought into it, and see if I can come up with a game plan.

@Sjoerd:
I live in Christchurch, New Zealand, and if you saw the news a few years ago, you may remember we had an earthquake. A bunch of students from our university got together and wrote an app for a cellphone that allows you to see, through your phones camera, all the buildings that used to exist.
But it’s an interesting idea to combine it with a game element. Perhaps like geocaching, or perhaps like this video here.
There have been a few ‘augmented reality’ games on android market (or, sorry, it’s called google play now), but most are poorly done. But I can see why. How do you know if there’s a wall between you and other objects? You have to either know the geometry of the building you are in, aligned to GPS, or do some digital signal processing.
Maybe if I had a phone powerful enough I would work on this, but as it is, my phone is a few years old and won’t run anything blender-based. Perhaps I can convince myself it’s time for an upgrade…

13

Thanks! Another idea, maybe a game where you have to create objects using realtime mesh deformation and sell them and create inventions to sell to the game world AI.

But that only hearing idea was great too. Maybe you could base it off the one super hero who had his vision until he got acid in his face.
I am a music producer so I know the HUGE effects sounds and music have on us. It has a lot of potential and I would be ecstatic to be able to make the music/ sounds for the game if you choose that idea.

14

Here’s an idea for the game of sounds: A blind man is traveling by plane, and the plane crashes on an island. The blind man is the only survivor, and he has to figure out how to survive long enough for the rescue team to arrive. Or, if the game needs to be longer, the rescue team could be removed and instead it’s a game of survival that lasts only as long as you can live.

The mechanics of the game would be difficult to achieve, but the theory is simple. For every object that is supposed to be on the island, make a simple collision object. Essentially, create the game as you would normally (ignoring the aesthetics since you won’t see it anyway), but have a plane block the camera. That way the physics would still work as needed but it would still give the illusion of being blind. However, all of the objects would need to emit or react to sounds. Echolocation would also need to be implemented, but I have no idea how to implement that…

15

I think perhaps instead of being a blind person, you’re simply a normal person in a place you can’t see.

Some art I did in a few spare minutes:

blind1.jpg1024×768 24 KB

The beginning, with the character sliding down into the caves

In-game.jpg1024×768 9.51 KB


And in-game.

Story:
Guy falls in cave. Navigate your way through the various levels until you find your way out.

Gameplay details:
From a top-down perspective. up/down to move forwards/backwards. left/right to turn.
Things like trickling water to keep you oriented. (what other sounds could you hear in a cave?)

Implementation details:
Just going to dump some thoughts here, sorry guys
Every time a sound is triggered from an object, it initiates a whole sequence:

  1. Play the sound
  2. Raycast out in a 360 degree circle, getting and storing hit-locations/distances.
  3. Use the information from the raycast to calculate the delay an echo from each point would have. Store these with the location and sound.
  4. Each frame, check to see what sounds there are to play. Play them using the proper 3D location of where the point would hit, and dividing the volume by the distance away. (and possibly scaling the volume based on how many sounds were cast)

I may have to have some option for the speed of sound
No idea how the aud module would cope with playing several hundred sounds each frame.

headphones would be necessary, to get the whole directional sound thing, but even then you won’t quite have the accuracy of normal hearing: ie behind you vs infront, or in this case, up vs down.

16

Have you found one already or are you still open?

17

Hi,

Maybe you can use my random maze generator setup to build up the cave complex (then you also don’t know the level yourself :evilgrin: ). It is still WIP but the basics are there, and I was planning to put it in the resources when finished. It would be an awesome resource if you could add an advanced sound system to it. The gameplay would be more 3D/first person, you could add 2 hands in front feeling for any obstacles and changing color/texture based on what they touch.

The pathfinding still needs work but I have some ideas to apply it to sounds as well. So the sounds reflect from walls etc. and it is not a strait line to the source. Dripping water and underwater rivers are indeed some good sounds. Maybe also add some sounds based on the floor you are walking, bare rock, pebbles/rubble/moss… And a big gong when you hit your head.

As a story variation, you could play an Indiana Jones kind of explorer and stumble into a trap of a temple complex and lose your light source in the process.

I added the current status of my maze generator as attachement, move with WSADQE (or mouse click).

Attachments

Maze_4_8_2013.zip (439 KB)

18

Nice movies! The second one is kind of cheesy, but nicely demonstrates the concept. I like the idea of the Christchurch app a lot, but I found the result disappointing (it overlaid really badly onto reality; like you said, you need extremely good GPS or digital signal processing, probably both).

I like the sound game idea a lot, I am rooting for it. Here are a few ideas:

  • The screen is normally black, but it can change color based on what you feel (red for fire/pain, blue for water/cold, white for gusts of wind, etc.)
  • Instead of shooting, you can throw bouncing balls to help you navigate. This is to avoid pits and other traps on the floor.
  • Whispers. Random voices that speak to you. Sometimes they try to help you (warning you of traps or hidden levers), sometimes they are evil (telling you to give up, send you the wrong path to your doom, or even throw things at you after they speak).
  • Like others suggested, some Indiana Jones stuff: big boulders rolling down the tunnel to crush you, spiky ceilings coming down, footsteps of patrolling enemies, fire, lava…
  • More whispers, spooky sounds. If they change on every location, they can help you navigate as well.
19

sdfgeoff, this is sounding very interesting. I love the idea of using sound as a key component.

I would definitely look into using the aud module for this. It seems to be able to handle pretty large numbers of sounds and gives quite a lot of control over the sound, including the speed of the sound which might be useful for your echo system. I’m interested as to how that will turn out, a solid echo system would be time well spent. Casting lots of rays might be quite expensive and slow, but that will be down to trial and error on how much you can do and keep things running smoothly. Also 3D sounds work well with aud and seem to give a fairly accurate representation of their location in 3D space.

One thing I did want to add was, maybe try and include some sort of visual representation of your echo system for players at the start of the game, then fade this out as you progress to increase the difficulty. I was thinking something as simple as an expanding, semi-transparent sphere that kind of ‘bounces’ to represent the echos. Not sure if I’m explaining that right.

Good luck with this, you’ve got an interesting idea and an interesting mechanic that sounds fun.

20

Some more sounds to add: Bugs, rats and bats. There are probably lots of small creepy creatures in the caves. So you can have trickling sounds of rats running around or rattling and other cricket like sounds. And maybe some wind blowing through crevices.

More tricky might be to get the player to experience spiders crawling on their hands and feet and running into cobwebs :evilgrin:

Also you could add 1 or 2 halls where light is coming in through the roof. When you get near you might imagine your almost out, just to enter some ghastly scene. Make it scenes that cause your imagination to run, like the fate of the previous explorer, or real big spiders, maybe some precious treasure that starts you searching for more instead of finding your way out…