Programmer looking for innovative gameplay ideas. Thread

I'm a programmer. I'm looking to develop a new mod/game with a fresh approach to gameplay. I'm a bit partial to first person games, but I won't limit it to that.

So what, exactly, am I trying to figure out?
An out-of-the-box approach to gameplay mechanics - how the user interacts with the game, how the game communicates with the user, and the overall objective of the game. Something simple to grasp, yet not limited.

Thanks for reading! Hope to hear from you soon!

Hi Gerry!

Would you be interested in joining a Multiplayer UDK project?

Moddb.com

If the concept interests you, drop me PM, or an email!

jesusrocko@hotmail.com

Cheers,
Alex

gerry wrote: I'm not looking for storylines. I could care less about a story right now.

... What if story is part of the game mechanics?

Dragonlord wrote:

gerry wrote: I'm not looking for storylines. I could care less about a story right now.

... What if story is part of the game mechanics?

It sounds like he is looking to build a prototype or tech demo of a unique gameplay mechanic; not a cookie cutter story mod.

^^ You both bring up a good point, so I should clarify what I mean.

Korge is more or less correct. However, that doesn't mean that the gameplay mechanic can't stem from the story. If that's the case, then that's fine.

I'm just really trying to avoid yet another survival horror mod that's just Half-Life 2 with new voice-overs and weapons. I'd really like to work on something that doesn't feel like all the other games out there. Even if it's only a slight difference, that's fine. I tend to be most interested in small, yet clever ideas.

I can understand you very well. These survival horror mods really are shooting out of the ground like mushrooms in the forest . Good to see you don't tuck off story as being just story without the possibility to influence game mechanics ( or like the way the story is being told is part of the game mechanics ).

How about reversing some long held standards?

Dunno if any of these have been done. Wouldn't be surprised if they were.

Make an FPS with guns but immortal enemies. Get all the firepower you want, but all you can do is slow them down. The objective then becomes a speed run, not out of given goals but out of the necessities of survival. If you don't move quickly, you get mobbed and every alerted enemy continues to follow you. Difficulty levels could be determined by availability of ammunition. Either set in an urban area with lots of enemies or tight corridors with only a few, but lots of dead ends. Make the player sweat

Rather than hide in shadows, hide from them. Shadows HURT you. Make use of dynamic lighting for an ever changing environment. No personified enemies, just you and whatever light you can find. Allow for different paths through a map, some requiring speed, some requiring light sources to be carried. Carrying too many light sources would slow you down. Maybe set outside with clocks counting down to sunset. Either get to the end before dusk or gather lamps, torches, neon tubes and power sources and hope they won't cut out before that next elusive street light. (Gears of War had something similar, but it was overly linear. What I propose here is more a puzzle/platformer in an fps. Think Mirror's Edge + damage dealing shadows and day/night cycles.) Toss a few corpses in dark corners to give the player a hint xD

It's 2am here in Ireland and my creative drive is running low. Tell me what you think of these. I'm only starting to learn programming basics (Java) right now and I'm a crap artist, so I'm hoping to be useful in the ideas department until I get better at either xD

Dragonlord wrote: I can understand you very well. These survival horror mods really are shooting out of the ground like mushrooms in the forest . Good to see you don't tuck off story as being just story without the possibility to influence game mechanics ( or like the way the story is being told is part of the game mechanics ).

e.g. Im pretty sure Portal's theme and story were written around the tech demo of a working portal gun. I dont think they thought up glados and said, "hey guyz lets make a portal gun k?"

korge wrote:

Dragonlord wrote: I can understand you very well. These survival horror mods really are shooting out of the ground like mushrooms in the forest . Good to see you don't tuck off story as being just story without the possibility to influence game mechanics ( or like the way the story is being told is part of the game mechanics ).

e.g. Im pretty sure Portal's theme and story were written around the tech demo of a working portal gun. I dont think they thought up glados and said, "hey guyz lets make a portal gun k?"

You don't get what I am talking about. In Portal the story and game mechanics are separate entities. You can exchange the story or how it is told and still get the same game mechanics working. I'm talking about making the story telling part of the game mechanics instead of story just being something told alongside the game having as most games are doing it. As did Yathzee once say correctly: story and game mechanics should not reside in two separate rooms without having the chance to get to know each other.

Edited by: Dragonlord

Dragonlord wrote:

korge wrote:

Dragonlord wrote: I can understand you very well. These survival horror mods really are shooting out of the ground like mushrooms in the forest . Good to see you don't tuck off story as being just story without the possibility to influence game mechanics ( or like the way the story is being told is part of the game mechanics ).

e.g. Im pretty sure Portal's theme and story were written around the tech demo of a working portal gun. I dont think they thought up glados and said, "hey guyz lets make a portal gun k?"

You don't get what I am talking about. In Portal the story and game mechanics are separate entities. You can exchange the story or how it is told and still get the same game mechanics working. I'm talking about making the story telling part of the game mechanics instead of story just being something told alongside the game having as most games are doing it. As did Yathzee once say correctly: story and game mechanics should not reside in two separate rooms without having the chance to get to know each other.

Yeah. Search for a game called Narbacular Drop. The story is different, the style is different, the portals are created by the environment rather than by a visible gun. This WAS Portal before Valve got their hands on it. The portal physics never changed from the original.

And with my suggested ideas above you could add any myriad of reasons for either to happen (Magic / Demonic would be the easiest, though technologically correct reasons might be possible if the setting is right).
A game shouldn't be all creative mechanics or all story. A game should have both in equal measure (a lot ^^). As for Portal, it would no doubt have sold without the storyline, but without Glados we would all be annoyed that the gun wasn't simply tossed into Ep 2 instead.

Edited by: CaptainLagfail

pado16 wrote: Rather than hide in shadows, hide from them. Shadows HURT you. Make use of dynamic lighting for an ever changing environment. No personified enemies, just you and whatever light you can find. Allow for different paths through a map, some requiring speed, some requiring light sources to be carried. Carrying too many light sources would slow you down.

This has actually been done, although for the life of me I can't recall what the mod was called.

1) I put up a rather long post about the story of a game idea in the ideas section however in terms of gameplay - how about a kind of 3d platformy thing in which you are a teddybear with a spider friend that webs things to your arms and legs to help you move better - pigeons to let you fly, crutches to use as stilts, chopsticks or a spork to use as hands. The spider has a certain amount of grappling hook qualities itself - you would also need to travel through mirrors, fight your shadows, and figure out when the game is just messing with you. Moddb.com

2) Another idea I had was to do a Brownies mod for Mount & Blade. Add squirrells and birds as mounts. Add giant trees, beehives, tree-castles etc. Just getting the birds to fly well and mimic the behaviors/advantages of different real birds could be quite a challenge. Getting squirrels to move right, having climbable tree trunks and branches that bob and sway would be awesome. Keep all the attitude of Caldaria though, it would fit very well.

3) Third idea I've toyed around with is a time-travel concept piece similar to Achrongame.com but not RTS, first or third person shooter, maybe with a premise that your character died and is working from some kind of a bardo/purgatory style dimension, destabalizing timelines with paradox loops so that he can loot the timeline debris after their destruction. The goal is to create paradox loops great enough to destroy the timeline although you might play it Multiplayer with some players trying to destroy timelines and others trying to prevent timeline destruction. Every possible time travel point at a given player time would represent a distinct timeline whose reprecusions and causality would routinely step forward to the next chronological time travel point.

if any of these sound interesting let me know. My blog where I discuss them more in depth - or plan to:
Resin213.blogspot.com

Edited by: Resin213

ambershee wrote:

pado16 wrote: Rather than hide in shadows, hide from them. Shadows HURT you. Make use of dynamic lighting for an ever changing environment. No personified enemies, just you and whatever light you can find. Allow for different paths through a map, some requiring speed, some requiring light sources to be carried. Carrying too many light sources would slow you down.

This has actually been done, although for the life of me I can't recall what the mod was called.

The closest I could guess would be The Darkness

Isn't "The Darkness" oriented game mechanics wise in the direction of Thief? There light is sort of your enemy if you want to stay unseen.

Yeah, in The Darkness light is your ally. The only way I could describe this in relation would be if the guy from The Darkness lost control of his powers and you were just someone in the area.

Love the sketch, Resin. I saw your concepts for the Divinity contest, wish I was that good.

Thanks pado, frankly I felt a bit out of my league.

Speaking of shadows;
I've been anticipating this game: Shadowphysics.com
and really would love to see it implemented in a sort of surreal horror survival setting like in Korsakovia (which I have not actually played yet, but looks very much like something I would enjoy): Moddb.com

Along these lines I would also like to see gameplay centered around radio and television frequencies, perhaps worked into the third idea I mentioned above (along with the shadow stuff). There is a lot of uncanny elements that could be found combining the elements of television and time travel. Murakami uses it well in his novel After Dark, Twin Peaks the movie had a great bit with David Bowie and a security camera, Lost Highway did some cool bits as well, Poltergeist of course, The Ring, etc,etc. - bad reception is the modern equivelant of the chain rattelling, personally I still want more - (mirrors are also great in much the same way). The gameplay I'm envisioning would be kind of like you find different stations on televisions or radios, some show you what you just did, some show you what's about to happen, some show alternate choice paths you could have made, lots are just static or garbled calls for help, and some are portals and watching them creates a jump cut to being in them. As you progress you may start to recognize 'stations' or frequencies as friendly or enemy controlled. Sometimes you'll want to go on the offensive against enemies or make a different decision in the past so mapping out time signatures of the different stations doing things like holding up a watch to a security camera (you'll know to do this because you'll see yourself doing it before it happens); keeping a marked up schedule of television shows and stations. I think smashing old watches like in China Town or collecting tons of wrist watches as in The Cube would be thematicly fitting and extremley creepy.
Cellphones and internet services could easily be worked into this theme - getting a good signal from the afterworld while adrift in time - Hell has a radio tower.

Edited by: Resin213

Pm me I have a team of sound design and music composers that would love to excuse the pun have a shark sized bite at your project! Also available is a 2d concept artist. PM and we can discuss further

Err, there is no project?

Did Dreads.maggs respond to the wrong thread? lol

Resin213 wrote: Thanks pado, frankly I felt a bit out of my league.

Speaking of shadows;
I've been anticipating this game: Shadowphysics.com
and really would love to see it implemented in a sort of surreal horror survival setting like in Korsakovia (which I have not actually played yet, but looks very much like something I would enjoy): Moddb.com

Along these lines I would also like to see gameplay centered around radio and television frequencies, perhaps worked into the third idea I mentioned above (along with the shadow stuff). There is a lot of uncanny elements that could be found combining the elements of television and time travel. Murakami uses it well in his novel After Dark, Twin Peaks the movie had a great bit with David Bowie and a security camera, Lost Highway did some cool bits as well, Poltergeist of course, The Ring, etc,etc. - bad reception is the modern equivelant of the chain rattelling, personally I still want more - (mirrors are also great in much the same way). The gameplay I'm envisioning would be kind of like you find different stations on televisions or radios, some show you what you just did, some show you what's about to happen, some show alternate choice paths you could have made, lots are just static or garbled calls for help, and some are portals and watching them creates a jump cut to being in them. As you progress you may start to recognize 'stations' or frequencies as friendly or enemy controlled. Sometimes you'll want to go on the offensive against enemies or make a different decision in the past so mapping out time signatures of the different stations doing things like holding up a watch to a security camera (you'll know to do this because you'll see yourself doing it before it happens); keeping a marked up schedule of television shows and stations. I think smashing old watches like in China Town or collecting tons of wrist watches as in The Cube would be thematicly fitting and extremley creepy.
Cellphones and internet services could easily be worked into this theme - getting a good signal from the afterworld while adrift in time - Hell has a radio tower.

Played Korsakovia, loved it.
All I will say is that you should play it in a dark room, and no matter what, don't read the FAQ / available dev notes until you've finished it. I happened to complete the game in a way that the lead dev swore he never knew could be done! (I won't reveal it here as it would ruin your own experience).
Play Korsakovia, when done with that (4 - 5 hours, maybe) play Dear Esther. TheChineseRoom have some amazing stuff.

PS, lol @ dreads.maggs

Mr.Kadish wrote: Hi Gerry!

Would you be interested in joining a Multiplayer UDK project?

Moddb.com

If the concept interests you, drop me PM, or an email!

jesusrocko@hotmail.com

Cheers,
Alex

Dreads.maggs wrote: Pm me I have a team of sound design and music composers that would love to excuse the pun have a shark sized bite at your project! Also available is a 2d concept artist. PM and we can discuss further

Fix't

pado16 wrote: Yeah, in The Darkness light is your ally. The only way I could describe this in relation would be if the guy from The Darkness lost control of his powers and you were just someone in the area.

Love the sketch, Resin. I saw your concepts for the Divinity contest, wish I was that good.

Are we referring to Top Cow's The Darkness here...? As i'm pretty sure that the light was your enemy, and the darkness was your ally? Doesn't change what you're saying mind, as it works either way.

--

Iron Wolf Studios

Squiggers wrote:

pado16 wrote: Yeah, in The Darkness light is your ally. The only way I could describe this in relation would be if the guy from The Darkness lost control of his powers and you were just someone in the area.

Love the sketch, Resin. I saw your concepts for the Divinity contest, wish I was that good.

Are we referring to Top Cow's The Darkness here...? As i'm pretty sure that the light was your enemy, and the darkness was your ally? Doesn't change what you're saying mind, as it works either way.

lol, yeah sorry. In The Darkness you stick to the shadows, in my idea above you do your best to avoid them.
Thanks for spotting that Squiggers. Dunno how I made that mistake.

pado16 wrote:

Squiggers wrote:

pado16 wrote: Yeah, in The Darkness light is your ally. The only way I could describe this in relation would be if the guy from The Darkness lost control of his powers and you were just someone in the area.

Love the sketch, Resin. I saw your concepts for the Divinity contest, wish I was that good.

Are we referring to Top Cow's The Darkness here...? As i'm pretty sure that the light was your enemy, and the darkness was your ally? Doesn't change what you're saying mind, as it works either way.

lol, yeah sorry. In The Darkness you stick to the shadows, in my idea above you do your best to avoid them.
Thanks for spotting that Squiggers. Dunno how I made that mistake.

Yeah, was thinking "Hmm, someones obviously got a different version to me then."

In terms of coding, it works on the same principle, as the light damages you - or at least, damages your darkness power and the abilities you can use. In theory, its doable.

--

Iron Wolf Studios

LOL Sorry my bad lol.