Swiss Army Knife Mod (Swarmy) Thread

I have been modelling a swiss army knife with XSI mod tool and while working my mind travelled back to MacGyver and the likes, who were able to overcome and survive any situation with just some duct tape and a swiss army knife.

So I wondered, if it wouldn't be cool to have a single player mod centered on the functions of your swiss army knife. It could be both, funny and realistic, working out solutions involving your knife, duct-tape and items you find in the environment. Sort of a Garry's mod Myst Crossbreed with a defined goal for each level. I imagine something like an Old Boy setting:
you have been kidnapped and put away in someone's basement. You have a year's supply of Microwave food and a water tap. The only thing they didn't find was your swiss army knife, stored in one of your socks. Your goal is to get out of the building and get away from your kidnappers without their notice (stealth). So this is essentially a non-violent game, which might have an Old Boyish Blood-Streak at the very last confrontation; it also might not.

This is just chatter. I really thought the idea of the knife as tool should be central. You could use a magnifying glass for different purposes (fire when the sun shines, building a looking glass with a second lense, reading) you have a saw, can opener(screw driver1), small and large blade, philips head screw driver and corkscrew. I think, if the puzzles are clever this could be quite fun to make.

Edited by: SinKing

This might make for a fun and quick single player mod that can be enjoyable if the puzzles are done right and aren't repetitive. But also, instead of the kidnapper's house I thought to myself that some sort of wilderness or a forest would make a great location for these types of puzzles also. Can't wait to hear more about this if you decide to take it any further.

Just did a quick google search on Swiss Army Knives, and I came across this...
The term "Swiss Army knife" is a registered trademark owned by Wenger S.A. and Victorinox A.G., - Wikipedia
And from this piece of information I started thinking "VICTORINOX IS AN AWESOME NAME." and the like, so i'm suggesting the name 'Victorinox' for your mod. Then going for some more name suggestions i typed in 'Victorious quotes' into google and Sun Tzu often said 'Will be, Victorious' and because victorinox and victorious sound similar, i thought "will be, Victorinox" as another contender for mod Title.
Other Suggestions:
'Victorinox Tools' 
'Why are Toothpicks in Swiss Army Knives?' A.K.A WatSack
Edit: 'House of Hard Victorinox' (like the saying 'house of hard knocks')

P.S. Schitzophrenia story sounds good, reminds me of the Movie 'Beautiful Mind' Starring Russell Crowe.

Edited by: MrCupcake

It's MacGyver by the way. Has nothing to to with Guyvers . Now what goes for the idea it is interesting. Sort of what adventure games are where you are supposed to use stuff in crazy combinations to solve puzzles. I would not center on the army knife since Angus has been all about putting good use to props found in his vicinity. Hence this would best work with an advanture game type gameplay. This can be done with an FPS engine but it would be better off with an actual adventure game engine. Not that I know one right off my head but I'm pretty sure some Lucas Arts engine ( Scumm? is that the name? ) would be better for that job.

Yeah, I don't know why, but ever since I heard about Guyver I keep misspelling MacGyver. It's like this "crisis/crysis" bug that has befallen some people.
Let me summarize the ideas and comments so far:

- single player
- location wilderness
- concentrate on all props+combination
- funny

I have the feeling like a zomie game will come out of this at some point. lol

Edited by: SinKing

Easy, knock on the door and stab them in the face with your pocket knife ...

Oh ...

On a more serious note, i think that making a macguyver type game would be incredibly hard ... To actually simulate the ingenuity of combining stuff would be hard ...

Not everyone would think of threading the end of a rake onto a garden hose to use as a grappling hook ... also it would be lame to have only one solution to a given problem ...

Im thinking the best you could hope for is simple problems with simple physics solutions using some Gmod like setup ...

You can only introduce fairly simple problems because you couldn't really simulate the ingenuity to do the cool/complex stuff ... say there is a lighter and an aerosol can ... you could make it so when you pick up those two items you automatically get a flame thrower ... but the player didn't really think that, and it would be nice if they actually had to think up the idea of using those two in combination ...

Maybe if you did some sort of item dialog, in which when you pick up your items you can sit down and have the player manually combine them to make different things ...

say you pick up a nail, aerosol can, newspaper, lighter, a pipe and a paper clip.

you could do multiple combinations with those items to make more complex items ...

Pipe + Nail + Newspaper to make a blowgun

Lighter + Newspaper to make a fire

Lighter + aerosol can to make a flame thrower

where as some combination don't work such as

Lighter + Nail + paperclip

Thanks for the find Diable. This seems to be based on Unreal Engine (1), I wonder, if similar scripting could be done for Unreal 3?

Stranded has the most annoying interface, I would much prefer something, which doesn't require you switching between inventory and map mode. I also think it would be helpful to have a kind of hint system (at the start) to show you which things can be combined and why. Additionally (later on) there should be a learning system, which allows you to create new materials and objects from having learned new techniques or found new upgrades: e.g. welding.

The more I think about it the more this takes me into the RPG direction, except in this system you'd have to build absolutely everything from things you find. Depending on what you research the most you would either end up having a well rounded system, or you would upgrade only certain traits, e.g. power vs. stamina. It could be interesting to think about this in a "Age of..." setting with Multiplayer, because then you could pit different people against each other. In order to leave a map first (objective) you'd probably have to overcome or unite with other players.

Not sure where this is taking us, but it is far off the original idea of creating a game mode centered around one tool. I think that you can make different objects from one object, depending on wht you combine them with is clear. The question is just: what's the point? Why are we doing it? War? Escape? Progress/Milestone?

Edited by: SinKing

In general this is what I planed for my game. The idea is to have props which have certain "traits". A trait defines as what a prop can be used. A player has then sort of blue-prints which indicate what he knows he can assemble. You can then plug the appropriate props together and depending on what you plug together you get different behaviors from your contraceptions. It avoids to some degree the problem of having to think about all possible interactions since the props interaction naturally with each other depending on their traits. How well such a system though stacks up in reality still had to be tested. So far it's an idea on paper and I did not get around implementing it yet.

I assume the license is not an issue if the statements on the tool pages is correct. ScummVM is GPL and mentions that you can use it to create new games although it's most probably not easy to do. That said I don't know what they understand as not easy. What goes for ScummC they state on their website that it's a 100% free way to create games using ScummVM. Hence it looks to me to be rather safe to use it without running up against LucasArts on the license part. That said I have not dug deeper into this topic to stumble across potential pitfalls. Just filed through some pages I found with google concerning the topic.

That said Scumm has been improved and re-implemented a lot in newer versions in the mean time. I don't think they care about this original stuff anymore. Besides there exist more modern tools for adventure games. Never worked with Game Maker or how these adventure creation tools all are named but they should be suitable for such a task too. After all you don't need a huge graphics gallore for a project of this kind so they should be another option in my opinion. I'm sure one finds something suitable in todays tools to get an adventure game done in short time even if it would be only for prototyping the idea in the first place.

My problem is that games/mods made with these engines have little appeal. Does anyone remember Mission Impossible on C64? Something like that with an FPS gameplay would be a nice setting. Escape an underground compound full of robots (later some humans, too). It could be you're being kept away by the government, because you had an encounter with aliens. Perhaps that gave you the rare opportunity to blueprint things, which you think about. The difficulty would be to get the player to think about certain things (by putting him in front of certain situations, giving him combinations, which still miss one tool/ingredient, etc)

I'd really like to give this basic combinatory play some depth and I have a cool idea, how the "thinking" can be done. It would essentially be a mini-game (in a mind-bubble), which would lead to the right results through making right combinations. Of course some wrong turns may also have you end up with ice-cream, instead of ice-spray, etc.

The reason I want a supernatural influence on the player is, because just running around, combining things you find will put you on a hunt to and forth the level, looking for items you are missing. The new system gives you a choice to manifest those items, or to go looking for them. Of course, some assosciations can't be made until you reach a higher level and the replication powers will be limited and work only on certain item combinations. It also means we can put an interesting twist to the story, as your struggle to break free would become more questionable after you start discovering more and more of your "alien" powers.

I feel we are getting somewhere. Could be an interesting game, and I agree that it needs some more thought and a detailed design document. I'd still like to think about an engine choice that is more interesting to other players than the Game Makers.

Edited by: SinKing

It's just that in 3D it's harder to make a game with lots of interactions ( I know from my own experience ) than using a 2D game where there are certain limitations which help you reduce work load. I think 3D is not the right answer for all kinds of games. Especially in a game based mostly on combining items and living a story 2D would be better off. One reason is to make prerendered background. Now some hate these but in contrary to full 3D you can put artistic elements into them like unnatural camera perspectives, viewing angles and alike. These tricks are hard to do with 3D games and can add a lot to the mood of the game. Especially if you go for more supernatural powers such non-standard art tricks can make it different than the common adventure click-and-pray style gameplay.

I'm writing an alternative fiction story to base the game on. It won't be totally original, but maybe it can shed some light on style and humor of the game. I agree with Dragonlord's standpoint and I also think it can have great artistic value to use fixed perspective and create a unique artistic look. I also still believe 2D is easier to produce, since you don't have to care much about the gamer looking at things in unwanted angles and the props, etc are easier to create.

I have come to think about Grim Fandango. That engine would be perfectly good enough for what I can imagine as the game and as soon as I get a fix on the setting and can flesh out a quest, I think we might have a rare adventure project going here. For the sake of functionality it will be rather short, though. I'll release a web-comic (here) as soon as I can to give you an impression of my idea.

Edited by: SinKing

Grim Fandango is based as far as I know on the Scumm principle but improved a lot over the original tool. I've also seen some people which claim having modded it. It's though less easy than using other options ( orignal Scumm or some game maker tool ). But the choice of the engine/tool to use would be less of a problem. That is if you want to be 2D. As far as I read Grim Fandango uses 3D too but I don't know in what scale as I never played that game.