Risk Management: An Online FPS with a Dash of Insanity. Thread

Good morning, or, if it is not currently morning where you are, close this window until the aforementioned time is reached.

Go ahead, I shall wait.

Good, now that it is morning (or so I will just go ahead and assume), it is the anointed time for me to make my first entry into the Unity forums. At least, that is what the voices in my head are telling me.

I would simply dive into listing my wants and needs like an errant Christmas list, but that would be seen as rude orunseemly or outright irritating by others, so I shall first provide information about myself as a person.

- My name is Michael, though you may call me Nigel or Marshal, both for largely indiscernible reasons.
- I am, at the start of this next school year, going to be a Junior at Illinois Wesleyan University as an English Writing Major, with an emphasis on dramatic fiction and being poor for my entire life.
- I have been playing videogames for a vast majority of life, on over 11 different gaming platforms, most of which I owned, some of which I convince others that I "own".
- I have a hatred for sarcasm and tongue-in-cheek humour and I will NEVER USE IT. Never ever. Seriously. I will never do it. On the other hand, I am an irony affectionado.
- While i have never fully completed development of a game before, I have written more storylines/scripts/backstories/characters than I could even hope to remember. So, if ideas are ever in a short supply in my brain, we can safely assume that it is a sign of the Apocalypse.
- My other skills, aside from writing (with characters and backstories being my specialty), I know some basic website and image manipulation management, can create halfway decent concept art, and have dabbled in the mental crafting of various gameplay mechanics/level designs.

AND NOW, the moment you were maybe waiting for (unless you just skipped past my horrible, terrible biography, in which case you are dead to me), I would like to present the game-in-incubation, Risk Management.

Risk Management is an entirely online multiplayer shooter (though, some offline elements are being talked about). True, the market is more over-saturated with such games than most would allow themselves to admit, but where Risk Management deviates is in its character. A la Quentin Tarantino, Risk Management will attempt to instill a sense of character and a kind of morbid fun to the genre while still keeping the gameplay approachable yet deep and keeping the new players safe from being devoured by the ever-judging leaderboards.

SIDE NOTE: Please don't steal this idea, or else I shall become very cross. You will not like me when I'm cross (I cry easily).

Put simply, Risk Management is a game in which you choose a character to play as, compiled by various costume pieces purchased with money earned in-game, a company (all TWO of them!) to side with, and then you are thrown into an office world from hell. The weapons at hand include staplers that fire staples more akin to bullets or arrows, a copier than prints out a sheet of your victim's face, a correction fluid grenade, and a giant prized bass mounted on the wall. In short, Risk Management will thrive on the strangeness of its own character.

(On a more serious note, if the premise of the game sounds controversial, there IS reasoning [lore reasoning] behind the events of the game. If you're concerned and want more details, feel free to message me and I can clear up whatever questions you may have.)

Game Modes will include the standard fare of Death Match, Team Death Match, a kind of "Hero" mode, in which one lucky scumbag will inhabit the body of the wrathful CEO, a Capture the Flag mode in which the teams must steal the other's water cooler, and various other modes which are so new and interesting that they don't EVEN EXIST YET!

Storyline-wise, Risk Management will support a large array of in-game "achievements", which, when achieved, will unlock cryptic messages that you have "intercepted" due to your mastery of the aspects of the game. I would just hate myself if I gave away spoilers, but suffice to say, a war in cubicles with office supplies may not be all that it seems.

AND NOW, onto that perverted Christmas list I made mention to before. I am but a lowly writer, a word peddler, if you will, and I have very little knowledge in the way of programming 3D games. So, most of this team-to-be will need some powerful technical support. Namely...

- 1-2 3D Modelers. There's some weird ideas floating around, so adaptability to the strange is a must. Though, I can safely say that you would be programming humans only, when it comes to player models, who can likely be built on the same wireframe.
- 1-2 Programmers. C++ is ideal, but it's possible I just have no idea what I'm talking about. That's part of the fun!
- 1 Animator. Again, most of the characters could probably be built on a similar wireframe and the weapons are none-to-fantastical,
- 1-2 Level Designers. My friend and I who first created this idea have some levels in mind, but tempering our insanity with pragmatism is always in need.
- 1 Online Server Manager. Mostly to handle the server required for the game.

SIDE NOTE: While you do not need an extensive profile to apply, I would like to see any work you have done previously.

While that is a fairly extensive list, I have left the numbers required open, on the grounds of versatility. That, and I am pretty sure that I might hate indecisiveness.

SIDE NOTE: On the plus side, there is NO AI that needs to be programmed into the game as of now.

If this sounds interesting to you, or if you want to know more about it, OR BOTH, contact me either on this website, at my email, mwetteng@iwu.edu , or on my Skype, on which my name is Marshal of Hopalop.

END TRANSMISSION

I don't want to work in this project directly as I'm working on a project on my own but I'm willing to make some 3d Models if you want ...

Making an MMO in Unity sounds like a nightmare. If you want to use TDM and DM these modes already exist in UDK and can be easily modded to suit MMO requirements. I would suggest using that. I like the ideas for the game, good luck!

Well, technically this isn't an MMO, it's just an all-online shooter, like TF2 I suppose.

UDK is something I'll have to look into, though. I think we decided to go with Unity at first because of its more pastel colour palette and simplicity, which is something we want to go for in this game.

You can implement any art style you want in UDK really. Unity is good but I'm not sure about how good it is for online shooters. You should probably be selecting the tech based on suitability for implementing the gameplay features you want rather than based on the colour palette?

Also if you're saying it's like TF2, then why not use Source Engine? I would say UDK, Source, CryEngine are good if you're making an online shooter as they have tons of stuff to help you out with coding, scripting, server commands. Unity is powerful but probably better suited to a web or mobile game.

Yeah, Source engine seems like something we could go to. Thanks, I'll go to UDK and Source next probably to try to peddle this idea. Source seems to be the most likely candidate, but if none of those work out, at least there's other options. Thanks for the insight.

Edited by: Marshalhopalop