Isn't it time that a game developer came up with...............

[vibe666]

before i start, just take note that some of this stuff may not be possible. i don't know whether it is or not. at the moment I'm not to interested in the can & can't aspect of this idea. its just my thoughts on what i would like to see in a perfect game and what other people think might work well in this game or something they would really like to see.

you might read this and think. No f**King way, that isn't possible. who cares what is possible? its a wishlist and nothing more. aside from anything it would take years to develope anyway, but if a developer happens to read this thread and picks up on a single good idea and puts it in a game, then as far as i am concerned mission accomplished.

Right, this is what I want in my perfect game>

One GREAT BIG HUGE map. one of the game making geniuses out there needs to figure a way to make a 3D first person game in a whole city.

I want a transit system in this city. Underground trains, taxi's, monorail (high up in the skyscapers).

I want it to be designed from the ground up to be a permanent multiplayer environment that keeps trundling on without you when you aren't in the game.

i want a computer network within the game itself to e-mail other characters, get work etc.

i want to be able to be a number of different things within the game depending on my preference. examples are some sort of trader, assassin (obligatory), police, special forces, bounty hunter, thief, drug dealer, cab driver (or other driving job), smuggler, spy, gang member/leader, underground resistance or large corporate that you can work your way though doing all sorts of things (work with me here it's only a little baby of an idea at the moment;) ) or any combination of the above.

i want day and night to go by at a constant rate all in the background at the same time for anyone within the game network including a weather system consistent with the time of year.

i want to have proper battles, where i can get a team of guys together (paying them for their services) to attack (or defend) a base, office, warehouse etc. success would mean more cash, property or other resouces. failure would mean either being killed and having to start from scratch or once you reach a certain stage having a cloning facility (or paying for the use of one at a high price) and picking up where you left off with the stuff you had before (minus anything you lost when you died) good and bad and continuing the game so that someone who had gained a lot (six months playing & accumulating) would not have to start from scratch.

a randomly generated player profile at the start, that you have a set amount of time & money to steer in the direction you want to go in before you go into the game, via training. either mental or physical as well as skills useful in the game. like you get on some strategy games. you can't know everything but you can hire someone with specific skills for a job you need doing. get the idea?

i want whoever makes the game to make it modular so they can keep updating the city and its contents. new weapons & tools, vehicles etc. you could have a poll within the game (on the internal game network) asking players what they want to see in the game. someone nominates an item, a better range/accuracy weapon and the makers of the game develop whatever gets the most votes. obsolete stuff is gradually fazed out, but you might still be able to get hold of that old ..... (whatever) on the black market.

I want NPC's as well as other online gamers within the city to make up numbers and raise the body count.

kidnappings, murders for any of the usual reasons. possesions, influence, moving up the ladder in whatever you do. but there must be consequences. taking out a witness etc. where necessary.

christ, what else?

all sorts of weapons (both leathal and non leathal), lock picks of varying complexity making it easier if you have the cash (and easier still if you have more skill at it).

cars, bikes, jetpacks, flying cars or something similar (when you have loads of cash). ID cards (with security clearences for whatever you do) fake/stolen ID's for intrusion/spying. bugs (audio and/or video). explosives, mobile comms device, medpacks (depending on your skill again). this list is almost endless, but as long as the game is modular that won't be an issue.

how about buying a plot of land and building something on it depending on your budget/needs etc.

secret hidouts.

i have a million and one other ideas, but i have to go back to the real world for a little bit. somone please post some more ideas to keep this going, i can't be the only one who has an interest in this. All ideas are welcomed (apart from me getting a life that is :D )

[Imperion1]

So, what you're saying is you want a 24hr/7day week, 364 day yr except leap year, Sim City 3D?

[Dark_Raver]

I don't think its a bad idea, quite ambitious actually, but if the game just kept on going real time, how would u know what happened??

you pretty much described an alternet life!!
you know what is going on in your life because it is real time, if a game was created based on similar concepts, how would u know whether to live your real life, or your game life?

You seem to be creating something similar to the game called "Dominion of Sarxos" from Tom Clancy's Net Force series called "The Deadliest Game". And even though your idea is more futuristic than the game in the book, and the situations in the book are a little bit far fetched for real world, something like that might end up developing.

Im not saying it is a bad idea, but i don't think we can handle something like that yet. Im not talking about the technical aspect of it but the real life aspect of having an alternate identity in a simulation of "Real World".



DR

[vibe666]

i don't know about all the ideas, most of it is just stuff that has been crowding up my head.

also for the fighting parts, some sort of damage calculator to decide how being hit affects the player or NPC. which would also depend on any armour the player might be wearing.

an example would be say a standard pistol will do X amount of damage to an unarmoured target area on a character. with X% chance of it being a 'kill' shot with that number increasing with each additional 'hit' in that area. e.g. you shoot an unprotected guy center mass with a decent pistol once and you have a pretty good chance of killing him there and then, but someone with armour of a value higher than the penetration value of that weapon with that particular ammo would not penetrate, but would have some sort of other temporary damage value that would 'shock' the target enough to give you the few seconds you need to keep firing.

another example: if a player/NPC has basic armour and they are shot with a weapon that has a 10% higher damage rating than the armour, the target only absorbs 10% of the rated damage for that weapon, with 10 shots being equivavent to one shot without armour.

limbs would have a low damage rating, but a hit in the leg would reduce speed and a hit in the arm would reduce your accuracy and rate of fire when trying to defend yourself.

as you take more damage, your vision gets blurred, you get to a point where you can't walk (obviously sooner for multiple leg shots, kneecapping would be cool for interrogation purposes).

if the player is then left there alone without being finished off (for whatever reason), but has medpacks, painkillers, steroids etc. they could possibly patch themselves up enough to get to a proper medic who could sort them out properly for a price, with time taken to heal (where you might miss stuff happening in the game) being reduced the with the more you pay to get fixed up.

likewise if you get caught by a hostile force you could give them info/cash/property to let you live. setting your character back in the game, but not leaving you starting from zero if they kill you. which again won't be an issue when you can get yourself cloned if you are killed.

if you do get killed suddenly it might be good to be able to see the events (the last few minutes at least) played back from a third person perspective near your assassin's location, with identities masked so if you want to get back at them you will have to actually find stuff out about them after you are cloned.

next...

you have various spy networks working for each faction in the game. bounty hunters, corporations, gangs, traders etc. you can subscribe to some of the networks depending on your allegance, but by being a member of certain ones you will be excluded from others.

as a (weekly) paying subscribee of these networks you have access to all the unclassified info that network has. including the locations of any individual who's location is known by that network, with a 'last seen at' feature for someone who has disappeared from sight. how i would work this is for each player and NPC to have an ID number (fakable, but expensive) that is visible through some sort of HUD system (you can turn on and off) so that if a person with ID xxxxxxx is within the field of vision of ANY member of that network, their location is made public on that network for anyone looking for that person.

example: player x has robbed one of your weapons dealers. you know who it is as he was seen by your dealer when the crime was committed. you log into the network of your choice, or all available networks (more expensive again, but better results for ugent things) and enter the ID number for that character, with a price on their head if you like for faster returns) if that character is spotted on the HUD of another user (with or without their knowledge (up to them, depending on what they do for a living. it would be invaluable for a bounty hunter but not so much for a trader) you are informed of their last known location, with it being updated as long as a HUD on a subscribed network can see them.

you can then get some men & firepower together and go and kick the guy's ***.

also the same system could be used in conjunction with a proximity sensor to warn you of known enemy's approching you with more range or enemy details on the device costing more cash, that way you can get to safety if need be, call in the cavalry or sit tight and wait for them to come get you. making sure you have them out gunned.

you can buy a basic car/van/bike, then upgrade it as you have more cash. armour, sensors, weapons, more speed, acceleration and handling etc. that way you have a better chance of survival if you are attacked on the road.

[skuz]

I know a game that covers most aspects you listed. It's called LIFE.

[vibe666]

I've tried that, and unfortunately for me I really suck at it.

Like I said before, I don't want a game developer to read this thread and go ooh, yeah, I'll go and make that exact game right now.

if someone remotely connected to game making sees something here and says, hey, that might be cool to include in the our next game.

Job done. thanks for coming.

[BigBirdZ28]

How about that 24hr/7day a week sim3d be laid out syndicate wars style to atart off with & when you jack cars it switches to a gt3 on the streets/grand theft auto & a simms type routine where your guy would have to have a job to buy stuff (not eat & shower), stuff like guns, cars, houses, etc... Components to design your own inventions, anything from a penholder to a reactor lol ???

Actually, the closes game I can think of to this (& only close by a loooong shot) is Ultima7 Black Gate/Serpent Isle. It was cool how you could interact with anything & kill anyone in the game provided you had the stats.

Syndicate wars was cool becuase you could level the entire map with enough ammo.

Cool, I have a smile on my face now. :)

[[shawn@localhost /home]#]

Originally posted by skuz
I know a game that covers most aspects you listed. It's called LIFE.

OMFG you crazy pscyo!!! you actually go around town killing people so you can steal their money and buy land to make your base better?!?!!?

jeez you have some issues dude

[vibe666]

All I'm saying is that a lot of stuff is possible now, that isn't even used in games.

it wouldn't be the main thing in my game because it would be players not NPC's doing most of killing, but the A.I. is still very basic in most games, which really does need improving. bad guys just wander round corners ready for you to kill them. Duh!

we need some sort of military strategist to explain how these things really go down in a firefight so NPC bad guys should be hiding and jumping out at the last minute on you, or calling for backup. falling back to reinforcements. etc.

imagine a running battle through the streets with 20 guys on each side some NPC some PC, hiding behind cars, mowing down civilians.

great stuff.

[Beeblequix]

There are some good ideas in this thread.
I was thinking about pairing this schtuff up with a game engine that has the ability to change aspects within the system settings to, say, always guarantee you 30 fps no matter what type of system you have.
For example, my PIII 667 w/geforce sdr card has pretty dang good 16 bit performance at 1024x768 with quality stuff on high. But on a game like Max Payne I slow down in parts, like the part where you're moving through the blown hole into the vault area (early in the game). And at higher resolutions I've noticed that the game seems choppy. Why not let the game engine allow you to say "I want a guarantee of 30 fps, no matter if you have to throttle down texture quality, # of light sources, color bit depth, resolution, blah blah blah." You would have the ability within this engine to allow the best balance of all worlds. How often are you creeping around inside a game slowly, and on occasion you wish you had that new Geforce 3ti500 to smoothe everything out? Well, aside from just buying new hardware, let the software help you out too. In those cases where you're stalking around slowly, you're system can allow you as much eye candy as possible. Then, when it gets fast, the dynamic detail throttler just reduces what it needs to to give you that 30fps (or whatever framerate you demand). I can foresee a time when your brand new Radeon 8500 or GF3ti500 will be sucking for air, where a great engine will pity it and allow it to play. Sure, I know I can set those things manually right now, but I'm stuck with 'performance' or 'quality' or whatever setting in between. Let the software handle it and leave me be.

Also, how about a small electromagnetic device placed inside the ear like a pair of headphones that stimulates your cochclea where you feel motion. That would be cool in a flight sim or racing sim. Hook it up to a PCI card (the card wouldn't have to have much on it at all, or to a serial, usb, etc. port with a small number of circuts to give the right frequency or whatever.
I'm not sure if that was something my friends and I wondered about, or if it's something in development. Anyone?

Hope y'all don't think I'm hittin' the bong too much with these ideas. What do you think?

sincerely,
B.Quix

[vibe666]

Originally posted by Beeblequix
Hope y'all don't think I'm hittin' the bong too much with these ideas. What do you think?

No such thing mate. Great idea's by the way. I'm amazed nobody has come up with the FPS/Detail throttling thing before. Couldn't see that it would take that much to implement. Slowdown seems to always happen (external influences aside) at the same places, so all it would take wuld be a developer/testers doing a walkthrough of the game and 'tagging' visually demanding areas so the game knows to account for possible frame loss at those times and compensate.

As for the earpiece, it would make people blow chunks. :D COOL:D it would be great. rocket jumps in Quake X and being blown up would be cool if they could get something like that to work. there might be a problem with people jamming them right in their ears, but if it was possible to do it 'safely' (got to be politically correct, to keep the whingers happy) then cool. its all good baby, its all good :cool:

[Fishsauce]

One more thing...

When your playing in a city or something and you shoot a gun or break something I think they should keep it like that. I want to be able to destroy things that can be destroyed.

Like in Counter-Strike when you shoot your gun at the wall, after a while it "heals."

[vibe666]

things like that are down to memory restrictions, as the game has to 'remember' where everything is, the gaem would just grind to a halt if it remembered avery little bullet hole for the whole game if you just sprayed the level with lead.

[MistralBurn]

I am a beginning Game Developer with DirectX, and your idea is the exact reason why I got into this field. I've always wanted a game that was basically life. Everything was built on real, true physics. And like you said with the damage system, everything does X amount of damage. And every object has so much damage it can take. I think that this ideal game will come out one day. Hell, I've been carrying this idea with me since The Matrix came out :cool:, as soon as I get a game development job and I get to know people in high places, then I'm definitely going to present such an idea to them. Hopefully they'll build a huge team of game developers and not just say "That's impossible". And like you said, it is a wish list, but with the computer hardware out today, the only real boundary, I think, is the actual programming of the game, it would take a very long time as you said. And most of the time, people just aren't up to it (IMO). Maybe, if we're lucky, such a game is already being worked on.

[MistralBurn]

I'm amazed nobody has come up with the FPS/Detail throttling thing before. Couldn't see that it would take that much to implement.

I'm assuming that you want the software to adjust detail settings during gameplay.

This actually could take a lot to implement. It wouldn't be hard to detect that frame rates are dipping. But, you'd have find out what is making the frame rates dip. Is it too many polygons, or is it the dynamic lighting? The lighting aspect may be detectable, but I'm not sure about the amount of polygons that are being rendered. Who knows, maybe some people have tried to implement it only to find that implementing such a technology slows down gameplay even more.

[Fishsauce]

Good Luck MistralBurn. I hope to see one of your projects soon.

[zantark7]

this idea is kick ***....this is very cool....i like the idea of "Life" we can do things in it that you can't do here due to laws or girlfriends or other things such as that...destroy your local walmart would put you in jail for life...destroy your "life" walmart would just put you on the run...very nice guys....PLEASE RELEASE THIS GAME SOON...


Dear mr. gates,
:cool:

[Aarmenaa]

This is a really good idea, but please don't let Gates have it. Life 2.0 will have more bugs in it than a beta release of Windows 95!

Oh, I did some research on the detail throttle stuff, and it has been tried. Mostly, it has been used in NASCAR simulations, where the game world is fairly constant, but it could be possible to apply the same stuff to other games sometime in the near future. Cool stuff! :cool:

-Aarmenaa

[Nemesis1s]

hmmm sounds like the matrix to me :)

[Alex Iannuzzi]

For this Game that you would like it would require a DVD Drive or a large hard drive like 10 or 20 gb.

[Beeblequix]

Thanks for the complements and input. I'm glad others like these ideas too.

Now, if the game engine would have to detect exactly what is causing a slowdown, wouldn't it make sense that the designers could make educated guesses on what type of calculation takes more processing power? It seems that they could measure those things individually to establish which things could be cut first. I can see a huge difference between 32 bit color depth and 16 bit color depth, as well as 32 bit texture detail and 16 bit texture detail. Perhaps within the engine's detail throttler, they could have it go through a subroutine that shows how much cpu/gpu different things took, like 1)polygons 2)color depth 3)texture detail 4)lighting 5)embossment 6)resolution 7)shading and the like. Or maybe have an Intelligent Dynamic Detail Throttler, wherein the engine is SMART enough to learn how you play your game and adjust things accordingly, kinda like prefetching. Example: one person might play the 'stalking' way where they walk around being very sneeky and using a greater amount of time paying attention to what they see. On the flip side, some folks might always run through the action at full blast (like during deathmatch), where some details won't even be noticed.

'nother idea: perhaps there could be a 'custom' setting wherein the user can prioritize certain details. Maybe the most important detail to a user is 'color depth'. They could rank that setting higher than all others. I s'pose resolution, fps, shadows, lightsources, etc. could each be prioritized according to tastes to make certain that the settings with the lowest priority get reduced first, leaving the more desireable settings for that user. You know, as of now my nVidia drivers will do this rudimentarily (I can set it for 'performance', 'quality', etc), but my gripe is that I'm stuck with that setting when I find it unneccary to have 'performance' while either 'camping'(eg. only;) or quality when I'm running for cover.

Perhaps the engine can use certain ways of detecting a bottleneck by evaluating how rapid your mouse is moving. Maybe you'd have to run through a series of tests on your pc during the installation process to determine YOUR system's potential, weighing in things like benchmarks (which it will do) on all the settings and coming up with a calculated method for your system. I'm not sure if it would be considered 'compiling' on each pc or not, but it might be more effective on a persystemme basis. Anyone have any insight?

Another idea: what about a custom device driver compiler for your system's components? Maybe the Via 4-in-1 drivers aren't quite what they need to be on a system with a Radeon 8500 & Athlon as opposed to a GF3ti500 & P4. Is it possible to program and implement an intelligent custom device driver utility?

About this Life game: what genre would it be? I think it would be an RPG, kind of like Deus Ex, or would it be The Sims? How would the plot be driven? Would there be a plot? What would you be trying to acheive? Perhaps through some kind of interaction within the game you would establish what YOU WANT to acheive, like make money, gets chics, assassinate a foreign dictator, stop drug trafficing, ?. The problem I see is the goal orientation: if there is none, would people want to play? At least in the Sims you're trying to make money and get yourself established.

What about that Walmart idea: you go in there, maybe shoplift, get caught, escape....you'd be a fugitive on the loose. Or, how about you're walking down the road to the radio station to collect a prize when you interrupt a robbery...obviously I'm not into writing stories for games. Life...maybe you'd have a whole slew of things to accomplish.

If there are too many things to do, and seemingly pointless or unimportant goals, why would you play?

B.Quix

[vibe666]

not sure if you could change colour depth without losing the picture for a couple of seconds with current graphics cards. think about HL, Q3, UT etc. all those games when you change the colour depth something resets somewhere and the picture flicks out for a few seconds. I think board M/F would have to introduce something that allowed it on the fly before it could be used mid game like that., but there are plenty of ,other areas where things could be done.

[mushroom]

great idea sound similar to Everquest but pesent day

[vibe666]

I know there is a big difference in game styles with what i am about to say, but i would like to draw some parallels with the Elite series of space combat/exploration/trading games. The guy that designed them (David Braben) made the games so you could just do whatever the hell you wanted to, without being steered in any one direction by the game. you were totally free to do any number of things you wanted with no time constraints or linear plotline that you had to follow. there were plots within the game, and missions to do if you wanted, but noone was making you do anything. you did what you wanted. or not.

what i was talking about in the beginning was taking that formula and translating it onto a first person perspective game, and expand on it as much as possible.

Also i think to make things more interesting it should be set a little into the future so if someone wants a rocket pack or advanced weapons something like that to be added into the game at some point down the road it wouldn't cause a problem with the authenticity of it all. you couldn't do that in any game set in the present without p*ssing someone off.

[vibe666]

hey I got a hot thread. My first one.

wea hey:D

[Martingi]

you would require a DVD Drive or a large hard drive like 10 or 20 gb:)

[Beeblequix]

Wouldn't it be cool in a game to be able to actually talk directly to the AI characters? I mean, right now in a game like Return to Castle Wolfenstein multiplayer, you have the ability to use predefined chat commands, and that's cool. I realize that it's different interacting with other real people and opposed to AI. But, how about in a game like Deus Ex? There are loads of places where you might have spoken to the AI players in the game. Now, how about a game where there is the option to tell one of your team-bots to "get down" if they're under fire, or tell them to "go left", or hit on chics, or maybe insult the executioner at the towne square (if you've ever played the MUD, Barren Realms, well....)? There are so many possiblilities.

I realize that even current systems have many limitations. So when the voice recognition software is written for the game, have it use maybe a 500-1000 word language limit. Also, you have to realize many software packages including games take anywhere above 2-3 years to produce. The technology in three years from now will have followed the same patteren we've seen for years, namely Moore's Law. Nvidia will have a video card supporting killer bandwidth and color/texture depth, Intel and AMD will still be cranking out new processors exceeding 3Ghz easy, memory types will improve (namely mRAM, or DDRII)...Basicly, the technology in 3 years will easyily be able to incorporate a voice recognition system.

Someone, please take all the ideas in this thread and produce them for us. People like me only think up stuff, only to never pursue them (lA-zEEEe-NeSs). Any more ideas of fantasy?

B.Quix

[vibe666]

i know what you mean Someone, please take all the ideas in this thread and produce them for us. People like me only think up stuff, only to never pursue them (lA-zEEEe-NeSs). .

I came up with an idea for some menthol chewing gum about a year and a half before it came out (wrigleys airwaves) and did nothing. A car security system that blocks all the pedals and cuts power to the fuel pump (as well as a couple of other things) and someone else came up with them and did something about it. I really have to get something going about ideas i have. its a pain in the *** keeping missing out on them, and like Beeblequix says: 'LAAAY ZEEE NESSS'.

need motivation.

Anyone up for joining the SETI@home team? details in Sig>>>>

***viBe***
Why not put your PC's idle time to good use by downloading the seti@home client HERE (http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/windows.html) and then joining the Sysopt.com Users 2002 Team HERE (http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/cgi-bin/cgi?cmd=team_lookup&name=Sysopt.com+Users+2002)

[matrixhacker15]

ok this idea would be really really cool (kinda sounds like the matrix)

heres some of my own ideas:

you can destroy stuff like buildings and cars and stuff with realtime damage. Like in Red Faction for PS2...You shoot a rocket at a wall and depending on how thick that wall is, it gets a huge chunk blown out.

also maybe you could buy houses/cars/clothing/food etc. and you would have to have a job (or steal money) like running a store and selling mechandise. you would have to pay taxes on the house too, or rent in an apartment.

just some more ideas to get the grey jello between yer ears to move around...lemmie know what yall think.

-matrix

[Beeblequix]

How about a Virtual Pain Distributor? I have no idea if they've already made this, or in the process, or decided that only masochistic folk would buy it. I've often wondered if it would make the gaming experience more real (or conversely less appealing :( ) to incorporate objects to help screw with your senses. We already have available force-feedback controllers, and I think they're fun. But say you're playing Soldier of Fortune II. You're sneaking around here and there. You can't quite see some druglord's henchmen, but they see you. And of course, they start using you for target practice. If you had a bunch of sensors hooked up to your body the game could simulate blows, whether they be to your cabeza, neck, right arm, left knee, you might be able to detect their direction. Plus, it would be cool.:)

What would that all require? Well, someone willing to allow an electrical jolt or two every so often. Small currents are no problem. You'd have to develop a PCI card that could send out pulses of electricity in ,say, 33(?) hit locations (like the GHOUL system in solder2) to simulate pain. Currently, you can buy chiropractic pads which you strap to yourself that send constant current through your muscles to both relax them and also make them stronger. You can easily make a full body suit to give you the 200mA jolts whenever an enemy tries to take you out.

The current shouldn't harm you. They use small current like I mentioned in chiropractic clinics, as well as physical therapy clinics, and I've never heard anyone complain about damage done to the human body from that before.

If that didn't work, you could also create a suit which delivers a driving blow toward you (but of course wouldn't bruise you or anything--it would just give your parts a jolt). This idea would be quite impractical, as the way I'm envisioning it, it would look like a Stormtrooper's armor from Star Wars, and would require motors to move back and forth....
...
wait...incorporate flat panel speaker technology into it. If anyone has seen these speakers, the whole thing is flat. The frequency is generated by the way a current goes through it and it moves. I guess that would work. You'd be safe from electrocution and you'd still get to feel blows. If anyone wants to see how much you'd feel, go feel your flat panel speaker right when you get *sniped* in a game. Yeah. Feel that. *thump*.

Okay, so now I've come up with the hoop-d painsuit speaker system. How about that?

Beeble Quix

[jake_westmorley]

Beeblequix, that ear thingy gizmo of yours would make everyone get seasick. people get seasick when their inner ear tells them there is movement when they do not see it with their eyes. this would be a good cause of that, and that wouldn't be much fun, would it?
Good idea nonetheless... now maybe if you had stereoscopic goggles that filled the entire viewscreen it might work...

Jake

[Bsamuels]

ok, first of all wow.. second, out of everything here i think the software detail changing thing is unneccessary, because it would be very time consuming to program that into an engine that would already have to be extremely complex to make this game possible. Third, i think you guys have something here, i know if a game was released like that, i would have to buy it instantly. But the game play would have to be modified a little because you couldnt emmulate life, that would be to complex and to open based to be considered a "game",

just a few thoughts.. B-

[Ka0ticSH]

Ideas for Virtual Reality Life forming on a Gaming Board. Now i have seen it all :)

[vibe666]

making it totally immersive would be the ultimate goal but in the meantime i really started this to try and get developers to use their grey matter a bit more when designing games.

look at whats out there now. Return To Castle Wolfenstien. Great game, but aside from some very clever level design and tweaked AI what have you got? What is there in it that wasn't in Quake 1? Can you do anything you couldn't do 7 or 8 years ago in a 3D game? I don't think so. They made the baddies badder, the scenery prettier and the whole thing a little more polished but its essentially the same thing.

Why do you think that Unreal and Halflife are still played in huge numbers? Nobody has gone and pushed the boat out and made a real difference.

You still kill some guy and walk round the next bend and there's his twin brother.

Would it really be that hard to incorporate some sort of 'bad guy generator' that could go to a database of maybe 50 faces and then randomly generate extras like beards moustaches, glasses, skin tone, hats etc. then go to the wardrobe and add things from a wardrobe selection. have 8 or 10 different body sizes too. the same face on a fatter head would look totally different.

that way you won't be killing the same guy every 5 minutes and you could create a character for yourself that truely reflects who you want to be in the game.

Also there should be a long training course where you can choose what you are trained in. for instance if you wanted to become a thief you would choose lockpicking, stealth and bartering skills as well as basic weapons skills to make you better at your 'trade'. An assasin might want to spend more time on the firing range to improve his long range aim and explosives skills. You would be allowed to return to this place at any time during the game (at a high price) to hone your skills further and learn new things as you progress.

I still think it would be really cool to make this a permanently online environment that continues on with or without you. When you aren't playing you could have your character put in cryo sleep and have your place of business shutdown until you log back on. but while you aren't there other people are still online and kicking *** without you. when you come back the whole thing could have changed. of course there would be an online journal that would inform anyone returning of any major events while they were gone.

Personally I would pay maybe $3-5 a month for people working for the developer to 'keep up' the maintainence side of things within the game such as the journal and other things that need to be taken care of. how about a reduction in monthly charges for users willing to be 'ghost' moderators within the game and take the strain off of the company if its needed.

Running something like this online would need a broadband connection I am certain, but with some tight coding it should be possible for someone using a dialup connection to act as a 'ghost mod' and see whats going on without actually being able to interact with the game itself. kind of an encouragement to get broadband so you can play it or move somewhere where you can get it. :D I would :D .

i thinkfor something like that to work there would have to be 'nodes' in various places around the world that could relay server information to avoid high pings. if thats not possible then maybe a european 'world', a US one and maybe one in asia. I don't know if there's a way to keep ping times down with someone on the other side of the globe if we were all playing together.

maybe something for the future.

[Ka0ticSH]

vibe that is a very splended idea. But first, think how much will the game cost, and then think on teh bad side too. Lame game hackers, you mentioned very high pings, well if a broadband connection is giving out its upmost, and a nice little DDoS kiddie comes along. Bam, repair that please.

The idea bout a character generator is very interesting. Say each person had a different image, maybe based on his personality, or some random data he enters. That would've increased lots of gamers' interest in Counter-Strike and what not. The game would give them a `mini personality test`, and then run the results, each answer to a question in a test would have a different value, then it would combine the value and a database of looks, and create the person. Of course this would take a lot of time, interest, and maybe even cost. But still, it is very possible.

[mushroom]

I watched The Matrix for the fith time today. DVD and all.

[vibe666]

i think we might be setting our sights a bit too high aiming for the matrix.

***viBe***
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[ronopp]

SOUNDS LIKE YOU WANT TO BE IN A MATRIX!! lol:D

[vibe666]

Why oh why didn't I take the blue pill?

***viBe***
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[BlackThorn]

I'll have to admit, it does sound quite a bit like The Matrix. Anyhow, I think there's some books you should read... the set is called "Otherland" and the author is Tad Williams. Oh, and forget the goggles idea... just get a hookup directly to your spinal cord and you're all set.

But now think about the bad aspect of it... if you had such a game, how enticing would "real life" be? How addicting would the game be? I have a fealing most people would eventually almost forget about real life... which translates into death. Hmm...

[vibe666]

don't forget though that according to that principle that they base future computing power on, in 30 years they will be able to make computer systems as complex and powerful as the human brain. so why even bother with the real world when you could in theory download your consciousness into a computer system and live forever digitally.

hang on i think we're getting into some deeply theological territory here. where's the soul etc.

I'll leave you to fight over that for now.

***viBe***
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[e980238]

You have some awesome ideas vibe666. If i were you id keep a hush on them and sell them to a game developer. you could make billions...or lose billions to software piraters. But seriousley those ideas are awesome. they could have a mainframe hosting the game with the city loaded into it and it would run 24/7/365..366on leap year. so far i think gta3 is pretty close to this

[zrm34]

SIM CITY 4000...

[Beeblequix]

The random character generator idea is something I've also thought about before. Yeah, it's tiring after seeing the same baddie over and over again. But you know, I do not think it would be very hard to code. in a C++ program all you would have to do is allow a character's image to be incremented though a bunch of noses, ears, tatoo's, etc. to determine what the dude looks like. There are already random terrain generators coming out (Soldier of Fortune 2). Terrain is a heck of a lot more difficult to generate than a person.

NBA Live by EA gives you the ability to create your player's profile, including looks. All that would really need to be done is incorporate an algorhythm to say "okay, this jaw, this stature, this race, blah blah blah" to make your baddies. It wouldn't in the first generation be necessary to associate their 'personality' with what they look like. No, you could just make the algorhythm bounce around the number of faces, bodies, etc. Heck, if you really wanted random you could associate its choices with your cpu's VOLTAGE. That's what they use to make 'random numbers' anyway. Just make your numerical type defined as like a long_double to 19 decimal spaces. You could in theory make a whole ton of npcs that way. It actually might not be necessary to define it that far out. Maybe just 11 decimal spaces. Basicly, enough to accommodate power supply variation. For those of you who think your power is constant at the exact same voltage all the time, well, it's not. It fluctuates. That is good news for this character generation idea. If you as the programmer get hard up for defining voltage, just use several areas of your system, say cpu, gpu, chipset. Oh yeah, the combinations/permutations you could get from all that---infinite! Really. And for very little computational investment.

The training idea that was mentioned in this thread was done in Deus Ex. You earned points and applied them to various aspects of your skills, be it lockpicking, electronics, computer hacking, steady handedness in rifles, pistols, etc. And it made gameplay that much better. That's one reason why I've said the Deus Ex is the best game ever, but that's another thread.

B.Quix

[vibe666]

i don't want to make millions, I just want some decent games to play :D :D :D

***viBe***
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[Death Bane]

hey man you know these ideas are awesome but one problem... BANDWIDTH :( only 56k in my area and i have a laggin time on UO
but maybe we will get something better soon

[MrBlandAverage]

Just addressing some of these ideas...

>>>Implanted headphones: they already have these. They're called "cochlear implants," (big surprise!) and can help some deaf people hear. Unfortunately, it presently isn't a viable option for normal hearing people because in order to let the implant work you have to destroy any "real" hearing you have.

>>>Blow ***** up: Yeah, the Red Faction GeoMod thingie was cool. But on the PC it eats memory like Louie Anderson at an all-you-can-eat buffet.

>>>Space issues: For something on this scale, we're looking at something like a 2 gig install, with sound and movies read straight off a DVD-ROM.

Now my own idea... Since this kind of game would require massive server-side processing, how about if the server were distributed processing? Just have the couple hundred people with the lowest pings and most powerful processors take an extra bit of work. Not enough to slow the computer down, but enough to significantly improve server performance.

[Mongo]

Star trek style holo deck FPS based on Austin Powers.

Yeah baby yeah!:)

[doubleclick]

About distributed processing, bandwidth, multiple nodes, massive online players, parallel processing, multiple background tasks etc.

I only know one OS which would be capable of managing a game with these features succesfully: Linux :D

Don't you think?

[doubleclick]

Another issue: Some of you were dreaming up a game where you can freely do anything you want to do. Let's also suppose that this game world is not only populated by online players, but by AI-guided characters. The actual plot of the game would be the result of every online player interacting in the same virtual game world. Ok.
Now my statement. Even though the game developers did NOT incorporate a rigid plot into the game, it would still be VERY restricted: For example, you couldn't by any means smoke a cigarette, jump, kill, buy, copulate or whatever in this game IF THE DEVELOPERS DIDN'T IMPLEMENT IT. In AI science this is called the frame or script problem, and it is a VERY BIG computational problem. You could think of any random generation routine and you would still be restricted to that routine. Anything outside the boundary of this "creative" routine would be predetermined and impossible to change.

Hmm, is this out of the boundaries of this thread?? ;)

[Mykex]

Take MS FS2002/Trainsim, The Sims and all the expantions, add a driving simulator then cook over low heat. Toss in a libiral amount of CS and a few Tom Clacy titles for death and destrction, simmer. Press to CD and serve.