Topic: My Game that wasn't feasable before the controller

[ThePerm]

Hi, remember back when they hadn't even talked about the freehand controller. I posted a topic about dreamgames...which i can't find. Nonetheless, I created a concept that everybody told me wouldnt work. Ah, now the tables are turned.

Basically, i came up with a new style of play for a survival horror game. The idea is you could interact with anything. Say your being chased by zombies...well you run to the basement and grabs some boards and board up your door. Perhaps you want to carry more items...well you chop down a door and tie it to a rope and drag it with you. You basically have almost full interaction with the environment..and you can use uit as a weapon. Say your being chased by a big monster and you really need to escape...if your in a room with drywall..use your axe and chop through. Do whatever you need to survive. It would be similar to re4 in that there are enemies upon enemies after you.

[Professor Gnarly]

I've always wanted to see something like that in a survival horror game.  I wouldn't want to see it have a bunch of guns though.  I think the replay value of a game like this would be pretty good if there was something different to do each time you played.  Smash through a wall with an axe or hide under a bed?

[austinattech]

I don't see how the controller makes this idea any more feasable?  

[kirby_killer_dedede]

I agree with Austin...it's a great idea but it could easily be implemented with a GCN controller.

[ThePerm]

cus its hard to pick up things and manipulate so many objects without it.

[KDR_11k]

But you still need destroyable walls, proper object interaction (and lots of it) so the system knows that you can e.g. hammer a nail into wood to hold the boards in place.

[JonLeung]

This game would be helped out immensely by the controller, for sure!

You'd need a good physics engine, though.  Like said before, nails holding up boards.

It would be cool if the zombies/creatures/whatever had a physics engine determining whether they are dead or not.  Well, zombies are the walking dead but I mean if they would still be posing a threat to you.  It could be applied to yourself, too.

If you are grabbed a certain way, maybe you could struggle free if you knew how to do it.  But maybe your limbs would've gotten caught, so you might be okay, or they might be bruised, or worse, broken.  If you twist your ankle or break a leg, you'd have to crawl away, and if you did get up and try to run, the damage you'd be further inflicting by running on an already broken leg would be calculated to see if the bone would tear through your leg, for example.  Imagine a count of the amount of blood in your body.  Damage done to certain areas of your body could easily have different rates of bleeding, but a really sophisticated game that really took into account the position of every vital organ (and how vital they are) could determine if a slash to your abdomen would be a scratch, a deep cut, or a severe disembowelment.  You'd probably be as good as dead if your organs were spilling out, but if the game involved a number of characters then maybe the game calculating how long one character is still alive and how capable of movement he is might be a lifesaver if he is able to throw a switch that opens a door before his blood (realistically spilling) runs out.

I suppose too free-form and realistic of a game might be dangerous if people were using it to test whether or not a certain action would kill or seriously hurt someone, though.  Then I might actually have to agree that games are dangerous.

[IceCold]

It sounds like it would be incredibly non-linear, and a lot of work would have to be put into it. But it's a good idea - I would try out a game like it.

[Kairon]

It sounds like what RE: Outbreak should've been, lol.

~Carmine M. Red
Kairon@aol.com

[ThePerm]

good ideas jon, id like it if someone had a ds they could get all sorts of stats...


and about nails...what are nails for? holding things together..although they could work as blow pipe ammo as well. I dont think you would need a great physics engine for the nails...but of coarse for other things. Id imagine nails would hold togehter any object that is free..as in loose wood, or a base ball bat. There would prolly be alot of options for combining things. Everything would have to be thought out though. In dead rising there is  alot of items you can use(if the game even comes out). In this game every item you see is put there for a reason.

gta san andreas is like the size of a whole state. Imagine a game that huge with actually good graphics. I'd start the game in the country, but you would have to make your way into the city. The goal would be to survive for 30 days....kinda like pikmin. Also, id put npc character throughout the game who join you. I think part of the surviving would be to find the other surivivors...and keeping them alive.

[JonLeung]

Morality, insanity, humanity...

If you had a survival game with realistic physics all around, you may find yourself eating other people to survive if food got scarce.  Hey, nutrients are nutrients, but I'm sure cannibalism won't go over too well with the ESRB (or anybody, really).  A game like this could get rated AO even without getting into anything sexual.

Ever seen The Hills Have Eyes?  There's one part where two kids use their recently-killed grandma as bait to capture one of the cannibal stalkers after them.  It would be neat if a game had really good AI that such a plan could be thought up and carried out by the player and have it work, without having the situation scripted at all.

Anyway, stepping away from disturbing talk, the Revolution controller would definitely provide a more intense hands-on experience.  Many motions may still be far from the real thing, but it'll be closer than if it were a soon-to-be-traditional two-handed gamepad.

[ThePerm]

imagine this....the freehand gyration by iotself is your view..but holding a trigger represents your hand

[zakkiel]

Quote
If you had a survival game with realistic physics all around, you may find yourself eating other people to survive if food got scarce.

That would be biology, and so far as I know there are no games out there that attempt realistic biology. Mostly because a lot of the consequences would just be annoying (who wants to wait while their character sleeps for eight hours, then watch it take a dump?)

Nails definitely wouldn't require much physics - it would just tell the physics engine that two rigid bodies were now one rigid body. If either body took too much damage, they would separate again. The more nails, the more damage it takes, until you actualyl have to break apart one of the objects.

[wandering]

Wow, I love this game idea, perm, and think it could probably work.

I think, though, that you'd have to put some heavy artificial limits on the game, though. An epic game where you start out in the country and wind up in the city? You couldn't do that and have the kind of interaction you're looking for, I don't think. You'd have to worry about picking branches off trees, breaking car windows, uprooting mailboxes, plucking grass, etc, etc, ad infinum....you'd need 100 game discs just to fit all of that in.

....But if the game took place entirely indoors, where the materials and possibilities are more limited, I think it could work really well.

Kind of off topic, but here's an interesting study in the kind of simulationism you're looking for. It's a text game with 2 machines, one that can shrink and enlarge objects, and another that can change objects into other materials (wood, glass, fabric, metal). The objects interact with the world and each other realistically - for example, you can take off your clothes, shrink them down, and use them to patch a hole....or take a key, turn it to wood, and burn it in a fire. It allows for all kinds of cool stuff, and lots of solutions to puzzles that the author didn't necessarily think of herself. Not nearly as complex as what you're after, of course....but I think it provides a good example of how a game like yours could work.  

[ThePerm]

i think it could be done..you just need a physics engine like hl2's. Every object is divided into different categories. Wood, metal, plastic, liquid, stone, brick, dirt...and maybe glue. Wood cracks and leaves shards, metal bends, plastic stretches and breaks..melts, stone can be broken off buildings maed of stone(essentially the game takes a cube cuts a whole in it and makes little cubes with the same texture, brick is similar except once its broken to bricks it can be broken into dust, dirt can be dug..like dig dug in 3d..or it can be exploded...maybe even piled; and glue holds things together. Liquid is obvious. Hl2 has alot of these things..although i think i listed one more...oh and glass....which is just like brick except transparent. Basically hl2 worked really well on this breakdown. Its just my game would be on a scale of gta..with better graphics(obviously because of the detail allowed by next gen systems)

if however it can't be done and look incredable...well then we'll just take the gfx down. Gameplay is most important...but i dont think that will be a problem.

Lets compare shenmue to gta. Shenmue has better graphics, and more detail then gta. However gta has huger environments. In this gen it should be possible to make every game as big as gta and have at least the same graphics. Actually, its not even arguable. It would look much better then shenmue. I think halflife 2 is a good example...because the levels are already huge.

I do want alot of zombies in an area though like dead rising though.

I can imagine building 3d models of about 20 different types of homes and having a computer randomized their locations and have it build me a city. With about a 15 square mile radius. The rest of the world would be blocked off with cliffs, mountains and ocean. I will probably use my hometown of yuma as a model..although id have the borders divided comically. Like snowy mountains in the north. Deserts in the west. Forests in the east and oceans in the south.

I think alot of the actual building of the city would be done by automated computer..that is the suburbs and maybe some urban areas. Of coarse things like malls and barns and other things would be done by the art team.

I can imagine the game being multi-player too. Co-op either with two people playing together, or verses where you're either the undead or the shadowy evil government..or a shadowy evil corperation like umbrella.

also as far as zombies go. There are about 100,000 people in my home town. But these people fit into certain categories. For instance gta3 broke people up into different games. You had the itailians, the comlumbians, the triads, the yakuza, etc. I would have my game break my zombies up by demographics and ocupation. In a city with 100,000 people theres about 150 of those people that are cops. i livedi n the southwest so it had a high population of mexican americans about 40%..so you have to then divide them up by their age and interests. I would say about 50 percent of them are either youth or older. anyways

you plug in all these different demographical information and you can get all of your zombies...and have them varied. You can even have the computer use some sort of age, randomizer to create different zombies. I'm hoping the disk size on revolution is better then 360's...but i bet it will be the same. Anyways..you have all your zombies created by computer and then placed appropriatley in various neighboorhoods where they originate. Also, there would be weird zombies that are really out of place. Like Clown zombie. etc

give each zombie the same intelligence and let the revolution simulate where they end up when you actually play the game. imagine if the entire game has zombies that do their own thing(of course theirn ot smart enough to bog down the system...heheh they are zombies afterall. The onyl downside i can see to this zombie sort of simulation is the amount of space it would require to track all the zombies..all the doors...all of the objects..and everything related to the game and keep it how it is.

for instancei  thought it would be cool in a game where you create some sort of bate for the zombies and constantly trap them in between a fence or something.

Anyways the possiblilities are almost too enless..and thats the problem.

but with every hurdle there is always some crazy way of maanging it. via compression..division...etc.

damnit i wish i could write my report and fill it up so fast like i can forum posts.

[JonLeung]

I think biology is important in any game where you have to kill things - while it's impressive to see bodies flying from the force of an explosion in closer-to-real-life physics, it's still possible that they wouldn't be dead after that or that others could die from less forceful blows but in more vital areas.  It'd make shooters more fun in that you'd still have to check if someone's dead even after you throw a grenade near them.

As for sleeping, well, in a survival horror game, it could be handled a number of ways.  Maybe the adventure takes place over the course of a day where a person will lose mental sharpness towards the end of it but it will never be necessary.  When a person does sleep, the game could simply cut to when they wake up or you could switch to other characters if everything is handled in real time.  Bladder and bowel things are not an issue, you could make it like the Sims, but with zombies.  A crude biology system is already in place there, a more sophisticated one could deal with blood, injuries, infections, etc.

[ThePerm]

jonleung and i should form a company..imagine if your vision is kinda blury(not to the extent of perfect dark) And your aim sucks by the end of the day. Drinking soda would help for soem while....(hehe rob vending machines)

[JonLeung]

I'm actually not keen on realistic games, actually.  They all start to look alike...give me a Mario sports game over any NBA/NHL/MLBPA/whatever [insert year here].

But a realistic survival horror game, besides realistic physics, biology, and controller ergonomics, shouldn't have an HUD at all.  I think I'd be scared throughout the whole game if I was never sure how close to death I was.

[ThePerm]

i like either...to me though there is a need for a game that is ultra realistic.

[zakkiel]

Quote
I think biology is important in any game where you have to kill things - while it's impressive to see bodies flying from the force of an explosion in closer-to-real-life physics, it's still possible that they wouldn't be dead after that or that others could die from less forceful blows but in more vital areas. It'd make shooters more fun in that you'd still have to check if someone's dead even after you throw a grenade near them.

The problem is, if they aren't, they get the joy of lying their bleeding for a while. Which is all right by itself, but if you throw in realistic wounding/crippling you'll wind up extremely annoyed as you shamble about, unable to shoot, waiting for someone to take pity on you and kill you.

Quote
I'm actually not keen on realistic games, actually. They all start to look alike...give me a Mario sports game over any NBA/NHL/MLBPA/whatever

I think sports games are kind of a straw man in any discussion about realistic graphics, because they are basically soulless abominations. But if you take DOOM3 and HL2, say, I think they're world's apart, whereas all the Mario games tend to blur into a single maelstrom of primary colors to me. It's all a matter of what your psyche happens to pick up on and respond to.

[JonLeung]

I suppose that if the controller really gives an involving, hands-on experience, we can pretty much bank on the fact that someone will eventually make a survival horror game that will work best on the Revolution.

Capcom may even make their twentieth* remake of the original Resident Evil!  Now you can open the doors as slowly or as quickly as you want to, since you'll be the one handling the doorknob!

*I exaggerate**.

**But not by much.

[KnowsNothing]

We were talking about the Rev in MSN just now, and fishing games were brought up.  So I had the idea of a fishing-adventure game.  Basically it's just an action/adventure game like Zelda, except instead of a sword you use a fishing rod.  The fishing rod COULD be replaced with a whip, but then it would lose personality and lol potential!

But think of all the cool things you could do!  You would control the character with the control stick addition, and your fishing rod is all remote, with the character's arm on screen mimicing yours.  It would be much better than usuing a sword, since a whip/line is much more fluid and you don't need the force feedback like you would with a sword.  Ideally there would be an open ended story mode with fishing missions included or whatever.  You'd always be looking for more exotic places to fish so you can catch unique creatures to make more money, or something.  Exploring could be cool, use the rod to swing across gaps or pull yourself up ledges, etc.

The gameplay could be very varied because there are so many ways to attack with the rod.  Poke someone in the eye to stun then and start swiping them with it.  Wrap the line around their legs and pull them and swing them off a cliff or into another enemy.  Wrap it around their throat to choke them.  Use line to hang enemies off of trees as bait for a larger creature, or to destract larger enemies, or just for lol.  Cast your line at a vase behind your enemy and slam it into the back of his head.  Cast your line at the handle of a sword an enemy dropped, reel it in, and cast it off again to attack from a distance.

There are so manty possibilites, and the fishing theme could open up a lot of neat minigames and create a funny atmosphere or whatever.  Huzzah!