Poll: I'm going to make a game, what do you think of my idea?

[Azaraxzealot]

Whatever you do, don't post it here when you're done. You'll get a black mark against you for "advertising". I've already finished a game and they removed the link and put me on probation when I tried to share it.

 

[James Joseph Emerald]

Firstly, regarding the comments about "too ambitious": I do intend to take a bottom-up approach with regard to features: I'll focus primarily on making the core gameplay solid, and then build up from there. I realise ideas will be changed or removed as I go. I just like to discuss this stuff.

I didn't even mention some of my crazier ideas, like simulating "social engineering" tactics by having NPCs with chatbot AI (like this [http://alice.pandorabots.com]) (actually it's not that crazy: I actually implemented ALICE into Unity as part of a college project). Or having an in-game web browser that actually links to real websites which you can "pretend hack" (the client would alter the local copy of the HTML and CSS files appropriately).

My main goal is just to get a demo/proof-of-concept working. I reckon if I get that far, there ought to be some people out there willing to invest to see it turn into a full game.

First person platforming is a chore, especially when you are under the duress of combat. First person pov is more suitable for tricky jumps or specific maneuvers but you will need to be able to get a glimpse of third-person so you can estimate your distance from an aggressor or his relative position to your character.

First-person platforming doesn't work. It just doesn't. Mirror's edge did it passably, but platforming in third-person is superior in just about every single way. I would steer clear of first-person platforming. the industry has had years to do it, and the best examples of it are moderate successes at best.

Well not really because in general you don't want to be reinventing water on your first game, unless you already have a system that trumps all the others this will end in tears, especially when you are doing 20 other things on top.
Also you are already doing animation for all the NPC movement, your character and theirs will mostly use the same stuff, and you quickly get around doing detailed animations by going for robots or cartoon characters (they can be just as expressive as humans but the viewer is less anal about it).

First, random stranger on the internet, I don't know your skills, but I have a certain feeling that they're not good enough to pull off the 1st person Mirror's Edge thing, sorry. Making this work, look and feel well is freakingly hard.

Hmm, I have another idea regarding this: lose the platforming, and instead you fly around. This is actually a lot more in line with the cyberspace canon (why would there be gravity in cyberspace anyway?), though it seems a little less "visceral".
It would control more like "spectator mode" than a flying simulator, where you can turn on a dime and don't have to worry about momentum, drag, gravity, etc.
The experience would essentially be the same: you escape from enemies that pursue you relentlessly, and use hacking powers to thwart them. The main difference is that you can freely move in three dimensions.

That would probably be more logical, be less frustrating for the player, and be easier to develop. And still allows for easy Oculus Rift integration.
What do you guys think?

I'm still not entirely sold on the idea, because I liked the sound of running, sliding and jumping. But flying may be an all-round more sensible way to do it.

 

[Techno Squidgy]

Sounds good, but far too ambitious for one person to pull off by themselves, or at least, I'd imagine so. The RPG elements seem completely unnecessary to me, and I think you should definitely scale back the whole project.
Try and make tech demos for each mechanic, then try and bring them together one by one.
I think you'll find that this is simply too much for your first attempt and definitely too much for one person.

However, write all these ideas down. Keep them for when you can realise them. Good luck, I hope you succeed.

 

[ThriKreen]

My main goal is just to get a demo/proof-of-concept working. I reckon if I get that far, there ought to be some people out there willing to invest to see it turn into a full game.

I'd start off with:
- Get a cube moving about a level, and basic FPS camera controls.
- Some world geometry to navigate around
- add some enemy cubes that do a basic move to the player, if player gets touched by them, he dies. Oh yeah, basic pathfinding around the world geometry
- Button to switch to hack mode, probably apply a material swap to wireframe to indicate as such
- slow time down, GUI popup for the hack mini-game.
- Add hackable objects and context minigames for their behaviour.

Even a year later, I'm still reworking my input system and redesigning how I'm to tackle things as I get more proficient with Unity, redesigning things based on how it works. Made the aim for the moon mistake on NWN by being too ambitious without knowing the full extent of what the engine could do. Now it's a bunch of small throw-away concepts [http://thrikreen.com/unity/], noting advantages and disadvantages and factoring them into the next project and building up from there.

Good Luck!

 

[James Joseph Emerald]

Even a year later, I'm still reworking my input system and redesigning how I'm to tackle things as I get more proficient with Unity, redesigning things based on how it works. Made the aim for the moon mistake on NWN by being too ambitious without knowing the full extent of what the engine could do. Now it's a bunch of small throw-away concepts [http://thrikreen.com/unity/], noting advantages and disadvantages and factoring them into the next project and building up from there.

Good Luck!

Thanks, you too.

It's funny though, because I tend to agree with the nay-sayers who say "you aren't experienced enough, you'll never be able to compete with professionals, you should get more practice, etc." and think to myself "they're probably right, but I'll do it for fun anyway."

But when I think about it, I've been doing this sort of stuff for fun for a very long time. I started when I was about 10 years old, with The Games Factory, making little 2D games. Then I spent my teenage years making Doom wads and maps for Warcraft III. Then I studied computers in college, and now I've spent the last year learning Unity, working on two major projects.

I've never really considered myself anything more than a hobbyist, but I think I'm ready for a serious attempt.
Also, a lot of people seem to get into making games solely for the end product, but if you actually enjoy the nitty-gritty details of it, I think you're at an advantage. I probably enjoy making games even more than playing them.

Very few things in life can top that feeling of hitting the "play" button and seeing everything happen exactly like you imagined it. Makes you feel like a GOD!

 

[ThriKreen]

"...you should get more practice, etc."

Well isn't that what you're doing right now?

Also, a lot of people seem to get into making games solely for the end product, but if you actually enjoy the nitty-gritty details of it, I think you're at an advantage.

Well, that's the problem : they think too much of how it will be like, and ignore the all important implementation stage which is where all the work comes in, and somehow expect things like game colleges or certain software to have some magical "Make Awesome Game" button for them to press to short-cut it all.

That's why I'm not that concerned about giving my ideas out, if they're that lazy to want to steal the idea, I doubt they'd have the drive to also work on it to see the idea to completion.

Although it might help to write up your design doc on something like Google Docs. Since it's a 3rd party, it's revision history of changes are outside your control and should hopefully mean it holds up to greater scrutiny in case of disputes i.e. the new "mail something to yourself" trick.

Speaking of revision history, I hope you've got a decent dev environment set up! I still need to get Perforce set up for the revision history and back ups.

Very few things in life can top that feeling of hitting the "play" button and seeing everything happen exactly like you imagined it. Makes you feel like a GOD!

Funny enough, part of my schtick is making back end systems and tools for other artists to make use of, so being able to make editor extensions with custom Inspector panels in Unity is a godsend.

Adjusting the pivot [http://thrikreen.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/adjustpivot.png] - really, reposition the empty parent gameobject without affecting the children, along with some buttons to speed up common placements.

Random object placement [http://thrikreen.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/angle_arcs01.png] specify a volume to spawn the decoration objects. Just tree models here, but can also extend to rocks, flowers, grass patches, etc.

And a helper [http://thrikreen.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/angle_arcs.png] to show the range of the random rotation of said objects.

Level streaming on a hex-based grid [http://thrikreen.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/whatsthisfor2.jpg] - well got it so it can take an object and report back the zone it is in and the adjacent zones. Next up, I have to do the code for the actual break up of the world and how to toggling the zones and its contents on or off.

 

[mohit9206]

Good idea but cut out the narrative elements and the rpg mechanics like some of the others have suggested and just focus on platforming and hacking elements and it could be a fun indie game.