Wednesday, January 19, 2011

The Bridge Wars and RPG VX

Once again i find myself reinstalling the program, building a world i already built which somehow got lost.  a few years ago i put in a few months of free summer time into RPGVX in efforts to build the island of Jaren, bordering Lilon within the Nonaverse.  that being done i moved onto characters plot, event mapping etc.  i don't know where it went but my files of the project disappeared over the spanning years so that all i'm left with is my long hand notes and a theme song Enigmachina made for the project.
So here i am playing around in the program again, a different story lingering in mind, fully aware that whatever time i sink into this will most likely be for not as the story's still to expansive.  The Bridge Wars spans three countries/continents and came out of the domain class'e that i randomly designs skill tiers for.  i'd proly have far better luck writing out snippets of the story.  perhaps i'll do that.
Then again, just mapping out the islands is a good feeling. i think its the catharsis of pulling unfinished projects back into the foreground.
we shall see how things go...

Sunday, January 02, 2011

A handful of game ideas

Going through some old notes and docs in my files i came across some quick ideas of what could have once become games.  the treatments were sometimes scrappy at best, mere bylines, but they're ideas non the less.  and they do no good floating my archives if they could be floating around the undermind, so out into the spheres they go.

Treatment  A PC start the game with a past he/ she's trying to forget, the goal of the game to reach the marine recruiting centre that wipes your memory and name, turning you into one of the many ubiquitous amnesiac third person shooter space marines.  Who then try to discover their past.  Funny how that works.

Treatment  Survival horror inversion.  PC is a monster, or something similar. Light hurts you, enemies are trying to fend you off as you poke around.  Upon reflection this bears shocking similarity to the 'i am legend' premise, but maybe that's a good thing.  

Treatment  Instead of trapping the hero in a remote, monster filled location they must escape, place them in a densely populated environment where no one will help them.  bittersweet ending of the hero going insane and only then people see them and helping, once all hope was lost.

Treatment  Have a premise where that the PC is a pacifist and is confronted by shambling body horrors and they try to escape through surreal horror (Undermind methinks)  the player “loses” whenever they decide to fight.  If they take a stand against a monster (decidedly out of character) then the monsters realize that the opponent is now “active” and respond in kind.  A lot.  Hard.  Non standard game over.  Games Aesop about losing the virginity of violence.

Treatment  Simple platformer ala braid and limbo.  Sword dude, long thing double edged rounded tip ninjato mod.  Revolver long reload, inf ammo, but long range.  Characters burst from each other s chest when switching between each other.  Trade off in a literal killer 7 or lost Viking style.

Treatment  Character has only one superpower (similar to braid only not as developed)  which is to freeze frame the game reality.  The plays function button act as the simple save, load.  The way that this could be useful would be a knowledge driven story over a materialistic key or quest item driven story.  The PC has to learn things, which stay with him/her and then when the freeze frame loads he/’she keeps all memory and knowledge gains, loses all material gain.  This could work on a similar pared down version of the engine, where the character sheet wouldn’t be as necessary.  A log of all information, conversation gains (which the game registers as coded triggers anyway) are logged and at any point the game can be captured/loaded.  Of course, because I love the mindscrew too much that I would make it far more common, the more the load and save is used, the worse effect it has on your character.  The character has to use it to progress through the game, but the more its used, the more unhinged the player becomes.  the data that is loaded becomes corrupted.  the character starts to remember  events that others allude to, but they never experienced and they aren't complete memories by any margin.

Treatment A game that focuses on time controls and manipulation.  Not only would it have a physics engine but a time engine as well, which would create possible parallels that the player could switch between randomly while learning and consciously after becoming comfortable with their powers.  Automatic time shifting.

Treatment  A game of hitmen in an active 3d world, mmorpg perhaps, only it wouldn’t be so much of an rpg.  I'm thinking Sid Meyers Pirates only using a glacier engine (Assassin's Creed) in a mmo setting that has interactivity. The few people in the city who kill, a variety of missions, when other players enter into your city/world.

Treatment A game where you play as a shape shifter, morphing between different powers and controls.  Devil may cry meets Pendragon’s Saint Dane meets the powers that Marvel vs Capcom put on display, all in a single character, swappable at will with minor control scheme variation.


Treatment Rpg where you start the game with Hollywood amnesia caused by trauma at a certain level mid game would usually be reserved too.  The narrative switches from the past to the present, where after the intro scenes, you switch control to the past and start to build the characters, the thing here would be a time travel plot of some nature, where the player builds the character that has already been built, only there choices are reflected in the past versions they’ve already played. 

This could also be lampshaded in a way that the player describes in conversation what he/she would want in a companions ability innocuously and that is created with the characters sheet being rolled up later on in the plot and one of the characters saying something to the effect of “ funny, thats so close what you were describing.  Some of the traits described would be opposed or randomized, and would indeed be different on a separate play through following the same path.

I'm thinking this for a modern rpg.  I’d kick it earthbound style with modern-ish weapons or maybe Cthulhu era weaponry, with similar devastating effects.    In fact, I wouldn’t even have a level system inside of it I would have something much more akin to coc’s system where you don’t level up but your skills do.  I love the hit detection that Dark Corners had but I’d have to say atmosphere wise I would like to stick third person.  Something about the movement scheme of first person games never sat well with me, but given the possibilities, it could also be something that lets you switch from first to third person.