StarDestroyer.Net BBS

What would you make?

Thought about this while posting in "SimCity" thread...

If you have unlimited funds for the video game. and you can call upon anyone ANYONE to help.
Any game designer alive or dead, you can summon them, and they will happily work with you and anyone else you wish to work on your game.

I would love to get Tarn Adams of Dwarf Fortress
Markus Persson of Minecraft
And a younger, less disillusioned and spiritually crushed Will Wright
All together and create two Epic games...

"Dwarfcraft" and "SimFortress"
Just THINK of the possibilities!!!

It'd be interesting to see a video game adaptation of Lensmen, not sure who I'd get to design it.

I want a really good predator/prey game. Something where you choose to play a creature of a species that is the only food source to two playable species, and two *other* species are prey to you, and around in circles. Played in generations, Spore-like, where you can 'evolve' your creature to try to counter the abilities of whichever player-run species you tend to contend with. Ideally some kind of 3rd person action MMO with well-integrated stealth elements for hunting and hiding.

I would get Sid Meier and his fellow workers, the ones who were the makers of Pirates and FASA, and all the makers of Crimson Skies, and have Pirates style maneuvering of your Zeppelin across North America and Crimson Skies style dogfights with fighter planes, leading a career as a Sky Pirate in the 1930s in the Crimson Skies setting.

Master of Orion - a remake pulling the best ideas from all three in the original series (even the ideas that never made it into production), and combines them with a truly epic-sized galaxy.
Civilization - same idea...pull the best ideas from the series and give us something actually pretty close to Earth-sized.
Simcity - nuff said.


As far as new titles? I've always liked wargames that are based on historical fact. Imagine, for instance, a WW-2 strategy / action game where you can be a participant in any part of the entire Pacific campaign. You can choose to be a pilot flying off one of the American carriers during the Battle of Midway...you can choose to be a Japanese submarine skipper, a member of the Chinese resistance on the mainland, etc... The goal would be to be able to experience every aspect of the war from every angle. Campaign mode would give you goals to try to meet based on the role you selected, or free-play would let you try to change history (Can you get the Yamato to actually avoid being detected by American scout planes?).

Do something similar with the European or African campaigns as expansion packs / sequels, etc.... This can also apply to other major historical conflicts such as the Civil War, the War of 1812, Napoleon, etc...

Would also be a great opportunity to teach history for those conflicts that are not very often spoken about in modern day, such as the Mexican-American war, the Spanish-American war, the Crimean War, the first Russo-Japanese war, etc...

I'd like a combo of Skyrim, Mount and Blade and Baldurs Gate.

Alternatively a Skyrim style Star Wars game would be good.

Failing that a good WW1 Total War game.

I'd get the team who made Battlefront II to make...Battlefront III, which is believe is actually on it's way, so moving on.

I'd get the team who did Homeworld 2 to do Homeworld 3. Also, possible, some people (I'm not sure who) to do a proper WW1 naval combat simulator. I want to re-fight Jutland damnit!

And something similar for Star Wars. Enough fighter pilots, I want to stand on a Star Destroyer and fight it out with a Mon Cal cruiser at point blank range.

A complete remake of Resident Evil 2. Think of how superior the remake of the first RE game is to its original. One of my favorite games is a polygonal mess. The story still captivates me and the music still rocks, but it could be better with updated graphics with a darker setting and tone.

Venture Brothers game. Don't care what genre.

Flagg wrote:Venture Brothers game. Don't care what genre.

Venture Brothers : The Action Man Chronicles

EVE Online Team
Star Citizen Team
Bioware Team
Planetside 2 Team

Game: Star Wars Online
- Star Wars IP
- Star Citizen level of walking around ships up to capital with multiple players required for the big things
- EVE Online level of systems and sand box for the space
- Bioware can add Mass Effect / KOTOR RPG FPS element
- Planetside team can add the ground combat for planet invasions / boarding actions on ships

Chances of happening - divide by zero

Hmmm, I think I'd also go with a new Doom game and/or a sequel to Quake 4, designed by...shit, whoever makes good FPS's these days.

A Shadowrun game with drop-in drop-out co-op where it's either set-piece missions or someone can gamemaster a la Neverwinter Nights. Finding appropriate partners in crime would be handled via a character finder and contract system. Permanent character death would be an option with some kind of bonus system such as access to higher-end gear or more lucrative missions.

Shitheads trolling would be handled via an account wide "Bad Karma" system. Runners or Gamemasters who made a habit out of screwing over other players would soon find themselves without people willing to offer them contracts. Complications would arise in computer or player controlled corporate competition either sending in their strike-teams or hiring their own (player-controlled) Shadowrun teams to cock things up. Neither group would know if they were human or AI. Basically, on lucrative missions, other teams would get alert contracts to bid on to play the other side.

Characters would be able to specialize completely while still maintaining their view of entertainment al la SWG. Deckers could decide to never go on site and just do legwork for the team in hostile computer system. Combat deckers could specialize in getting onsite for faster and easier decking. Mages could be on the ground or just run astral overwatch and throw in spirits for flavor, same with Shamans. Other players could decide to just play fixers, getting the right players together with the right gear, and just taking a cut of the earnings. If shafted by players... well, just hire your own runners to hit them where they live. Players could even specialize as member of the SWAT or FRT teams and do nothing but bust runners.

Combat would be relatively lethal, but choice map design would reward intelligent runners for avoiding combat, retreating, or setting up cross-fires. Even blackmailing the right suit might lead to an easy payday or suffer it's own consequences when said suit decides to get even.

Cops and corporate strike-teams are a real threat. Busting out the big guns or magic will lead to response from authorities and must either be dealt with or forcing the runners to pull out and re-do the mission with penalties or abandon it and take a karma hit (though not in the same vein as Bad Karma).

Also, car chases because Riggers are awesome.

This being an MMO is almost a requirement due to the runners needing flop-houses and other places to do business. But some kind of persistent server farm might be able to accomplish the same thing. Also, since I'm making it "FeniX" is a reserved name across any and all servers.

A fully polished, properly balanced and generally well thought-out MMO along the lines of Day Z, but with the zombies replaced by triffids.

An X-COM FPS in the style of SWAT 4 or the original Ghost Recon.

A proper Firefly MMO, probably using the same engine as the new Elite game.

I had a few ideas over time. The one I like most is a game where you play as a survivor on a large Mars or Venus colony/research station. Fairly low amount of people, lots of machinery. Scientists manage to tap into a giant wormhole network made by aliens, and the network taps into that. But instead an invasion of hostile alien monsters, you tap into bits of a lush nature preserve.

You are a survivor that has a semi-sentient alien symbiont attach to your back. The symbiont can heal you completely and eventually learns to communicate with you and later, allow you to tap into some of its senses and knowledge (translating stuff for you). The symbiont can't survive without a host (except in a specific environment it was ripped from) and you suffered a spinal injury so severe that your symbiont is holding you together. It can't take control over you without knocking you out and only does so in one or two cut-scenes.

Your job is to move between the two worlds and try to restore everything and rescue survivors. The other, alien end got just as messed up as you got (most of the systems were automated, old and thus a bit crazy). You have to rescue survivors, bring them to safety and later get to work.

The primary thing is the true impossibility of development and that this would be first-person and wouldn't be a shooter. There were security staff, but only with non-lethal weapons. And no, there are no Dead Space-like power tools that function extremely well as firearms (maybe a rough, alien equivalent of a gravity gun for the sake of physics). If anything, the armed security force is a hindrance to your goals, being composed of guys who think that they are in Doom and shoot first, ask questions later. You on the other hand will have to rely on other ways to get around troublesome animals. Most will be afraid of you but not necessarily hostile. You will recover some tools to help control them, both improvised human tools and some alien ones that don't have security safeguards. You in fact will have to avoid using violence as some of the enraged animals will do tremendous damage to surrounding equipment, even destroying airlocks (think a rhino or hippopotamus). Or you'll just make it mad if you try to bash it with a wrench. Animals will also learn your behaviour, becoming calm if you give them space and feed them or become enraged if you scare them (for example, turning off the lights). Most of the time you may have to lure them away or even use stealth.

In essence, you will be playing a first person puzzler with some adventure game elements.

Most tools will be that: tools to access things, to repair things and even bits of equipment to replace things that cannot be repaired. You will also have things like portable oxygen, firefighting equipment and so on. You can't don a traditional knight-armor standing power suit or hazard suit because of the symbiont on your back. You can however control various robots of various kinds to do stuff for you.

What I'd like there to be is for a complete ecology for both human and alien areas. In human areas, you have to worry about oxygen, warmth and food. As an engineer, your job would be to restore power, fluids and general system integrity. In alien areas, you either have to dodge existing security (which are calibrated for capture, not kill) and use the alien ecology to your advantage, as well as trying to find someone on the alien side to unmake the mess everyone is in.

First the one MMO I could probably go into hardcore. Crimson skies MMO. I think that with modern mouse look control schemes a game with a lot of dogfighting could be made accessible enough to be populated.

Then KOTOR 2 actually finished and the Alien RPG Obsidian was working on earlier that got canned.

One thing I really want is an open world RPG with an in depth faction system even beyond what New Vegas had. Something like Age of Decadence that doesn't actively hate you for having the temerity to not have the exact right build and an interaction system more colored by faction alliances than dialog trees chosen by it.

I'd like a game that is mixed with an open sandbox world like the GTA or SR series add destructible environment of the Red Faction series. I'd like to see the cities actually act like one. Busy streets filled with people and cars. Rush hour gridlock. Each person has their own lives in the game and there is a set number of people in it. Everything is accessible. You can go into any place whether you are allowed to or not (e.g. B&E).

Each action you take has an appropriate reaction. Cops see you steal a car? They chase you down until they arrest you. No cops going back to what they were doing once you leave their field of view. They'll have the car's plate numbers and will keep searching. Only way to evade is to ditch the car and get the hell away. But with the way I'd have the game, ditching the car doesn't mean the car disappears into oblivion like in other games but it stays there until someone else steals it, or the owner finds it or let's say after a couple of game days go by you pass by and the car is still there but now the cops have found it and is in the process of towing it away. Things like that.

You kill a person, the cops will hunt you down with appropriate force. Start shooting at them and they'll shoot back. Kill too many people and get caught? There'll be a cut scene with the judge sentencing you to death and you'll have a choice of a death penalty. Choose one and you get to see your character die.

Also a somewhat realistic reaction to damage to structures and the environment. Collapse a building? It'll be cordoned off and crawling with cops for a couple of days. Then a clean up crew to get rid of the rubble and then randomize what comes next. Will it become a vacant lot? What was once a warehouse is now replaced with condos? Restaurant? You get the idea. But they won't just appear over night. Though in reality it would take months to rebuild, in the game it would take about a game week.

Go freaking nuts and blow up random buildings and bridges and the city goes into lockdown with the streets, skies and waters filled with cops trying to find out the culprit.

Basically a digitized reality but with some exaggerations.

I've also had an idea for a some what original game that could tie into my previous post. Your character has a special ability in controlling people. His/her ability starts small like straining\pulling a leg muscle of your target causing him\her to fall. As your character gets stronger he'll\she'll be able to do more and affect more people at the same time.

Imagine walking into a bank and then sitting down on a bench in the lobby. While to everyone, you are just sitting, in fact you are scanning everyone's skeletal structure and choosing which bones to break and time seems to stop at that point. Once selected, with a click of a mouse button or from a press of a key, you activate your ability. Time resumes as normal and everyone within your view suddenly collapse from broken necks, shattered spines or collapsed skulls. You think you're in the clear as you are stuffing your bags with cash when you realize that they have cameras and a security guard suddenly appears from somewhere in the building. You could simply kill the guard and try to find the control room and wipe the cameras or you could possess the guard and have him do it (making it easier as he'll know where it is and the location appears on your minimap) before making him eat a bullet from his own gun or as before but instead of having the guard kill himself, you could wipe his memory and make him the fall guy once the cops show up.

Of course, in the game you can make your character good or pure evil.

Engine: Ace Combat, with ground vehicle elements.

License: G.I. JOE: A Real American Hero

I'd make a Necromunda first person sandbox RPG. Including the Ash Wastes, so you could get some vehicles in there too. I'd want the companion AI to be good enough that you could plot a course and let them drive while you ride shotgun, or wander around if you're in one of the larger vehicles.

You'd start off as just a troubleshooter who operates exclusively in the Underhive, but eventually you could create your own gang, or take leadership of another, take guard jobs on Ash Waste convoys or own your own vehicles, make nice with the Guilders and set down roots or go outlaw.

Oh, and I'd definitely have a woman as the protagonist.

Any game?

Give me a Paradox game that starts in the chalcolithic and runs through to the near future with a steadily expanding map (and the ability to migrate from day 1), which also has RTS combat as an option (Total War, say) with the ability to then control a unit in that battle, with the orders and AI commanders system of Take Command.

FeniX, I fucking love that idea. I would love to see a good Shadowrun MMORPG.

Grumman, that sounds like a great idea too.


The game I'd have made is actually one from an Animorphs novel. The idea is that the game creates a complete solar system with life on two or more planets. The idea is you make just one change that affects the life form you choose, either the environment or the life itself, then let the game run. The main character in the book plays a game of it against one of his friends, his species is on a planet with complete cloud cover, he causes a small break in the clouds allowing them to see space, his opponent controls a species of rodent on the planet's moon, he changes them so they breed rapidly. The rodents, using up all the natural resources on their moon and running out of food and space, see the species on the planet and attack them, killing them and eating them all.


I notice that a lot of these ideas would need fantastic advances in AI and probably a lot more powerful hardware.

Take Dwarf Fortress, Minecraft and Fallout real time settler and you get...
"Colony"

It's the far future and man has begun sending colony ships into the darkness of space to strike new ground to create new civilizations on new planets for mankind. You difficulty level is based on what type of Colony this will be.

Easy mode your a rich businessman who has the money to hire whoever he wants and is only limited by the size of the ship and the amount of initial supplies (stuff like self assembling living quarters, food, fuel and laser rifles) you intend to bring. Also in easy you can pick among a few procedural generated planets on which one to land on. You can chose to orbit a few times to map the planet before landing.

Normal your the Colony main recruiter and project lead now you have to balance your budget to attract the right people, hire the right kind of ship and equip the colonists for life on their new world. Your world is pre-chosen and pre-generated with you having choice of the landing site based on what you and your satellites can see in the slow down pass.

Hard you are the Colony mayor, everything is pre-selected you might wake up in charge of a group of space piligrams who brought more bibles than axes. Re-settled political dissidents or wild eye back to nature hippies.

So the first part of the game on easy and normal is selecting what type of people to bring, what areas to recruit from and doing your best to ensure you've got a good mix. The main part of the game is Dwarf Fortress like on this procedural generated world which may have anything on it. Deadly to human plagues, local fauna that taste great but is nutritionally worthless. Angry native, helpful natives or maybe even outposts of another alien space faring race which might be friendly or hostile. You viewpoint would be first person with space technology to let your Colony mayor zoom out to an rts style screen at will to set production priorities order things moved around and set tasks. The reason it's first person is because your mayor has skills and while you can autoresolve everything you can have your mayor out there doing things like exploring this world your on or doing some in person mayoring or defending your colony. The 1st elements would be secondary and more to show off what your making.

Random events would be big, good and bad and new settlers from earth would be a big deal.
"Winning" is either surviving a set time or becoming a full fledged human planet by some set goals. One game you may lose after twenty years because you saved money by sending colonists in waves but earth was destroyed before everyone got there and you starved to death. Another game maybe your genetic tinkering with your colonists to adapt to their environment got you declared as a separate species and destroyed by earth. Heck maybe boby q citizen built himself Shodan in a garage and your colonists fell to a machine uprising.


That's what I envision.

Sandbox type Star Wars ala Skyrim but with the scope of EVE with fully developed planetary options.

Mr Bean wrote:Take Dwarf Fortress, Minecraft and Fallout real time settler and you get...
"Colony"

It's the far future and man has begun sending colony ships into the darkness of space to strike new ground to create new civilizations on new planets for mankind. You difficulty level is based on what type of Colony this will be.

Easy mode your a rich businessman who has the money to hire whoever he wants and is only limited by the size of the ship and the amount of initial supplies (stuff like self assembling living quarters, food, fuel and laser rifles) you intend to bring. Also in easy you can pick among a few procedural generated planets on which one to land on. You can chose to orbit a few times to map the planet before landing.

Normal your the Colony main recruiter and project lead now you have to balance your budget to attract the right people, hire the right kind of ship and equip the colonists for life on their new world. Your world is pre-chosen and pre-generated with you having choice of the landing site based on what you and your satellites can see in the slow down pass.

Hard you are the Colony mayor, everything is pre-selected you might wake up in charge of a group of space piligrams who brought more bibles than axes. Re-settled political dissidents or wild eye back to nature hippies.

So the first part of the game on easy and normal is selecting what type of people to bring, what areas to recruit from and doing your best to ensure you've got a good mix. The main part of the game is Dwarf Fortress like on this procedural generated world which may have anything on it. Deadly to human plagues, local fauna that taste great but is nutritionally worthless. Angry native, helpful natives or maybe even outposts of another alien space faring race which might be friendly or hostile. You viewpoint would be first person with space technology to let your Colony mayor zoom out to an rts style screen at will to set production priorities order things moved around and set tasks. The reason it's first person is because your mayor has skills and while you can autoresolve everything you can have your mayor out there doing things like exploring this world your on or doing some in person mayoring or defending your colony. The 1st elements would be secondary and more to show off what your making.

Random events would be big, good and bad and new settlers from earth would be a big deal.
"Winning" is either surviving a set time or becoming a full fledged human planet by some set goals. One game you may lose after twenty years because you saved money by sending colonists in waves but earth was destroyed before everyone got there and you starved to death. Another game maybe your genetic tinkering with your colonists to adapt to their environment got you declared as a separate species and destroyed by earth. Heck maybe boby q citizen built himself Shodan in a garage and your colonists fell to a machine uprising.


That's what I envision.

What would you envision in Nightmare mode? A warden of a prison colony expected to terraform the toxic planet they're on into a paradise with a bunch of worst of the worst scum mankind has to offer?