Open Source Game Concepts

[Mqark]

Many years ago I entered a game design competition in Edge magazine. It inspired me to think of lots of games concepts that hadn't been developed at the time.
I came up with what I thought were 20 unique ideas. I assume I didn't win because I wasn't very good at presenting the ideas or more brutally the ideas just weren’t good enough.
Over the years, I've seen about 5 of the ideas become realised as commercial products though what I assume is other people recognising the same basic concepts that weren't represented or attempted as games. So I see this as a positive thing - you can have an idea that proves to be a viable commercial product, but if you aren't capable of developing it yourself, it's just as valid to pass the concept on and let other people who'd like to work on a project develop it into something.

So it seems that for an open source system with some great looking games being developed it would be appropriate to share our ideas and make them available to all. I'm not talking about the usual playground discussions such as "it would be great if there was a game where Batman beats up Dr. Manhattan" - I'm talking more about outlines / concepts or 'treatments' for games that aren't derivative and genuinely seem fresh or innovative.

I envisage this to be a way of sharing ideas and discussing / developing them more than an adolescent "your idea sucks ass and you smell" kind of non-constructive exercise.

If people like this idea then I'll start the thread off with some ideas, I don't mind them being ripped to shreds and pointed at and laughed at - I've got quite thick skin and I know I'm nothing more than a consumer of games, not a developer, so I make no assumptions that my ideas are better than anyone’s.

Do you think we should have a basic set of rules for logging the ideas - such as less than 200 words, a brief concept outline, number of players, type of game play, description of audio / graphic style, level structure?
Links to external reference documents for further developed explanations / presentations of artwork could be considered so that they don't clog up the thread?

 

[dflemstr]

Heh - you sure like to restrain the posts that in your opinion should be posted here
You would make a perfect forum moderator. Anyways, this is a great initiative so I'll try to present an idea I've had recently (it's probably very bad but at least easy to implement etc... Not overambitious).

Game: Codename Marble
Genre: Puzzle
Technology: 3D, physics based

Basic outline: You, the player, are a ball. This ball can be controlled by the player with arrow keys/analog nub or the like in all horizontal directions. This ball moves around in a 3D world filled with different types of platforms (mostly cubes, block-like) that are suspended over some kind of fuzzy surrounding (infinite space, for instance). If you fall off the blocks, you die (yes, the game has earth-liek gravity even if it is in space, so what? ). The game consists of user-made levels that the player has to roll through with the ball. Performance of the player can be stored, compared and shared online (completion time, some kind of points collected, etc).

Then, there are different type of objects in the game:
- Ball materials with different properties:
-- Metal (default ball)
-- Glass (breaks if you fall from too high; can pass through laser blocks)
-- Paper (can sink more slowly; burns easily)
-- Ether (can not move vertically at all; when you get this material you stay int he same plane, even if you go off the edge... Youc an also pass through ether blocks that are blocking to other materials)
-- Mercury (to sip through poreuse blocks etc)
-- etc...

- Blocks:
-- Material-changing blocks (if you touch them you switch to a specific material)
-- Bouncing blocks (if you touch them you bounce away)
-- Ramps etc
-- Door-and-key blocks (to force the player to go to a certain location to unlock a door)
-- Things like laser-blocks, ether-blocks, fragile bridges etc that force you to have a specific material to pass through)
-- Checkpoint or save blocks for long levels

Levels are made in a level editor and can easily be shared, downloaded from within the game and rated etc. to allow for communiy interaction.
The user can also add custom blocks/materials (and the custom blocks can also be shared online as separate files) if they provide a model, physics properties and the code.


Well, that's the basic idea I had. Haven't elaborated on it. But I might actually make a game like this if I get the time.

 

[lulzfish]

I don't think a strict format is really necessary since these are just concepts.

And if the point is to make concepts that other people can use, then they're technically free-use concepts that may or may not be implemented as open source.

Here's a couple of ideas I have, though they're not original:

1. Persistent world + persistent client
Most games are one of the following categories:
Single player games, where the world either stops when you leave the game, or stops until you do a plot action.
Multiplayer games, where the world only exists while you and your friends are playing, for maybe a few minutes at a time
Massively multiplayer games, where the world is persistent, but your character disappears and becomes non-interactive when you leave

My idea is for a game client that stays connected to the server, but 'minimizes' when you want to stop playing. During this period, graphics and sound resources are freed, but the player can still chat and do basic actions like trading.
Vendetta Online has something like this, I believe their chat system is actually an IRC client, so people who aren't playing can still talk to their friends who are online.
In my concept, this would all be in one background program, so that you can play the game in a minimal fashion without needing to devote all of your attention, graphics, and RAM to actually watching it.
I suppose this could apply to single-player RPGs as well, but RPGs mostly block until you perform a plot trigger, whereas MMOGs could make more use of a system that pushes events back to the player.

2. MMO racing game:
I think there's a game that has already done this on PC, but I felt like I should have a second idea up, so..
This is probably hard to implement, but the idea is exactly what it sounds like: persistent online racing. Something like Need for Speed Underground 2's "race anywhere" would be cool, but I think this would allow too much trolling by people who attempt to disrupt racing. It would work best, I think, if the sections of road that were for racing were separated, so that people who weren't in a race there were intangible and possibly also invisible.

@dflemstr: lol, it sounds like if xmoto had a love child with one of those marble games. I would play that, as long as the controls and camera aren't horrible. The last marble game I tried kept moving the camera, I could never figure out which way I was moving. It sucked.

 

[Mqark]

Great response so far! Whoo hoo.

I'm just trying to make sure there's a little structure so that it's easy for people to present their ideas, I think the reason I failed to get anywhere in the competition wasn't because the ideas didn't work, just that I didn't know how to pitch or present them effectively.

@lulzfish, thanks for putting me right on the definition!
Yes, the idea is to share the ideas and let them flourish rather than stagnate.

My ideas will be added after the Grandprix and my GF comes over - so probably on Monday...

 

[PoisonedV]

I think its a great post, especially for that Batman vs Dr. Manhattan type stuff that usually abounds, though I suspect it will get moved to pandora general, anyway. just like to point this out http://www.squidi.net/three/index.php

 

[lulzfish]

This squidi guy has lots of crazy ideas. The white noise thing alone would be really weird, someone could try to make a game whose graphics can only be perceived properly when animated. :blink: Making screenshots useless.

You can always use noise in games, I think it would be a good [or at least visually interesting] substitute for fog, like as a way to hide something without darkness or reduced contrast.

I'll have to try it someday when I stop being so lazy.

 

[PoisonedV]

This squidi guy has lots of crazy ideas. The white noise thing alone would be really weird, someone could try to make a game whose graphics can only be perceived properly when animated. :blink: Making screenshots useless.

You can always use noise in games, I think it would be a good [or at least visually interesting] substitute for fog, like as a way to hide something without darkness or reduced contrast.

I'll have to try it someday when I stop being so lazy.

they already made the white noise game. its pretty wild.

 

[lulzfish]

Dunno how I'd find that, link please.

 

[Username]

Sounds cool. Please link me.

 

[surt]

There's one here:
CODE
http://tigsource.com/articles/2007/11/14/lost-in-the-static

Not sure if it's the one PV's talking about.

 

[PoisonedV]

There's one here:
CODE
http://tigsource.com/articles/2007/11/14/lost-in-the-static

Not sure if it's the one PV's talking about.

yup! figured it would be on tigsource or indiegamer.

 

[PoisonedV]

Alright, didn't mean to kill the thread.
I'll add a bit to try and revamp it...
dflemstr, your idea has actually been done down to a T multiple times. its somewhat if a common game on the casual game arcades (oberon media, reflexive, bigfish even i think)
Anyway, my idea is more of a mechanic, kind of like the stuff on squidi. It's not fully fleshed out, but it's generally taking a single player RPG and the user gets to selectively choose which parts of their experience they want to make online- do they want singleplayer trading, or massively multiplayer trading? What about the ingame arenas? How about large raids, ai controlled or people controlled? I had a design document detailing all the facets of it, but I can't find it

 

[lulzfish]

I was thinking today that a game with lots of nameless NPCs could be done in a weird social anxiety / paranoia style where the NPCs avoid you or they always look like they're talking about you or something.
A unique camera scheme might also be used, where the camera steers away from eye contact.

I have no idea what purpose this would serve, but it seemed interesting.

And by "lots of nameless NPCs", I mean where people are all kinda similar-looking and perhaps pixel shader-blurred as though the player character is trying too hard not to focus on them.

 

[fischju2000]

As in the tutorial/beginning parts of Assassin's Creed? You have to go through crowds that are faceless, it's kinda freaky

 

[lulzfish]

Yeah, but from a first-person view, and with Interface Screwing.

 

[Alpha2]

inventing game concepts is a great excercise but it's sad that there are so few people with the skill to actually take them on, usually because they already have their own ideas and dont have time to do anyone elses.

Small games might have a better chance but it's hard to create a small game now adays that has staying power without just being a derivative of something else.

 

[Trip]

I think it might be a good idea for someone to set up a site along the lines of Ubuntu Brainstorm.. QUOTE
http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/
Not only would this allow people to vote on new game ideas, it would also be useful to help improve the Pandora's usability on the software side of things.

Shame I don't have the web space or I'd give it a shot myself

EDIT: IdeaTorrent.. QUOTE
http://www.ideatorrent.org/

 

[femngi]

This seems like the right place to post this.
What would you recommend someone who only knows a bit of C++ start to learn? As in openGL or SDL? I had a look at lazyfoo's SDL tutorial but it didn't seem to explain things the way I expect to see them explained, if that makes any sense whatsoever. Since I'm only thinking about a very simple 2D game perhaps I should forget this and go with python.
For the record I do have an original idea, however I won't bother telling people here since only myself and a very select group of friends would ever be interested in playing it.

 

[dflemstr]

inventing game concepts is a great excercise but it's sad that there are so few people with the skill to actually take them on, usually because they already have their own ideas and dont have time to do anyone elses.

Small games might have a better chance but it's hard to create a small game now adays that has staying power without just being a derivative of something else.

Don't worry, I'll implement my idea myself when I get time

 

[lulzfish]

You should look into Pygame. It's a Python interface to SDL. You'll have to learn Python, but it makes SDL a bit easier, and their documentation is maybe a little better.
If you want to do anything with shaders or rotating sprites, you'll probably want to learn OpenGL and use SDL as a starter for OpenGL.

Also, this thread is not the place to ask this. Possibly the developer forum would be somewhat appropriate, but these forums are about the Pandora, not general game development.