Sim9's Journal!

Game Dev Idea:

Walrii had this idea inspired by Sonic the Hedgehog games:  "you play the 'Awesome Child Laborer' the fastest child laborer in the world!  Run around, collecting parts, and reach the end of the level where you assemble them as quickly as possible in a minigame." 

Sounds neat!  I'm not so sure about the minigame (Walrii's been having a lot of game ideas that involve minigames as of late :P), but it could work in neatly if the minigame was fun.  For example, a The Incredible Machine minigame could be awesome, whereas another type of minigame might be less fun.  When running around, the ACL'er could find items like "a dollar!," "tonight's dinner!," and other power-ups for a Sonic-ish game.

Another spin might be to do a more Metroid-ish game instead of a Sonic-ish game (ie, action is much less slow, and there's more of a shooting / exploring emphasis).  This might be more suited towards the C.E.O., who would find weapons like "Hostile Corporate Stock Buy Gun" and "Media Cover-up Bomb" and power ups like "Repeal Child Labor Laws!"

Levels for either style game could be desert countryside, urban desert cities, factory floors, and even a rats-style machine interior.

Other News:

Things are coming along quite nicely on the store, as well as various other things.  I've also ordered (and received some) parts for my massive computer upgrade!  More news on these later as they develop :)

Game Dev Idea:

I wanted to write this idea down before forgetting all about it.  I almost did, but for some reason, I remembered today.  This idea I have to credit to one of Amni's friends, through which Amni told me about the idea.  I heard about this months back, so the idea might not be quite the same as what he told me, and may not be quite the same as what his friend told him.

The base idea for this game is that a team of individuals will fly a spaceship, as you might see in a movie or television show.  That is, it takes several people to perform all the functions of a ship.  At minimum this would require three or four people.  One person to actually fly the ship, one to navigate, one to operate scans and other information, one (or more) to operate weapons, and so on.

I think it would be neat to offer multiple ship selections, with smaller three/four crews, and larger battleships with dozens of crew members.  Voice chat would be a must, and LAN play would be ideal.  This could work in either a independent universe where everything is AI controlled, or as part of a MMORPG.  Gameplay would be totally freeform, starting you with a few dollars on a space station where more experienced players with their own ships are hiring.  In about 10-20 hours of gameplay, you should have enough money to buy your own small ship.  Missions that ship owners/captains can take on can be supplied by the game AI (Rescue this NPC from enemy territory, collect X minerals from location Y) or made by players (Do this for me, and I'll give you this), or made by themselves (Go to planet X, search for treasure.  Go to unmapped planet Y, map out parts of planet, sell to players or NPCs, engage enemy ships and plunder).  In a MMORPG situation, you could have giant events like two massive battle fleets fighting for control of a sector.

Players should be able to walk around the ship while it's moving, as well as disembark from the ship and enter space stations, planets, etc.  IE, everything should be from the individual player's view, with interfaces rendered to textures in the ships.  The ships should be fully detailed, with plenty of options and controls (this is a game that should come with a 100-page fully illustrated, comprehensive instruction manual).

Game Idea:  Basic premise is solving a maze.  A tie-in with the Cube line of movies would be great (and possible since they're indie based).  Several difficulty modes (all with optional multiplayer) would unlock:

Level 1:  3x3x3 Basic Cube, no movement, no traps.  Just find the exit.

Level 2:  5x5x5 Cube, no movement, Traps in easily visible marked rooms (red rooms, perhaps?).

Level 3:  7x7x7 Cube, movement every ten minutes, Traps in rooms with a number puzzle to solve (even vs odd)

Level 4:  9x9x9 Cube, movement every five minutes, Traps in rooms with a number puzzle to solve (even vs odd)

Level 5:  10x10x10 Hyper-Cube, movement every two minutes, while eliminating some rooms with every movement, Traps in rooms to solve (prime of prime problem), must find the singularity room to exit (based on numbers)

Dazed is working on a similar, but not cube-based problem.  He is creating (in TFC) a temporal maze, similar to my image below:

Temporal Maze

Players must navigate the maze temporally in order to solve it.  If we added a height dimension, we'd have a true 4d maze.  I've always enjoyed making a good maze, but never really thought about adding a time aspect to it.  Neat! :)

Random Dream:
In this one, I have somehow managed to aquire office space for The Archive.  All the staff is there, as well as some pre-elderly office ladies who are helping out with things.  For some reason they keep sneaking into my office.  Eventually I realize that they're trying to do something with the elevator that's in my office.  We realize this can't be allowed, and so a skirmish between the staff and the office ladies ensues.  Unfortunately, we are too late, and the office ladies diabolical plan has worked.  They have used my elevator to open a gateway to Hell, and summon Satan into my office.  Satan decides to turn us all into little black dogs.  Fortunately, there's an opening in the latest Benji movie, and we work there.  The End.

Progress:
In other topics, I've been working on various projects (primarily relating to HotAir in one way or another).  Among these will hopefully be a linux version so we can distribute SimWorld running on linux. :)

Game Idea:
Partially inspired by the TFC map: escher.  How about a FPS (CTF?) style game, where you fight in an Escher universe?  You would have to master maps that bend space and challenge traditional FPS navigation (ie, some hallways would take you back to the same room, but now you're on the ceiling).  Each painting could be a different map.

A quick entry today.

Dream:  It has occured to me, that I have the best dreams.  For example, you might think that playing doom3 would give me terrible nightmares.  Not so, apparently.  In this particular dream, I was in the doom3 world.  But, I had found some kind of options room, that gave me two options.  First let me set the aggressiveness of the enemies, the second the cinematic style.  I'm not sure the cinematic style had much effect since I think I set it to poetry, and I didn't see any poetry.  The aggresiveness DID have an effect.  First off, the graphics became that of the older game Dungeon Keeper.  Second, I wandered around and chatted with the monsters/demons about how their day was, how things were going, and other idle topics.  My dreams keep me well entertained ;)

Forums:  I'm approaching my 3,000th EA post (6 more to go), and the forums has passed 10,000 posts.  It's clearly upgrade time!  I've been debating what to upgrade to, but I've settled.  Look for more information on the forums as more is revealed ;)