Game Conception (Non Immaculate)

[Wilco23]

So we all know about the difficulties and challenges involved with the implementation of your gaming idea. From coding room scripts, classes, variables, functions etc. etc. What I'm interested to hear is where people get their ideas from for the games that they have worked on in the past, or are currently working on. Do you brainstorm? Do you use material from your dreams? or do you primarily base your gaming ideas on currently existing games and/or movies/cartoons etc?

Curiously Querying,

[Kon-Tiki]

For me, it keeps on hitting me right in the face. If I were to make a game out of every idea I had, with all the ideas I had for that game, one lifetime wouldn't suffice. It's kinda like a little raincloud above my head, all raindrops being ideas for new games, or ideas to implement in games, whether or not I'm already working on them.

My latest one, for example, was an engine to train a certain part of your body (left leg, right leg, left arm, right arm, chest, back, stomach, head, perception... in other words, all trainable parts, kinda generalized), then implement that in a fighting engine where it'll calculate damage given and received based on what you're wearing, what you're using and how well you trained your body. If you really boosted up your right leg, but neglected your left, you'd have jump advantage, but speed wouldn't be all that, nor would balance.

Another idea, around the same time, was making a game where you first had to assemble your own dragon, choosing thickness of bones, choosing between certain ribcages, collarbones, etc, choosing how big they are, filling them up with certain guts, proportion them, choose muscles for around it, how much on which spot, same with nerves, then pull a type of skin over it and choose between sets of eyes, teeth, etc. and finally extras, like flabby heatcontrolling thingies or the likes (stuff like horns and wings're done with the bone structure... several heads possible, depending on the collarbones), then the program would calculate the abilities and disabilities of the dragon, like if you put a giant skull as thick as a bodybuilder's chest on a long neck with bones as thick as your little finger and only a faint layer of muscles, it wouldn't be able to lift its head.
To make it a bit more appealing to make a decent dragon, you could battle your dragon against another person's dragon in Final Fantasy-style of battle (Mortal Kombat-style would be way too hard, and there's some pretty damn heavy-duty coding going on in the creation-part and calculating the behaviour already, let alone getting all that to work properly in a Mortal Kombat-style game )

Anyways, these things constantly jump to mind, and not always as similar ideas as the above two. That's only a coincidence ;D

[mystran]

Do you brainstorm? Do you use material from your dreams? or do you primarily base your gaming ideas on currently existing games and/or movies/cartoons etc?

Typically, I get new ideas when I'm either reading something, or playing something. The better the game I play, the more likely I am to get new ideas. Say, last time I played Super Metroid, I got this idea of a similar game, but with Abuse like controls, and a cross-breed of a "ninja-rope" and a "gravity rod". Oh, and the other day I got this idea of how economics could be structured for a MMORPG to make it "work", and derived at least a few scenarios.

Anyway, once I have one simple idea, growing a world and the full game mechanism around it is really not that hard for me. It just kinda flows automatically. Much harder it's when I start thinking of actually working on a project, and must limit the scope so that it won't grow and grow indefinitely.

(btw, I actually thought of writing the Metroid/Abuse thing as an internet multiplayer thingie..)

[dh]

I'm not much for making video games (or any game for that matter) but I have been working [slowly] on an rpg engine in VB. Yes I know, not portable. Once it's running and fairly stable, I'll make it opensource for everybody to play with ;D.

[Wilco23]

Thanks for sharing your thoughts guys. I find it a little difficult myself at the plot design stage, though I often have dozens of thoughts floating around in my head. I at the idea concept stage as this point will determine the direction of the entire game. Well... best get on with I guess.

[rwfromxenon]

To be honest, the things I come up with are completely random. They just appear. Like, I'll be talking to a guy, and then I suddenly say, "Ooh, I could make a game about a penguin stuck in Hawaii."

Imagine the funny looks I get :-\

[Kon-Tiki]

Or you end up making a toilet simulator. I completely forgot 'bout that thing, until somebody brought it up again in a conversation some time ago. Only excuse I have for that one, is that it was purely for coding practice.

What do you want to do?
A) Raise toiletseat
B) Lower toiletseat

A) Pee
B) Poo
(C, for if you chose to be female) Menstruate)

Then, when you'd be a female and did any of those while standing, you'd get some horrid message, just like you'd get as a guy when taking a crap while standing... or peeing with the toiletseat down. Those're just a few things from in that game. Nothing to go to a game publisher with ::)

[Eero Ränik]

I pretty often get some game ideas, that seem to be very good, but having no time to actually take them any further from an idea status, I just write them down somewhere (perhaps to be used later). I sometimes think about the story, characters etc too (and when I see them a year later, I think they're so immature).

Oh, and the other day I got this idea of how economics could be structured for a MMORPG to make it "work", and derived at least a few scenarios.

I have thought a lot about MMORPG economy too, with alot of good game ideas. It's a quite interesting subject, really.

[Oliver]

I pretty much get inspiration from music, other games, weather and stuff that happens in my life. At the moment I have a game in AGI about Woodstock in progress, I got the inspiration from the weather and some stuff that happend in my life.

[Solar]

My ideas usually start with the user interface / controls. Like, I always thought space fighter games (Elite, Wing Commander, Descent, ...) to suck in the steering department. All too much space opera for me (as in, atmospheric flight characteristics).

So I thought, how could a space fighter be really like? And I came up with the idea of steering with two joysticks, one left and one right. Each stick controls the direction of one thruster, with the left trigger firing the thrusters, and the right trigger, weapons. The rest would be physics. You'd probably never hit anything and get lost to a star's gravity well more often than being shot down, but it would be cool...

• both sticks up, thrust: dive
• both sticks down, thrust: climb
• left stick up, right down, thrust: right roll
• right stick up, left down, thrust: left roll
• both sticks left, thrust: turn left
• ...

You could come up with some really sneaky flight maneuvers that way...

Well, that was in the mid-80ies. Today, joysticks are "ergonomic", and you can't really grab them with the right. Then again, they sell flaming steering wheels only for car games, so perhaps there's a market there.

---

And just in case someone rips off the idea and releases such a game engine in a couple of years or so, it's my idea, and I'll dig out this thread and sue the hell out of you, you sneaky thief you - unless you pay me a set of the latest hardware, a copy of the game with my name in the credits, and a percentage of the earnings.

Or you give me a decent job in your game software company.

----

That being said, a good interface, together with a not-too-steep learning curve and level playing ground, is what makes a game fun IMHO.

That's basically why I loathe today's ego-shooters, online RPG's, and / or strategy games. They're all built for people with m4d s1llz from having played loads of their kind already, and the casual gamer is usually lost shortly after the tutorial.

(I was killed recently when my UT2004 / Red October opponent, who knows zilch about WWII or military matters like how to spot a good sniper position, started to shoot precalculated trajectories when he heard the chime of a certain special being picked up which he knew where it is located. A rocket hitting from nowhere for no realistic reason kills all the "realism" those state-of-the-art 3D engines try to generate...)

[Kon-Tiki]

Not to mention they all feel the same. Play one FPS from nowadays and you've played them all.

[Wilco23]

And just in case someone rips off the idea and releases such a game engine in a couple of years or so, it's my idea, and I'll dig out this thread and sue the hell out of you, you sneaky thief you...

If you are seriously worried that you wouldn't get credit for your idea if someone else thinks of the same thing, you could always mail it to yourself in a letter - then you'd have legal proof of the date (well, at least the date at which you posted the idea to yourself).

I'm currently thinking up ways of using my imagination to it's fullest potential to literally dream up creative ideas and plot concepts for a SCI game. At the moment I'm experimenting with lucid dreaming, and have to say that I've had some wild success (if you don't know what Lucid Dreaming is and feel interested, have a quick gander here: http://novadreamer.com/discus/)
Just the other night I had vivid images of myself falling through a void, and I could see large, cone shaped, floating islands. The islands were rich with flora and beautiful gardens. In another vivid hypnagogic state that I had induced (drug free!) I saw a bizarre creature with a triangle shaped head that resembled a beatle. And yet another image of an odd, organic looking house that somehow resembled a croissant... but before I give away all my ideas I best stop here

[Kon-Tiki]

Y'ought to stay off the shrooms Seriously, no better way to get good ideas than to let them come. No need to force things. Take my Jiggy Jiggy Uh! Uh!, for example. Was done with nothing but a pot of regular tea while sitting at the kitchen table, yet I had the hardest time convincing people I didn't take/smoke/drank/injected/whatever else anything else than regular tea.

*Looks at the lucid dream link anyways*

[Wilco23]

I hear what you're saying, but believe me I'm not forcing ideas - just anxious to produce a harmonious and supportive environment where creative juices can roam freely, flit wherever they wish to go and may breed in perpetuity. A land where these innocent, juvenile little juices have the same rights as the rest of us and we're an equal society devoid of prejudice and bigotry and ... and.... yeah.

[Kon-Tiki]

Hehehe, everybody their way. The French poets got their absinth, you your lucid dreams, me an overflow. Whatever tickles your fancy, just know that "Must be creative! Must be creative!" is contraproductive.