New concepts in games

Back in the day in Planetside 2 there were huge events called Server Smashes, where 240 or 288 players per server from a pair of servers (Planetside 2 is an MMOFPS for those who don't know. It still has a decent playercount but it has fallen off from where it was substantially). All of the players for each server would be in an elaborate voice chat setup with a command hierarchy and everything and the event was each team fighting to see who could take more territory from each other. It worked quite well for those two hours, but I doubt it could scale to a full-time mode on an MMO.

Alternately the world record match in PS2 which was widely publicized a few years ago was the same concept behind the scenes but with 1160 players on three teams. For technical reasons it was a laggy mess to play in but the command structure still worked.
Imgaine the coordination they could have pulled off with proper user interface in addition to voice chat.
 
I seriously entertained the idea of making a mobile game for a short while. In this region, we have rows of these nice colonial-era shophouses along some older streets. Efforts have been made to preserve them as historical buildings and today they house all sorts of businesses, from hotels and hipster cafes to cycling gyms.

I thought I'd be able to get some government funding if I wanted to make a casual semi-educational isometric game about managing these shophouses - you'd rent them out as residential units, run businesses out of them, buy adjacent units and upkeep them so they pass inspections by the authorities. Residential units will be the easiest money-makers at first but, mirroring what actually happened, they eventually become less and less appealing - until much later when you can design affluent or luxury residences. And having a good selection of businesses along the street will also attract higher-paying residents.

But, not knowing how to code and needing an artist to make appealing graphics, I figured I'd need to spend more money than I could get on good talent for those. And then, even if people actually liked the game, I could be buried by copycats with much bigger budgets.

Yeah, making games today seems really hard.
 
Making games isn't hard. There are a ton of tools that can streamline it for you. Making games that look nice can take a decent amount of effort. The real issue I think is making games that are unique and stand out and possibly profit seems damn near impossible because of my first point, there's like no barrier to entry into making games, and there will always be millions of tech savvy students or just teens around the world doing it for fun who will do it better than you. Just look at all the $1 indie titles on steam. Hard to compete with that.
 
Imgaine the coordination they could have pulled off with proper user interface in addition to voice chat.
The in-game map was really full-featured, you could see approximately how many people were at each base and with knowledge about how the game works could infer quite a lot more about the situation across the whole map.
 
Making games that look nice can take a decent amount of effort. The real issue I think is making games that are unique and stand out and possibly profit seems damn near impossible because of my first point, there's like no barrier to entry into making games, and there will always be millions of tech savvy students or just teens around the world doing it for fun who will do it better than you. Just look at all the $1 indie titles on steam. Hard to compete with that.

Yeah, that's what I meant. Like painting is quite easy, but painting something that will sell for a significant sum is very hard.
 
Indie game making indeed wont bring you money unless you are resolved to spend serious time on it & have some talent. Moreover it is a product needing more than one skill (eg not just scripting or storymaking but also graphics or animation abilities).
Maybe if i was 20 i would focus on it, but now i doubt it. Considering my combined income from game stuff has been the rather unimpressive sum of 24 dollars...
Patreon video making seems more logical, if you are looking for gaming/web related income.
 
I've always wanted a game set in medieval Iceland, with Irish monks and Norwegian settlers, based on the low fantasy universe found in the Icelandic sagas.
 
Cutting communication isn't in games because it would be incredibly frustrating to issue orders and have the game be non-responsive, especially if you're not immediately sure why that is the case.

The most similar thing I can think of has happened in Squad though, if you are on SL-net trying to give or receive intel/suggestions to the other squad leads but one or both of you cannot clearly hear said comms through the brutal pounding of mortars landing on your position(s), or machine gun fire right next to your head. That game does audio right.
This is a huge flaw in my meta-game idea. The RTS modes depend in part on people playing FPS to follow orders. Not sure how well that would work in practice to be honest. Probably not too well.
Right, you don't want it to simply be an exercise in frustration. Giving players some ability to manage and adapt to command & control problems, rather than just be victimized by them, would be important. It shouldn't just be that, randomly, your [stuff] doesn't work. [insert Nelson from The Simpsons saying "Ha-ha"] That would just be bad game design. But, for example, if your game has an upgrade tree, things like radios and computer network improvements could be on it. Likewise, ways of messing with the enemy's command & control could be in the game, and ways of anticipating the enemy messing with your command & control could be in the game. In the Battle of Normandy, the US paratroopers prepared in advance to be lost and disorganized, and without reliable communications. Everybody probably knows the famous "Flash! Thunder!" call-and-response for paratroopers flailing around in the dark. SS commandos during WWII and Soviet Spetznaz during the Cold War were specifically trained to infiltrate behind enemy lines, don uniforms to impersonate engineers and military police, to misdirect supply convoys and send troop columns down the wrong road. The Germans recruited men who'd lived in the United States for commando units because they spoke fluent English, with American accents. For years, the US military has used superior night-vision technology to its advantage. The US Navy recently reintroduced old-fashioned celestial navigation training for its officers because they know the first thing the Chinese will do at the outbreak of a war is try to knock out our comms and GPS satellites.

I've always wanted a game set in medieval Iceland, with Irish monks and Norwegian settlers, based on the low fantasy universe found in the Icelandic sagas.
Yes, new settings would be great. I've fantasized about a sword-and-sorcery game set in a magical world modeled on pre-colonial Africa, just as an example, like a "World of Wakanda" MMO.
 
I want some mods to existing games that set them in Harry Turtledove alternate history timelines. An HOI 4 mod set in the Timeline-191 universe would be a lot of fun. It would also be very fun (imo) to have an HOI 4 mod set in the Worldwar timeline, where aliens with roughly 21st-century military technology invade the Earth during World War II.
 
I want some mods to existing games that set them in Harry Turtledove alternate history timelines. An HOI 4 mod set in the Timeline-191 universe would be a lot of fun. It would also be very fun (imo) to have an HOI 4 mod set in the Worldwar timeline, where aliens with roughly 21st-century military technology invade the Earth during World War II.
Nice idea. There's probably a ton of awesome material out there, in the form of novels, tv shows, whatever. How about a game based on The Expanse novels and/or tv show? Or what about the original Starship Troopers novel, with powered suits of armor that jump over buildings and [stuff]?
 
Or what about the original Starship Troopers novel, with powered suits of armor that jump over buildings and [stuff]?

HELLDIVERS

downside is that it's only 2.5d, but this game is basically Starship Troopers.
 
Nice idea. There's probably a ton of awesome material out there, in the form of novels, tv shows, whatever. How about a game based on The Expanse novels and/or tv show? Or what about the original Starship Troopers novel, with powered suits of armor that jump over buildings and [stuff]?

Powered suits of armor...aliens that can be referred to as "bugs" without being too stretchy about what bugs are...

That would be Half-Life.
 
How difficult would it be to make a 3D SimTower clone? IsoTower seemed to have died so I guess it’s not easy. I have the digital art down and I know exactly what I want to happen but I cannot for the life of me make the jump from 3D array battleship setup (in console) and unused graphics packs (used for advertisements).
 
The recent indie hit, "faith", was an interesting showcase of how you can make something decent even with c64 gfx and sounds. Of course it later on got cool animation/ cutscenes added, which make it a lot more stylish.
"Faith ii" apparently is released now (?).

It is a horror action/adventure.
 
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