Posts of Ideas for Computer Games

Tholish

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The idea is that rather than just discussing existing games, or discussing possibilities for games that don't exist by referring to these ideas tangentially in other topics, those that have ideas for games that would have to be made from scratch could have a place to post ideas for new games. Originally I put this in Off Topic, but was told it was it was, er, off topic there.

Here's one I just thought up.

Planet 3

Turn based strategy. The task is recolonizing "the home planet" after evacuation to deep orbit spaceships filled with cryosleep capsules (or maybe to a nearby colony world that has now become untenable) following a multi pronged catastrophe of plagues, envirnomental collapse, war, and economic ruin.

The world map has 3 sections: two circular maps representing habitable regions that are at the cool poles, and one cylindrical connecting section that represents the uninhabitable wasteland away from the poles (which can still be paseed through and exploited by or in machines or by the genetically enhanced).

Colonies are planted at each pole, but there is ahuge tendency to fragmentation of factions. There are various hazards such as mutants and old robots (these can even become factions if left around long enough). Of course treasures also exist in the ruins. You can assume leadership of either polar gov, or let the m autoplay a while and accept leadership of another faction when it emerges. Eventually aliens arrive, and if you are not strong enough by then they will defeat you, so its a race against time.

Should be readily moddable to an emulation of other games.
 
Here's another one
My idea is to create a Turn Based Strategy Game of my dreams in phases of increasing complexity.

1. Claim. This will be TBS reduced to the most basic level. The board is a grid of identical green squares, and each player starts with an army which is represented by a black bordered square of his national color filling its terrain tile with the strength of the army displayed by a numeral. Each player also has a global Wealth variable. Armies can be moved one square per turn through a tile face (not diagonally). The last player to have an army in a square owns that square, and the square turns from green to the player’s national color until someone else captures it. Each turn, each player’s Wealth increases by one for each square he owns. Each turn, each player’s Wealth decreases by one for each strength point of Army that he owns. This is deducted when the army is moved, or tapped off as not moving, and if the player doesn’t have the money to pay the army being moved it vanishes (or declines in strength by the amount underpaid, if stronger than level one). During his turn a player may also build new armies anywhere in his territory, which always start at strength 1 and cost ten points of Wealth. When an army enters a square occupied by a friendly army, the two merge to add up strengths and become one new stronger army. When an army enters a square occupied by an enemy army, the strengths of the armies are compared and both adjusted based on relative strengths. The weaker (or defender if equal) is downgraded by the difference between the strengths. The stronger (or attacker if equal) is downgraded by the square root of the remaining strength of the weaker (or defender) rounding down. After a battle, if the attacker is stronger than the defender, the owner of the defending army must move it to some other square (any other than the one the attacker came from) so the attacker can move in. Which square the defender moves to is up to the owner of the defending army, but the consequences can lead to the formation of new army conglomeration if the square fled into contained friendly troops or to the fleeing former defender becoming an attacker as it moves into an enemy occupied square.

I'm finished with this one, its attached to this post. < 3000 lines of C++ (entirely ifs whiles and arrays) using PTK for graphics.

2. Phalanx. This will actually be a tactical game. Two players start with a number of phalanxes on a grid of squares. A phalanx is represented by an arrow pointing to a face of the square. Each turn, a phalanx can move forward one square or rotate 90 degrees. A phalanx may attempt to move into a square occupied by an enemy that is facing the back at it, but both will be destroyed. If a phalanx moves into a square occupied by enemy units facing some other direction, all enemy units are destroyed and the square is captured.


3. Phalanx Claim. This combines Phalanx with Claim into one game, in which battles between armies on the Claim board are resolved by going to the Phalanx board to fight it out. The number of phalanxes each side gets will be determined by the strength of the army that entered the battle, and retreat is handled by moving phalanxes off the edge of the board. In this version, armies, once assembled, can always be broken up.

4. Phalanx Claim 4X. This adds just enough to the basic Phalanx Claim game to make it qualify as a 4X (explore, expand, exploit, exterminate) game without creating new mechanisms that will not be in the later versions. Now Wealth is not a global variable, but instead Wealth units are created by and in each square every turn and can only be spent by moving them to the point where they will be used. Thus you have to move supplies to armies in the field, or to where you want to build a new army. These wealth units can be captured, so when you capture a square containing them, you capture the wealth units. Additionally, you can spend wealth units to develop a square, which increases its production. By spending a wealth unit in a square you can also survey it for its maximum development potential. Each time you do so, you check for one additional possible level of maximum development. Once you know this potential exist, you can develop it further. The concealed map of maximum development levels is generated randomly at game start. Other than that the game is the same as Phalanx Claim.

5. Battle Claim. Battle Claim is Phalanx Claim 4X on steroids.

a. There are more types of combat units than just Phalanxes. There are now Archers, Chariots, and Swords. The original method of battle resolution from Claim is revived. Phalanxes have a strength of 4 to the front and 0 to other sides. Swords have a strength of 2 to all sides and don’t have to turn. Chariots are directional, with a strength of 3 to the front and 1 from other directions, but they get 3 moves per turn, so they can move 3 squares straight ahead or turn, move forward, and turn again, or do a 180 and advance one. Archers move like swords but have no defensive combat value. They can only attack an adjacent square or one two squares away, with a strength of 2. A unit attacked by archers can “raise shields,” which reduces its combat strength in all directions by 1 and prevents movement, but makes it immune to the archer attack. Also, archers attack a square, including all units in it, not just one unit.
b. There are more types of resources than just Wealth. There is now construction, food, cattle, metal, and goods. Everything consumes and produces these. Improving terrain costs construction. Armies and improvements consume food. Resource units consume goods. Town improvements produce goods while consuming metal, cattle, food, and construction. Armies are built with various amounts of metal, cattle or goods depending on unit type.
c. Terrain is less abstract. The initial productive value of terrain varies, and the color of the terrain indicates what kind of terrain is in the square. There are now water, ice, highland, wetland, wasteland, and plains. Wetland has a high probability of having a forest bonus, which can produce construction, and highland and ice have a smaller chance. Forest must be removed to build a farm. Mines can be built on any land square to produce stone, and building a mine also has a chance of revealing any hidden metal. Some metal is not hidden. Metal has a higher chance of being unhidden in highland. Farms can be built on wetland to produce food directly and constantly and cattle occasionally. Some squares also start with cattle productivity. Herds can be built on wetland or plains, and they produce cattle which can be used as food or for production. All kinds of resource units can be converted to waterborne resource units on any water or wetland square, at a cost of goods, and can move on both wetland (which is assumed to have rivers) and water. Water can also be improved to fishery, which produces food. Combat units can also be converted to sea carried variants at a cost of goods, but on converting back into land variants (which can engage in battle) they must spend goods to convert back to sea variants again. Additionally, there the galley, a unit that can engage in combat on water (and attack others of its kind on wetland and defend there against land units). Galleys function like chariots in battle, with forward combat strength equal to the number of squares moved in a straight line that turn plus one.
d. The terrain generator for Battle Claim generates a land mass that goes from arctic to tropics vertically and from eastern sea to western sea horizontally, without wrap. Highland will tend to be along the center line, ice at the top and dry areas in the tropics, but variety and multiple continents are possible.

6. Advanced Battle Claim. Advanced Battle Claim is Battle Claim with tech progress. No longer stuck in an eternal bronze age, the world can evolve. Now towns can have multiple types of improvements. All improvements and units have a chance each turn of becoming some new more advanced type of improvement or unit, with all this entails. In addition, the game map has diagonal wrap, with 9 regions similar in size to the one in Battle Claim. Battles are played not on a flat featureless field, but on terrain of the “province” where the battle is being fought.
a. Each province has an actual terrain generated for the province as a whole and this is fought over and recorded for consistency in case there are future battles there.
b. When not in war, military units have an infinite rate of movement, but cannot enter enemy territory. To enter enemy territory, a player must take the game to War Speed. At War Speed ordinary resource units are not shown. Wherever resource units are produced and consumed, war buck equivalents are produced and consumed instead. For construction and combat unit production it takes 50 war bucks to equal one regular resource. Wherever regular resources were stored, the represent 50 war bucks each, but if consumed they will not be there after the war ends to support regular needs. Regular resource units represent activity over a long period. After 1000 turns at War Speed, another Generation turn must be executed.
c. Strategic Aircraft get a second move on the battle map at War Speed after battle resolution phase. This reflects sorties, and movement rate in battle is prorated to represent that time over the battlefield is only part of flight time. The more distant (relative to range) that the target is, the worse that ratio. Normally the worst possible rate is still sufficient to move all the way across the board in one battle turn, thus speed in air on air battles is not affected by the ratio, just the number of iterations of dogfights. German planes can fly to Britain and fight British planes once, but have to go home and refuel then by retreating off screen.
d. On battle screen, all movement is like this: each turn, a unit gets a number of movement points equal to its speed. Players take turns moving units until all units that have movement points left have moved one square. Thus faster units just keep going longer.
e. If an army enters enemy territory, battle is joined. After all players finish moving, all battles are resolved at battle speed, one province at a time. After 50 turns on a battle screen (or one side is left with the field) the next battle or next turn at War Speed ensues. Unresolved battles are left unresolved for the next resolution phase.

6. Space Claim. Space Claim is Advanced Battle Claim with a larger map and future techs. It has multiple diagonal wrap planets moving on a disk shaped solar system map. This is treated exactly like a different part of the world that units can teleport to (only from specific spaceports on planets) and into (only at the planets location at the time) out of (only to the location of a planet). Space is its own kind of terrain, with its improvements and resource units and Generation Turns and War Turns. However, there are no battle maps in space. Combat is resolved there immediately the War Turn level. (Alternatively perhaps space battles will be resolved in an RTS form) Also, movement on the solar system map is by acceleration. A destination is set and trajectories are calculated and fuel expended. Acceleration ensues and location calculated from it is translated each turn into tiles and turns. Actually there are separate maps for inner and outer solar system and for orbital areas around planets.
 

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I always thought a sim earth remake of sorts would be pretty cool. More complex though. It would be like taking the failure of SPORE and making it a complete sandbox where you can populate it with creatures you create and then they interact based ont he planet parameters you make and can change. You design every living thing on the planet, from plants to apex prediators, and if you imbalance it too much then your world collapses and the game ends.

I envisioned it played on a minature globe playing service that you can freely rotate for view, You pick the axis tilt, year length, day length, add moons, tides react to your selections, brightness of the star and distance from it, makup of the atmosphere, etc. The map is just 50 square miles in total, all the ecosystems you care to create existing in minature.

No civilization, just a natural enviroment.
 
I've always wanted some kind of World War I nation-based FPS. Instead of the Hearts of Iron method where you attack with a division and you see a giant soldier moonwalking into another territory, you would actually see explosions from artillery and what not; that is to say, exactly what you'd see if you were looking from a satellite zoomed in to see all of France or what not.
 
The problem with WWI games is that in real life the war was static, so an faithfull video game would have to show the same. And thats not fun.

That and there is a distinct lack of weapons and unit types that anyone playing WWII games would instantly notice. Its the same reason why all the first person shooter Civil War and similar period games all failed.
 
But there are a significant number of games, in many genres, based on the Civil War. World War 1 game exist too, but are remarkably obscure.

In the end, I'd like a WW1 game of ANY type. Maybe it doesn't need to be a FPS, maybe it can be an adventure game, an investigation game, or a frickin' platformer, I dunno. Something!
 
I thought you were talking about FPS. I would imagine that a tactical WWI game would just revolve around players using heavy artillery to wipe out ineffectual assault infantry. It would be like an endless Zerg rush but without it ever working.

Not exactly what you want, but here you go!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Storm_(video_game)
 
The problem with WWI games is that in real life the war was static, so an faithfull video game would have to show the same. And thats not fun.

Sorry for being unclear: you would control the entire government of country X, not just the military. You choose how to motivate troops, how many men to draft, what countries to ally with, and all that.
 
The problem with WWI games is that in real life the war was static, so an faithfull video game would have to show the same. And thats not fun.

That and there is a distinct lack of weapons and unit types that anyone playing WWII games would instantly notice. Its the same reason why all the first person shooter Civil War and similar period games all failed.

Or maybe because there have been few civil war era shooters and they weren't very good games anyways.

WW1 was not all trenches like on the western front and even then there could be plenty of fun missions. Midnight raids on an enemy trench, mass assaults, or the Italian front with the Austrians in the Alps.
 
I would imagine that a tactical WWI game would just revolve around players using heavy artillery to wipe out ineffectual assault infantry. It would be like an endless Zerg rush but without it ever working.
Funny, that's not how the actual war happened.
 
I have a PS2 game called Civil war: a nation divided or something and it's pretty good. It's an FPS where you choose a side and advance through those missions. I would like to see that in a WW1 game. Playing as Britain, beating a mission hen going to the Austro-hungarian missions.
 
In fact WW1 involved commando style raids and daring exploits--it wasn't all "over the top." Also, there were more theatres than the Western Front. So an FPS like Call of Duty, except set in WW1, would not necessarily be without potential.
 
Funny, that's not how the actual war happened.

Yes, that is what happened. Artillery killed far more people in that war than any other weapon, including the machine gun. It got the name "king of the battlefield" from that conflict for a reason.
 
Yes, that is what happened. Artillery killed far more people in that war than any other weapon, including the machine gun. It got the name "king of the battlefield" from that conflict for a reason.

I think he's disputing the "Zerg rush" interpretation. It's completely ignoring stormtrooper tactics, and also the tank warfare later in the war.
 
I think he's disputing the "Zerg rush" interpretation. It's completely ignoring stormtrooper tactics, and also the tank warfare later in the war.

Do you want to guess the ration of tank to infantry formations? If you focus on the tank and stormtrooper portions, what you are really doing is ignoring 99% of the source material and just playing WWII in 1917.
 
The fact that artillery fire killed more people in the war than any other single weapon doesn't make all of the actions in the war "Zerg rushes". Variants of infiltration tactics were around for basically the whole war. Both British and German troops were doing that stuff at First Ypres during the race to the sea, for instance. 1914 in general is a pretty good counterexample, even in the West; for every Tuchmanesque description of Germans swarming and dying at Liège or French swarming and dying on the Saar, there's a Ludendorff story, or an early-morning bayonet attack like the German Third Army successfully accomplished near the St.-Gond Marshes. No description of Tannenberg could call what happened in the broken ground over there "Zerg rushes" into the teeth of massed heavy artillery. The Serbian front saw classical defensive-offensive fighting on both sides that didn't rely on artillery fire, too.

But hey, yeah, keep your All Quiet on the Western Front myths about idiotic, unconnected generals launching futile and costly human-wave attacks against prepared positions and sending their men to be slaughtered. Your "99%" - sweet made-up statistic - of the source material focuses on postwar writings made in light of the outcome of the fighting, and basically created the enduring myths of the war that historians nowadays have been working to explode.
 
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