Video game idea (log)

[anoni]

This is for personal use just as much as outside use, this video game may not necessarily be made but may be, so it's just here in case I forgot some of the systems

This is an idea of a video game I've had for a long time, now that I know how to program, the basics of modelling, sound design and knowledge on using the unity game engine, I am pretty confident it can be done if I spend enough time doing it, which is a big if. Regardless, here's the idea, you can comment to see if the idea is good, what you'd improve and so forth, the idea is not complete but here's what I have so far.

The pitch:

  The game is a Sci-fi top-down shooter, open world RPG, a unique genre which I haven't seen many games follow. Top down shooters, for those who do not know, basically have the camera in the sky pointing down, the player moves around the screen and the mouse cursor represents where the player is aiming. What is unique about this particular genre is it has this sort of action-play, while also maintaining an open-world RPG shtick, with characters to talk to, planets to explore, quests to do and a world to get engrossed in. The game will be a 3D game, however movement will be restricted to 2D. That is, you can only move left-to-right and forward-to-backwards, but models and terrain will be 3D and enemies may be able to jump and move in all three dimensions.

  The player will be moving around in the universe and will, in general, have a lot of freedom. The universe will be separated into systems which each have planets. A player may enter a system and land on a planet, this would be done in a simple, point-and-click way. Each planet will be filled with NPCs that you can talk too, ideally all NPCs would be voiced, when talking to an NPC a dialogue box will open in the corner of the screen allowing you to choose many different dialogue options. Each planet will have a general, unique theme and a quest associated with that, a planet may have a unique alien civilization, it may have unique geography or have a unique society, going to each new planet should feel like entering a whole new world distinct to all others. Each system will also have a broader them and a very long quest associated with it. Some quests may go across multiple planets and multiple systems, some may be very simple.

  The player will have an inventory system with a weight limit, similar to most current RPG's. The player can equipped a large array of weapons and can modify these weapons in a multitude of ways that will be talked about later. The player can also craft weapons, add weapon mods to weapons and so forth. The player also has armour. Three different armour sets can be equipped, a chest plate, leg plates and a helmet. As said before the player can move around with the arrow keys or wasd, and use the mouse to aim. When the player shoots the mouse cursor expands into a circle, the circle represents the accuracy of that weapon from that distance away from the player, the bullet could potentially travel anywhere within that circle, so a large circle represents more inaccurate gun fire. The players weapons will have a large variety, including projectile weapons, explosive weapons, energy weapons, grenades and melee weapons. Melee weapons are auto-selected when pressing the melee button, which will lunge the player forward a small distance to initiate the melee attack. You would also have special abilities that would represent your Darkon powers, manipulating space and time these would be capable of doing several things like teleporting, shooting bombs, making yourself invisible, summoning firestorms and so forth.

  Several minigame-like sub modes will be made, including computer hacking and a command style minigame (Called command missions). The command style minigame turns the game into a simple RTS, where you can command troops to attack certain settlements with a chance of them succeeding or failing based the troops stats and the settlements stats. It'd be turn based, and if a person failed you could have the option to jump into the settlement, in which you'd go back to normal gameplay and have to manually kill all enemies in that settlement or capture a flag or something. So this mixes the RTS elements with the real time elements, however you could only do this once. As you complete quests, you'll gain peoples support and you can use them as troops for command missions in the future. The final mission in the game will be a large command mission that will be very difficult if you don't have these aforementioned resources.

The Story:

  In the year 2152, humans perfected darkon technology (darkons being spacetime manipulating particles that all matter is made of), allowing them to manipulate both space and time, giving them the opportunity for interstellar travel. Humans branched our quickly and ferociously, moving to every star system, exploring everything and discovering the intergalactic society that was already in place. The Symbias, a union of aliens, and the Xenox, a brutish tribe themed alien race, were the two most dominant aliens in this sector of the galaxy, the Symbias being slightly stronger. The Symbias was in trade with the Xenox over some rare resources, however as the Xenox owned a monopoly on the resource they increased prices, something the Symbias didn't take kindly too. Discovering humans, which they called Revites, they found the hidden location of Sol, our area of space, which was still abundant with these precious and rare resources. The Symbias decided to invade Sol to get the resources, humanity was stuck in a bitter war with the highly advanced and greatly superior symbias, and they ultimately lost, with the earth being destroyed. Lost for contact, and losing more than half the race, humanity was lost among the stars, gripping to a dying race they went into hiding and tried to create a society as best they could.

  250 years later, in 2402, a small farm boy (the player) and his family (mother, father and brother) live on a small farming world, belonging to the human nation of the Colonist front. Humanity is a shadow of it's former self, comprising of three major nations and countless smaller ones, over 35% of humans had migrated to other races, including the Symbias and the Xenox as refugees. The human race was dying and in a bitter state. This small farm boy and his brother discover a meteorite that crashes onto their farm, when they touch they gain great powers, being able to manipulate darkons with their minds. Within a day a bunch of shady men approach the farm, they kill your father and your mother and kidnap your brother as you're forced to run away and hide from the threat. With no more family, but your brother, you have to undergo an adventure to find out where your brother is and what the stone you touched was.

Spoiler for Some later-game story concepts:

 
  The first quest beyond the tutorial would be to get off your home world, not so easy to do as your home world is being protected by the Unified Alliance, the largest human nation-state in the game, who has sent a massive blockade on the planet. Using your friends and your skills you have to smuggle yourself out of the planet, either sneaking in, disguising yourself or going in guns blazing. Once out of the planet, you have to find out what happened to your brother, you need to explore a few key planets to see if anyone has any information, these planets are not human planets but are Xenox and Symbias controlled planets as you have become a wanted criminal in the Unified Alliance. You quickly find out that the meteorite you had touched was an element, very rare rocks of unknown origin that give people time warping abilities, you also realize that people can get these time warping abilities artificially but not to as great of an effect. You eventually discover that the Unified alliance captured your brother and is holding him in a prison cell. You got to bust your brother out but when you arrive you find the jail has already been attacked, your brother is missing and you find traces that the people who attacked your brother were simply known as the "Black Elegance".

  Meanwhile a representative of the unified alliance meets with you. He claims the unified alliance did not kill your parents, but in fact your brother did accidentally when they tried to take him, due to him having elemental powers he became a massive risk to the national security of that planets home world. He says he will give you free access through unified alliance territories and will give you all information about your brothers capture if you help them out on a special task.  The Symbias has become the strongest empire in the sector of the galaxy due to them having a monopoly on most material, the Xenox, no longer with a foothold, has weakened in power. The Xenox is attempting to attack Sol and capture the once-owned human area of space from the Symbias, meaning they are at war. The leader of the Revite Military Front, the second largest nation state in humanity, has decided that while the two nations are at war, attacking them both when they are weakened is the best chance for humanity to recapture Sol. The unified alliance leader believes this is a bad idea as it would bring too much attention to the weak human race and asks for you to stop him.

  When attempting to find out how to get access to the Military fronts leadership you eventually find a Symbias Trooper named Arkos, who, once completing a main quest for him, will become impressed and will invite you to join the Symbias in the war, and support them for maintaining control of Sol, with promise of great reward for the player and his brother, as well as directing efforts to find him. The Xenox, as well, with the Grand Master Zeriphon, asking you to assist the Xenox, with a promise of helping the human race as a whole and bringing more balance to the galaxy. When the player finally discovers the leader of the Military Front, HE will attempt to convince you that taking the system is a good idea and will give the player the choice to support the humans. The player can now support either the Xenox, the Symbias or the humans in taking Sol, each with pros and cons. Each reach different and unique quest lines.

  During completing these quests, the players will come across a cult of humans, this cult are all heavily manipulated with darkon warping technology so they can create darkon powers like the player. They will see the player and notice his great darkon manipulating powers and invite him to join the cult, in which they worship three gods, they claim to know where your brother is. The player can either join the cult, or join Callius, an almost immortal super soldier (created by a race hundreds of years ago that got exterminated by another race called the sentinels) and his rag tag team of people to destroy the Dark cult. The dark cult quest line would need to be completed as well as the main faction quest line, before the final mission can start.

  Upon completing the dark cult quest line and the military quests you discover that the dark cult were in fact the ones who kidnapped your brother and have been hiding him in a secret fortress on the now dead and desert like earth in Sol. You discover that the Dark Elegance is in fact the reminents of the race that created the super soldiers that Callius is from, and that the dark gods are in fact real and they were the ones who introduced the elements into our universe! You then team up with whoever you decided to join up with, either the Symbias, the Xenox or the Humans, and you have a full on assault on Sol system, defeating the other two sides. Once this has been completed, you go to earth to save your brother, with all your allies and soldiers in toe. There a dark demon-like soldier appears, claiming that your brother is a useful source for them to enter our universe. They claim to be part of a separate dimension, and that they created this universe in order to get new resources and it was time to claim what was there's. The elements were part of a large stone with huge darkon reserves, the stone was used as a marker so they could enter into the universe. However, Callius discovered this and destroyed the stone causing a massive warp storm and shooting fragments throughout the galaxy. Your brother, with the manipulated and brain washed dark cult and Black Elegance, has had his powers tuned just enough that he is able to act as the new marker. You then have a final epic battle between you and the god-like demon, when he is destroyed you can save your brother, though the demon will claim that they will invade the galaxy anyway, though it'll take more time. Alternatively, if you decide, you can sacrifice your brother in the name of the Dark cult, circumnavigating the final boss fight, but causing a bad ending where the Realm creatures can invade the universe. A final reel comes on during the games completion that informs the player of his actions and the consequences that they have resulted in.

[anoni]

  Skill: Like many RPGs this game will feature a skill list with a set of skills that can go from 0 to 100. There will be several skills available, here is a short PROTO-list with descriptions of each skill. Note: This list is not final and probably will change

•   Strength: Determines carrying capacity and melee weapon damage
•   Agility: Determines speed, sprint stamina, side-roll distance and melee weapon speed
•   Marksmenship: Determines visibility range and also weapon accuracy
•   Science: Determines XP gain and also analysis ability (see later)
•   Engineering: Determines crafting and repairing ability
•   Endurance: Determines health, damage protection and armour stats
•   Persuasion: Determines reputation and fame stats, as well as barter and persuasion property
•   Strategy: Determines Commander Mission gameplay and Companion stats
•   Power: Determines Darkon power XP gain, Darkon power strength and Darkon power regeneration
•   Brutality: Determines weapon damage, gore content and enemy fear level

   Here are some special comments about each of the skills

•    Science controls the "Analysis" ability. When you discover a new weapon or item you've never seen before you can Analyse it to increase some of it's stats and add an article about the item to the codec. Each item you can analyse can be analysed (with maximum science) 3 times, and the effectiveness of the analysis depends on your overall science. When analysing an item you have to choose what part to analyse which relates to what stat you want to improve, for example you could analyse a weapons muzzle to increase it's accuracy, or analyse a weapons ammo container to increase ammo capacity. Once a weapon type has been analysed you cannot un-analyse it and that weapon type will stay analysed for the rest of the game. Armour and items that misc can also be analysed, to reduce their weight, increase their cost or increase their potential crafting use.
• Power increases your overall darkon power effectiveness, but power has it's own independent XP system, that relates to how often you use that power. People who use the darkon powers a lot will eventually get more darkon power XP to unlock new darkon powers or upgrade their old ones. However, the more you use darkon powers the more "corrupted" you become, becoming corrupted increases your power, strength, endurance, agility and brutality stats, but decreases all your other stats. You also occasionally here voices talking to you and see hallucinations that can act as enemies, however being corrupted is useful when dealing with the Dark cult, who are all corrupted as well.
• While "100" is the max limit for each skill when leveling up, it's possible to go over by wearing armour or enhancements that increase the skill. For example if you have a science of 100, but wear a lab coat that increases your science by 10, the game will work as if your science was 110.

Armour:
  The player can wield three different components of Armour, these components are leggings, chest plate and helmet. Each protect different parts of your hitbox. As said before, the game is 3D but only has 2D controls, because it's 3D guns have a three dimensional spread, which means not only can they hit you in different places longitudinally but they can hit you laterally as well, so bullets can hit your legs, chest or head and the armour you're wearing for that area will determine your protection from it. Armour has the following three properties

• Hit Points: This is how many hit points your armour has, it acts as health for the armour. Armour can be repaired but if the armour runs out of hit points it breaks. Armours hit points are generally much greater than health (health might be in the range of hundreds, while armour in the range of thousands)
• Deflection chance: Every bullet you hit has a chance of being deflected by the armour, in which case the damage the bullet would cause gets directly impacted to the armour causing no health loss and only armour loss. For example, if a projectile did 100 damage and your armour deflected it, you'd lose 100 armour but 0 health.
• Absorption percentage: If a bullet does not deflect, your armour absorbs some of the damage, which is given by this percentage. If the absorption, for example, is 20% then the armour would absorb 20% of the damage and you'd lose 80% of the health you'd normally lose. The armour also gets damaged but only by half the damage that was inflected by it. For example, if a projectile did 100 damage and your armour absorbed 50% of the damage, your armour would only take 25 damage and you'd take 50 damage.

  So you might have an armour that has a high chance of deflecting the bullets, but a low absorbing percentage. You might have an armour that does not deflect and only absorbs. When a projectile is deflected sparks fly off your armour so you know it was deflected, otherwise blood comes out and a detection sequence (like a small flash) comes up to show you've been hit. Armour also has special modifiers that can change it's durability, like resistance to fire, or ability to heal hit points.

  Armours can also be modified by the player via two mechanism

• Reinforcement: Armour can be reinforced with certain materials that the player finds. These include things like strong alloys or advanced technologies. Reinforcements generally can give a high benefit, but also come with a loss. For example, you may add a strong titanium alloy to your armour, which increases its durability at the expense of making it heavier and reducing speed. Or you may add a shield to it, which gives it a regenerating shield, but at the expense of having the armour use power cells, etc.
• Finish: Armours can also be given finishes such as rust proof coatings or protective coatings. Finishes, unlike Reinforcements, usually have no negative side effect but the advantage they give is generally smaller than a reinforcement.

[anoni]

So for the last two weeks I've been working on actually starting the game and It's going well so far. Lets have some screenshots (Keep in mind I'm not an artist so the graphics are all Dev textures, so the final game will obviously look pretty, if you want to be an artist for the game (You will be payed) post below!)








So what have I implemented. Lets see

Gameplay:

• Character Movement, Character faces cursor
• Cursor expansion that represents the spread of the weapon (Second screenshot was midway cursor expansion so it doesn't accurately represent spread but it expands to be larger later)
• Firing mechanic
• Weapon switching mechanic
• Health and Armour system described in the above post
• Added an advanced "ActiveEffect" system that allows you to modify code anywhere within the project in a modular and easy way. This basically gives you the ability to add "Modifiers" to almost anything, including weapons, projectiles, health, and so forth.

Weapon System:

• Expansive Weapon system that makes adding new Weapons, weapon types, ammo, and so forth, incredibly easy
• Allows for versatility, weapons can be of all shapes and forms and they integrate to the system really well
• Right now 14 different weapon stats control how the weapon moves, but more can be added easily. These include things like number of projectiles fired, damage, reload speed, fire rate, speed of projectile, weight of weapon and so forth

TO DO:

• Implement Skill system
• Implement Inventory screen, selection, adding, removing, chests and so forth
• Implement basic AI

[anoni]

Update on my game, you can see it looks a bit more complete

Please ignore the UI in the first three screenshots (the last 2 are ok) as I forgot to set a parameter and couldn't be bothered retaking the screenshots

Picture 1: Player vs 5 enemies
Picture 2: Enemies shooting player
Picture 3: Player shooting enemies
Picture 4: Player getting items from dead enemies inventory
Picture 5: Player conversing with a friendly enemy.








I have someone working on making a better UI so don't worry about that! My brother made the map, it's just a test map, but I've added a lot of stuff to the game.

I've all three things I said I was going to add, AI system, Inventory System and Skill System.

I also added an Aid system, Dialogue System, Transfer system, Better character system, Improved Item system, and so forth.

Now you can add a new weapon or armour or aid into the game without doing any scripting, no longer running through a test framework but straight from unity's inspector so it makes making maps like this heaps easier.

On set for making a demo level before march, hopefully we can make that goal! At this rate we should be able to.

Need to make melee weapons, a Quest system (important), Better UI (got a person working exclusively on that) and a minimap, as well as things like explosive weapons and what-not. Got a lot to do and not much time to do it but I think we can make it!