New Project Need Opinions
by Jeff Dunant · in Game Design and Creative Issues · 06/04/2003 (3:56 pm) · 6 replies
You can see the project page for this here:
http://www.garagegames.com/index.php?sec=mg&mod=project&page=view.project&qid=2074
-------------------------Story Line-------------------------
The year is 2157. Many people have moved out to space and Mars and Venous have at least 4 million humans living on them each and more underway. This was known as the exploration period and many cooperations were trying find technology to make human life able to live and Mercury for the ever growing population. One cooperation known as Tri-Star found a temple on the surface of Mercury, excitedly they explored it and found a single gem. Using equipment they found out the gem holded information, they attempted to extract it and succeeded. What they found was another language written into many, many pages of text. Using markings on the wall of the temple as a guide, they translated the text. The people of the corporation now new so much knowledge from this text, many secrets that were supposed to be left secret were revealed. The corporation heded back to Venous and shared what they had found. Then one day, a man from earth was watching the night sky for comets when he saw the big orange dot that was Venus go out with a flash. He called NASA and indeed they lost all contact form Venous. NASA sent a ship to see what was going on but the ship never returned. The last transmission they got was on emergency frequency and only a couple words were made out: "Ships, advanced, blew up Venus." The public did not know what to think, but 6 months later, all contact was lost from Mars. Suddenly it became clear, the humans found out something that were not supposed to, knowledge that if used by the wrong hands could turn someone immortal, this race whoever they were are going to destroy humanity, because of something they found out, that they should of never even touched...
----------------------Basic Overview------------------------
This will be an online game. When people first create an account they will have a choice to be on the Humans team or The Keepers team. When they first create an account they will start out with a certain amount of money. With this money they can buy weapons and tech. At the end of a mission a screen will be displayed telling them how much money they have earned. They will earn money by killing bad guys, completing tasks giving by the task manager (more info on that later), or completing. objectives There will be 2 types of servers, client and campaign. Client will be servers created by other players and will be completely customizable. Campaign servers are servers that go along the story line. When a team on a campaign server has one (or whatever happened) that server will be shut down and points will be recorded for the team that one. After that staff or I will make another campaign server as soon as possible. There will be at least 3 campaign servers up at one time so if one was completed you could still go to another one. I am hoping to make 200 different weapons at least 3 upgrades to each weapon and 50 tech items. Since this is a lot of weapons to handle we will add more overtime until we have reached 200. There will be 4 roles in a game:
Defender: Defends targets or bases.
Advantages: (coming soon)
Attacker: Attacks targets or bases.
Advantages: (coming soon)
Engineer: Deploys turrets, sensors, etc. And repairs items.
Task Manager: Basically the leader. He/She assigns tasks to his/her troopers. Each task completed has its own reward in money. There will only one TM (Task Manager) for each team in a game at one time. When a TM leaves the player that has the most points will become the TM. TM's are placed in a TM building which is guarded with turrets. If a TM building is infiltrated and the TM is killed that team will have to wait 20 minutes before another person to become a TM. If a persone dose not want to be a TM the person in 2ed place in points will be asked to be one if he declines then 3rd place will be asked, etc, etc. If the TM is doing well the team can vote to recall a TM. The TM will be recalled if 60% or more vote for him to be recalled.
When a person dies in game he will have to wait 4 seconds to respawn. This time limit will increase by 3 secounds every time the person dies.The time limit will stop increasing at 30 secounds. If the time becomes too overwhelming a person can quit that server and his time will be reset, however that person can not play on that server for 20 minutes. Also during a game a person can choose to time out or disappear from that game incase he/she needs to do something but dose not want to wait the 20 minute time limit for the server. You can only use your timeout three times during a game.
http://www.garagegames.com/index.php?sec=mg&mod=project&page=view.project&qid=2074
-------------------------Story Line-------------------------
The year is 2157. Many people have moved out to space and Mars and Venous have at least 4 million humans living on them each and more underway. This was known as the exploration period and many cooperations were trying find technology to make human life able to live and Mercury for the ever growing population. One cooperation known as Tri-Star found a temple on the surface of Mercury, excitedly they explored it and found a single gem. Using equipment they found out the gem holded information, they attempted to extract it and succeeded. What they found was another language written into many, many pages of text. Using markings on the wall of the temple as a guide, they translated the text. The people of the corporation now new so much knowledge from this text, many secrets that were supposed to be left secret were revealed. The corporation heded back to Venous and shared what they had found. Then one day, a man from earth was watching the night sky for comets when he saw the big orange dot that was Venus go out with a flash. He called NASA and indeed they lost all contact form Venous. NASA sent a ship to see what was going on but the ship never returned. The last transmission they got was on emergency frequency and only a couple words were made out: "Ships, advanced, blew up Venus." The public did not know what to think, but 6 months later, all contact was lost from Mars. Suddenly it became clear, the humans found out something that were not supposed to, knowledge that if used by the wrong hands could turn someone immortal, this race whoever they were are going to destroy humanity, because of something they found out, that they should of never even touched...
----------------------Basic Overview------------------------
This will be an online game. When people first create an account they will have a choice to be on the Humans team or The Keepers team. When they first create an account they will start out with a certain amount of money. With this money they can buy weapons and tech. At the end of a mission a screen will be displayed telling them how much money they have earned. They will earn money by killing bad guys, completing tasks giving by the task manager (more info on that later), or completing. objectives There will be 2 types of servers, client and campaign. Client will be servers created by other players and will be completely customizable. Campaign servers are servers that go along the story line. When a team on a campaign server has one (or whatever happened) that server will be shut down and points will be recorded for the team that one. After that staff or I will make another campaign server as soon as possible. There will be at least 3 campaign servers up at one time so if one was completed you could still go to another one. I am hoping to make 200 different weapons at least 3 upgrades to each weapon and 50 tech items. Since this is a lot of weapons to handle we will add more overtime until we have reached 200. There will be 4 roles in a game:
Defender: Defends targets or bases.
Advantages: (coming soon)
Attacker: Attacks targets or bases.
Advantages: (coming soon)
Engineer: Deploys turrets, sensors, etc. And repairs items.
Task Manager: Basically the leader. He/She assigns tasks to his/her troopers. Each task completed has its own reward in money. There will only one TM (Task Manager) for each team in a game at one time. When a TM leaves the player that has the most points will become the TM. TM's are placed in a TM building which is guarded with turrets. If a TM building is infiltrated and the TM is killed that team will have to wait 20 minutes before another person to become a TM. If a persone dose not want to be a TM the person in 2ed place in points will be asked to be one if he declines then 3rd place will be asked, etc, etc. If the TM is doing well the team can vote to recall a TM. The TM will be recalled if 60% or more vote for him to be recalled.
When a person dies in game he will have to wait 4 seconds to respawn. This time limit will increase by 3 secounds every time the person dies.The time limit will stop increasing at 30 secounds. If the time becomes too overwhelming a person can quit that server and his time will be reset, however that person can not play on that server for 20 minutes. Also during a game a person can choose to time out or disappear from that game incase he/she needs to do something but dose not want to wait the 20 minute time limit for the server. You can only use your timeout three times during a game.
#2
06/05/2003 (2:02 pm)
Thanks, I was never a good speller.
#3
06/06/2003 (6:11 am)
It's OK. I guess many people stop reading after they found typos - it doesn't *look* professional, even if the idea is great. Good luck! 
#4
As far as gameplay goes, it sounds to me like it may be a little too punishment oriented. Sure, increase the respawn time but put a cap on it (like in Halo). Forcing the player to leave the server is a bad move b/c he might just keep leaving and leave your game!
Task Manager is a good idea if it is done well. Check out Natural Selection. I've heard that they have one of the best "task manager" implementations yet done. The one thing you might want to add is to allow the leading player to defer (some people might not want to be task manager) and for a way to allow the player to vote a bad task manager out.
200 weapons is a bit much. Even if you managed to generate that many you will find that the players will end up playing with less than a dozen once they figure out which ones are the best. I would aim for having about 12 distinct weapon types with a few variations within each type.
The campaign servers are a good idea but are going to require a lot of work on your teams part. Sometimes people are going to beat your campaign much faster than your anticipated. I would be sure to start out at least four campaigns ahead of what you let people play and strive to stay that far ahead at all times. Being ahead initally will also help you to know how long it is going to take your team to build each campaign. If a campaign takes longer than you anticipate to finish use that time to get ahead. Once a campaign is done, you can release it to the client servers and let people replay their favorite campaigns. Be sure to plan for the bandwidth and hosting costs for 3 24/7 servers.
Your game at this point is fairly generic. Nothing very innovative separates it from many other games out there. This is fine though as long as you can distinguish it from other games artisitically. Make sure you have a very cohesive and distinctive style. People should be able to look at your models and levels and instantly recognize them.
Don't get discouraged if you don't have people flocking to help you. Just start making the game (which will likely involve a lot of learning) and when people see that you are serious they will start to become interested. No one's going to make your game for you but if they see that you are making it, they will be a lot more likely to help you.
06/06/2003 (10:05 am)
First, a few things about your backstory bug me a little =) It's 4657 and we've only managed to colonize 2 planets? And NASA is still around? Sounds to me like 2157 would be more correct (as far as fictional dates go =P). "many megabytes of text"? Nothing wrong with that per se...just doesn't seem impressive.As far as gameplay goes, it sounds to me like it may be a little too punishment oriented. Sure, increase the respawn time but put a cap on it (like in Halo). Forcing the player to leave the server is a bad move b/c he might just keep leaving and leave your game!
Task Manager is a good idea if it is done well. Check out Natural Selection. I've heard that they have one of the best "task manager" implementations yet done. The one thing you might want to add is to allow the leading player to defer (some people might not want to be task manager) and for a way to allow the player to vote a bad task manager out.
200 weapons is a bit much. Even if you managed to generate that many you will find that the players will end up playing with less than a dozen once they figure out which ones are the best. I would aim for having about 12 distinct weapon types with a few variations within each type.
The campaign servers are a good idea but are going to require a lot of work on your teams part. Sometimes people are going to beat your campaign much faster than your anticipated. I would be sure to start out at least four campaigns ahead of what you let people play and strive to stay that far ahead at all times. Being ahead initally will also help you to know how long it is going to take your team to build each campaign. If a campaign takes longer than you anticipate to finish use that time to get ahead. Once a campaign is done, you can release it to the client servers and let people replay their favorite campaigns. Be sure to plan for the bandwidth and hosting costs for 3 24/7 servers.
Your game at this point is fairly generic. Nothing very innovative separates it from many other games out there. This is fine though as long as you can distinguish it from other games artisitically. Make sure you have a very cohesive and distinctive style. People should be able to look at your models and levels and instantly recognize them.
Don't get discouraged if you don't have people flocking to help you. Just start making the game (which will likely involve a lot of learning) and when people see that you are serious they will start to become interested. No one's going to make your game for you but if they see that you are making it, they will be a lot more likely to help you.
#5
-Updtated Storyline-
Changed Year
Changed megabyts of text to pages
-Updated Overview-
Put a max time limit, 30 secounds
Person with most points can decline the message for becomming Task Manager.
Task Maneger can be recalled if 60% or more people vote "yes".
06/06/2003 (12:20 pm)
Thanks for your help, I changed a couple things...-Updtated Storyline-
Changed Year
Changed megabyts of text to pages
-Updated Overview-
Put a max time limit, 30 secounds
Person with most points can decline the message for becomming Task Manager.
Task Maneger can be recalled if 60% or more people vote "yes".
#6
06/06/2003 (12:49 pm)
Looks good =) 
Torque Owner Gabriel Gambetta
Are these cooperations or corporations?
Are secrets reviled or revealed?
...and english is not my native language...