Actually, what I guess all are seeking in games today are flexability. I want to be able to move freely, no restrictions at all. I would like to do something like a vast gaming area to begin with. I guess the game would be a FPS cause it gives you a feeling of closeness to your character Anyway, when you have a the basic physics to begin with you can add some simple npc:s and structures. The main game would be in MultiPlayer but when you close the server the game state is saved so you and your buddies can keep on going later on. I´m jsut babbling right now, but face it, it would be kinda cool. Equipment and such would need some kinda generator since there should be lots of them. Ok ok, what would you do then (ingame I mean)? Well, co-op with your friends or move against them. Build strongholds.....attack....defend......get quests. The main thing is that it´s up to you as controller of the character. Well I know this already exists in MMORPG:s, but who wanna pay their fees? (Sorry all fans of the genre) Well, now that´s said. <>

The idea was that it should be a quite simple game. Not to much time should be put into the graph-engine design, rather make the game as fun as possible. At the same time there should be no movement restrictions, you would be able to wander of wherever you wanted to. Think about the game Halo. It was supposed to be like that before they started putting almost all their efforts into the graphics part. There you were supposed to be able to move wherever you felt like, even without any loading times.

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Keep in mind Halo was designed largely to show off the graphics capabilities of the XBox.

The "very" long term project im working on now is designed to work exactly like you are suggesting. In fact my game is designed to have all of the features so far stated on this thread. Works a bit like an MMORPG like everquest only there is simply no fees for playing and the multiplayer capabilities are not designed to be MMORPG as much as for LANs, mostly because of it''s real time combat system.

Sorry that I don''t really have anything productive to add to the thread though, I just found it amusing that someone described the perfect game to be much like my design. If anyone has any other questions about it though feel free to ask.

~Vendayan

Cool, so your actually working on something like that? I´ll try that myself when I get a better hang on this Dx stuff Do you have any screens or something or haven´t you got that far yet?

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quote:
Keep in mind Halo was designed largely to show off the graphics capabilities of the XBox.

IIRC Halo was being developed before MS announced any of it''s plans for the XBox - it was originally developed for the PC and MS decided it looked like a good flagship game for its nice new console, and then bought Bungee.

quote:
Actually, what I guess all are seeking in games today are flexability. I want to be able to move freely, no restrictions at all. I would like to do something like a vast gaming area to begin with.

This is a common but false holy grail. It is easy to play a game and think "Wouldn''t it be great if I could go into ALL those houses, wouldn''t it be cool if I could cross that impassable mounatain range, wouldn''t it be amazing if I could get in that spaceship and explore anywhere in the universe!"

It is slightly harder to design such a game that isn''t completely dull. I don''t want to spend days and days wandering around an enormous map trying to find something interesting to do. Unless you have some way of generating storyline dynamically, players will just get frustrated by having to explore this huge detailed world in the hope that one house out of 10000000000 has something relevent to the storyline in it.

Unfortunately, generating dynamic storylines is a little bit harder than generating unlimited worlds. There has been plenty of discussion about it here and in the game design forum, but I am not sure if anyone has any real results yet.

The main idea with the game was that it should be a MMORPG without the fee. You would be able to host a game through a local area network and play as much as you like without worrying about the costs. One other thing is that you wouldn´t spend to much time designing the graph. engine and instead focus on the playability. The character would have more to decide about in the world than just himself (like in other MMORPG:s). Build things, start own campaigns woithout restrictions. A more dynamic world that the character would be able to change. Trying to explain this is like trying to explain the matrix, you just have to see it by yourself.

sHaKaZeD