Dream Game

Much like the dream thread in the other section, Trig and I thought it would be
a good idea to dedicate a thread to our dream games. I'm curious to see what
kind of games you would come up with.

Recently Trigger and I have been playing Carnivores, a hunting simulator
in the same vein as Cabella's Big Game Hunter. The gameplay is pretty
straight forward: an FPS where you go hunting in various terrain types for
various prey items. As you collect trophies and enhance your score, you
unlock new weapons, new maps and new dinosaurs to hunt.

While this works fine on its own, my game could be so much better
than this. I would expand upon the hunting premise of the game by
including survival mechanics as well.

My game would expand on the hunting aspect of the game and include
other mechanics to fully emerse the player in the role of a hunter. The
player will begin the game as a novice hunter and throughout the course
of their adventure, the near death experiences, the desperate struggle to
survive, they will emerge as an expert hunter, as the top predator of the
savage lands.

Core Mechanics
My game will contain the following features.
- Open world enviornment, containing several different terrain types, each
including their own diverse wildlife and survival challenges.
- Real time random events & encounters
- Free froming wildlife, controlled by similar A.I to what we've seen in Skyrim.
- Crafting mechanic
- The survival Mechanic
- Tiered / Leveled Progression
- Multiplayer

The Enviornment
Part of the hunting experience will be the wilderness the player finds himself
in. What I have in mind is an open world very much like Skyrim. Anywhere that
you can see with your eyes, you can go there. There will be several different
locations that the player can travel to, and each place will include different terain
types, different flora and fauna, different enviornmental hazards and challenges
that will overall effect the players hunting prowess. Some terrain types will be
easier than others to hunt in.

Each location will offer unique things that are easier to find in other locations, or
are exclusive to those areas, requiring the player to revisit the places from time
to time.

Real time events & encounters
Much like in skyrim and runescape, my game will have random events and
encounters that the player will experience during their time in the game. These
events can be harmful or beneficial. This could be anything from the player
finding a crashed supply shuttle, landing the player rare supplies, such as
guns and ammo, maybe medical kits, or suddenly finding himself in the
midst of a dinosaur stampede with only moments to make a decision on
how to save his life.

Random encounters aren't like your typical RPG where you run into a monster
at any given time. Tho, the premise is similar. These encounters can include
running into helpful NPC's, or running into rare trophy creatures that you can
try to obtain.

Freeroaming Wildlife
Much like Skyrim's Creation Engine, the wildlife in the game would roam about
on their own free will, behaving like any other living creature would. Enteracting
with the enviornment, with one another (I.E Dinosaurs will hunt and graze in
differening places.); When injured, animals will either flee from the player
or predator in question, or will engage in a fight to survive. Players will find it
hard to hunt in certain places as surrounding wildlife may alert their prey to
the player's approach unless they're crafty enough to get by unnoticed.

Likewise, at any time, the player may find themselves to be the on the hunted
side, as predators will roam around looking for food, which includes the player.
Forcing them to either fight off the hungry beasts or flee for their lives.

Crafting
The ability to craft various items from seemingly nothing is a handy thing to have
in any survival situation, and in this game, that's no exception. The player will
be able to use the crafting mechanic to create weapons, traps, poisons, medicines,
food, specialized clothing, tools and other essential items to aid them in their survival.

Players wlll even be able to craft items that they can use to barter with NPCS in order
to get goods and other items otherwise hard to find for the player, or items that are
unique and one of a kind in the game.

Survival
The survival mechanic is a subset of features that make up the challenge of
surviving in the wilderness. This includes various skills and abilities that a
player would require to survive, muchless thrive in the wild, and requirements
needed to maintain top physical condition in hostile places.

The player will have to keep themselves fed and hydrated by living off the land
by foraging for food and water, The player will accomplish this buy purchasing
various skills and abilities through points that they gain from successful hunts,
achivements and missions.

Such skills as foraging, tracking, Identifying various animal and plant life,
navigation, creating traps and makeshift weapons, creating fire, building
structures, even rafts and other such things will become available to the
player the longer he survives and the more experienced a hunter he
becomes.

Tiered Progression
While there no real restrictions for the player as far as what creatures or
enviornments are available to him, don''t expect a new player to walk in
and take down a T-Rex with just a knife. Each location has it's own
hidden challenge rating that will always be a challenge for the player to
exist in, as the player advances their skills, those places will be a litle
easier to handle.

Players can attempt to hunt anything they want, but they will soon find
that they have to climb their way up the food chain from the bottom. They'll
have to work their way up to hunting the various prehistoric beasts in the
land, and along the way getting what I like to call Extinction Points. These
points, much like the game that inspired them, will be one of two currencies
in the game, unlocking various skills and abilities that the player will use, but
also special hunting opporunities and challenges that the player otherwise
wouldn't have access to.

Multiplayer
Multiplayer will include several games that players can enjoy,

- PVP Survival: in this game mode, two teams of players are pitted
against one another. One group players human hunters, and the
other group plays as dinosaurs.

The game will be a scaled down version of the main game. the goal
of the hunters is to track down and kill the dinosaur players. They
will have to scour, forage and craft their own weapons, medicine,
and other supplies needed to make traps or essentials to help
them in their hunt.

Dinosaur playes have two ways of winning. If the players are predators,
they must hunt down and consume other dinosaurs to become stronger.
As they get stronger, they can "evolve" into stronger dinosaur types
until they can hunt down and kill the human hunters.

If they're herbivores, then the players must simply survive as long as
possible. This can be accomplished in different ways depending on the
type of dinosaur the player gets. They could be aggressive triceratops
or pachycephalosaurus, which can attack and kill hunters. Fleet-footed
runners, such as gallimimus or pteranodon, who can run or fly away
from danger, or damage absorbing titans such as diplodicous or
ankylosaurus.

The last group standing is the winner.

This is all I could come up with for the time being, but once I think
up more, I'll include it here.

-Update-

It seems that great minds think alike! I stumbled upon this on a random
search for a dinosaur themed MMO!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/524168447/the-stomping-land

I suppose my dream game would be a huge mashup of nearly every "combat vehicle" series.   It would allow you to pilot mobile suits, X-Wings, Zoids, Evangelions, Mobile Armor, ZOTOMS, Orbital Frames, and every manner of starship and battlebot from every realm of fiction.   My major stipulation would be that every vehicle would have a fully-rendered cockpit view, complete with the ability to swerve your head around with the right control stick, thereby seeing the cockpit from different angles.

There would be an ever-increasing number of maps and game modes, such as free-for-all, king of the hill, capture the flag, team deathmatch, siege mode, blah blah blah endless playing potential.

This would all be multiplayer, of course.  Your "level" would determine what vehicles you could pilot.  Any mook can get in a Zaku I, but it'll take a day or three to upgrade to the Mark II. Don't expect to pilot the Justice Gundam until after a few months of relentless battle.  

Evangelions would probably be an ultra rare unit.  So ridiculously OP.


Anyway, I could go on and on quite a bit about this topic, but I'll save the rest for later.   Next time, I'll get really specific.

I'd kind of like something similar to that, but it should have a setting that lets it scale from 'mech FPS' to 'ridiculously hardcore mobile suit pilot simulator.' Though you can crane your head, in the higher difficulties this should allow you to see other control panels you need to monitor & interact with. You may or may not have the free time at those points to just look around, see the Earth below you, etc.

I'd also kind of like my 'bots to be at least based in reality. Laser weapons? Absolutely, but nothing supreme. No particle cannons that can annihilate an entire battleship & still have left enough energy in my suit for me to fly around at mach onemillion with laser swords flashing. Ground it in the reality of the first Gundam series, without being able to turn into a jet.

after playing dota 2 i think my dream game is r-r-r-r-r-REAL