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[Maqrkk]

Idea: Multiplayer Text Adventure Shooter.
Details: Players use typical Text Adventure commands to interact and eventually kill each other. Map will have randomised rooms, randomised weapons.

Tools:

• FlashDevelop
• Visual C# 2010 Express
• Player.IO
• Flixel

Progress:

• Day One

Currently:

• Experiment with server code some more.

[Melly]

Welcome to TIGSource. Please enjoy the multiplayer bloodbath.

[Maqrkk]

Thanks!

My current idea is to make a 'strategic' teamplay game. But that would require more than 2 players, so this may be revised at any time. Both team exist of pickles, obviously, and there is one team attacking, and one team defending at any time. One of the attackers will have the ball, and the goal is to bring this ball across the field behind the other team for a touchdown. If an enemy players collide, a minigame will occur. The minigame decides which player 'wins', and the losing player will be stunned for about 2 seconds. The ball carrier will have some sort of 'debuff' which will make them worse at the minigames, or make the minigames harder. If the ball carrier is defeated in a minigame, the enemy player becomes the ball carrier and the team roles now switch.

Sounds ok in my head. Not sure how much of this I will be able to pull off, lol. But it sounds so much fun I'm giving it all I got
Lots of research and fun ahead!

[Maqrkk]

I'm getting different ideas for different games now. Need to decide what's most fun to do.

[Sos]

Minigames are a pain, you sure about this? Also, think small, better to have a finished shitgame than a barely-started masterpiece! Also, I love shitgames!

[Maqrkk]

Minigames are a pain, you sure about this? Also, think small, better to have a finished shitgame than a barely-started masterpiece! Also, I love shitgames!

Why are minigames a pain? If they're quick, they could work, right?
I've put that idea on hold though, I've just updated the first post with a new idea.

[Maqrkk]

Too many ideas -_- Need to decide on one thing and go with it. Currently I'm thinking just multi-player turn-based minesweeper could work, but that's not very new in any way.

I like the saboteur idea alot, but I don't think different minigames would work, somehow. They'd become repetetive quite fast I'd think.

[Maqrkk]

I finetuned the idea for the pickle game a bit, essentially leaving out 'minigames', and making it more fun. It'd still require atleast 2v2, most likely 3v3 though.

Another idea I had can be 1v1. And I think I may be able to pull that off alot better. It'd be an interactive multiplayer shooter. So you'd have to type in commands to do everything. Example:

LOOK
You're in a green room. To the north is a door. To the east is a door. To the south is a cupboard. To the west is a painting of a pickle.

EXAMINE CUPBOARD
This cupboard contains a bottle of peanut butter, a book, three little balls and a revolver.

PICK UP REVOLVER
You pick up the revolver.

GO NORTH
You go through the door into another room.

LOOK
You're in a yellow room. Yada yada. Standing besides you is EnemyPlayer532.

EQUIP REVOLVER
You equip the revolver.

SHOOT ENEMYPLAYER532
You shoot EnemyPlayer532. He drops dead to the floor. You get a point.

Etc.
I'm liking this idea so far, could be pretty funny I guess. I'm almost certain I'll go with this, as it seems best doable for me in such timeframe.

[Devenger]

That idea certainly has some strange consequences - for example, weapons with shorter names are faster to use, and players with longer/more challenging to type names take more time to hit. You'd also have the issue of cheating via the use of programs that simulate keyboard input (the equivalent of an 'aimbot' would be having a macro that auto-types your opponent's name, or something). Still, interesting in a quirky way. 

[LiquidAsh]

I like this idea too...  And hope for many interesting ways to kill your opponent along with some opportunities to counter/protect yourself from such attacks.

[Maqrkk]

I will probably randomly generate the maps (so players don't learn the maps and instantly own at them), and randomly generated weapons with longer/shorter names may actually be a good thing I think. Players with longer/shorter names on the other hand seems unfair indeed, have to find a way to counter that.
I don't know how I could counter cheating through macros/programs. Something to take for granted I suppose. I still have over a month though, so who knows.

As for countering from attacks, that is a great idea!

I'll start working on this today. Will probably make this in Flash, Unity seems pointless for this and I'm more advanced in Flash. For the title I was thinking 'Very Interactive Fiction', as a play on words for the genre 'Interactive Fiction'.

[Maqrkk]

Progress Report:
Researched Player.IO today (Thanks a bunch Chevy ), and thought up and wrote down some ideas for the game. Now that I get the basics of server-user interaction I may be ready to start work on the actual project. Productive day, even though it looks like I've done nothing.

[SophieH]

Hiya Maqrkk, good to see you taking part! :D

I really like the idea, and I'm thinking re: player names, perhaps you could have presets assigned randomly at the start? could even make a set of characters each with their own abilities maybe? like cluedo if colonel mustard carried around his old pistol from the war, but it jams super easy. and if in cluedo it was a deathmatch or whatever... >__>

ok, ignoring me might be best, but I like the idea anyway, looking forward to how it works out

[Maqrkk]

I thought about having a bunch of presets randomly assigned, and this is still my favourite idea at this point. I mean, it's interactive fiction, anything could happen. Maybe an optional gender toggle, or am I making too big a problem of tiny things? If the names are random, I think it would matter less if one were named 'Quintin' and the other one 'Bob'. That's just luck of the draw, not an abuse by one of them.

However, characters and their own abilities is also a great idea, and that would also take care of this problem. This would require some slight rethinking of certain aspects, but it sounds like alot of fun.
I'm going to have to admit I've never played Cluedo though, but that is not the point

Anyway, thanks for the kind words, I hope not to disappoint :D

[LiquidAsh]

Or maybe longer names could incure some kind of offsetting penalty.  Like it's harder to counter or heal yourself because of the longer name(?).

[Inanimate]

Longer names on weapons = deal more damage

Solution for player names could be to make them all six letters long, or so.

Anders
Smitty
Robert
Joseph
Johnny
Keaton
Alicia
Olivia
Andrew
Ashley
Sophia
Kaylee
Bernie
Adelle

etc.

[Maqrkk]

That's a very clean solution I'd say, Inanimate. I may go with that. Thanks a bunch

The Flash part of Player.IO I can now do pretty much from scratch. The server bit is still a huge mystery. To have full control, I feel I have to be able to write it from scratch. This is not the case yet. I haven't found a good guide to set up Player.IO server code from scratch. I'll continue experimenting ofcourse, until I tackle this.

[Maqrkk]

I think I'll make the lobby/room selection also in Text-Adventure style. There'd a be a 'help' command to get you started, but you'd type something like JOIN LOBBY to enter the chat/room selection. You'd use commands like LIST ROOMS, CREATE ROOM MAQ, JOIN ROOM MAQ, etc. Chatting would be by starting a sentence with a word that's not a lobby-keyword I think..

Once there are atleast 2 people in a room, it will be started (this is so the first player cannot get a huge advantage by exploring and gathering weapons before any other players join).

That said, moar experimenting!

[Inanimate]

You mentioned 'randomized arenas'... perhaps instead of just being entirely random, you can choose 'themes', like "THEME: LAVA" or "THEME: FACTORY", which produce certain tilesets / weapons / obstacles?

[Maqrkk]

For weapons and rooms, themes could work. And I may not have been clear enough on my ideas, but it won't feature any graphical output other than text. You will not see the map, that's left to your own imagination.