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[antymattar]

 
CRAP WRONG BUTTON!
I will edit this. don't worry. Sorry.
...Ok.

So the game would be a turn based, side viewed strategy game.
Each player would be given and island. there would be a small gap between all islands. in the begging of the game, each player will be allowed to configure the layout of his island. He/she will be able to assign one building to each of the four areas. A summary of this would look like the following:



Each building(Farm, city, factory) will generate two resource(their specialty resource) and consume one other resource. This forms a chain of consumption and production. However, it is also important how the buildings are placed. Having the same type of building together will produce one more of the specialty product but consume one more of the required consumption product.



In practice, the city generates two "energy" units and consumes one food unit. The factory generates two "resource" units and consumes one energy units. And the farm generates two food units and consumes one resource unit. Having a city next to a farm will generate an extra energy unit but consume an extra resource unit. Having a farm next to a factory will give an extra food unit per turn but will also consume an extra energy unit. Likewise, having a factory next to a city will generate an extra "Resource" unit but will consume a unit of food(Don't ask why. Make it up yourself.). Also, if a building is next to the edge of the island, then it is as if it was next to the next part of the cycle(if it is a city then it would be next to a factory.) In theory, there will never be perfect peace between all of the resources because of the spacing/size of the given islands. Trade routes will exist and keep this in mind afterwards cause it has a twist.



Ok, now that I have covered the resource production part *Phew* , I can actually get to the goal of the game. The game originally takes place in a perfect society. One of the three islands has committed a crime. The crime being, they have nuked the fourth island(Not in the game) and everybody is out to determine who was the real culprit. Every turn the player will have to make a "political" decision to make. At the beginning of the game, there is always a random chance that the player might be chosen to be the culprit.

The goal of the player(if he is a good guy) is to find the island who did the crime. If the player is the bad guy, then his goal is to slowly dominate the whole world.

Every city has a level(size?) and an amount of "Population units" corresponding to their level. When ever a player wishes to make an interaction with some island, then he/she has to lose one(possibly more) population unit(s) for several turns(This can range from two to 10 depending on the interaction you want to make.). The trick here is that if you use up all your population units, then you can't make any interactions. There would also be ways to assasinate population units in order to lower the chances that a player can ever make an interaction/get back his pop-units.

My idea is, that if/when thee culprit fools one of the islands to believe that it was the other good island who did the crime, then the third island(blamed) will be cleaned of buildings and the land will be divided. This is where the fun starts because NOW it can turn out that, in fact, everybody made a mistake. At this point, a civil war would most probably occur. I have yet figured out how the player would control that but I will come up with it later.

Now for the grand ending: With the fourth island destroyed and the other one uninhabited, the resource chain is broken and the balance of world has been broken

A version of the game with no island size limit and special resources would look like this:


and here's what it would look like with the island limit and resources:


For now it's time for bed.

[antymattar]

Fixed. sorry. 

[shig]

Wow, man. Sound pretty good. Depending on the execution it could turn out to be pretty boring, tho.

Also, this should be hard to code... Are you just throwing a random idea you had or are you actually going to make this game?

[antymattar]

Actually, I aready have most of the building/grass/other sprites done and I do have an engine for building this stuff.

[dmizzle]

Hey!

I read through your game idea and it looks like you put a lot of work into this so far! That's awesome!

I definitely love the "mystery" aspect to the game and I think this would be an interesting moral dilemma.

Like I said, I really like the fact that you've planned out a lot of what you want to do and the only criticism I have would be along the lines of the previous reply. That criticism is that the player might get too bogged down with the resource management aspect of the game and not really appreciate the idea that you're trying to figure out who committed a genocide.

However, I don't want to derail you or anything like that. Keep up the good work and I'm sure once you get prototyping and throwing some code together you'll figure things out and it will all come together!

[antymattar]

ACtually, resource management is there only for special abilities. If a fascility does not have the required resource to operate, then it will generate only one speciallity unit instead of two.

Also, yeah, I have about five pages of design document with charts and everything lying in my room.

How I came across this idea was so- I heard the story of how missile commander was actually made in fear of there actually being a nuclear attack. And that the 6/9 cities represented his states cities along the west coast. I then afterwards saw the zeitgeist films. "Damn" I thought "I should tell this to others somehow.". Yeah, a game was born.

[Starflier]

I personally think that the resource management part of the game seems really light, I'm assuming that you can trade surplus resources with other players, yes?

I know you didn't ask for suggestions, so read/ignore as you like, but It would be neat if rather than the accused island being cleared automatically, players could construct missle silos (first destroying one of their industries to make room) and bomb the island that they think is the culprit. And then the evil island has the same ability.

Also, I think that more players would make the game more effective. With three players there isn't really much of a mystery beyond a coin toss, but with 4-6 players, the evil island will have more opportunity to play mind games with the others, who will have to use more deductive reasoning to decide who he is.

[baconman]

Only problem I see in the design, is it's very strictly formulaic with very little method or risk/reward to the constructions. One could easily produce circular resources simply by using one of each type. The fourth, apart from being completely inconsequential, would simply kick up production of an additional resource.

Now, what COULD make this interesting is to prefabricate a few islands that are already imbalanced, so that you'd have to deliberately produce abundances of other particular resources to balance them out; or that the relative placement of certain elements could affect the others (IE: food would have to travel to a town; so you'd consequently get food produced more rapidly by placing the town and farm closer than you would spreading them apart).

Cities, naturally, should consume 2 foods (since presumably, they house the workers that run everything else); and farms (to counter-balance this?) should produce 3. This would mean, naturally, that 2 farms can support 3 towns (ideally, by being located between them). You could also introduce "power plants"; so the towns produce a labor quota, and the power plants produce the energy. And have "mines" where an each island can produce something of value in proportion to it's size (10/landtiles), so smaller countries (and more "scarce" unique resources from there) have something of value to trade to larger ones in exchange for producing more goods than they have room to produce on their own.

Finally, one more touch to make things a bit more interesting: MIX UP THE ISLAND SIZES. Make it so some lands can produce abundances, and others have to specialize and trade; or perhaps endure some kind of fighting over resources if they're in need and have nothing left to give.

[antymattar]

Actually, I did have an idea to eliminate the islands completely and make it so that the countries slowly spread. Also, every building will have the ability to have one special facility that does something special(I originally had the idea that there could also be resources called bioshem. mech. intel. pollution and social disorder).

Since this is a *Perfect* society, the factories are fully automated and no workers need to exist. This is why people are all so smart.

Also, cities are built in such a way that they produce massive amounts of energy with a surplus.

@Starflier: I don't think it would be civilized to bombard other countries. But yes, It should be possible to build silos. My original idea was that there would be some missiles launched and that the silo is a defense mechanism.


Also, The thing that would increase the hardness/uncertainty would be natural resources unique to the islands. Every island might have a blow ground resource/power source(Geothermal) and so forth that other islands may not have.
These resources will definately change the production for the islands. Also, islands will each have their own projects(Energy plant/nuclear facility/waist removal facility) that they will slowly develop and the other islands will not know about it at first.

Also, you can have an island with one city and three factories. The trisk here is resource transformation. If you have 2 "resource" units, then you can turn them into "1" food unit, if you have 2 food units then you can turn them into 1 energy unit etc.

Each buildings special upgrades(One per building) will also change the [Biochem/mech/intel] production. I'l explain about those later. Now I must go eat.

[Starflier]

@Starflier: I don't think it would be civilized to bombard other countries. But yes, It should be possible to build silos. My original idea was that there would be some missiles launched and that the silo is a defense mechanism.

But, but... I wanna 'splode things up!   

Thanks for clearing stuff up :D I like the idea of the countries spreading. Kinda a tough break for the poor guy in the middle though.

[antymattar]

Not necessarely. There are three types of citties. A land city, a water city and a underground city(if they spread that is) And underground city can expand downward a bit but that costs a bit more resource-wise. ?if the underground city is buit on a mountain(the expanding idea has this) then it will be able to expand a bit more upwards too P=. The water city can be built on water tiles(the expanding one also involves water tiles) adn they have a few better improvements(but that is all still at a higher cost). A REGULAR CITY HAS HE ADVANTAGE OF EXPANDING A LOT.

[baconman]

What about random natural disasters? Something to disrupt the players' gameplay flow, especially if it opens up opportunities for the other regions? The playfield becomes a sort of probability chart, so that WHEN (not if) a disaster occurs, it will create a rift in one alliance's resources and open an opportunity for another's?

[the_dannobot]

This idea seems like it would lend itself really well as a board game.  That would be an excellent opportunity for you to prototype & iterate different variations of the gameplay mechanics.

Cheers!

[antymattar]

hmm.. I never thought about that. Could be a sweet idea.

[The Monster King]

may I recommend either making the world wrap or make it actually on a circle so that islands aren't on an edge with no neighbor?

[antymattar]

Very possible. I think that (if the game is ever going to exist) that could be an option. What I wouldn't like, is for the world too seem like just a bunch of islands.

[The Monster King]

why not, why should anything beyond the playable game world exist?

[Inyssius]

why not, why should anything beyond the playable game world exist?

For the exact same reason as games have graphics beyond the bare minimum necessary to convey their mechanics:

To inspire a thought or feeling in the player.

[antymattar]

why not, why should anything beyond the playable game world exist?

For the exact same reason as games have graphics beyond the bare minimum necessary to convey their mechanics:

To inspire a thought or feeling in the player.

What he said. Perhaps he whole thing might take place on another planet?

[Inyssius]

Perhaps the whole thing might take place on another planet?

Well, it depends. I know you don't want your game to feel limited, like three islands in a box--you want it to seem like there's a larger context, you want to provide a sense of scale. But beyond that, how do you want your game to feel? It's a thematic choice more than anything else.

(I think the Monster King does have a point, by the way. Making the map wrap around would either reduce the imbalance that could arise from one guy being sandwiched between the two others, or--even if that imbalance doesn't exist, and the locations are immaterial--reduce the feeling of imbalance that could arise from one guy being "stuck in the middle".)

So, ideas for "island" settings that could wrap around... maybe the "islands" are stylized representations of continent-sized civilizations. That could have a certain Cold War-era vibe, if you wanted--Russia, America, and maybe China, with the nuked "island" being Europe? Maybe the "islands" are the mindscapes of titanic dreaming creatures? Maybe they're the moons of a gas giant, or open-plan colony ships orbiting a fusion candle "engine"? Maybe the "islands" are the sides of one of many giant polyhedra floating aimlessly across an massive air-filled (or airless?) void, à la the Infernal Battlefields of Acheron? Maybe the "islands" are colonies on different planets, and the divisions between them are representations of the outer space that separates them? Maybe they're colonies on one very small planet, or cities on a small ringworld? Maybe they're steampunk islands floating in the sky, and no explanation is given of how they can wrap around? Maybe they're actually arranged in a more three-dimensional pattern on a flat plane, and the "wrapping around" is just an abstracted form of rotating around them? I dunno. Like I was saying, it really depends on what atmosphere you want to evoke more than anything.