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[Pishtaco]

Mostly on the bird-flight strain, but I've always wondered how fun it would be to see something from something else's eyes and have to re-learn navigation from that.

Obvious examples would be birds, who if I understand correctly have a much higher peripheral range than humans do. People have near 180 degree view-cones or whatev' you'd call em, but birds, because their eyes are on the sides of their heads, have much more. Hawks also see much further and clearer than people, and flies have hundreds of tiny eyes.

You get the idea. Many different creatures see in different ways, I think games that used atypical camera views would be interesting 'nuff to keep a player playing.

A lot of vehicle sim games have something like this, but it's in the way you move rather than the way you see. Moving as a plane has different rules from moving as a human, and part of the interest of the game is to learn how to do it.

They can also have different ways of seeing things, if they model sensor equipment. In Falcon 4, say, there are a lot of different radar modes, with their own rules. For example, some modes use the doppler effect to pick out fast-moving enemy aircraft from the slow moving earth, so if something turns to move at right angles to you, it disappears; or there are various weirdnesses with polar vs rectangular coordinates. In Dangerous Waters, a modern submarine sim, your main sensor is passive sonar. So you can tell what direction something is in from you; but to tell what it is, you need some experience of the different sounds things make, and to tell how far it is, so you can program a torpedo correctly, you need to collect data over time and make some clever guesses. And if you are getting your sonar readings from a towed array, you get the angle that the sound comes from, but you don't even know if it's from the right or the left.

[Lukas]

The Problem I see with the view-thing is that I don't think you can simulate that properly - on no kind of display.
Even if you.. say... make a large display... a human can't see a 180°-viewangle with his...  120° (or whatever) -viewangle.
And simulating insect-view also kind of sounds like a "gimick" since I don't see how you could do it except putting lots of little mini-displays on screen which all show almost the same. It may be an interesting experiment though.

Anyway, I also thought about this for a bird-sim and I'd rather work with other effects.
What about that:
When the player flies an eagle and searches for mice the camera adjusts itself automatically. So everything becomes unfocused except that small spot on the ground (where the mouse is).
Other birds could have alternative "filters" on their view... like infra-red-sight or something like that.

[Mr Dumle]

A game with a world that grows endlessly with user creations.
(Like maps, enemies, quests.. Not like LittleBigPlanet or HL Mods that are more stand alone creations than integrated in the game world.. )

If a computer could automatically put it all together with consideration to aesthetics and how good the user creation was it would be even more awesome.

[Mr Dumle]

i really like the idea of different places giving you diffferent things i think this could be applied to a collection type game and be really great! thats not what this topic is about though..

1. Take a world map with different colors depending on the surroundings. Forest, desert, snowy, lake, sea, mountain.
2. Make Pokemon clone game to Iphone
3. Profit

(Important!!! Rare Pokemon can only be found when on extremely high altitude on mount everest or on a plane over the Atlantic.)

[Bree]

Will do, Mr. Dumle.

[Doompuppet]

I've had some concepts that sort of fit into this category. (things that have never been done, to my limited knowledge)

1.) You're a werewolf. During the day you're a completely harmless human being, I mean you can't even attack anyone. The game world is populated with different humans with different abilities (Chef that can throw knives, Fireman who chops for heavy damage) that 'live' in different buildings, and areas OF those buildings. Now, during the night you're a Werewolf. Super-powerful. The problem is that when people see you, they RUN. They run faster than you, and they run right out the door of the building. They can't be found again that night. So the purpose is this - During the day, as a human, you need to set up different variables within the people's homes, yards, businesses, etc.

For example the Chef - In his restaurant you need to turn up the heat on the cooking food, remove the knobs w/wrench, and cut the fire alarm's power. Then when things start burning, the chef will move out from in front of the freezer door. You can then go in, get boxes of frozen food, and start stacking them in the building's exits. Come night fall, you wolf out and the chef can't escape.


2.) A game where you rapidly age. You're a clone with a very short lifespan, by design of the folks who created you. You've got to take out the company within the alotted time, and you're going to get older and weaker as things progress - so you'd better get all the good power-ups and weapons! You might be able to fist-fight grunts within the first 30 minutes of the game, but after that they'll be able to punch the crap out of you. In another 30 minutes you're not going to be able to survive a short fall without breaking something. Etc. This would rely on a timer that is consistantly counting up throughout the entire game.


3.) Pumpkin Carving side-scroller. No, really. You're a pumpkin-headed scarecrow, and the type of face you carve into your pumpkin (patterns would be unlocked through various means, which would make designing largely fool-proof) decides the type of abilities you have. This would be handled by clicking pixels to design the face, and the game recognizing if you've clicked all the correct ones to gain a certain advantage. You only get to carve your face at the beginning of the level (or after a death) so choose wisely for the area/challenge!

Carving appropriately might seem impossible from that description, but keep in mind that the size of the area you're carving on makes all the difference. Also, some basic, less powerful patterns are provided initially. Experimenting with drawing different things would be rewarded as you might stumble upon a very powerful ability!

Examples: Cat eyes gives you better visibility in dark areas. Sharp-toothed mouth gives you the ability to spit blades. Tongue-out mouth gives you the ability to use a vine whip from said mouth. Etc.

[Bree]

I love the pumpkin carving idea. I also think more games should have actual time limits as a gameplay motivator- maybe even ticking away when the game's not turned on. It'd be like Animal Crossing, except that instead of finding your village overrun with weeds, you'd be dead!

[brog]

1. Take a world map with different colors depending on the surroundings. Forest, desert, snowy, lake, sea, mountain.
2. Make Pokemon clone game to Iphone
3. Profit

(Important!!! Rare Pokemon can only be found when on extremely high altitude on mount everest or on a plane over the Atlantic.)

This would be both awesome and completely irresponsible.  Like Barcode Battler.
We need to think of a way that it could be done that would encourage people to be more adventurous and get more exercise, but that doesn't encourage people to burn more fuel or to risk their lives going to extreme locations.

[Doompuppet]

If you had the resources, you could design an odometer the user could wear. Depending on other factors within the game, etc. you'd discover different things depending on how far you go in a certain game-world "direction". (Yes I'm aware that goes beyond all scope of possibility.)

Edit: Actually that'd be more of a 'fit' for the Wii-fit dealie. And I'm completely going off on a different tangent, now... <_<

[pen]

1. Take a world map with different colors depending on the surroundings. Forest, desert, snowy, lake, sea, mountain.
2. Make Pokemon clone game to Iphone
3. Profit

(Important!!! Rare Pokemon can only be found when on extremely high altitude on mount everest or on a plane over the Atlantic.)

This would be both awesome and completely irresponsible.  Like Barcode Battler.
We need to think of a way that it could be done that would encourage people to be more adventurous and get more exercise, but that doesn't encourage people to burn more fuel or to risk their lives going to extreme locations.

Getting people to climb mount Everest to get rare 'pokemons' would be an EPIC feat!

[muku]

This would be both awesome and completely irresponsible.  Like Barcode Battler.
We need to think of a way that it could be done that would encourage people to be more adventurous and get more exercise, but that doesn't encourage people to burn more fuel or to risk their lives going to extreme locations.

Like Geohashing (not to be confused with Geocaching).

[nihilocrat]

2.) A game where you rapidly age.

Passage did this.

[Doompuppet]

Just that line, or the whole concept?

Ah, well. I am not a unique and special snowflake after all.

[nihilocrat]

Just that line. You age through an entire lifetime in the space of about 5 minutes, but there's no fighting anything or clones or whatever.

[Loren Schmidt]

What I love is that even if someone else already used an idea, the game they made almost never is exactly like what you dreamed up.  :D

[William Broom]

If you had the resources, you could design an odometer the user could wear. Depending on other factors within the game, etc. you'd discover different things depending on how far you go in a certain game-world "direction". (Yes I'm aware that goes beyond all scope of possibility.)

My friend had something like this once. It was similar to a Digimon but with an odometer in it. The player had to walk to different towns to get all the digimans or whatever they were supposed to be. Unfortunately the easiest way to do this was just shake it all the time. He was shaking that thing constantly for weeks, all through every class at school. As you would expect from such a device, the actual gameplay was horrible. Also whenever you travelled between towns (which took around 4000 steps) there was something like a 1/4 chance that you would be caught by a hurricane which would SEND YOU BACK TO THE LAST TOWN YOU JUST FUCKING WALKED FROM. God damn, that game was shite.

A game with a world that grows endlessly with user creations.
(Like maps, enemies, quests.. Not like LittleBigPlanet or HL Mods that are more stand alone creations than integrated in the game world.. )

If a computer could automatically put it all together with consideration to aesthetics and how good the user creation was it would be even more awesome.

Isn't that what LOVE does?

[azeo]

- A turn based strategy game where all players set up your turns by giving orders, and then they play out for maybe thirty seconds in real-time with no input as you watch (and scream as your carefully laid plans turn to custard).

RoboStrike beat you to that...

Which is stolen from Robo Rally  I love that game. In fact, I'm gonna call some friends and play it next week.

The recent "last remnant" actually does something like that too

[Tanner]

- A turn based strategy game where all players set up your turns by giving orders, and then they play out for maybe thirty seconds in real-time with no input as you watch (and scream as your carefully laid plans turn to custard).

RoboStrike beat you to that...

Which is stolen from Robo Rally  I love that game. In fact, I'm gonna call some friends and play it next week.

The recent "last remnant" actually does something like that too

Don't forget Advance Wars!

- An fps with different character classes, some players are hackers and can access computers at various locations to do things like open doors, steal data, disable security systems.  The soldiers have to protect the hackers.  Have lots of detail in the world and lots of modular computerised equipment so you can do things like camp in a conference room of some office building you've broken into, reroute the security cameras in the corridor outside to the projector so that your team can watch out for anyone approaching on the big screen while the hacker is busy trying to hack something.

http://www.moddb.com/mods/dystopia

[Candlejack]

Reverse survival horror(since survival horror has been done to death). You play as a humanoid plant/fungus/animal and eventually machine alien hybrid. You feed off fear and human blood. Human blood regenerates you while fear makes you mutate(since it stimulates all of the electro chemical reactions in the body to make prey tastier). You can also graft stuff onto yourself to make you a more efficient killer. This can either take place on a quarantined military base or a spaceship.

[JasonPickering]

candle jack I had an idea like that before, except mine was a 2 step game, where you were running from these creatures, trying to save the spaceship you were on, and if you got caught you basically switched sides, you became the mosnter and it was your job to make sure the ship made it to earth. yummy yummy earth.