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[null & void]

Vision will be the most obvious source of horror. Here's another: the map will constantly mutate and change. Sometimes the ground itself will try to attack you.

Also, the enemy "Domain" (call: base) will be moving toward you for the first half of the battle, collide directly in the middle, then move away for the second half. The directions vary greatly. There's all a very good explanation for this, I simply don't want to let the cat out of the bag.

The game is already set up in a manner which directly deprives the player of information, and I had no clue until now.

Another, somewhat less obvious source of horror. Units die fast, but if they survive they can have their stats added to Diablo-style, causing a somewhat contrived fear for the units -- they're personalized, after all. You can name them and everything. But once they die, well, they're dead.

And the least obvious but biggest source of horror requires some explanation, I know of nothing like it.

Areas (basically a space the size of 1/4th of an 800x600 screen) have a score called "Atrocity". As killing goes on, Atrocity adds up and the land itself starts to become hostile. AI-controlled units get spawned in high-Atrocity areas, and go out to destroy things. Atrocity goes up faster with more demoralizing weaponry. Eventually, Atrocity leads to something called a breach, which is directly toxic to units and has some other nasty surprises.

I discussed breaches with a former General of the US Army and a couple RTS enthusiasts. It became clear that players would use them strategically to blockade their enemies. I decided to make this punishable by utter annihilation.

The player who contributes the most Atrocity to a breach will have AI-controlled units spawn and go after him first, not the nearest player. If he's got the infrastructure to ignore such small attacks and then opens another breach, things get really ugly.

See, multiple breaches increase the chances of VERY NASTY units being spawned. In fact, they're less like units and more like divine retribution. I called them "Qlippothic Avatars". They don't die. They get bored with smashing unrepentant bastardly face. If you are a terrible, terrible person who lacks basic human emotion, you too could be visited by one of the ten "I will eat your cosmological right to existence" Qlippothic Avatars.

I like this so far, because it adds a dimension to the RTS that most ignore. "What if we decide to tell the Rules of Engagement to screw themselves?" Plus it's kind of scary just to think about. But I'm aware it could be unbalanced in some way or another.

Ask questions. Make suggestions. Tell me I'm going about it all wrong and I really need to reconsider ever touching game design ever again.

I just want to hear what people think of my ideas for creating horror.

[Gainsworthy]

Mutating Maps, Atrocity and Qlippothic Avatars

I like this so far, because it adds a dimension to the RTS that most ignore. "What if we decide to tell the Rules of Engagement to screw themselves?" Plus it's kind of scary just to think about. But I'm aware it could be unbalanced in some way or another.

This sounds... incredible? I mean, I loves my RTS to pieces, but the genre gets familiar. To hear such a damned fresh take on the genre, well. It's heartening.

I love the idea of the maps changing, and attacking you. Reminds me of Dune, and the sandworms. Always jumping from rock to rock. Admittedly, had me scard for my units. I assume areas with a higher attrocity will mutate faster?

Speaking of attrocity, actually punishing players for making efficient kills in an RTS is a very interesting idea. Coming from one who feels pretty bad hearing the ethic "oh, I've got heaps more marines at my base" or "dreadnaughts are dime-a-dozen", it sounds interesting. As does the stat increases for individual soldiers. I imagine this corrupted area will fool and scare the player as well as killing them off. Though, a suggestion. The promise of occassional rewards appearing whilst inside the zone would encourage risky behaviour - sending in a small squad of elites to recover the artifact could be very scary indeed.

Finally, the avatars. Scary. I'm imagining some kind of unique Lovecraftian beastie.

Now, you've gone gotten me all excited and interested. Hope you keep up the updates and discussion! Also, as a pre-emptive strike, I'd really love to test any developments.

 

PS: You've been in discussion with an Ex-General? Impressive. Gained any spectacular insights?

[homeDrone]

Big jumps in the odds stacked against you sometimes horrifies me in good ways in strategy games. RTS or otherwise. 

Like way back in Heroes of Might and Magic, we would normally fight 50 or 60 monsters, 200 would be a huge fight.. so when one day I saw a monster icon that was listed as "Legion of Skeletons" I was thinking in my head "a legion in roman terms was a 1000 wasn't it?..naw couldn't be". It was. I was horrified. But eventually I figured out how to beat the level regardless.

There was another little moon management game I can't remember the name of now. You had the ability to make defense satellites which we knew were needed to fight an impending alien invasion. The aliens would come in these waves which weren't so bad. But then near the end, the alien wave was insanely huge. When it first arrived I was horrified. It was like 10 times what I was used to fighting.

Playing an SRPG lately, I finished a big close fight and was congratulating myself when the level didn't end and a second wave of troops arrived. That was horrifying.

Maybe the horror is the realization that you are not ready to fight what you see. That your current level of battle planning has not been enough, you're going to have to up your game. This can be frustrating in some games. But in the ones above, replaying the levels were not so frustrating. If there is room to run from the horror and build up, even better.

[null & void]

For reference: yes, Atrocity will cause HUGE terrain shifts, many of them very very bad, most just unnerving (extrudinghalf of a human torso before the head falls off and the thing crumbles to dust, as one example that I've thought of.)

Atrocity has many good things and is a necessity to "win" an encounter.

Battles are timed, because there's no need to build infrastructure during a battle. You "win" by taking away most of your opponents "Domain" (read: base) by adding Atrocity. (I should note there are other ways, but this is the most efficient.) Above a certain threshold of Atrocity, an area can't be Domain. When you lose some of your Domain, fog-of-war sets in over it, the ground begins to mutate, etc. (Tou can see everything in your Domain normally, plus the ground down't mutate.)

If you're REALLY incompetent, you can have entire huge chunks of Domain lost via a Go-like mechanic I call "breakthrough". If you can surround an area of your enemy's with a ring of Atrocity, everything in the ring ceases to be Domain. Buildings instantly crumble, units often flee to base. The only part of the base immune to breakthroughs is the main building, which I haven't named yet: if it's part of a potential breakthrough, nothing happens. Atrocity can be slowly returned to Domain by your builder units or the commanders. (So it's not a one-way street.)

One more thing about Atrocity. If somehow a breach opens up, you can level up your units without fear of reprisal. In fact, each Qlippothic unit (not avatar) killed lessens the Atrocity of the area they were in. It's supposed to add a very small PvE element to the game, as well as reward "fighting against evil". On top of that, units can be affected by status effects caused by enemy units, most of which increase Atrocity by great leaps and bounds while being EXTREMELY useful. (One in particular could very well create a breach all by itself: Fear effects double the Atrocity of an area instantly while causing enemies to panic and run around willy-nilly. It sounds useless until you realize how focused the mechanics are on precise control of units.)

The Qlippothic Avatars are going to be ectoplasmic forces of nature. Many will cover two whole screens. Those that don't will be unusually fast, think the Flash, or blink dogs. They are going to be less Lovecraftian and more gigantic representations of the sphere of destruction they represent. The Avatar of Thamiel, for example, will very much resemble a fallen-angel version of siamese twins struggling with obesity and a REALLY NASTY skin condition. (Representing the placement of Thamiel in the Kabbalic Qlippoth as "Duality of God" and "Polluted of God".)

EDIT: Oh right. Almost forgot. He's been a great help, Gainsworthy. He's very useful in discussing this with because he knows precisely what makes modern warfare work instead of playing like Shattered Galaxy, Starcraft, etc. There are reasons you don't use depleted uranium, white phosphorus, neutron bombs, etc. It's difficult to give the player that CHOICE, but discourage it. At least without frustrating them. He came up with Atrocity at first, I designed breaches, etc. He's been invaluable. If I had to give advice from him to others looking to make an RTS or Tactical RPG, it'd be this.
A: Players will do anything they can if nothing is stopping them.
Case in point: Prevalance of nukes in Shattered Galaxy and Starcraft.
B: They don't care about polite suggestions.
Case in point: Have you ever tried it? It doesn't work.
C: They are easily frustrated.
Case in point: Most people I know will never play I Wanna Be The Guy.
D: They lack basic human empathy once they start playing the game.
Case in point: I remember going to a forum where people laughed about setting random innocent people on fire in Deus Ex: Invisible War. Gamers are terrible, terrible human beings.

[Kegluneq]

If this is squad based a good idea would be that if anyone dies it's a game over. The player would be much more scared in an attack if he needs to make sure every unit makes it out alive. In an RTS it seems like as long as you have your base and some resource gathering units you'll be fine, because you can just rebuild your army. If you force the player to manage every unit it could create a claustrophobic game experience.

I believe in the punishment idea, but not this severe. If you ARE going for the squad approach I think a better idea is to have each individual unit specialized in different fields, but once they die they're dead. That's it. For instance: scouts see farther and are absolutely necessary, but if you keep them behind the front line then they're useless, moving them forward puts a valuable unit in danger. Snipers make excellent long range killers, but are useless without the scouts, which must be protected by the heavy infantry, which in turn can't take the enemy on alone without the support of the snipers. This way, the players don't get a game over the moment one of their soldiers die, but it would deal a heavy blow to their strategy. It also encourages heavy micromanagement, which can get pretty crazy and scary at times. Of course, there are many more unit ideas and relationships out there, but you get the idea.

[null & void]

I'm not going for the squad approach.

Alright folks, I found something pretty on Sourceforge called FIFE (check http://www.fifengine.de/ for details). It looks like it'll sooner-or-later be precisely what I need, so I'm going to use the current versions of the engine to hash out everything they support. Lots of ugly placeholders, lots of botched gameplay, lots of development-stage hey-I-wonder-what-this-button-does fun. -But- it means it's going to be stepping beyond the conceptual stage, so if nothing else it won't be lost in "hey guys I need an engine" limbo.

Right now I'm going to get to work on customizing the engine details, setting up a bunch of ugly grey placeholder graphics and making a prettiful HUD.

That is all.

[pen]

. The Avatar of Thamiel, for example, will very much resemble a fallen-angel version of siamese twins struggling with obesity and a REALLY NASTY skin condition. (Representing the placement of Thamiel in the Kabbalic Qlippoth as "Duality of God" and "Polluted of God".)

This sounds just like something I would draw 

[Lord Tim]

You could always pull a "The Mist" and make the Fog of War an active enemy.

Imagine what would be going through a player's mind when, after the fog clears to allow his unit to scout ahead, it closes back on him, and your unit is lost to screams of agony in the darkness.

I don't think that's been used before?

[null & void]

Pen, if you're up to drawing it, my art skills are abominable. I'm limited to terrible landscapes and some simple ghosts. The Qlippothic Avatars are going to be very much beyond my ability.

Lord Tim, that may sound like a good idea until you realize that makes it impossible for the player to survive. Consider: you have to go out into the fog of war to do battle. You have to deal with the enemy bringing fog of war into your base via Atrocity. You have, in general, to do everything within the fog of war. Making it an enemy might be plausible, given the setting, but it would make the game unplayable.

Formidible (and scary) obstacles are the goal, not insurmountable odds. Frustration is, in my experience, anathema to fear. (It might work better in a Space-Hulk-esque squad game, much like many of the prior suggestions. Maybe someone should mine the thread for ideas and make a goddamn scary Space Hulk style game.)

[pen]

Pen, if you're up to drawing it, my art skills are abominable. I'm limited to terrible landscapes and some simple ghosts. The Qlippothic Avatars are going to be very much beyond my ability.

I'd love to, but I'm not a pixel artist, I can merely assist you with concept art.
 Just  post the descriptions in here or send me a PM, and I'll try to make some time for it.

[magnum_opus]

there's kinda two problems I can see with this.
1. it seems like a lot of stuff to keep in your head when fighting, maybe enough that the player is too focused on strategy for any sort of fear state.
2. if breaches attack the player who caused them and atrocity can't be used as domain. it seems like the obvious strategy is to always send out waves of the cheapest most useless troops you have. If they succeed in killing something, groovey, but if not the opponent has just killed dozens, hundreds of people, very close to their (the opponent's) base, send in enough troops to cause the opponent to open two or three breeches and their boned. Basically kamikaze zerg rush, but worse because a zerg rush at least has the trade off that if it fails now you're opponent has an upper hand in infrastructure and an opening to attack. In the game you laid out if the your zerg rush fails, the land itself starts attacking for you.

[Gr.Viper]

The Avatar of Thamiel, for example, will very much resemble a fallen-angel version of siamese twins struggling with obesity and a REALLY NASTY skin condition.

Reminds me of Giger's works. couldn't find the one, but those two kinda give the general idea


Another place full of weird ideas
http://www.keiththompsonart.com/gallery.html

[null & void]

Magnum_Opus, I had already thought of that, which is why defending on your own Domain isn't considered as worthy of Atrocity. In other words, everything you do on your own Domain is worth 1/4th of normal Atrocity. Meaning your opponent will be adding WAAAAY more Atrocity than you that way, meaning of a breach opens they WILL be the punished ones.

Another thing: there are ways to close the breaches (via your builder units), and the one closest to the breach has an advantage there. In other words, that strategy would level up your opponents units, have virtually no effect, and would make you a terrible human being -- all before we even factor in the home-team-Atrocity-reduction.

Pen, that's exactly what I meant. Pixel art can come later, what I need are concepts and things-to-go-off-of. It seems you're interested, which is great. I'll send you the details soon.

Gr.Viper, you seem to have gotten the idea. Kudos to you.

I can only hope the end result is as scary as Giger's stuff.

[null & void]

Haven't posted in this topic in awhile. Been writing and trying to learn Python (strangely difficult for me).

I've got Atrocity working to a degree. It keeps track of it, but nothing happens. Otherwise it's the demo game that comes with FIFE with a funky half-finished HUD.

I'm gonna continue to work on this. I'll start posting screenshots when I have SOME of the in-game stuff replaced and the HUD finished.

[Nitro Crate]

It doesn't really seem like it would be that scary at all, but I love the idea of this atrocity and whatnot. Finally an innovative RTS (Well I guess Starcraft was innovative at the time of its creation). This sounds like tons of fun.

[Maisnon!]

When I first played that survive the alien attack 'secret' map in.. Red Alert it was?

That scared the crap out of me, not knowing what was coming for me

[null & void]

I stumbled upon something neat while playing with fog-of-war stuff. I wonder what people think of it.

I'm thinking about making all visibility beyond Domain have a delay to it, so you see what actually was happening 3 seconds ago. Makes sense because it IS radio, increases tension big time. Thoughts?

[William Broom]

That sounds like an absolutely brilliant idea, actually.

[Gr.Viper]

Yes. But the radio-areas should be marked.. maybe by some light static over them.

[null & void]

I was going to do that (the static) anyway. Plus, anything outside of your own Domain (e.g. with fog of war) will require radio to stay in contact... It won't be too awfully hard to keep track of where you lose normal contact and switch to radio.

This WILL, of course, leave transitional (e.g. into/out of Domain) movement a bit confusing (currently the engine simply crashes, I'm working on that) but I'm sure I'll come up with something.

Lastly, I've been thinking about this radio thing and for all of you who clamoured for squads... Looks like we'll have them. Sort of.

My new idea is this: while in Domain, each unit can be controlled individually. Before a group can leave Domain, one unit has to be equipped with radio stuff and several units "assigned" to it. While in the field, you can directly control the "commander" unit, and relay general commands to the rest of the group.

Electronic countermeasures are finally important, and the "magical scouts" I have designed for each faction will be far more useful. Especially think of a scenario where you don't have the aformentioned "seers" (due to an attack, maybe) and suddenly one of your field units loses all contact. You have no idea what's going on, it could be a minor radio malfunction, simple communications jamming, or your soldiers could be reduced to smears on the ground.

Thoughts on this one?