Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Two more weapons

These ideas have been in my head for a while now, and I might have mentioned them before. For some reason, I've never written them down before. I typed this up after I read this thread on the TV Tropes fora.

Modded Jackhammer
Setting: Near-future, with a ton of Black Box-driven future tech

Plausibility: Possible, but might be cumbersome, unreliable, or inefficient
Pretty much exactly what it says on the tin. An auto-shotgun based on the Pancor Jackhammer that can fire three different kinds of ammo. I might discard the Jackhammer idea however, and use an original design. Possibly one with three barrels, one for each ammo type. Said ammo types are; Standard 12 gauge shell, Dragon's Breath, and slugs.

Lightweight SMG
Setting: Same as above.
Plausability: Would probably work
A smallish submachine gun with a large cylindrical magazine. The main gimmick is that it's meant to be held Guns Akimbo. The recoil is low and the ammunition is caseless, so you don't need to worry about ejecting shells hitting you in the face. I even made a model in SketchUp. It also has a grip and laser sight in case you only have one, or don't have the Powered Armor it was designed for. (Said Powered Armor includes sight lines extending from the barrel as part of its HUD)

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Three game ideas

Heroic Bloodshed Third-Person Shooter

The plot of this one will be worked out at a later date, and frankly it's not important. For a game like this, the plot is just windowdressing. The gameplay is standard TPS fare, but with your character growing in power as he racks up combos. The game starts off fairly realistic, but as your combo increases the art becomes more stylized, and so does the gameplay. You can pull off stunts, land precision hits without aiming, and do other fantastic things. This also affects things such as your health, enemy AI, and your ammo count. You have no HUD, letting the game manipulate the variables from behind the scenes.


Forever War

The setting is similar to Total Annihilation. Civilization got destroyed long ago and the military are the only survivors, fighting for a cause long forgotten. Soldiers are cloned and raised from birth to fight. As the campaign goes on, you gradually learn the cause of the war. So far, I have three ideas for the backstory.
  1. The War was started by two generals who loved nothing but war. They conspired to create a climate of endless conflict to make their own paradise, at the expense of everyone else. Through advances in nanotechnology, they are still alive, and are still commanding their armies in their hellish paradise.
  2. The same two generals created the war, but they're long dead. Nobody has any idea what's going on, just that everybody on the other side has to die.
  3. The original conflict was small, and escalated out of proportion. It kept growing, until it engulfed all of civilization.
I'll probably end up using the first scenario, but the second might be a better choice.

The protagonist is a commander in one of these two armies, and eventually discovers the reason behind the madness. Seeing how pointless it all is, he strives to stop it the only way he knows how. War. He gathers people from both sides and leads a rebellion, taking on both sides at once.

The gameplay will be similar to that of a normal RTS, but on a planet-wide scale. Instead of bases, you have gigantic cities. Instead of units, you have armies. Despite the apparent similarities to the 4X genre, there is little to no micromanaging. Your cities automatically expand and gather resources to expand your control over the planet, and new cities are even made without you choosing where to put them. You just give the general orders. (i.e. "Expand this way, and focus on building mechanized infantry.")


Revolution

A sidescrolling shooter with themes of revolution and war. Each locale has its own color palette, reflecting the state of that area. You start as a revolutionary, helping to free a country from its oppressive regime. After many struggles, you finally dispose your rulers After this, you take help the rest of the world, destroying other totalitarian powers. Some see these acts as ones of heroism, while others say that your government is unjustly imposing its will on other countries when it has no right to. Eventually this results in an all-out war against your regime. Thanks to your efforts, you stay in power. Eventually, the protagonist realizes that the revolution he once supported has become the very thing it was fighting against, and takes his own life.