The DPS Game

DPS - Damage-Per-Second

While an incredibly useful tidbit of information in an action oriented game, it really is an overused metric, especialy in rpg type games. So how about a game that focuses on DPS?

You have HP (or life) and DPS. HP of oppenants should be scaled such that normal foes around your level should take 3-4 seconds to kill. These are the only two stats in the game. Maybe two more stats, one called focus that allows you more control over your DPS, and the other a 'stamina' stat that controls.

You can 'allocate' you DPS in several ways. You can have area affect, single affect, and ranges. Focusing all your DPS into a single melee target will give a more intense focus vs trying to hit everything in a circle around you.

Thoughts:

• keep the 'control' and 'stamina' stats. Control affects the ability to create ranged and area attacks. Increasing the stamina cost decreases the DPS penlty.
• thought - 'attacks' can be created with a variety of special effects. The effects have no impact on DPS
• thought - armor does NOT reduce DPS. Primarily visual, maybe have some rare suits that boost one of the 4 stats.
• 'weapons' and 'spells' have a minimal affect on stats. The primarily provide the set of visuals that can be used to construct attacks.

The core mechanic is DPS. Anything that distracts from that is bad.

Train Destroyer

Trains are the only method (for whatever bizarre reason) that certain kinds of goods can be moved about. For whatever equally bizarre reason, you want to shut down the trains. Now the problem with this is the rails, not the trains but the rails themselves are owned by the government. Blow up the trains? That's fine, security is their problem. Blow up the rails? Oh, you're in for it now. So the challenge of the game becomes to destroy as much as possible of the train without damaging the rails.

You get points for :

• Damaging cargo - usually by shooting it with weapons
• Destroying cargo - this is much more risky because the usual method of doing this is by blowing up the cargo container, which carries a high risk of damaging the rails
• Contaminating cargo - the cargo is intact, but in some way 'contaminate' so it is less useful than it normally would be
• Slowing down the train - no one likes late shipments. Doing so is dangerous, as the best way to do this is by taking on the engine, which is heavily protected. Plus, destroying the engine so the train stalls on the tracks will get you penalized as well.

*thought - rival companies hire 'lane pirates' to strike at each others trains. You can start out as a loner, and eventually either create your own group or sign up with an existing one.

Initially you have a very modest base of operations, with a simple strike flyer. You initially have to be cautions about which targets you take on.

*thought - trains can carry cargo for more than one company. In some cases you will have to be very careful not to hit the wrong sections of the train.

As you get better and earn more money, you can upgrade your craft and weapons.

Victory conditions could be crippling a certain industry, or taking down a monolithic corporation.

Misc Idea

Soul Forge

All creatures have soul energy. Some creatures, if the will is strong enough, can prevent the soul from leaving the plane and instead reform a physical body. Always needs a focal point, a shrine so to speak, and is very, very painful.

Mechanic - On death, player can relenquish sould (reload) or reform. Reform will take player back to a 'recall' point

It is possible to prevent a soul from reforming. Certain areas saturated with certain energies, or specific rituals cast over a room. (there are certain zones that you cannot reform from) Other techniques exist for preventing reformation, varying from simply difficult to extremly evil and forbidden.

The vast majority of creatures do not reform. Rather, they release their energy and their essence rejoins Existance, waiting to be reformed by Existance. Even if a creature reforms, they still release most of their energy.

Released soul energy can be abosrbed, or even crystalized. Absorbing is of medium difficulty, and the majority of sentinants (and some animals) can do it with training, though most don't bother. Crystalizing soul energy is much more difficult, and dangerous, since most creatures that have enough energy to crystalize are very aggressive.

It is possible to crystalize essence. However, doing so is a crime against Existance, and carries harsh penlties. It is also hellishly difficult. Crystalized essence may be several orders of magnitude stronger than normal crystalized soul energy, but few consider the price worth it, given that Existance will not rest until the crystalized essence is freed.

Soul energy can be used to:

• Enhance the body
• Enchance the soul (gain levels - very slow)
• Refresh the body/energy (restore health and magic?)
• Enhance weapons
• Enhance magic reserves/power

Skills are incresed by use, training, and study, in order of speed.

Tie in to NWN:
On death, skill check vs Harvest skill to determine Soul Enhance (xp) gained and free soul gained.

Conversation system to handle the use of free soul to enchant items and the other uses.

Idea fragments

Rune Lord - collectable rune game. Either done with cards or plastic chips.

Shopinator - How much shopping can you do in one day? Challenges include timing visits between stores, fitting stuff into carts, and irrate cashiers

A typing rpg. Sword and magic attacks are done via typing drills. The more powerful the attack, the harder the typing.

Dragon Forge

There's just simple not enough dragon sims out there. Actually, there aren't any dragon sims as far as I know. So one needs to be made!

So many different directions to take, this will be hard. There's three approches that I can think of off hand.

1. Total Control - The simulation is the world around you, not the creature. Awfuly close to an RPG though.
2. American Sim Style - You can either let the sim wonder off on it's own, or step in and provide total control for a bit. This is the 'The Sims' style of control
3. Asian Sim Style - This is modeled after Princess Maker 2 and Knight Creator (which is a title only someone from Taiwan would probably reconize). You still have a high degree of control over the creature, but the only time you have 'total' control is during fight scenes. You decide what the creature will learn, but over stress and it will start to rebel.

Probably go with the Asian style.

Quest for the Pefect Cup of Tea

Would work best in a fantasy setting (hence me doing it with NWN) but could work in a sci-fi settitng as well.

Random though: Board game would work quite well, no need to limit this one to the computer

The goal is to create the perfect cup of tea. Of course, this is not easy. Especially when the individual wanting the perfect cup is a rather power mage(warlord/whatever) that's a bit mentaly unstable. And has decided that you will help make this tea or else.

There are four kinds of leaves that are needed for this tea. The first is close by, in the mages garden to be exact. Of course, said garden is the home for a wide range of living, carnivorous, and very hungry, plants.

Another kind is held by a merchant who wants a high price. If you can smooth talk the merchant, you find out he's convinced the mage that the leaf won't taste right if taken by force, and that the merchant fears for his life trying to leave, both from the mage plus some local bandits who have heard of the 'golden' herb the merchant has. Deal with the bandits, and he'll freely give over the herb. Or you can just buy it.

Another herb is found high up in the mountains. A local knows where it is, and can provide that information if you help deal with some poachers. Otherwise the mage know roughly where it is, but you'll have to do quite a bit of exploring.

The final 'leaf' is actualy a flower that only blooms at night. The mage knows exactly where it is too. It also happens to be the hunting grounds of a very nasty nocturnal predator (undead maybe?)

This is where refinment is needed. Not sure on rewards, difficulty, or alternate paths.

Parking Lot Tycoon

OK ignore the IP infringement there :p

The general idea came to me while grumbling about parking. Why not have a game in which you are a parking lot owner? Maybe start off small with a tiny self-service lot that you have to collect money from every night. From there you can move up to gated lots, gated garages, monthly parkers, even high tech elevator/fully automated garages! Could take place in a variety of cities, either real or made-up. Keep the economics of the cities simple, such as high crime/low crime, high land value/low land value, certain types of business (commercial, industrial, service) and so on. Not sure what kind of 'disasters' could befall a parking lot, other than perhaps the more high tech ones. I guess mechanical failure, untrustworthy employees, inclement weather (only uncovered lots, minimal increase for covered ones).

Side note: the built in spell-check doesn't work well :p

To my students

Feel free to comment at will. With the start of the semester, I will be keeping a Game Idea Journal as well, so you can get an idea of what I'm looking for. Comments are allowed, but I really wouldn't recomend flaming your teacher. Doesn't mean you can't tell me my ideas are horrible, just that you have to say why they're terrible.

Serious Game Idea

Just a side note for those not familiar with the term 'Serious' as it relates to gaming. By Serious I don't mean 'I seriously think this idea is great', rather that it is a 'Serious Game' or a game designed to teach/train something in real life. With that said...

Waitering! Or 'How to be a Server'. I was at a resturant with some of my fellow teachers, and one of them who use to be a waiter brought up stratagies he was taught to help increase tips. Such things placing bills face down, giving crumpled old bills instead of crisp new ones, give as many ones as you can, and so on. Would possibly make for an interesting game, waiter training. Could involve time it takes to get from table to table to the back for drinks and so on. Customers could be programmed to be nice/bitchy/picky, and even place a little randomness in the food.

Control Mechanic

Simplified controls are usually better than massivly complex ones (depending on genre). Base a control set on WASD and a two-button mouse. Granted most mice have a scroll wheel, but that'll be ignored for now.

WASD is used because of the familiatity. Arrow keys could be used as well.

• No Buttons: Movement
• Left Button: Attack. Holding the left mouse button and press a direction key will trigger that attack. This gives 4 possible attacks that can be used.
• Right Button: Defense. Holding the right mouse button and pressing a direction key is a defensive move. Or maybe pressing right blocks, and the arrow keys are for dodging/special kinds of blocks
• Both Buttons: Special attack. Depends on genre of game. With fantasy in mind, tapping out sequences of spells would be one idea. Or have only four spells that can be 'ready' at any one time.

Refinement to Infinite Plains

Infinite Plains is the name for the immortals controlling planes idea. By the way, these initial posting are ides already written down.

Use fixed seed random sequences to generate near-infinite terrain for the planes. As long as each player has a unique seed, the basic planes will be different. Players can influence the plane to develop in certain ways, modifying the base terrain generated. Specific items can be placed at specific points, but this is time consuming or difficult to do. Have the option for hand-crafted planes developed by the admins to provide quality content for players.

Online Games

Part of the problem with Massivly Multiplayer Games (MMG) in which players share the world, is feeling signigicant. They tend to form societies, and true to real life, only a few people in a society can truely be of earth-moving importance.

One idea to solve this is giving each player control of a private domain that others can visit. The players could represent immortal beings, who control their own personal plane of reality. Certain planes could be controled by the admins, to ensure quality content, but otherwise development of the planes would be up to the players. The better a plane is developed, the more people will be attracted to play in that plane. Of course an option would be needed to ensure 'nomad' immortals, or playyers that don't want to develop a plain, wouldn't be left behind.

The First Post

Spur-of-the-moment impulse to show my students what I expect from them for there game design journals. Also gives me a single place to accumulate my ramblings on game design.