Brainstorming ideas

It’s like this now I’ve posted enough.

The idea is to redefine a genre.

The genre is popular, and it’ll be safe to develop, ensuring an audience. But to accomplish the same things the genre has, in a new and fresh ways isn’t enough. It needs to be redeveloped, to accomplish those new and fresh ways. Though how to explain it, so the tools and production can make it real was my goal.

And I assume Crate uses proprietary, so it’s good for the legacy.

The idea of the text editor is an example, that can be used for FX or other assets as well. It’s a tool to keep a lot of information organized and easy to use and access. So, when you’ve got a lot of information, you can plot solutions in engine hopefully easier.

It’s like this, when you’re in production and have a ton of things to look at. Looking for a solution isn’t easy. You know what the problem is, though need to create a new asset and clean up others, to reach your goal. Though you have to search through a huge list of stuff, to get to your subject. Making a tool that gets it for you and all its sources will help.

I think the context is, this is more programming than other things. I am aiming for programming to build tools, in order to accomplish something. What it is they’ll accomplish isn’t what I am detailing. More like giving ideas, so the tools and logic is creatively active.

I could aim more for a visual. Like my post about colonist creating problems with crops. The truth is urea is found in urine and it’s used as fertilizer, not as urine though a refined product. The idea is that too much urine will damage the plants with salts and urea, cause a blighted crop. The problem is there, what does the colony do to solve it. What they can find is urea is a fertilizer, allowing them success in growing greater yielding crops. They’ll need to develop means to refining the urine, in order to narrow down what’s allowing them to grow greater crops. Finally, the goal of advancement in technology, using test tubes and beakers to refine the urea and use it for growth. This will help support the colony, and progress into further advancements.

The source Weed Level - #50 by Anthoirty

It’s an example to inspire other ideas, that can be influential in a developing colony. With enough of these ideas, you could say there are many different cultures with something each has to offer. Further developing the modern technology of the country or world, using political and governing practices across many uniting colonies. A progression we see in the builder/civilization games, in a different direction. Just a different way to approach and progress, as if they didn’t need a governing influence to succeed as an independent colony. Other games use management, politics and governing to approach these things, with trade agreements and menus, lacking the details that get those tasks done. I thought to attempt to reform that idea, into something actively guided with AI storytelling, detailing the advancements in short. Then we can offer the player those management or political tools as options later. As if they’ve made sure to advance the technology so they know what they’re doing with it, before allowing them to advance is means to guide the next advancement (Like some games offer %100 completion, with side quests only with advancements). Hence playing the advancements real time, with the colony they’ve built throughout their game.

He’s an idea. A family is living in a house, it has a straw roof. Their daughter is getting sick, nobody knows why. When she’s at a friend’s she feels better. She tells her dad she feels sick when she smells something at home. Her friends and her dad work together to figure out the cause of the problem. Her friends Dad changed the straw on the roof and together they noticed the different smell because of it. They change the roof, and she feels better. They’ve learned something, that’ll be used again and again until they make a new solution to the problem.

This could be displayed as chat boxes, saying things to each other, telling a short story. Much like gossip around town, telling parts of a story or trying to tell the player something. These things don’t need to be done by the player, simply need to be happening. I think AI could accomplish this plenty well, until later advancements when the game becomes more political and governed. Nothing to big, though with a point. And will require priority settings, the player won’t need to manipulate. Allowing the AI to change the main focus, setting the current priority, based on importance to the colony. Short stories, gossips and dangers as an example, would be easy to prioritize. Dangers would be priority, warning the player to react, short stories could inform players there’s a potential advancement, and gossip will tell the player there’s a need for something.

Another one of these ideas, based on a comment I made. You can find the comment here. Diseases - #8 by Anthoirty

Animals have been digging up corpses and eating them. Gossip around town in the direction of raising the dead, giving hope to the people their loved ones can return. The mortician gets ideas, in the direction of making people ideas come true. Hero of the town helps mortician, offering his DNA or Blood to help the cause. After not solving the problem, gossip continues with passion. Mortician adds his idea to the dead, before burying them. After this problem goes on too long, a zombie woke from the dead. Now the problem is, they have dead folks that are hungry, eating other folks still living. Though they regard the hero as their messiah or savior, following his command and leadership. Are the folk happy about this? Will they join the undead?

Now we have means for multiple character classes along the line of a necromancer and a puppeteer. The necromancer was the mortician and the puppeteer the hero who offer his blood. The folk are their subjects or clergy, praying for their dead asking the hero to return them.

Be careful what you wish for!

Idea of tribes. This one is kind of like Aztec or Egyptian. The primitives live in a rain forest setting and are having problems with wet ground. Their people sleep on the ground, due to constant rain fall, they are getting sick and dying. One tribe man got an idea, while hunting. He noticed the cold wet wrinkles went away making me feel better, while he’s in the sunshine. His idea is to build a pyramid to the sun, using stone and sand. They build this pyramid, allowing tribe folk to sleep on the steps going to the top. The pyramid allowed rainfall to run off, giving his people a dry place to rest. This is a solution to their problem, though they also noticed fruit was drying on the pyramid. Now they’ve got raisins. They learn from this technology and try many foods, venison for jerky, fish, bread, ect.

Another way cultures develop, allowing people to live easier. Like survival to show people a way to better themselves, through natural means they live with.

The ideas here, are meant for the Monument idea I posted. Achievement Unlocked: Way too many people - #8 by Knife

Every tribe or colony has to start somewhere, in a timeline. I was thinking about this as a prequal to the main event of the game. It can be skipped, though players won’t get the same benefits or weaker benefits. Something about this part needs to be rewarding, like a survival game that got easier as the culture advanced.

Example starting monuments.

Tree: The people live off this first tree, allowing them to expand their territory.

Stone henge: The people built this, to prove they are strong and can work together.

Pyramid: The people needed a means to keep them safe, praising the sun god for its absolute offering.

Fire: People found warmth and safety near the fire, allowing them to feel the energy of their lives.

More can be made. As the development of cultures becomes harder, detailing the culturing community will be what they rely on. I can’t think of any more basic starting places.

Then cultures that work together, may build things like boats or ravines, offering a better way to cope. Boat maybe inland, using a ravine to fill a dam. The dam is broken once the boat is complete, allowing water to wash it to sea. Advanced cultures will be able to accomplish more, with great technology.

If you’re wondering, I have played a game called “Heroes of Might and Magic”, which sense has been rebranded “Might and Magic: Heroes”. If you’ve played these, you’ll be able to imagine the game world. Great and vast lands, laden with kingdoms and strong holds. Rivers and lakes, coastal regions and forest and full of resources to be taken. Though these are common goals for many, you might imagine are powerful adversaries.

Now imagine this world in simpler unchanging terms, everything laid out with fog of war hiding it. You must explore to uncover regions and the unknown riches. Doesn’t make you wonder what lay beyond the limited confines of your reach?

Now imagine that world, with a growing changing cultural influence. That’s the goal I am imagining.

Idea is RTS example. In most RTS we get this team, within that team is a hero or main character. We’ve seen this in Warcraft, Dune, Dawn of War and many others. Taking those examples, adding the character classes from Grim Dawn, we can get a cultured class with redefined role. Not usually a thing we typically see in a civilization game. Though I think it’ll help define character classes, to have a cleaner simpler playstyle, with a more detailed or well refined class. It’ll play differently surely, though if there’s even a consideration of Grim Dawn 2 or the like, it might be nice to have some basis and direction to those classes.

Every character I make is a single player character, in a world they can be their best. It’s typically a short story style character, I believe gameplay to be between 2 and 4 hours. Though within that 2 and 4 hours I have a few goals.

1: Tell a short story.

2: Progress story/skill tree and develop character relation to audience.

3: Limit story path and development, to allow expansion or alternative story and endings.

Guidelines maybe but not limited to, to achieve best results.

1: The character must be able to adapt. (Some kind of mechanic in the world compliments the character).

2: There must be a quick and progressive playstyle. (Advancement must happen in a manor, that explains without words why the character does that).

3: Story supporting the advancement must justify the development(s). (Informing the player, there are options. You’ve chosen this option and you’ve limited yourself to this).

4: Supportive characters can interact with the main character on a level, the rest of the game reacts to as important. (Squires learning objectives, exposing enemy weakness draws attention. Changes in the main characters fighting style, makes companion concerned about character. Community allows character to accomplish things readily). (The example here is the squire. What does that mean? It’s one of two things. 1: Like a side kick or tagalong, telling you the main character things that’ll help defeat an enemy real time. It’ll make the enemy(s) focus on the squire. 2: scouting a location, informing you have best practices or entry point(s)).

These details are something reserved for the player character, though hint at these points while in proximity. The community will appear to be doing the things hinted, to show it’s an active mechanic or offering to the player. This along with AI communities makes the world start to feel alive, to remind the player there are things they can do.

The question I asked was. What kind of things in the entertainment industry make you feel emotional? Anything that the audience has an emotional response to is important. So, creating things to achieve an emotional response is important. Now the thing to do to make that true is supporting it. What kinds of things do I need to make, in order to achieve that idea of emotional response? Supportive actors, music, special effects, weather and story dialog, are the most common answers to this.

History is another great way to get an emotional response. That history doesn’t have to be fiction, in terms of target audience. Though the audience has to have some knowledge or be aware of its existence, like a legacy they can relate or think about. Think about this.

Vampires are a dignified representation of humans, though more so than humans themselves. They build great mausoleum style castles and live in dark places. Their expectations are greater than normal or publicly accepted. Driving me to believe they are perfectionists, with a romantic pseudo. Telling me there maybe something afoot, I am not prepared to participate. Although we’ve heard of these creatures, they have remain hidden from us. What is it that has brought this creature to our attention? Was it our need to conquer everything not known to us, exposing those who might plot hidden from our design? Driving us to protect others from the unknown dangers, these creatures have proven over the generations. Even the need to know everything, hasn’t truly exposed these creatures to the light, simply reminded us they’re out there.

So, a while back I started this saying. “I don’t want to become a swear wolf”. The idea started one night, blood moon in sky, in good company. Jokingly I said that “I don’t want to become a swear wolf”. The response was great! My friends expected me to say, “I don’t want to become a werewolf”, we were joking about things the blood moon influences (I’m being technical here). Though once they realized what I had said, they started laughing. It made sense to many of us because, we live in homes with arguing parents that use swear words a lot. There for they had pause before responding. That emotional response I wanted, was created by saying something similar to what they’ve heard before, though changing it made the response thought of carefully before proceeding.

I just thought of it. I played this game that uses blood moon as a mechanic. Good game I haven’t played in a while. Tribes of Midgard. I think you’ll have to check it out.

Have you ever played Urban Assault?

This was the most advanced RTS of its time. Dune and Warcraft where great, though Urban Assault allowed you to pilot your vehicles, reminds me of Mech Warrior in RTS form. Warcraft 3 added playable characters with unique abilities. Starcraft I missed when it first released. And now we have MoBA, allowing simple characters to battle online. How do you get the most out of your characters?

Farthest Frontier is not an RTS game however. Just a town building game with some optional combat.

Yeah, I know, there’s some difficulty setting to reduce combat, or something along those lines. I’m trying to think of a way, to build history in the city. Like people of renown, that pushed advancement of technology. Or some kind of benefit that unlocks secret technology. I was thinking something like the random loot drop system, that is used in ARPG for weapons and armor, though for newborn colonist. They’ll have the cities legacy behind them, allowing them to advance technology and growth. I even went as far to elaborate about ways of, redefining character classes like found in Grim Dawn. Such as Vampires and Undead, even Shaman and Miliary classes. Using a primitive system, developing a legacy, opening these options for advancement.

One point I was trying to make, is in many city builders or civilization games, there are many menus to accomplish things. I was trying to think of a way, when a colony advances to allow menus based on those advances. This is by reducing menu use in a primitive colony, kind of streamlining common tasks you’ll find on builder games. Then unlocking things for building, hunting, gathering and even combat as the colony advances. This will allow the player to choose to be militant or passive, though also progressive advancing their colonies skill sets. This in turn will allow your colony to be a benefit, to share with other advancing colonies in the world.

I think this Farthest Frontier is to be a 4x game, which includes building, advancing economics and military. This means build an empire and rule the world, though politics or military. How you get there, is about the legacy you’ve built in my theory. Through success and even failures, there’s a unique way to be known in the world, advance and rule. But does this include survival as an advancement? Maybe another means to offer unique gameplay. Then again “They are Billions” and “Frostpunk” does this sort of thing.

What if we had a Plato and Democritus style competition? Like I mentioned above, something two different cultures can relate, to inspire advancement.

Tried and True.

Trying times, sometimes lead to acknowledgements, rewarded forgiveness.

What if I want a painter in my colony, like Maarten de Vos. Or a Galileo, building ships. Or a Michelangelo to be an influence. So many things to consider. Check out this game, it’s done some amazing ideas. Eastshade on Steam

I get this idea there’s a world out there, and I want to see it. These people have shown us a part of the world through their art, so we may know the world as they did. This may have inspired empires to conquer, just to see more. To reenact these periods, as they may have known the world, is an exciting challenge for any artist.

Not possible. Again, not that sort of game.

Sadly there’s the issue. Steam says 4x and that’s what kind of game 4x is based on. I don’t know what to expect and that’s not even my point.

From the Wikipedia 4X is a subgenre of strategy-based computer and board games, and include both turn-based and real-time strategy titles. The gameplay involves building an empire. Emphasis is placed upon economic and technological development, as well as a range of military and non-military routes to supremacy.

Definition of 4x. E X plore, E X pand, E X ploit and E X terminate

There’s my point. How will Crate achieve this definition?

I suppose we could reform that into explore, export, execute, excellence

I wouldn’t put too much emphasis on that 4X thing anyway. Those tags can be added by anyone and aren’t necessarily right.

I’m not. I’m just being a smart ass. Thinking is what I do. Management, strategy, builder, simulation is what I think their making. Just need to think creatively, to inspire means to accomplish that.
Good night.

Good night, sleep well.

All in all, these genres usually share a fairly common goal. How to achieve all or a part of this, is kind of my thinking. Maybe one game does it in a way, that’ll help to create an easy to accomplish medium. The more examples there are, the more likely there is something they can do.

Like, if my colonist found a spaceship, while farming some land, how do I think they’ll react. They wouldn’t know what it is, gossiping about treasure or evil maybe even thinking it’s a mountain buried. Still unaware of what they had found, they would explore it. Some may think it’s best to pack up and move, other talking about covering it back up, though the interest will always be there. What they decide to do, will not be the only option.

I can reform this idea using antient temple, buried under the rubble of another civilization. They settled in a ruin of old, revealing the antient history of a long-forgotten people. Again, they have a decision to make, dig in and explore, run, hide or build on the ruins that were built on ruins. Always gossip and stories, telling of an old culture that used to live here. Inspiring creativity and horrors in the minds of the people, motivating them to accomplish something. What it is based on this one story, is simply explore, run or hide it or build over it. If they explore, they’ll have the motivation to uncover the thing most interesting to them, making progress quickly and inspiring criticism to focus that attention elsewhere. If they run, they may travel fast, to put it behind them. If they hide it, there’ll be a memory of what they’ve found, until somebody explores it, using better tools and stories to accomplish it. If they build on it, then they are the next generation, unaware the reasons the former culture failed. Maybe it had something to do with those antient dwellings.