something i spent some time thinking about, then had a go at writing a design document for. some technical ideas inspired by what http://www.butterfly.net/ is trying to do (generic back end for online games)
this has grown out of grif's thread about making a pitch. i thought it was a realistic and defined game design, and I would be able to produce most of the art assets in 3 months, with another 3 months for polisihing. comments welcome. programmer who want to sign away there soul for a small amout of money also wanted.
http://www.websamba.com/davidcoen/karma/frames.htm
GAME SUMMARY
online fantasy game where your actions effect what you are reincarnated as.
intended to start with 5 world, each on top of the other. highest world is for angels, then elves, humans, gunts, demons. Player starts as human. traveling into another world can considers you as a monster in that world.
aim of the game is to reach god or devil status by maximising out karma.
powering up character, creating custom items in game.
time slows down during combat action, and actions have recovery times.
summoning monsters (other players) to aid in combat or to trade for skill improvement.
that sok blitz.
the gameworld isn't collision based, actions are dermined by stats on attempting the action. eg. as such, fireing an arrow at someone- when you select that action the stat calculation is done to see if you hit, and two spheres of time slowing are created, one around the attacker and one around the target. the closer to the cernter you get in these spheres your animation, movement and actions are slowed down to combat speed.
someone standing nearby is effected, but could possibly move away, or run towards the attacker and go into the same slowdown mode... are my explanation making any sence
//player can set what their combat speed is, but the lowest of combatance is chosen
// the aim is to avoid twitch dependance (buterfly net likes to do most stuff server side) and to merge with the game world seamlessly. the sort of factor i was thinking about was a 0.1 slowdown, with the option to take it back to 1 (no slowdown) might need to reduce some of the action recovery times to accomidat this, or get a better combat solution, so thanks for pointing it out as an issue
DSC
Localized Time Deformation (TM) :P is interesting to be sure. I think it's one of those things that might be difficult to tell how it would go until you've actually got it in the game and can playtest it.
The basic idea seems to be that it is turn based combat, and the time-slowdown just gives you the opportunity to vary your attacks rather than making an attack automatically with whatever weapon is in your hand etc.?
I think this system could actually discourage PvP, if you don't wanna be attacked just put your combat mode on the slowest possible and people will get frustrated before they can kill you haha :)
CYer, Blitz
I think I remember having this discussion with people from Criterion, Krome, Bluetongue, Bull Ant and Microforte... my friend aske why we could not have something akin to bullet time... and the very basic of it all was... synchronisation and Timing issues. Either you have to synchronise everybodies else machines, in which case this interferes with game play (ie: one persone enters bullet time, everybody does). Speed up time play.. err does not work... the two players outside become out of sync with the rest of the server.
Any how not sure how this would apply but it comes down to this, what ever affects the local enviroment has to affect all other players to be in sync.
I played poker with a Tarot deck the other night. I got a full house and four people died.
--Steven Wright.
"time slows down during combat action"
How do you plan to do this in a multiplayer game? (Sorry to get technical on you :P)
CYer, blitz