Something I’d like to see: JRPG-esque Party System Battles. I’m not sure if they’d be viable, but I feel like it would be nice to see multiple character fight-offs in text form, as well as sate a deep-seated need for companionship that I developed playing Final Fantasy, Chrono Cross, and Legend of the Dragoon.
I agree with the other posters: first-or-third-person narrative about real characters with defined personalities, and actual relationships with others. A Hunger Games where I can choose if Katniss kills Snow or Coin. A Harry Potter where I can get Harry to hook up with Hermione. A Walking Dead where I can select the number of times Lori gets shot point-blank in the face…
@RVallant What do you mean by codex? Apparently not a book of bound pages…
Surely you mean a Hunger Games where Katniss kills Peeta and/or Gale. 
I’d love a Hunger Games/Battle Royale style game. Even Truman Show/Cabin in the Woods/Running Man.
A tournament to the death and a reality tv show merged into one, in a large, wild arena that’s filled with traps.
Where there’s a number of paths to the win, be it persuade everyone to work together, and manage to turn the hunted into the hunters. To going it solo (or just with your love interest). To being the villain, hunting down everyone and taking care of them, tricking and outwitting them, through either your brains, brawn, or beauty.
You have, what 20 other NPCs roaming around the arena too, each with their own personalities and motivations. Some of them are going to stab you in the back. Some of them are going to befriend you. Some of them will attack outright. But they all have their reasons for being there.
And of course you have the psycho that’s just running about gunning everyone down, determined to win.
You’ve got to keep track of your food and water. Your ammo, your equipment and shelter, and med-kits. Balance hiding with fighting. Scrounging for equipment. And time keeps tick, tick, ticking by.
Of course there’s love interests, people that need protecting, friends that must be betrayed, traitors, or suspected traitors, who do you trust? Can you risk it?
I think that sort of reality show would make an absolutely fantastic game.
Did I set the bar on fire again?
@CJW - From what little I’ve seen, Terminal does seem very clickety. That’s not to say it’s not good though.
@FairyGodfeather - I’m with others in not feeling comfortable with the demands for less description yet more characterisation. To me they go hand in hand and is where games on here fail so easily. If you’re putting me in the shoes of a character or allowing me to invent my own for the purpose of the story or the game and you fail to immerse me in the world with descriptive text and scenarios and characters, then it’s already losing the essence of it.
@HoraceTorys - A codex, like in Dragon Age or Mass Effect. An item that allows you to open a book with an index of pages to every race, culture, country, item (or whatever and etc) all there for quick handy reference. I haven’t seen it attempted yet, I have a feeling anyone attempting it would need to do a sort of ‘epic’ story in order to accommodate it, or have a story that is messily complex and requires it?
@RVallant, I haven’t played either of the games you mention. My WiP has a World Index (reached by a button next to the stats one) which allows you to choose from a series of reference pages on History, Geography, Politics, Magic, etc. of the gameworld… plus an alphabetical glossary of unfamiliar terms (mostly Greek or archaic English words put to fantasy-world use). It means that players with @FairyGodfeather’s preferences don’t have to slog through lengthy explanations of the world background, but can just pick it up from contextual clues as they read – while others who would get lost can read through the world background at any time. Is that the sort of thing you have in mind?
That’s pretty much why I started doing “background” links. I realized at times I started writing too much “world fluff”, so I decided to separate those bits into a different links that could be clicked on, if the reader was interested. If they didn’t care about world background or descriptive stuff, then they could just ignore it.
I tend to do stuff like that too if I’ve got major portions of story or dialogue which are interesting, but not necessary to understand the overall story.
@Havenstone - That sounds like what I’m on about.
@EndMaster - Your background information bits is one of the major influences in relation to my desire to see stuff like a codex. It’s also the primary reason I went immediately to the tutorials on CYS to learn how to make one for my WiP. =)
Cataphrak is doing something of a codex in his game SoI. Although it only gives relevant - semi-relevant information.
@FairyGodfeather
Do you truly think it’s possible? That sounds extremely epic, but even I can see that being a pain to code, not in complexity of logic but just keeping tabs on all the possible situations and overlaps.
@TDilz Moving between areas
Very much agreed, that is something I wish to both pursue and see pursued.
@Caddmuss
I have previously been (and am still) experimenting with JRPG mechanics in choicescript, while most of it is possible, a lot of it feels underwhelming. Combat for example - while it’s very doable - it feels lacking without the visual aid.
If you can think of some way to make it interesting without them though, I’d be very interested in hearing about it.
The support for first and third person narratives surprises me, truth be told. I thought everyone was largely clingy to the second person around here (understandably so).
I have to agree though, it’s nice to be the person the game revolves around as a player, but for a writer it’s incredibly difficult - there’s stuff you’ll never be able to do.
You can’t (or shouldn’t) say things like “you feel angry” - because how do you know? They might not. “I feel angry” or “She felt angry” is fine though - it’s much easier to control the story and characters.
@cjw Yep I think it’s possible. First I’ll admit Choicescript might not be the ideal language for it but there’s no reason that it won’t work
It does mean there’s a greater chance of ending up with a very replayable bush of a game than with a long game though.
There are ways to cheat while doing it too. The easiest way to cheat would be to think of several paths people could take through the game. Allow for jumping between those paths though.
Note I’m using Katniss here just as a placeholder name.
Katniss could go it completely alone. Write up that path like what happened in the book. Of course there’s choices in that path, such as whether she teams up with Rue, and Peeta. Whether she kills various people, or allows others to do the killing for her. You can sub-divide that path into Katniss avoiding people, and Katniss hunting down and killing them.
Katniss teams up with the big group. Write that one up, keeping options open for her sneakily killing them off one by one, and make sure that at any point you allow her to skip out on them and jump to the solo-path.
Katniss is skilled with electronics or explosives. She works out a way to short-cut the traps that exist, or to blow them up, given the tools on hand. So she spends most of the time scavenging.
You have the benefit of you have a game that takes part in a relatively small area. It’s in an arena. It should be easy enough to code who is in what location at what time. Especially since everyone starts in the same place. There’s only so many directions you can go, only so many places you can be.
Battle Royale took care of things with an arena that got gradually smaller, and explosive collars around people’s necks. The Hunger Games had their booby traps. So you have set encounters that will happen, regardless of what location Katniss is in. At 1pm the forest is going to catch fire, at 2pm the beach is going to flood, at 3pm the killer bees will be released, or whatever.
And you will lose people rapidly at the start. Katniss can’t save everyone. People will run. People will kill eachother. Some people will accidentally step on traps, others will bump into each other and their encounters will end up with someone dead. You can write this out.
Now it may not be as fun as if you had a game with everyone acting independently and intelligently, but I think it should be possible to do in Choicescript.
Tackle it as a story first. Divide it up into locations first. Create your NPCs and who will be aggressive, and who’s trustworthy, who’s open to alliances and who isn’t. If your NPCs are hanging out in groups it makes them easier to keep track of.
Clearly you need to think about it more than I have though. I think it should easily be possible. I think it’d make a fantastic game, especially one that cashes in on the whole Hunger Games popularity.
Throw in some romantic options, be it the bad girl that’s going around killing everyone but who can be forced into a grudging alliance, the baker boy who needs someone to protect him, the computer geek who can help with the sabotage, or the charismatic leader who just wants everyone to get along.
I think it should be possible.
Forget the Hunger Games DMW was better with traps and just atmosphere… and violence it wasnt none of that PG-13 stuff
@2Ton What’s DMW?
I think he means Deadman Wonderland?
I hadn’t heard of Deadman Wonderland. I’ll google it in a few. I’d have used Battle Royale as my example but I’ve no idea how many people have read the book or watched the movie. I loved Battle Royale, it’s the reason I read The Hunger games, since I’d heard it was a teen version of Battle Royale. I actually liked how both of them did things and their takes on the same subject. There’s an awful lot of striking similiarities between the two books. I haven’t seen The Hunger Games movie.
I’ve seen Battle Royale 1 +2 and just recently watched Hunger Games, I enjoyed HG but preferred Battle Royale 1.
@Nocturnal_Stillness I’d reccommend the books if you haven’t read them. Although you are clearly mistaken. Repeat after me “there is no Battle Royale 2”.
@FairyGodfeather I could really do without your awesome ideas and descriptions - they’re devilishly tempting (I’m already biting off more than I can reasonably chew). Thinking about it though, it would be very plausible.
You could even make randomly moving NPCs with some basic “motive” AI - it wouldn’t be easy, but I’m fairly certain choicescript could handle it - if you’re clever.
I should start up a “FairyGodfeather’s Idea Thread” please someone make this game. That one’s a project I definitely wouldn’t tackle. I find the idea fascinating. I think it’s far beyond my skills as a writer to implement though.
My best writing is not descriptive, it’s generally somewhat tongue in cheek and my style would be completely wrong for that sort of game. I might, just might be able to do it in first person, but I suspect that I wouldn’t manage. I just can’t create the sort of vivid imagery that I think would be neccessary for such a game.
I’d be all
“I creep through the forest. I feel scared. A twig cracks behind me.”
- Where really, the forest needs described. The level of fear needs to be shown, not told, with a gradual building of tension in the text. And then SNAP! A sound and panic.
#I spin around.
Oh! Only a badger!"
#Pet the badger
The badger leaps on me, ripping my throat out.
Which is not what this game needs, I think. I’m not good at action. I’m not good at description. I prefer writing light-hearted, character centric, heavy-dialogue based games.
I do however enjoy writing vague plots and coming up with ideas.
I think, with this game I’d have fun with random. Invoke random encounters in whatever area you enter. Set up a huge list of all the possible random encounters you can have. (Not just random battles, but also bumping into people.) Create variables to ensure that if someone is dead/killed you can’t have the encounter with them. Do that to add length to the game, as well as having the storyline paths going through it.
So you divide the NPCs up. Pick out the ones assigned to the storyline. Pick up the ones assigned to random encounters.
Battle Royale has a lot of random encounters. So rather than having real AI, you just mimic it with the encounters, keeping track of variables.
Throw in booby traps as random encounters too. With some of the random encounters varying depending on which zone you’re in and what time it is.
DECENT ROMANCES
MEANINGFUL CHOICES
LESS LINEARITY
Meaningful replayability - as opposed to just replaying the game for exploratory purposes. Seryou’s #Orchids plans on using *show/restore_password to unlock characters post-completion, I’d like to see some other ideas along those lines.