As a programming exercise I will be making an action RPG that uses coloured ASCII graphics. I aim to release it by the end of the year.
So /tg/, I welcome you to brainstorm ideas for the plot and setting. Ideally I'd get a writer, but I think that's too much to expect so I am merely asking for vague directions.
I'm interested in all themes so I'm open to anything really, but as a guideline if you want to know my passions, they are sci-fi, murder/thriller/mystery, alternative history, war and politics, exploration in general, and space exploration.
I do love medieval-style settings as well, and a present day or future scenario wouldn't at all rule out forests, villages, sword fights, etc.
If the game turns out well, I may take it even further once completed in its initial text graphics form, as I progress.
The picture is NOT of the game by the way - it's a screenshot from another game to demonstrate the style of graphics I'm shooting for.
Sure, how about we shoot you some moon-logic puzzles, and you yay or nay them?
>>43593956
Please elaborate.
>>43594135
Well, classic adventure games need classic adventure game puzzles... Like tying a banana to a metronome in front of a piano playing monkey to hypnotize it frozen in place so you can take him to the valve that controls the island's waterfall and use him as a (snerk) "monkey wrench", to shut off the waterfall and access the villains secret lair behind said waterfall.
That's moon logic. Something that only makes sense in a classic Sierra video game.
>>43594195
Won't that just annoy players who don't know these random solutions?
>>43594256
And then you have a 1-900 hint line that costs $2.99 per minute! Mwa ha ha ha ha ha!
No, seriously. I'll be good. My puzzles will be solvable without insane deductive prowess.
>>43594296
Alright, shoot.
By the way, based on earlier suggestions from a thread I made some hours earlier, I'm tempted to make the premise about infiltrating a 'hero party' and soiling their plans to undermine the great oppressive empire (tm). A sort of a detective game where you find and track down the culprits, and then join them in order to lead them to their deaths.
>>43594256
Yeah.
But they can be fun too.
There is a certain pride that comes when you figure it out.
>>43594195
I will never forget the time I spent *forever* trying everything I could think of to get past one part of a text game.
I finally stopped and asked myself, What would I do in real life?
Then I got it.How do climb a ladder into a dangerous sewer, with a light source, if you need both hands to climb the ladder?
>>43594449
Take the flashlight into your mouth?
>>43594296
Sample puzzle: one room, simple obstruction, can be overcome by trial and error.
>At the back of a octagonal room with one entrance (S) and six exits (SW, W, NW, NE, E, SE) there is a khali-armed statue, in each of her six arms is a different spread of five cards.
>At the foot of the statue is a plaque that reads "when wandering in the ebon knave's land / chose the path of the best hand"
>The player inspects the state's hands, they might associate the five-card spreads with the card game known as poker, and choose a pathway based on the rules of said game.
>In actuality, they should use the clue "ebon knave" to realize that they should be using the rules of black jack to appraise the hands of cards.
>if they read according to poker, a hand bearing a Royal Flush will take the players to a trap that may kill them, preferably by flushing them down a golden bejewled chute.
>If they follow a hand that adds up to 21, that's the correct path and the game progresses.
>If they follow another hand: I'm sure you can come up with clever traps / encounters based on common names for hands of poker.
>>43594523
It was a glowing rock, and yes.
It took me forever because I kept thinking in terms of previous game interactions, and not life.
>>43594590
In one game, there was a part where you (a really stupid ogre) were confronted with a complex chess puzzle that would open a wooden cage and give you a key. The problem was, the ogre didn't know what the fuck chess was, and would move pieces... Badly.
The correct answer was to HULK SMASH the puzzle and take the damn key. Because when you have a club...
>>43594583
Yay.
I like this. This tests the player's wit, rather than ability to come up with a random solution.
>>43593744
>>>121969923
>>43593744
>sci-fi, murder/thriller/mystery, alternative history, war and politics, exploration in general, and space exploration.
I actually am aentirely unpublishedwriter and from your interests, the first setting idea I had was:
>Alternative history set in your preferred time period, only centuries earlier, aliens made first contact and establish earth as a colony.
>Aliens are largely peaceful and are exploiting earth manpower and resources in exchange for advanced technology.
>Think England in India rather than Darksied as new overlord
>Plot of game is assassination of human and alien leaders in capitol
>Hero is human officer who, by alien law, must be the one to solve the murders which appear to be the work of a third party
>Aided by aliens, the trail leads to... SPACE!!!
>Hijinks ensue
>>43594675
In my opinion, intuitive solutions beat random, it-only-makes-sense-if-it-is-a-game solutions.
>>43594583
These are great, if they make sense.
I realize this is an example, but there should ideally be a reason for the puzzle to have multiple arms and blackjack.
Evil genius wizard did it counts as a reason, though.
>>43594640
And I love to include the low-brow work arounds, with a penalty.
>>43593744
>sci-fi, murder/thriller/mystery, alternative history, war and politics, exploration in general, and space exploration
Right-o. At the end of World War 2, Hitler, in one of his many fits of insanity, instructed his scientists to begin a program in which they would seed the worlds of the stars with the beginnings of a new race of Aryan supermen who would conquer the cosmos. By squandering the entirety of the Reich's war materiel on the top-secret program, they miraculously succeeded, though too late for the Fuhrer to be informed. Almost all of the probes were sent to dead worlds, because astronomy was ass back then, but by sheer weight of numbers a few managed to land on habitable worlds in good enough condition to set up their cloning factories and begin churning out space Nazis. Using faster-than-light technology developed with German Science in rejection of the relativity proposed by the Jew Einstein, and a secret base in the Himalayas that remains hidden to this day, the remaining Nazi hierarchy coordinates the conquest of the galaxy.
Soon after the Space Nazis make their appearance, aliens make contact with Earth, searching for the source of the invaders. This is where Earthican history diverges from reality. After convincing the aliens that it is a rogue group that in no way represents humanity at large responsible for the Galactocaust, the hero is chosen as a member of the intergalactic force tasked with finding and eliminating the clone factories, even while hunting down the Nazi doppelgangers that have replaced key government officials across Earth governments, and using their secret intel to piece together the location of the base that holds the National Socialist leadership.
>>43594776
Is this Strife?
>>43594991
I'd rather troll the aliens and let them and humanity compromise each other in a war, then tip the Nazis of the opportunity to take over both.
>>43594940
A cult which worships the many-armed goddess of fortune. Her temple is part casino, part dungeon, part deathtrap.
If the player ever actually meets the gods, she really fucking hates those guys, but maintains an absolute policy of not fucking with the people who worship her (Everyone else is fair game, naturally)
>>43595319
That should definitely be an option.
The basic gameplay will be your standard adventure game sort of deal where you need to solve convoluted puzzles to expose the imposters, then use the info you get from that to piece together another puzzle that reveals the location of the Unterbase - but wait! You'll run the risk of passing on false information without confirmation, as well as fingering the wrong people for being imposters, so be careful! And if you're in a situation where you knowingly do these things, like if the game knows you have the information available to avoid the error, it'll gradually flag you as a saboteur, making available the option to betray everyone to the Nazis toward the end of the game.
And that'll be broken up by Asteroids-esque space games where you shoot down Nazi spacecraft and scan planets for clone factories in between your political duties.
>>43594991
Man, Wolfenstein is getting weird.
>>43595232
Maybe.
I dunno.
I just made it up.
>>43595319
Could you just make a dope slashing game?
I like to kill indiscriminately
>>43595832
Personally, I prefer escapist games to simulation games like that.
But each to their own.
Making the player character a secret agent or detective of some sort, but not necessarily the 'rebel', is a really attractive idea.
I actually have a disdain for these David defeats Goliath fantasy tales where a small party of underdogs destroys an impressive militaristic empire. It's always a black and white divide between good and evil, which frankly is an insult to the audience's presumed intelligence in my opinion.
Not only has that been done to death; what if one sympathises with the empire instead, and seeks to uproot the rebels (terrorists)? What if I want to see the 'bad' guys big master plan succeed?
Let's say a human space empire has colonised space. They're relocating the native lifeforms of various planets and moons so as to build industry and infrastructure. They're competing with a rival human empire and holding off against dozens of small clans that lay claim on their own turfs or call for anarchy, insisting that nobody can own space. The war effort is very costly.
The rival empire is trying to undermine the main empire through cyber warfare, false flagging, framing, and funding anti-governmental forces, though we don't initially know that. In the public eye, the empire's reputation has been smeared. All this combined with some natural disasters and destroyed power plants and mines have caused economic turmoil to the main empire, leading to social unrest and a strong clandestine rebel movement within the empire that seeks to overthrow the government.
Your mission would be to save the day by undermining the rebel 'hero' party, exposing the lies, and ensuring that the government may undisturbedly finish a secret death ray superweapon that will bring the rival empire and the separatist-anarchist clans to their knees. Perhaps the death ray is ancient alien technology from an era before the alien culture collapsed into a primitive stage of religious extremism.
>>43597029
Sounds like you have a good start.
>>43593744
>please do a bunch of work for me /tg/!
fuck off
>>43597029
I would also find it a worthy consideration of throwing in alternate history there somewhere, as per earlier suggestions.
What if the space empire stems originally from a German Empire that went undefeated in World War 1? With the rebels being socialist revolutionaries, and the rival empire being a still existent Soviet Union or the British Empire... or something else, give me ideas? I know Hitler and the Nazis are cool, but space nazis is hardly a new idea and making them the villains hardly gives room for any moral ambiguity nor challenges the audience to think and draw their own conclusions.
Perhaps there is also further reason for the economic turmoil, social unrest, anarchy, and space colonisation; what if the cold war turned hot and led to a nuclear holocaust?
Much of the Earth has been turned into desert, where mutants and zombies dwell. Natural resources are scarce. The main empire and its rival are the only remnants of orderly human civilisation, scavenging for resources, taking the harsh measures necessary for their survival, while trying to keep the public's unhappiness at bay. To secure the resources to uphold their populations, the empires need to make full use of extraterrestrial resources, seeking to eventually colonise space since half of the Earth's land area has been rendered uninhabitable on the surface.
>>43597324
Sod off, it's working.
A bump before I head off to bed. I hope the thread's still going to be there when I wake up. If you want to see this game, I ask that you give me some bumps at the very least.
Bump.
Alternatively post cool inspirational art.
I am imagining random rural village enclosures nearby non-nuked areas. Few people would want to live outside of the empire's city perimeteres, as it entails growing/hunting one's own food, holding off against the zombies, and lacking protection aside from the occasional robot patrol, but some prefer the freedom.
>>43597826
City life can indeed be very dull, limited, and regulated, despite safer.
>>43597859
Beyond the city perimeters, this man is your FRIEND. He fights for FREEDOM.
>>43597890
He keeps the horrors of the wilderness at bay.
>>43597890
He alongside his comrades...
>>43597977
Defends us against our enemies.
>>43598059
And protects our way of life.
>>43598135
Our continued existence.
>>43598175
>>43598199
>>43598236
>>43598327
>>43598350
>>43598412
Last bump. Goodnight.
Even though some of us are different, we fith for a common cause.
>>43597413
>tripfag attention whore making an "indie game"
yep
