hi all,

im simon, a 27 years old gamer from nanjing. recently i quit my former job as a spanish translator and started to draw the basic structure of a game ive been wanted to play for some time. i have no knowledge on programming, so right now only working on writing and design.

the ideal is, an unforgiving 2D post-apocalyptic single-player survival game on PC, aiming a steam release. might need 3-4 programmers, 1 artist and 1-2 musician at the moment. below i will fill up with a quick look of the basic game concept:

1. BACKGROUND

the world has been merged into one perfect united utopia society where human being could have lived happily and peacefully forever, yet somehow the old world nuclear weapon has been triggered and human has been hiding in underground facilities, supplied by the merely sustained utopia institute, for centuries, until now, when the nuclear winter is about to end.

the supply line was somehow interrupted, so you and your shelter mates decide to explore the unknown facilities and even the under-sky world in order to survive.

2. COMBAT

2.1. processing in a randomly generated xcom-like map with limited interaction with the environment;

2.2. its turn based;

2.3. weapon: melee/throw & range & explosive. the weapon has "condition" status and "durability" status, reflex its efficiency. every character will be able to carry one or more weapons at the same time depending on weather the weapon has "suitable-for-carrying-mod" or not;

2.4. vision: as impotent as the weapon, having a sniper looking at you will be a bad experience;

2.5. action point: depending on the character's build, the more the better;

2.6.

3. CHARACTER BUILD

3.1. characters wont be able to level up, their status only be shown to the play by their mental & physical traits. the mental traits shows if the character is stable or not, and the physical traits shows his/her balance/strength/reflection;

3.2. traits will be generated randomly when the character is generated, and their is a chance to casually gain/loss traits in certain circumstance, some traits even unlock battle skills;

3.3. hidden traits;

3.4. learning: some skills like coding/gunsmith need the character to learn systematically, reading a instruction book will be the best way, after studying a skill, its instruction wont be consume, and they shall be classified as dumb, average, smart, talented;

3.5. when a character dies, he/she dies.

4. SHELTER MANAGEMENT

4.1. food/water/power: in the early game the remaining utopia institute will keep supply the player;

4.2. shelter room can be expanded if you have the right tool or machine;

4.3. the character has personal needs, make your shelter a human-friendly space will more likely give them good traits.

5. CRAFT

tools, weapons, and even machine can be craft if your characters have the skill, tools and components.

6. END GAME

different choices or encounters lead to different end game, for now i have four different ending in mind, and im still grinding them though, might still add or remove.

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>>DEVELOP PLAN<<

2>3>4>1>6>5 (to refer the basic game concept part in above)

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a game won't shows up in one's dream if he hasn't play it for tons of hours, not like a girl, that sometimes only takes you one gaze at her smile yet the moment has been last forever. if you happened to like the ideal of game, here might just be your stop, please PM me or leave a comment.

have a nice day!

ioci

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Just some tips from a programmer to help getting more people interested:

Your concept document is too detailed about the user experience which should come later as an iterative process.

Try making a simplified board game version and play it with friends before getting someone to program the full game logic. This is called a mockup.

Add some concept art to show your art skills and someone might be willing to compromise on own ideas.

Involve players at an early stage of the design and be prepared to change anything to make it fun.

Without specifying an engine and programming language, you might end up with programmers from different paradigms that work in 10% speed with twice the bugs.

AI programmers have the hardest problems so physics developers have to listen to what the AI developers can efficiently handle or you end up with slow and dumb AI.

Physics programmers comes next and must approximate the graphics that the artist made or you end up having shaky inaccurate physics with things getting stuck in walls.

If you do not listen carefully to the technical limitations specified by the programmers, it will just be another of many projects that failed from poor management.

I am mostly worried about what happens when one programmer gets bored with fixing bugs and just leaves with code that noone else understands. Since it happened within a week every time I worked with unpaid strangers that I met online, this project feels too risky for me even thou my own game is quite close in concept but with a medieval setting.

hi Dawoodoz,

many thanks, your reply shows me a new world :D, specially the relation between AI programming, physics programming and art drawing.

the engine and programming language bother me a lot once i started to prepare the story of the game. so i started to read a C++ tutorial to get a fundamental knowledge. openGL was considered, then some free game engines that some may call them "for the beginners". later i realize that the project should let the real programmers to decide on the engine and language, as my own vision on programming is so limited.

after all a team is to let everyone do what they are good at, under a control which always relates the motivation management, task distribution and problem gathering.

the concept posted above was meant to get attention from members with skills who also interested in playing a worked piece with those features, should have realized that it could also makes the project looks like a talker. but still, i'm glad that it exposes some unconsidered issues which will help the project to avoid in the future.

best regards,

ioci

hello we are a growing team, who is going to create a new MMORPG, for more info and if u want to join e-mail me at: jgakamix@gmail.com