Game Suggestion

[EtherDragon98926]

I have a game suggestion that I think might be right up Introversion's Alley - which utilizes the procedural city generation.

Game suggestion - A Sniper Game
In a (procedurally generated) city contested by a corrupt government and rival crime factions, you work as an executioner for one of the factions.

You are offered jobs to "take out" high priority targets, within a certain time-frame. Some of these jobs would be part of the story element, others just random work for random sub-plots, to make you extra money and rep.

Once you take a job you have to:
Move around the city (explore the procedurally generated city)
Locate your target, and possibly study the target further to find the best opportunity for the take-down.
Locate a place to take your shot from - the more discreet the better. As you complete missions, your profile gets more and more noticeable, so whatever you can do to lower your profile the better.
Some of the activities you might do are hacking your way into a building for surveillance or to find a good place to shoot from.
Security guards, key-pads, simple locks, cameras, pad-locks, chain-link fences etc... might all be in your way to deal with. The big difference is that every time you have to interact with anyone (say a security guard) your profile is significantly increased, so you should rarely (if ever) social engineer yourself into a building because that raises your profile a lot, whereas cutting through a chain-link fence, and picking a lock on a fire-escape door raises your profile a lot less.
Actually take the shot (and finish the job), then get away (clean, hopefully), and get paid.

A job will give you some starting information, but you might have to research the rest.
Maybe you find that your target likes to hang out at Pete's Pub every Friday evening after work, and takes a back-alley short-cut on the way home.
You discover that the building 300 yards up the street is under construction, giving you easy access and a clear line of sight for the shot.

The procedurally generated city should be 3d first/third person shooter style. But the visual style could be done more graphic novel style - something simple, but gritty.

Possible ideas for character / gear progression.
As you complete more tasks, your reputation allows you to get more difficult tasks.
Task difficulty dictates how much heat you pick up, based on how you perform - this would be mitigated with good planning.
Maybe you start with a simpler rifle, and have to either plan to drive away from the site discretely, or stow the gun and go get it later.
As you gain rep and cash, you can spend money to have your fire-arm stowed for you, and picked up afterwards by some other crew.
You can spend cash on access to better guns and gear to break into places.
At first you might have to wait some time for your profile (heat) to decrease before the next job, but eventually you'll be able to afford paying bribes or seed mis-leads to lower your profile.

Possible over-all story:
A corrupt city government and criminal factions are battling for control of the city.
You are recruited by one criminal faction to serve as their "cleaner".
As the story missions evolve you finding out the depth of the local corruption, and can eventually turn toward cleaning out the corruption, or helping your organization thrive from it. Either way, parts of the city government is working to clean itself up, making your life difficult - so you're working some high price jobs so you can retire soon.

Tutorial thoughts:
Easy, low pay jobs (tutorials?) might be laid out for you step by step.
Training Mission 1, this guy goes to an underground dog-fighting ring every Thursday. Go to this abandoned apartment up the street, and "take care" of him as he exits. Drop the gun in the laundry chute, it will be handled for you.
Training Mission 2, this guy sneaks off to a strip club every pay-day. Find a suitable location to "take care" of him from. You must gain entry, do the job, and get out without attracting too much heat.
Training Mission 3, this guy is trying to muscle in on our distribution, but he has an inside man. Find out who he meets with, when they meet, and a good spot to "take care" of both this guy and his contact. Gain entry, do the job, and get out without getting caught - you'll have to take some time off to let the heat settle.
On to the regular story / free world missions.

Scoring thoughts:
I think the story missions can be the game timer, really. The story goes on with or without you - and it should be that doing nothing (or failing a job) is worse than choosing the lesser of two evils.
The randomly generated missions are there to allow you to money / rep up between story missions and ultimately contributes to you final "score." Which allows people to play against themselves or an online leader-board if one is added.

Closing thoughts:
I would play the crap out of this game, if anyone else would, or has ideas for a free-form procedural generated 3d sniper game, please stick em up here.

[Colytic]

I guess you know that IV has their hands full with Prison Architect at the moment, but I absolutely love this idea. It would be really exciting. It might quite like to see a unique art style for it too to emphasize the procedural generation. Not sure what that could be - perhaps something as extreme as the minimalist, Frozen Synapse style of their old WIP Subversion. On the other hand they could be just plain, gritty, and modern, or a kind of futuristic film look with lots of vistas.

[Jackdapantyrip]

You could add bullet drop physics too with different suppressors and guns.. procedural wind..

[EtherDragon98926]

Yea, I'm on the alpha notifications, and make no illusions about Introversion being able to "whip up" my game idea at a moment's notice.

But suggesting it is the first step towards seeing it happen someday, hopefully. =)

[xander]

Generally speaking, content producers (man, I feel like such a douche using that phrase---game developers, authors, television producers, etc.) ignore unsolicited ideas. Using someone else's idea (even with the kind of implicit permission given in a forum post) is a great way to open yourself up to a lawsuit.

xander

[EtherDragon98926]

@xander, that's too bad.

Let it hereby be known that:

The game suggestion given as the opening message of this thread is here-by the intellectual property of Introversion by virtue of the following facts:
1. The discussion originated on a message board owned by Introversion.
2. The original author of the thread makes no claim to ownership of any potential game design (real or imagined).

Note, the following disclaimers
1. There is no implicit or explicit guarantee that any suggestion given in this thread will be added to any product real or imagined.

At any rate, I thought "it would be cool if..."