Subversion Development - Any Suggestions Etc...

[Wasgood]

Makes me wonder how Multiwinia will go on xBox.

[Cooper42]

Said some interesting word thoughts

Aye. If the aim is to provide a vast amount of freedom to the player through scripting at various levels, then it would be great to be able to share those. If we're able to set up, say, security systems and so on it'd be nice to be able to share puzzles and challenges with others if you're gonna go down the UGC route (Though Spore is maybe not a good example here - the mission creator is crap). WHich would be a better bet than simultaneous multiplayer.

Also, if UGC is part of the game, then lots and lots of work will need to be put into the sharing mechanism. Whilst some of us may be prepared to trawl the forum for things, it would be better if it was built in with easy and accurate searches available and good (and numerous - not just downloads and ratings) ways of sorting content to find new stuff. Games which rely, even in part, on UGC can fall down due cumbersome and unintuitive sharing systems.

[bert_the_turtle]

I have to agree with xander. Whatever subversion is going to be, it's likely going to be complex, long winded and have more of a niche appeal. So content sharing multiplayer would probably be the best approach. Well, I disagree in one bit: the DEFCON community seems to be alive and well to me.

Regarding gameplay input, umm, you realize we know nothing at all about your overall vision for the game? So most of the stuff we'll come up with isn't going to fit in and be even more useless that the usual 'help us improve our game' threads? I can think of interesting stuff to do with the logic simulation stuff (like, have a building populated with gadgets and sentry bots and you need to infiltrate it either yourself or build gadgets that do the work for you; remember Robotropolis? Probably not.) and cool stuff to do with a procedural city (though none of it would be very introversion-like), but I can't see for the life of me how you'd combine both together into a coherent whole.

[martin]

I have to agree with xander, as much as I love multiplayer games you need a lot of people to make them work. Maybe a game which works with both multiplayer and single player is needed? Eg, you start the game, and start playing alone, and that's good fun, and then other people join and that's also good fun - in that way people will have servers up and running all the time because a single player game is a multiplayer game with 1 person....

[fredthedeadhead]

Rather than having synchronous multiplayer game, it might be interesting to have an asynchronous kind of game...

Whether synchronous or otherwise, I'd still like to see to see multiplayer being a strong aspect.

[vanarbulax]

Along the topic of multiplayer I think that user generated content would be pretty cool and keep subversion going a lot longer than IV could considering their relatively low staff levels. I would like say a few IV created areas showing off the main aspects of the game, some neat tricks, some basic story and then basically everything else being created by the community as I'm pretty sure Chris implied in one of the "It's all in your head" when talking about the editor. Basically this could be the Little Big Planet approach.

Secondly from a gameplay perspective I do not want something that relies on multiplayer (No player vs player or MMO stuff) but maybe missions which are played singleplayer could also be "dropped into" and played multiplayer. Though I actually haven't played it yet (am eagerly awaiting to import the US version) I'm think along the lines of Demon's Souls multiplayer component. It's effectively a single player RPG where you progress through a series of brutally hard dungeons but in game you can use items to summon people into your game to help for a section. Demon's Souls also has this cool system where you can leave notes and hints to other players (or leave a false message which sends them to their doom) and if subversion is the espionage/breaking into buildings/subverting systems game I think it is, then player hints about how to beat a level would be cool.

As you'll notice these ideas are all based off other games I think have cool multiplayer systems and my own idea of what subversion is going to be like so I have no idea if it's going to helpful or relevant at all, but the basic gist is that I don't want the game to be focussed on multiplayer but being enhanced by it.

In terms of gameplay basically Feud's post is what I always thought, and wanted the game to be. But hopefully not completely like eXperience 112, it was a cool experiment but no matter how much I tried I couldn't like it as a game. Though it does some interesting things I would want to play the game mainly from a "god view", but maybe hacking into security cameras and stuff will allow brief first person glimpse into the world. For example you're trying to infiltrate a building but you don't have much intel on the guards or security systems, you hack into one of the cameras, giving you another window which will have a first person view inside the building. This will give you more detailed information about what's going on, but you'd hack/control everything in a god view of the world.

[Jordy...]

I started writing the part below, but I probably should sum it up first.

A game in wich you built a control system trough wich you can influence the people (NCP). Controlling these people and influencing in so many ways, can be be so funny in so many ways, and I think would make for great multiplayer as well.
It would be a bit like the sims, but then 10 times cooler and more cynical I guess.

Ways you could influence people;

- Buildings and what there is to do within them
- Advertisement
- Control systems, like camera's and gates etc. Like controlling traffic streams
- Special player people that can do certain actions, like starting a campaign of terror and bombing things
- Schools, what the people learn at school influences later lifes, think about the schools in dictorial regimes
- People influence each other
- Speakers, Flash Signs, official state propaganda

And ofcourse not all the people will do like you say, you don't control them directly, but depending on how well you "secret police" is organized they will do what you say.

So in short, it should feel like you're the Stasi and the sum of capitalist cooperations in one, trying to control and influence "your" people and make them do your bidding.
This could be in single player, as well as in multiplayer where people fight over territory and control, and where they can begin political parties to show and extent there power.

I don't know how hard the scripting for these virtual brains will be, but I think it can be done relatively simple, like person A saw this advertisements X time for a duration of Y and his gene make him this influencable for this kind of message category and the random factors is P, or something like that.


A game in wich you control certain areas with buildings and the people living in it, then you try to manipulate them into all kind of thing by all kind of means to get benefical things, kind like sims pro.
KIND OF SHADY?

So you own a building, let's say that you then turn it into a place where people can work and make money, people will come into the building to work and make money. Then you regulate the elevators that they will always go one floor higher then the people choose too, wich makes them use the stairs, wich make then excercise and get hungry, so you can sell food to them or let a food shop pay you mony for being in your building.

Let's say you control a whole area of buildings and roads, you then can control traffic by cutting of certain roads, making people all go trough one specific road where you place major advertisments bringing you revenue and making the people get influenced by the advertisement.

STILL NOT CONVINCED HUH?

Let's spice it up, you got people from a different area passing trough you neigbourhood, you show the advertisements saying that there employers are bad and that they should strike of leave that part of town, or you tell your own people that those people from that area are bad and they should fight them, this way you can have "skirmishes" between players by influencing the people.

Or say, you built a temple and you start a belief that tells followers to attract more people to there belief and then as the belief you set certain rules like non-violence, non-work etc. disrupting your enemies economy or benefiting your own.

I'll try to make this concept and my ideas more clear, and write them up some day, if there is anything usefull in it for you?

[Jordy...]

A sandbox game in wich you built and extend your influence.

The importest thing would be the "black box" of the ncp and making it realistic, but I think this could be extended over time and with the help and ideas of the fan base.
Also new systems could be built with simple buidling blocks like Chris showed in his blogs, and I think there is really a lot to do with that, thinking about what kind of things you could do with a simple prgram like node-def.
So players can built new systems and if it's not doable I think there should be some kind of service that IV takes the plan creates it and the owner of the idea get's to use that system exlusively for some extent of time before it get's public. This way a real intricate world will come to live I think.

Roughly you could divide these system in to 2 categories;

- systems with a fixed outcome, i.e. the persons have no choice in the interaction like camera's, roadblocks etc. altho this might change there behaviour or thinking in a way

- systems that try to influence people, i.e. advertisement, religion etc.

With systems I mean "a set of rules" that interact with the people.


So taking this in a mmo game it would be like that players try to influence people to make them go there way and then there is the first person game where you control your character and interact with the surroundings. A bit like Assassin creed or something but then more hard-style. I think that aspect comes really easy with the aspect mentioned before because if you have a living city then you can play naturally in it.

For example you'r terrorizing an enemies area of control, he has put on extra cops on duty and has set in a night clock, then you can sneak trough the city trying to avoid cops or make it even funnier and pay a citizen in that area to stake the cops moving patterns and give it to you.
So let's say paying a citizen to give you info about cop movement was not included in the game yet, then it should be easy to suggest that idea to IV and to get it implented into the game, a bit like dwarf fortress in the way that the game is continuing with updating itself.


SCENARIO

You got a city procedurally generated and all the people sit in there home, you're starting from scratch.
You decide to start a political party and rase funds on the promise you make live better, you get money from the people and make a headquarter in a building, employing people and paying them, from then on, those people will move to that headquarter each day and work for you. Say for now you tell them to raise more funds, then you tell people you give starting businesses a money bonus to help them start up, this will incite people to start businesses and the city will start to come alive.

Or very differently, you make a bank from the starting money you received and let people deposit there money there, then you tell them we need police to protect the bank so you raise more funds and create more jobs. Then you try to rob the bank and you buy more buildings creating businesses etc.

So the idea is you have this procedurally generated city and you can bring it to live in anyway you want to and play in it from then on.


So, this would probably take a lot of time to make and relatively lot of money to maintain if you want to expand it over time, but I think you guys should be ambitious with Subversion because it has such a great promise to it.
And if it is really great I'm sure lots of people will play it, also because it's truelly unique and who doesn't want to play the REAL sims game?!

[fredthedeadhead]

I suppose a game in which you hada god-like perspective, but very limited influence over the contents of the game should be called a god-of-the-gaps sim?

[GreenRock]

woohoo!!!
ive always imagined subversion, from the very moment i saw it, to be a sniper strategy game.
not quite sure how the actual mechanics would work but the main mission is to find your opponents sniper postions and eliminate them.
maybe somehow incorporate hacking techniques (since this is an advanced-looking city, loaded with sensors, cameras; the whole shebang(and all of jordy's control systems)) to find the sniper locations.

I dont want this to be a First person shooter game. Whats important is the whole situation of having snipers trying to kill other snipers, and orchestrating such an event against another player.
Not too sure about the story.

just look at that subversion picture at the beggining of the forum and tell me its not a good idea.

I mean, you can try to negotiate with the other side. Weapons, ammo (yes your buying ammo from your enemy whom your going to use against) food, etc. etc.. and to trade with the other side, meeting points are needed. of course, you and your opponent send snipers all around the meeting area to make sure things go smoothly. and if ur opponent doesnt send any snipers (which youll know by hacking all the surrounding buildings) its in ur favor to eliminate the messenger, and take the items. again, another aspect arises at this point: time. meeting points need a time and a place. an army time clock or an 12 hour clock would be somewhere in the players HUD.

and this is just meeting points.

another thing would be supply drop offs.
maybe the drop off will happen around 1500 hours. the receivers heavily defend the drop off zone while the opposing team tries to elimintae all the drivers (several armoured cars carrying food, ammo, reinforments, and other supplies) and whatever make it to the zone, the player recieves.

too many situations....

[Jordy...]

I was thinking about this too, tho not sniper exactly but more gang wars and drug deals etc. getting locations getting unoticed by police bit like ABP maybe, but better because it just looks so much cooler!

I have mentioned this before but probably everybody forgot, so I'll do it again;

Long time ago there was thi guy that wanted to make a game in wich a while city was constructed and every room was decorated etc. and all the people had there own jobs and going abouts etc. in short a real living city.
Now he imagined that you could choose a career, like anything from criminal, politician, policeman etc. and go trough this career to rule the city, true corruption, terror, persuasiveness or whatever. Ofcourse this was way to ambitious the, and the actual game was not that bad but quite flopped, but I always thoughed Subversion could be something like that.
One important thing to I remembered last night, IV probably aready took it for granted, but Subversion doesn't have to be a game that is realistic in human perspective.
It's logical, giving IV pasts games, that the gameplay is in some kind if virtual reallity story where maybe all the subjects and players may have humana charactaristics, but are actually virtual entities or robots as such. This allows maybe for more gameplay options if not all.

Anyway back to that game I mentioned, forgot it's name, I think it would be awesome if you could rise to the ranks as an police officer, or control officer more like it, and in your rise to the top you can play the games in many different ways going about manipulating the people.

[Jordy...]

So, you play subversion and you pass a law that the population should be imlented with chips, then you launch big campaign with advertisements etc. and then you try to track down the unwilling people, I think that could be fun gameplay ?

[GreenRock]

even though that sounds like a terrifically complex idea, and pretty cool sounding (for some i suppose), i would want more of an intense type of game from introversion. However, i'm not too sure how multiplayer would fit into your idea, Jordy. Without multiplayer, im afraid the game may lose replay value. I was going everywhere the sniper idea, but i figured multiplayer needs a good, solid, fun game for it to last, with quick thinking in place of complex planning.

[Jordy...]

I think complex planning should definetely be the key of Subversion, since quick thinking is so damn casual and complex thinking is ehh.. never done before? But I assume it's hard and that that's the reason why it's never done before, BUT.

I think it's time to close in the gap between all this free web-based time based games and the MMORPG GAMES I don't know how Cities XL does it, but it should definetely be possible.

Here's how I see it.

[GreenRock]

I think complex planning should definetely be the key of Subversion...

wouldn't that result in dull gameplay?