Subversion Development - Any Suggestions Etc...

[martinmir]

At Introversion we are always looking for input from our fans. Ideas don’t come that easy and everyone, including ourselves needs a bit of inspiration from time to time. We would like you (The IV Community) to start posting up your ideas, thoughts and insight for how you see Subversion developing. This can include what it looks like, game play, characters, story VS arcade, dark VS light. Don’t be shy with your words, as we want to see what you are made. If we do use any of your suggestions in Subversion, we promise to award you a prize. Images are welcome, so to all your graphic designers and artists, get creating.

[Ace Rimmer]

I still hold to my theory that Subversion will be a game form of Cube, or rather an IV game inspired by Cube.

[Mas Tnega]

Characters should be procedurally generated! They should have something resembling a genetic code to work with event data to define their appearance and attitudes. Major characters should be this and MORE! They should have goals in life and slightly fudged histories to give them specific motivations towards that goal and means that would make their goal either more attainable, or at least gain more attention as they try to pursue it.

The main story should simply be very major characters or groups with highly ambitious goal, one of which with a significant impact on the game world for the rest of the cast to act around. Such characters should especially be able to exploit past history of other named characters in their set up for <dire consequence/glorious outcome here>.

MacGuffins should exist with functions, shape and of course any amount of history, ranging from "I made it last week, it's just a new WMD" to shockingly long and comprehensive as a toy train just shouldn't be 4,000 years old when it's still the 21st century.

[Montyphy]

Violence and destruction.

[Feud]

One thing that I think could be neat that Subversion could be used for is an adviser/orchestrator god game.

For an example of what I'm thinking of, it's like the office scene in the Matrix or the movie Eagle Eye, where a seemingly omniscient entity aids people through a series of small simple steps that create a complex solution to the problem.

Perhaps in the game you, the being, could aid you're person or group go somewhere or do something, helping them avoid certain people or enabling their route, by doing things like stopping/starting elevators, changing traffic lights, causing distractions, etc.

[Xarlaxas]

@Mas: Dwarf Fortress then?

*is liking Feud's and Mas' ideas*

[Rkiver]

Characters should be procedurally generated! They should have something resembling a genetic code to work with event data to define their appearance and attitudes. Major characters should be this and MORE! They should have goals in life and slightly fudged histories to give them specific motivations towards that goal and means that would make their goal either more attainable, or at least gain more attention as they try to pursue it.

The main story should simply be very major characters or groups with highly ambitious goal, one of which with a significant impact on the game world for the rest of the cast to act around. Such characters should especially be able to exploit past history of other named characters in their set up for <dire consequence/glorious outcome here>.

MacGuffins should exist with functions, shape and of course any amount of history, ranging from "I made it last week, it's just a new WMD" to shockingly long and comprehensive as a toy train just shouldn't be 4,000 years old when it's still the 21st century.

I'd go +1 with this. I cannot think of anything off the top of my head.

[NeatNit]

Try the bottom.

[Montyphy]

One thing that I think could be neat that Subversion could be used for is an adviser/orchestrator god game.

For an example of what I'm thinking of, it's like the office scene in the Matrix or the movie Eagle Eye, where a seemingly omniscient entity aids people through a series of small simple steps that create a complex solution to the problem.

Perhaps in the game you, the being, could aid you're person or group go somewhere or do something, helping them avoid certain people or enabling their route, by doing things like stopping/starting elevators, changing traffic lights, causing distractions, etc.

Reminds me of eXperience112, always wanted to try it.

[Cooper42]

Slinkies.

What's the point of a physics model without loose srpings walking down stairs?

[RabidZombie]

Getting in testers early, as in, before the final polish stretch.

[prophile]

A game of large-scale corporate espionage, like Uplink except you're actually breaking into other companies (or the government) rather than just hacking.

Also you should get a chance to blow a nuclear bomb/antimatter charge/other doomsday device and level an entire city at some point during the game.

[fredthedeadhead]

My favourite games are all multiplayer, so I'd like to see that as being a prominent feature. Working with this, and the free form procedural world, I can see a few interesting ideas.

The game could go down an MMO style route, and have several active cities, or even just one, that are rotated every so often. The player would control themselves. The game play would be a sort of "killer" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassin_%28game%29) style assassination game, with all the players in one city trying to kill a single other player, whilst not getting caught by the police/public/other assassins. Each player could have a base to hold up in, and would defend it with CCTV that automatically emails evidence to the police if the player gets killed, or have sentry bots, or just really hard to crack doors.

Alternatively, this could be scaled down to much smaller scales. Each player has the same objective, except they are a computer literate mob boss, and have RTS style control of their minions. Minions could be set to guard targets, earn money (robbing banks etc.), and go on missions to take down the other mob bosses. This could even be played as single player quite well, with the player trying to take down an oppressive government with aggressive raids (Fight Club style?).

Overall, I think most ideas for gameplay would go down the same route of having the city being fully fleshed out, with citizens, police, corporations and rival players/gangs (this might be achievable by having a "random gang generator", with priorities and resources randomly determined, and just randomly assigning them to being cops or an underground group, and their priorities determining whether they are 'good' or 'bad'?). Once this is done, there needs to be a modifiable system of rules determining what the player controls and what the victory conditions are. In fact, this is the only real thing that needs to be done. Oh, and of course a system to distribute them. Perhaps each month has a user created game mode as a theme?

[martin]

One thing that I think could be neat that Subversion could be used for is an adviser/orchestrator god game.

For an example of what I'm thinking of, it's like the office scene in the Matrix or the movie Eagle Eye, where a seemingly omniscient entity aids people through a series of small simple steps that create a complex solution to the problem.

Perhaps in the game you, the being, could aid you're person or group go somewhere or do something, helping them avoid certain people or enabling their route, by doing things like stopping/starting elevators, changing traffic lights, causing distractions, etc.

I've always imagined that's what subversion is (although I always tend to think of the guys in the radio in mission impossible, the matrix is probably a better analogy). For the record that would be an awesome game

[xander]

My favourite games are all multiplayer, so I'd like to see that as being a prominent feature.

I'm going to have to disagree with you here. IV has released two multiplayer games to date, and neither of them really developed a very large community. There are less than 100 people in the world that play Multiwinia with any consistency, and perhaps a slightly larger number that still play Defcon. Hitting the server browser and seeing no active games is death to a multiplayer game. Until I see some kind of plan for developing a large and active community of players, I would hate to se IV commit to yet another multiplayer game that dies a slow death of attrition.

Instead, it would be nifty to see IV really focus on the sandbox aspect of the game. Rather than having synchronous multiplayer game, it might be interesting to have an asynchronous kind of game, perhaps in the model of Spore, where content creation is relatively easy, and content can be shared from one player to another to build a larger, more believable world.

xander