The introversion interlink idea....

[Steeds]

(Edit: Im releasing this idea under the Commercial Creative commons license so that introversion can "legally" use this idea for subversion)

The origin:

I was playing quake3 the other day with some mates at a lan and although i cant remember how we got onto it, we started talking about the dreamcast version of it. I own it and didnt realise that playing with the dreamcast over the internet, you can play pc quake3 players(with an old patch version mind).
Which got me thinking about other games that do something similar (MMORPGS, Counter-strike:source, UT2004, Battlefield 2 (to some extent)) then some days/weeks along the line i thought; how about instead of different platforms of games (e.g. Xbox and ps2) how about two (or more) different genres....

The concept:

Imagine, playing Defcon and when attacking a COMCON (command and control), it switchs over to the uplink interface so that you can insert a Darwinian teleport gate in their main servers and begin taking over the system
Or
Using only Defcon and Darwinia, four players are playing on a network. Two players having the defcon interface to do global war/management while the other two fight it out over missle launcher computer locations.
Or
Using uplink and Darwinia, singleplayer-wise could mean bonus research for darwinia if the correct files are found over the internet or Bonus programs for uplink if you can gather enough darwinians to construct them for you etc etc

The reason:

Think of it this way, if a player owns two or more of the games (interlink enabled) then bonus levels and challenges open up because of the fact that this idea can be done (e.g. sonic adventure on gamecube/dreamcast allows you to have a chao mini bonus game if you own a Gameboyadvance/VMU). Reason enough to own all three (and any future projects) i would say.

The technical:

I personally only know of two games that has seperate EXE's for different areas and thats ufo:enemy unknown and xcom:terror from the deep. When playing either game in the geoscope (the world map and management screen) you were running geoscope.exe, But when you were attacking/under attack, geoscope passed arguments (e.g. -size:640x480 etc) to a another program called tactical.exe and it passed back more arguments (e.g. -won etc)after the battle. Having to pass arguments is the comparativly easy way of doing it. Think of that as play-by-email
They can be run altogether in real time(introversions games) but that means re-writing the network code for defcon and writing network code for darwinia and uplink.
It basically can be done however it wouldn't be financially viable for older games, but could possibly be done for newer/unreleased ones. Food for thought there....

Any other contributing ideas folks?

EDIT: P2P gave me another idea, uplink/an uplink type game can utilise p2p style network packets and visualise them as a miniature internet (not actually editing them in any way, just a way to make it frightningly real).... theres an idea in there somewhere.
*breathes*

(Creative commons license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/deed.en_GB)

[martin]

As it happens I'm designing a game (probably never get built from lack of time) which is different games, the idea is a four or more person game with two people running businesses and two running armies, the armies are then hired by the businesses to attack the other (works better with more players because then you've got rogue armies attacking everyoe etc).

However I think "city of villains" and "city of heroes" are different games which work together aren't they?

[Steeds]

Essentially you are thinking of a tycoon -esque game incorporating the "Mercenaries" idea into it. There has been a game similar to it, but it was not multiplayer. Plus if it is a game you want to sell/not release as freeware, then you have to consider people playing in singleplayer I.e using A.I or not using certain elements at all.

"city of villains" and "city of heroes" are the same game (i think) just with different content and a different viewpoint but play on the same MMOG servers. The idea i had was the same as your first one, different genres/different ways of playing.

I've always wanted design a game, even though ive done programming courses and hardware classes as a side thing, i could never get my head round it. Thats why i like uplink so much. No need to learn jargon or any programming routines. Just a quick mouse hand and a lot of luck....

[Rkiver]

One word.

Vapourware.

[martin]

One word.

Vapourware.

which one?