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[Brentai]

I AM CANDIRU

[Niku]

god I hate your avatar

[Brentai]

Okay, so, the poorly-lit, brown-gray age of video games sucked.  We all know that now.  But sweet Christ you guys need to stop overcompensating for it.  Everything in Dead Space is just... I mean it's freaking radiant, and the game's supposed to be poorly lit and suspenseful.  And you stop chuckling over there, Bioshock, I'm looking at you too.

The whole HDR/Bloom thing works okay in moderation on games that are supposed to be bright and sunny (Oblivion, Guild Wars, probably a bunch of kiddy games I never play except those never have bloom for some reason), but yeah everywhere else it needs to die.  Painfully.  Even the latest iterations of the Source engine are teetering on the edge of too-fucking-much-light (Portal actually runs screaming over this edge, but it's entirely on purpose.)

[Disposable Ninja]

I was just thinking about how much I'd like to see a straight-up slasher game. It would be half stealth / survival-horror, half adventure game. During the stealth/survival horror sequences, you'd have to run and hide from this one murderous person (and I mean just one) -- Farmer Brown, we'll call him. Now, Farmer Brown has all sorts of wonderful toys to play with: axes, a shotgun, throwing knives, a chainsaw, a sniper rifle. You get some mace.

Every once in a while, though, you won't have to worry about him at all for a while; maybe he fell down some cliffs, or you're in his house while he's checking the corn fields, whatever. During these little sequences, you'll have to solve little puzzles and maybe even learn about what's going on and why Farmer Brown is trying to murder you.

You'll also acquire three or so companions. Three wonderful, sympathetic people who will help you survive and bring necessary insight into the puzzles and story. And just as you start to fall in love with them, naturally, (with maybe the exception of the last companion, depending on how you play your cards), they will all die, gruesomely, by Farmer Brown's hand, right in front of you.

[Brentai]

Sounds like the old original Clock Tower, where the only real menace was the Scissorman... okay, and a few people trying to kill you more subtly, but mainly Scissorman, who turned up pretty much everywhere.  Walking down an empty hallway?  Scissorman spawns out the other end.  Climbing a ladder?  Ladder falls, Scissorman pops outta nowhere while you're on the ground.  Boarding an elevator?  Scissorman won't even come out of it... you just go in, and moments later blood spurts out the door to let you know he got you.  There's even one ending that's basically "You escaped.  Scissorman followed you home and killed you.  The end."

[AČ]

I recall discussing a game about the African savannah with Bal.  At the start, the players are Meerkats or something, and must stick together in order to survive.  Gradually, as the player gains experience, they can choose to be animals higher on the food chain, until they are elephants who can shitstomp anything they come across.

Elephants still tend to travel in herds, though.  That way they can shitstomp harder.

[Brentai]

Or, you know, that other game.

(Neither one actually required you to group up, although arguably Spore is entirely about that after the creature phase.)

[Brentai]

So I may be getting a new client soon that's going into, of all things, marketing for independent games.

If it takes off I'll let you guys know.  I'm sure a couple of you could use it.

[James Edward Smith]

So this guy's pong watch is pretty cool.



It's not entirely clear from the video, but I think it's just a watch that plays pong against itself and then the score at the bottom is actually just the time cleverly disguised as the expected pong score. If that's not what it is and the score is actually just the score then the watch is lame and he should remake it to be what I just described.

It's a cool idea though, I think you could do it with a lot of games that have on screen score and/or lives and coin indicators. Even if your recreation game wasn't 100% accurate because you changed it a little to fit on a practical screen size/resolution and so that the time was displayed large enough.

It would be cool to have like, an Arkanoid watch, a generic shmup watch or something else like that.

[James Edward Smith]

You know what I was thinking today? I was thinking that instead of making Chrono Trigger remakes and Rehash of Mana games, Squarenix should make a Chrono Trigger sequel/spinoff about Ayla's glorious Iokan caveman regime.

You would play as Ayla leading her tribe through the iceage that follows Lavos' impact into the planet. Your party would be Ayla's family, Kino and her kids basically. Playing as Ayla, you would raise the Iokan royal family in sort of a Princess Maker like manner, only you'd have lots of princes and princesses. Unlike in Princess Maker where you have to raise your child in one way, you'd be raising say 4 children to be a balanced party led by Ayla in sort of a Leneth Valkyrie sort of role.

There really aren't enough party based RPGs where you actually have an onscreen avatar who plays the maternal leader of the party. I think it would play well in the geeky RPG playin' girl market and then us guys would just play it and boast about how good a head crusher our eldest son is and then tell everyone we just had an eyelash in our eye when our youngest daughter got married.

[Kayma]

It would probably be exclusively for cell phones....

[Bongo Bill]

Reminds me of a concept that drifted through my mind not terribly long ago. For lack of anything better I named it "Mama" and then never did anything with it.

So. The valiant, hot-blooded swordsman and his ragtag band of misfits destroyed the World-Devouring Evil some years ago, then went their separate ways. Ol' hero ended up marrying one of the party females, settling down in fantasyville to have N children (where N corresponds roughly to this game's difficulty level) and lead a quiet life in a time of relative peace.

The poor bastard caught the plague and died, leaving behind a wife (that's you) and children, his house, and a distressingly small life insurance policy (adventurers are considered high-risk). Since adventuring is just about the only thing you're qualified to do these days, you pick up your old gear, noting with some dismay that years of idle domesticity have caused you to revert to level 1, and set out to right miscellaneous wrongs! You need money for your kids' upbringing, and you need to be around to tend to their age-appropriate crises. Sure, in certain situations you can hire a babysitter to keep 'em out of trouble, or send 'em off to school in the daytime, but sometimes they just need mom to be there.

Making sure that your kids don't die or become delinquent takes time out of your day, and time is your most precious resource. The monsters are getting tougher and the cost of henchmen is increasing; if you're not leveling up at a good pace, you could struggle just to avoid being wiped out, and that's no good. As your kids age, you might be able to get them to ease your burden a bit: teenagers can hold jobs, watch younger siblings, or even accompany you on your quests. Provided that they're trustworthy; a home with one parent dead and another often absent isn't always the most morally nourishing environment to grow up in.

The game ends when A) you die, B) all your surviving children have come of age or run away, or C) you save the local peril-prone royalty from the World-Despoiling Menace and are rewarded with aristocracy. C might not be applicable.

[James Edward Smith]

I like mine with the healthy household better. Also Cavemen... also Ayla... also better.

[Brentai]

Bongo's sounds more like actual Princess Maker, except the adult does the actual adventuring.  But otherwise it's the same.  Right down to the absolutely pitiful salary given for BEATING SATAN IN A SWORDFIGHT.

[McDohl]

"Thanks for killing the embodiment of pure evil!  Here's five bucks!  Oh and you knocked up the spirit of another planet/constellation.  Have fun with that!"

[Classic]

While pondering MMOs, Classic had a vision: Instead of making monsters drop rare loot really rarely, instead have players accumulate some drop probability effecting points. Spend 2^16 (or maybe 2^32) and guarantee your rare drop.

Too... Too math-y? For a "Haz millionz of playerz" MMO that rakes in zillions for Blizzard, I mean.

[Bongo Bill]

It shouldn't be a problem as long as you include a progress bar.

[Niku]

In theory, that's how WAR's public quests work.  Now in reality contribution is nebulous and pretty much fucked up, but in public quests and keep sieges and whatnot, basically if you are in x place on the contribution list, you get a little medal that adds y number of points to your loot roll.  If you do the public quest multiple times in a row, in addition to the contribution bonus, you also get a persistence bonus on your loot roll until you win something.  If they can actually make contribution itself work, it's a fairly non-retarded system.

[Brentai]

That's not what he's talking about.  He means making it so that doing a raid 5 times pretty much guarantees your claim to the Leather Boots of Domination, as opposed to actually encouraging those fucking DPS wankfests.

Sorting loot probability by DPS/HPS/WTFPS is pretty much the opposite of what Classic wants.  I have to agree with him, too - being in x successful raids is probably a better indicator of contribution than "I got x points because I know how to rape the system."

[Kazz]

But then people will only do the raid 5 times!  THEN WHAT DO OUR SUBSCRIBERS DO?!