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The game I never saw get made -or- Earth, 2015.

For random rambling. Please keep your posts tasteful and respectful.

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nikosv
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Subject: The game I never saw get made -or- Earth, 2015.

Post Posted: 04 Aug 2015, 09:03

So there's this game I really want to make. I've studied computer programming, various kinds of fine art, and natural and political science my whole life. And game design. I don't want to do anything except make games (though washing dishes at a restaurant isn't too bad a lifestyle either).

So this game. basically instead of controlling a character, you are the eldest member of a tribe of nomadic people in some kind of post-society world. I don't know how the controls would work, but basically instead of moving people around individually you give out commands and everyone in your tribe does what you say. Micromanagement isn't too bad, because if you train your tribe to take shifts watching out for enemies, you won't have to repeatedly tell your Scouts to keep guard every time the sun goes down.

You walk around, your tribe explores this crazy world that exists post-everything. The world is harsh, and your tribe is virtually always on the move. It's scenic. A lot of "should we cross this ocean or continue along the coastline?" You sometimes have to fight other weird groups with their own culture... and maybe their own weapons. They may have learned to restore firearms. You guys are fucked and have to hide when they come through. Or you have chemical warfare so it doesn't matter. I don't know. Maybe they're peaceful and you are too, so y'all can just swap some young people to increase your tribe's genetic diversity.

Also, they have certain skills which your tribe has never seen before. Skills can be passed along. Elders are wicked useful. They teach young people. This means that tribes with poor physical health have people with shorter lifespans and thus the overall amount of specialized skill is diminished.

Anyway, that's mostly it. I developed this idea gradually through all of high school and college. It's pretty much how real life works, but I like the idea of throwing in bizarre things, like the idea I just sent my friend about physical mutation.

here is the message i sent my friend:

i had a nice moment in my brain with worlds today. thought about my nomadic tribes game again and
i liked drawing some of them with oddly long arms, differently proportioned limbs, short and wide ,
but didn't think much of it
a large plot point, however, was that in order to end the game, one must find a sort of ark from a previous generation of people, that will again accelerate intellect. something kind of future library for the illiterate
HOWEVER~
speciation is the divergence and creation of new species due to geographic constraints— distance, usually— and animal-politics. the only reason speciation hasn't occurred with humans is because of globalization and our tools such as language and technology which profoundly limit genetic segregation.
today i came up with something: what happens when that globalization network is ~removed~, due to an infrastructural collapse and harsher planetary conditions?
two ideas from here:
1) speciation occurs naturally and bodies evolve with folk culture developing in different places
2) artificial speciation. humans see the great Event coming from a distance and prepare for it: they decide that the only chance of the survival of intellect is in the specialization of human beings.
############ NUMBER ONE: NATURAL LIFE
imagine cave networks with a bio-luminescent edible currency, deserts with competing wildlife, rural oases with habitual builders/makers, overpopulated areas ravaged with frequent war, water pokémon, dwellers of urban decay, ?space nomads. assignment:imagine what all their bodies would look like.
i like the idea of it being borderless. towns could exist with some homogeneity in their culture, nomads could exist, but the unifying theme would be that distance and lifestyle choices over generations would dictate appearance. cave dwellers would lose their sense of sight but have beautiful voices. seafolk would develop gangly limbs for swimming, and their land-bound ancestors would become great climbers and builders of cliff-hugging architecture.
perhaps in places two cultures could even exist intersectionally. maybe a city of people who only have a sense of touch and taste could develop a handheld sign language, retaining intelligence and becoming very physically strong. smaller creatures could live around them and only communicate in high-pitched voices so as not to create vibrations sensed by the hand-talkers.
########### NUMBER TWO: OVERLORDS
various arks are placed around the world which train devolved people to perform certain tasks which will aid in their survival and raise their quality of life based on the characteristics of the surrounding biome— instructions on how to reclaim contemporary windmill farms, for instance. electricity in the hands of posthumans could be very interesting! or one could go simpler and just give instructions on how to build a very clever hunting weapon, or how to build an underwater breathing apparatus.
the point and difference with this one is that the gift given to a certain area would be ~designed~ to create certain kinds of cerebral and/or body specialization. the learning arks could even have a strange transportation system in them for trading resources between other cultures, regulated by an enormous distributed computer. and the arks would encourage sheltered living styles, such that different people breeds would never see each other, or ignore each other, or kill each other. but never procreate.
the motive of the creators of the ark-net is that they felt our demise and return to apelikes was going to be inevitable, and that humanity must survive, no matter what.
##############
okay, so those are two paths.
(i really like the first one. it's prettier)
so, most importantly, third idea: what if world 1 and world 2 were the same place?
the computer exists, with all its ideological flaws, and among borderlands, where specialized creatures have become mutts, ~real~ intelligence and ~real~ consciousness exists. these animals are nomads and have the most romantic and exuberant forms of communication.
the non-nomadic folk cultures mentioned before do exist, but only in the futhermost regions.
################
thank you for listening to niko explain how Earth 2015 works in video-game lingo. goodbye!


end of message

So I know that may not really flesh out the gameplay at all. It's just more background story stuff. But it affects characters drastically! Different tribes could become cartoonishly different in visual design. Just something to think about.

Anyway, I just thought I'd share this. I like the UnrealSP community and I don't know if I've ever written as much as I did about the game as in that facebook message, so I thought I might as well scratch up a design document that I've been putting off writing for three or four years.

Let's talk about games!
Current Project: None. WTFs2 had to go to sleep, RIP.

I still sometimes sculpt PS2-style terrain by hand with Blender 3. Some passions always linger.

User avatar Rarsonic
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Subject: Re: The game I never saw get made -or- Earth, 2015.

Post Posted: 04 Aug 2015, 16:16

Sounds like Rising Lands.

I also have a couple of ideas for video games, and one in particular I'd like to flesh out. My problem is that I cannot draw for shit, I suck at the graphic arts. That, and the fact I'm not really secure in my storytelling skills.
Image

User avatar LannFyre
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Subject: Re: The game I never saw get made -or- Earth, 2015.

Post Posted: 13 Aug 2015, 00:43

I'm trying to make my game through modding Unreal Gold, but I can't find out how to make new controls so I've been stuck for weeks. ;^;
way2goslugger


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