The dream project

Posted by aeron on Feb. 6, 2014, 2:46 a.m.

Hey all, got an open ended question for you. Say you had all the time and resources in the universe at your disposal. Anything's possible. You get to choose one project to start/revive and see all the way through to completion. What would you choose and why?

In before short blog, I'm treating this as an open ended discussion. Think of it as your ideal/pet/dream project, that one thing you've always wanted to make but it just hasn't fallen into place yet due to constraints, whatever they may be. You can refer to a specific project or just describe something general you want to aspire to.

I'm pretty sure most of us have one (or two or three) of these lingering in our minds, so if you'd like to share, I encouraged you to leave a comment or dedicate a blog to it. I know I'm not the only one who'd be eager to read it and give feedback.

Comments

Mega 10 years, 2 months ago

So many ideas… But there is one 'pet' project I'd like to take to completion.

I've always wanted to create a sandbox survival game based on extremely high resolution voxels, placing the player(s) on a chain of deserted islands with no food/water.

The type of survival I'm thinking of here is leaning more toward Robinson Crusoe style survival, without a focus on combat; I think this would be an interesting game to play with others.

On the somewhat less impossible side, I want to complete an FPS design I had worked out; it's planned as being very similar to Quake/Doom, would have a multiplayer component and… well, I could say I'm working on it, since I'll probably use my engine for it.

aeron 10 years, 2 months ago

As for me, I'm torn. On one hand I'd really like to do something for this community and give it a makeover like it's never seen. Recently we've made incremental improvements to the site, but the code base doesn't allow us to do anything radical without an avalanche of headaches. Building from scratch is hard work but it pays off by giving us the chance to plan for features we've lost support for *cough* QDB *cough* member points shop *cough* forums *cough* polls *cough*, as well as features we've yet to consider. We have a lot of potential to grow here, and it sure would be great to help see it through.

But given the resources of my own hypothetical, I'd probably not use them on a website (which could still be reasonably managed by a small dedicated LOL team). I suppose I'd put them towards a game I've contemplated making for quite some time. It would be a huge space exploration game, where you captain a ship and explore foreign planets, fighting to survive however you can, ultimately trying to win an unwinnable war. Think Nethack meets FTL meets Alien Swarm (Realtime top down roguelike rpg shooter). One thing I wanted to implement was some type of actual in game coding that let players customize their weapons (not necessary to play but cool). I've sort of attempted working on this in various forms, but nothing's come close to a prototype yet. It definitely feels like one of those projects that isn't feasible without at least a few others on my team.

Mega, I like the idea of a survival game not based around combat, sounds like it would have very interesting multiplayer. I can picture players hoarding resources and starving each other out, assuming there's hunger involved. And I can't wait to play your FPS, in whatever form it takes (though I must admit to being a fan of quake like games).

MMOnologueguy 10 years, 2 months ago

Communism.

Quietus 10 years, 2 months ago

^dying, MMO. lmao

TO MAKE: one (1) influential post-rock album of the 90s (time travel required).

it'd be more progressive/avant-garde now. but yeah, that's definitely something i've wanted to do since i started learning fretless bass at 15 or so.

TO MAKE: several (?) awesome music videos that don't all look the same. as it stands, idk what i'd even use to throw one music video together. :P

TO MAKE: one (1) serial comic that doesn't suck. (wow, that sounds ambitious)

i've wanted to do this ever since being laid up with head trauma in '11 and reading a ton of Inuyasha manga. 3 years of planning and studying still makes it a novel desire, compared to games and music.

TO MAKE: one (1) game that… err, fuck. i don't know the answer to this one. that all-enclusive Minecraft/GTA-esque sandbox MMORPG everyone dreams of? i'm just now realizing - i don't have any ambitions for real 3d. so.. here.

*a really good 2d fighting system for my platformer.

*a skeletal engine that auto-animates walking, jumping, etc. those are really cool.

*an immersive creature raiser. or really, anything with good AI.

*a horror game with a lot of replayability. (why are these so boring to me? x_x)

*a story based indie game where people actually care enough to follow the story.

*a music visualizer with interpretive dance, via the skeletal engine. (and by interpretive dance i mean explosions and ragdoll physics)

and… that's all that comes to mind for now.

Castypher 10 years, 2 months ago

I would slit throats to see a lowpoly-3D version of Terminys.

Josea 10 years, 2 months ago

I'd make a city building game. I'm tired of Simcity 4.

Acid 10 years, 2 months ago

I have so many ideas and interests, I just wish I had the financial means to persue them all and still have time for my family. I'm currently contemplating pushing out a bunch of really polished shitty games since Flappy Bird is making fucking 50k a day on ad revenue. It would destroy dignity… but even if I made 20k off of 5 really shitty games a year, it would let me have more time with my family and to work on projects that don't suck.

The guy who made Flappy Bird is probably extremely overwhelmed because he never expected his game to blow up like it did. I'd probably freak out and not want to do any interviews either.

Moikle 10 years, 2 months ago

unlimited time and resources is not what I am lacking to complete stuff. I need unlimited motivation instead

panzercretin 10 years, 2 months ago

Hope this isn't too vague but here goes.

I want to make a comic that proves comics can indeed be a valid source of art - not just entertainment, but true and heartful art that leaves a little scar on your heart when you're done with it. I want to make something raw, but at the same time descriptive - knowing my style, maybe a supernatural romance in Eastern Europe. I just want to make something that shows how things make me feel - how things burn inside my head. I want to scream on paper and have that screaming mean something to people, for it to key into the exact headspace I want it to. I want to tear asunder the perceived boundaries of comics as art - not just in an expressive way, but in an emotional way as well. I wanna make a comic for readers to cry with, to laugh with, to live with.

In short, I want to make the rawest, heaviest, most beautiful comic I could possibly comprehend.

And maybe, if there's enough of me left to work with, I might want to try the same for games, too.

colseed 10 years, 2 months ago

I think it is safe to say this exercise only succeeded in making me depressed

:(