[Mandrake]

The first evah video game writing based compo. Ok, the idea is pretty simple. I give you a background and setting, you guys set up a plot. Basically it should be in simple form, nothing too detailed (think basic plot outline). Characters listed first (names- description- when they join/why) then basic plot. You have until Feb 4th.





Backdrop:

The main character awakens in the ruins of an empty hospital. Go.
_________________
"Well, last time I flicked on a lighter, I'm pretty sure I didn't create a black hole."-
Xmark

http://pauljessup.com

[Hajo]

Preface:

I wrote this last friday (before this contest was announced). It's somehow funny that it almost matches the plot description, although the hospital is rather a laboratory. I'll not have time to further work on it until February 4th so I post it as-is.

This text has a few logical gaps (which could be worked out with some more effort). It has a few time-gaps which I planned to fill with content once I have time to continue the story.

It's horrible english. It's full of wrong words and bad spelling. It doesn't have style. I never tried to write such thing in english before. I was listening to load techno musik and wrote it in a heavily altered state of mind.

If I could, I'd make a game of this. OTOH I think it's better suited for a novel.

I have no idea if you can accept it for the competition. I post it anyways. This is the first time I publish such a thing. If someone wants to use this idea for your game, please ask me first.

It's called: "The one man fleet"

There is only one character. It's you.

-------------------------------------------------------


You are the partner of a mad scientist. You want to take over the world.

He plans to implant your brain into a giant cyborg war machine. You will
be a one man army, almost invincible. You'll be a flight enabled tank
with an supportive army of remote controlled battle drones.

You prepare for the transplantation, giving up your weak body, changing
into a war machine. The scientist narcotises your body, you fall
unconscious.

When you wake up, you are a cyborg. But you feel weak. Being a war
machine is something else.

You can't move. Your sensors report the laboratorium destroyed. The
scientist is lying on the floor, dead. You can't receive radio or
tv transmissions.

You need to find out what happened.

You use the remote control battle drones to activate some of the
lab equipment. Finally You manage to finalize the work on your
cyborg body. New energy fills the capacitors, your moves are swift
and forceful. Sensors paint precise images of the fines detail into
your mind.

Now you can leave the lab. You open the armored doors, and lift your
body out of the lab.

You find the world destroyed. The earth is covered by ashes, plants
are nothing but burned trunks. You can't spot any animals or beings
of your species. Your sensors report the atmosphere has turned into
poisoneous unbreathable gas.

The heavy armorment of the lab and your cyborg body saved your life,
but the world that you wanted to rule is no more than a grave for
millions of your folk.

You want to find out what happened.

Your memory contains the positions and detailed information of some
military bases, that you formerly planned to attack and take over.

You send your battle drones to the bases. The bases are most
thoroughly destroyed. You had big luck that the lab wasn't attacked
by the attacker, most likely only the fact that nobody knew about it
saved you from destruction.

You decide to visit the remains of the closest city. [...] You find
some tapes of the latest TV news - aliens attacked the planet! They
seem to have captured everyone they could get hold of and finally
destroyed the planet, obviously with the intend to kill all
remaining life.

You surely had been an offender all of you life. The rule of the
strongest has been your rule. You can't accept that the aliens
took all that should've been yours.

You seek revenge.

Being a flight enabled tank controlling a fleet of battle drones, a
plan grows in your mind. Your memories store information about a top
secret military facility which was working on a interstellar jump drive.
If you could leave the planet you could try to take over another
planet, maybe even attack the aliens, and give them back what they
gave to you - destruction and hate.

The base is located deep under a mighty mountain. The thousands of
tons of rock protected it from the alien weapons, but some kind of
radiation must have killed all life.

You wonder why the radiation
didn't kill you. Maybe the fact that you had been unconscious
during the transplantation had saved you - finally you don't even
know how much of your old body now resides inside the cyborg. The
scientist had told you that you won't die of old age, in your new
shape but who knows?

You enter the secret base. You find a prototype space ship with the
new interstellar jump drive. The factory components are still working
there is enough material to complete the ship.

You can't control the ship in your shape of a flight-enabled tank.
But you can build the core of the tank into the ship, replacing
the main computing system, and connect yourself to the ship systems.

After many months of work, you can take off for a first test flight.
Being a space ship, you feel more powerful than ever before.

After takeoff your sensors shape the image of a completely destroyed
world - you knew that it was destroyed, but somehow you hoped that
some spot could still be lively and someone of your folks could have
survived. Your hate of the aliens grows the longer you watch your
destroyed homeworld.

You return to the military base, where your new body had been build.

You need to grow stronger before you can attack the aliens system.

The next years you spend on modifying the military base to an
automated factory for ship components and the hevaiest of known
weapons. You also send out long range spying drones, using the
new interstellar jump drive to investigate nearby solar systems,
hunting for signs of the aliens home.

During those activities you also research options to control additional
ships. You need a fleet to attack the aliens system.

In the meantime, with help of the factories of the base, you created
a big number of robots who act as your remote hands.

The idea of cloning your brain seems to be the most promising.
With help of your robots you start building a cloning facility.

Then the thrilling moment comes near - you start growing a clone
of your brain. It shall control the sister ship of yours which
slowly shapes up in the factory.

All of a sudden, a feeling like an illness comes over you, you're
no longer sure of yourself, almost as if you'd exist in two places.
It's the growing clone of your brain. Somehow you can feel it - it's
not a clone it's a part of you, it's you and you're it. You're two
now, and still one.

A idea grows in your mind, becoming a multitude, becoming a giant
fleet of spaceships, yet being all one. This will give you an
incredible advantage over any other fleet, you're always aware of
all actions of all of you, being able to act and react quicker and
more precise than any fleet manned by individuums ever could act.

You do further experiments with the new jumdrive, send your other
self to space systems far away, and see if the link somewhen will
break. You figure out that there is a maximum distance beyond which
the link will break. But it's light years, not a problem even for
a big fast mving fleet of thousands of yous.

You test enhancements of the weapon systems, force fields and armors
known to you. You expand the factory to build even bigger ships. You
grow new clones of your brain, manning the new ships, from the smallest
fighter to the big battle cruisers.

Then one of the spy drones finds the aliens system. It's rather far
aways, at the limit of the jump drive total capacity, if you want to
return to your home world after the attack.

You can't build jumpdrives for each ship of your fleet, even if the
factory grew to a many miles wide complex and resources are shipped
from automated factories spread all over the bodies of your home
system.

You figure that you'll build one carrier that is equipped with
the jump drive, and maybe some of the biggest units as a fallback.

You design this carrier around the body of your space ship. It's
a gigantic prism-shape. On each surface, a fleet carrier can dock
which will be faster and better maneuverable in enemy territory
than the prism carrier core.

Each of the fleet carriers will carry a group of cruisers, a small
fleet of frigates and hundredful of corvettes, fighters and bombers.

The carrier core will have to be build in orbit around your home
world, it is just to big to land to start from a planets surface.

In the end it will be a structure, almost 80 miles long and 20
miles in diamters, with 6 docking surfaces on the outside.

The fleet carriers are hollow, longish flat shapes. Their inside
is starting and landing area for their subvehicles.

Even cruisers will be build as carriers for fighters and bombers.

It takes dozens of years, to expand the factoriers and build the
fleet, to grow the clones and equip the ships. You grow into a
fleet of 450.000 units, 450.000 times death and destruction for
the hated aliens. 450.000 facets of you.

It's a historic moment as the core carrier moves the first time.
You test splitting off the fleet carriers, launching the cruiser,
frigates, corvettes, bombers and fighters - it takes hours but
finally all 450.000 facets of you move independantly yet controlled
by one will.

You recollect your fleet, refuel the ships, repair what went broke
and leave your home system to seek revenge on the aliens.

After a long journey, you and your children approach the heavily
fortifierd alien system. It has 10 planets and several doezen smaller
bodies. The plantes number 3 and 4 seem to be inhabitated by the aliens.
According to radio transmission world no. 4 is their home world, the
center of their might.

The planets are fortesses protected by force fields and bearing
the heaviest of cannons that your sensors ever had reported. They
have long rangle battle fortresses in orbits around their sun, soaking
their power directly from the gigantic star. Big power converters draw
power from the sun and transmit it to the planets to supply force fields
and cannons. You'll have to destroy the converters quick.

Each body in this system is a fortress, a platform for cannons
and missile launchers. The aliens home fleet well extends 100.000
units, including heaviest of cruisers and battle ships. Mine fields
protect large areas of the system.

You and all your facets count 450.000 units, all controlled by
one will. A fleet moving and thinking as one man.

You drop from hyperspace just outside the alien system. Your main
carrier body splits off the fleet carrier components carrying the
fleets of heavy cruisers, frigates and corvettes, each again carrying
a multitude of fighters, bombers and drones.

The fleet carriers slowly start heading towards the alien system.
Your main body follows a bit slower. The heavy cruisers launch from
the carriers. You launch the battle drones to protect your main
carrier body and the fleet carriers.

The first waves to attack fighters depart from the carriers and
enter the alien system.

You unfold your might and send your wrath towards the aliens.

Then the call arrives: "Who are you, and what is your intend?"

You turn on all of your radio transmitter, and the 450.000 of
you answer: "I am your enemy! Your destruction is my intend!"

The answer is something your sensors translate as a lough.

Your sensor report gigantic power supplies powering up. Cannons
on the planets being activated and risen from their subsurface
fortresses. Disguised space fortresses wrap themselves in force
fields and send first waves of missiles against your fighters.
Fleets of alien fighters depart from hidden bases, and
some space bodies lift their disguise and turn out to be
mile-long battleships.

The first factets of you die in alien fire, not even having
reached the alien system. The pain screams inside you.

--------------------------------------------------------------
This is where the game begins, the assault on the alien system
--------------------------------------------------------------

[Sirocco]

I call this one "Caesar meets Terra".


I came. I saw. I cast Ultima. I conquered.

.

[tcaudilllg]

I think that could be a good game, the one about the cyber-cruiser trying to kill the aliens. Although, the numbers seem a little high.... Maybe if you issued directions to units of several thousand ships, that could work. And I guess you'd have to have a development phase, and, yeah you'd need characters I guess: different personalities of the main personality that would become evident and need to work--ah I'm getting the impression I may have gone a little farther than the author had considered. Sorry I do that when I try to take a fantasy idea and make it work. Yeah.

[bay]

[Bjorn]

I've very much enjoyed reading Hajo's story, which kept being interesting from top to bottom. In my opinion he could have the game start way earlier in the build-up phase, but then he hasn't really written anything about his plans with gameplay yet.

[Hajo]

The problem to make a game from the story is the size, as LordGalbalan recognized already.

A fleet of so many units isn't commandable by a single player. A solar system is too big in size to be controlled by a single player.

Scaling down, e.g. reducing the number of units by grouping them, lifts the game on a more strategic level, away from the deep immersion that a cyborg-fleet will/should experience.

Also, my question "how to make the player feel like space ship" in this thread http://forums.rpgdx.net/viewtopic.php?t=1223 didn't result in answers that I think are needed to transport the feeling.

The plot is more suitable to a story, a novel maybe, where the narrator can go lengths about the feelings of the cyborg, and a sensible reader will immerse in this universe. A game falls short on communicating feelings.

If I was a better sound designer I'd try to make an experiment with a one-on-one space combat simulator. Sounds give feedback of the state of the ship, e.g. a quietly powerful pulsing sound gives the impression of machines working perfectly, upon a hit, a screaming crescendo of unwilling transformer banks and shield projectors could tell how serious the hit is. Each machine could have a few sounds - working idle, working power, overloaded. There could be sounds for machines taking damage from overload, and also sounds for the damage levels.

This will give quite a lot of feedback, on a channel that still frees the player visual system to reading display and text.

At the moment both - the plot and the sound experiment - are just dreams for me.

[Mandrake]

Well, how I was picturing it was like a real time stratagy game, where you (the ship) controlled the droids from afar. I think with some creative fine-tuning you could create a sort of remote control panel for the droids that would make the player feel like a living ship.

Interesting game idea- would make for a very nifty experimental game.
_________________
"Well, last time I flicked on a lighter, I'm pretty sure I didn't create a black hole."-
Xmark

http://pauljessup.com