The Magellan Ideas

[Hasabushi]

Project Name: The Magellan: Race Against Time

Genre: Action/Adventure/RPG MMO(PVE)

Style: Sci-Fi - Mystery

Premise: Takes place on the Magellan (its a big ship)

Concept: The characters are sent a mysterious message saying that there is something wrong on the
ship and people are going to die. The characters head off on a fact finding mission to find out what has
happened. This would be rather short, maybe 5 hours, because it leads to the next game.

Factions: Humans (colonists), Humans (government), Androids (NPC)

Introduction: 1 Month before the Magellan incident takes place all of the characters receive a strange telepathic dream, telling them about an impending disaster that will fall upon the great colony ship. The characters race against the clock to find out who sent the dream and why.

Features planned:

• Able to transfer characters from the "Race Against Time" to the RTS
  Day & Night cycle
  characters must sleep or suffer in stats
  Some puzzles but not overkill
  characters have to discover who they can trust and who they can't
  uses a friend/neutral/hostile approach, which can change based on the characters interaction and actions
  Characters appearance will effect how others interact with them.
  When injured character has a 5% chance of receiving a scar or being disabled in someway.
  The ability to become totally evil or totally good, even remain neutral, whatever it takes to get to the truth.

Similar Games: Robinsons Requiem, Deus Ex, others


Engine: Possibly EO or a custom built Engine.

[mrlemke]

Sounds interesting, especially if we were to develop it with EO for a five hour game. Makes me wonder how well EO would work with single player games (the genre doesn't list multiplayer, so please excuse me if I'm wrong) and how would well it would work to tie the client and server together in one executable (while hiding the server).

Some things I have questions on:

Day & Night cycle

What's the point of a day and night cycle on a spaceship? How exactly would that work visually?

When injured character has a 5% chance of receiving a scar or being disabled in someway.

I think that this would need to be a little further expanded upon, because it would suck to lose your hand because of a paper cut. Maybe have it based on the type of damage (slashing, piercing, blunt) and how much damage was caused with a little bit of chance mixed in.

[Hasabushi]

Sounds interesting, especially if we were to develop it with EO for a five hour game. Makes me wonder how well EO would work with single player games (the genre doesn't list multiplayer, so please excuse me if I'm wrong) and how would well it would work to tie the client and server together in one executable (while hiding the server).

Sorry about that its MMO, PVE specifically (possibly PVP) I'll update that.

What's the point of a day and night cycle on a spaceship? How exactly would that work visually?

That's a good question, my thinking was similar to how the Star Trek franchise does it. It would be more of a 24 hour cycle, in which the ships lights would dim to simulate night time. There would also be different NPC's during the night shift as opposed to the day shift. We could do other things, like not have certain services available to the player at night/day such as a tavern on board the ship opens and closes at a particular time.

I think that this would need to be a little further expanded upon, because it would suck to lose your hand because of a paper cut. Maybe have it based on the type of damage (slashing, piercing, blunt) and how much damage was caused with a little bit of chance mixed in.

Yes let me make it more clear, basically a character would receive injuries based off a scale of sorts. If the damage is severe enough for example an explosion, the character has a higher chance of suffering some type of permanent damage such as a scar, burn, disfigurement and possibly death. Injuries that resort from fights or inhaling plasma would be radically different. The whole point of the game is to survive to escape the ship. The worse the injury the more it will effect your stats. I want the player to be cautious of everything, taking risks only where they absolutely feel they have too. It's more of a survival RPG but it won't be as drastic as the Magellan Survival Game will be.

This is really more of an experiment to see how realistic we can get without making it ridiculously hard, and causing players to give up to soon. Similar to Robinsons Requiem but not that insane.

[Emperor Wilbers]

Wow! I really like the concept and the features. At one point I didn't even know games could do that stuff until I met the Elder Scrolls, lol. I think it is a GREAT idea, and I'm for anything. I have never honestly heard of a game that was 5 hours long! Must be a BIG ship, and have a lot of content.

[mrlemke]

Ok, cool sounds good Hasabushi.

[lightspeed15]

Yeah...5 hours may seem attainable, but from a developers perspective it seems far fetched. There's no way we will captivate the player for 5 hours on a 2D system when they could be playing Halo

[mrlemke]

Yeah...5 hours may seem attainable, but from a developers perspective it seems far fetched. There's no way we will captivate the player for 5 hours on a 2D system when they could be playing Halo

Doesn't have to be 5 hours in one sitting, and have you neither you nor Wilbers played Diablo, especially Diablo 2 which still sells for $20 in stores a recent price drop from a long standing $30? The reason I bring this up is Dialo 2 is a 2D RPG that still has people playing it. There are different target markets for products and services, so (over simplifying this whole thing here) the typical Halo player isn't going to give a damn about 2D, thus we don't worry about them but the people who can enjoy games wih less technilogically advanced graphics.

5 hours isn't too difficult to achieve considering most RPGs have at least 5, although depending on if it's a PC RPG or a Flash doo-hickey it can go up to 100+ hours.

[Hasabushi]

If you make the game engrossing 5 hours is very easy to achieve, as a matter of fact I expect it to surpass that as it would be very open ended and re-playable. Just keep in mind this is an experiment in keeping the player(s) involved in the story. I think it would very much appeal to the 2D crowd and possibly even the mobile audience in the future, but I'm getting ahead of myself lol. We could also add PVP if it made sense, although that would be very small in scope as it would be in party.

[mrlemke]

I think PVP would make sense and would reinforce the whole who do you trust thing in an exciting way. The only problem would be making sure it is balanced so people don't just default to killing everybody (excluding extreme cases of course), so the PvE should be difficult enough that most people would want to work together.

[lightspeed15]

Are we incorporating different classes into the game? They could be more modernized types of classes like a Sentinel (for defensive powers), Engineer, Commander (a soldier type of class), and others.
Maybe a lock-picking system here and there, throw in a pick-pocket system, top it off with some kind of alchemy system.

And we should have them use magical kind of powers, like they have the force in Star Wars. We could call it Organic Energy or something like that. It would be split into different categories like technical powers, offensive powers, defensive powers, and others.

I'm spinning off of Mass Effect with the power idea, I think that the powers incorporated into their game is really well structured and a great addition.

[mrlemke]

And we should have them use magical kind of powers, like they have the force in Star Wars. We could call it Organic Energy or something like that. It would be split into different categories like technical powers, offensive powers, defensive powers, and others.

I think it would depend on how fantasy Magellan is, because if it isn't fantasy at all then I think using electricity as a kind of power could be interesting and unique. With some creative thought, it could be quite possible to replace common magic abilities with electrically derived equivalents. That could even be a unique aspect of your Engineer class provided.

[Hasabushi]

There is a type of "force" in the lore of the Magellan, its more sci-fi though than fantasy. They use a magnetic energy of sorts thats generated around our bodies aura's if you will. I already have several classes set up I'll have to post them so you guys can get more of an idea. Basically there are Civilian classes, Military Classes and Scientific, the Aura users can use the magnetic energy.

[Emperor Wilbers]

I have not played Diablo, but i have heard good things about it. That all makes sense.

[lightspeed15]

There is a type of "force" in the lore of the Magellan, its more sci-fi though than fantasy. They use a magnetic energy of sorts thats generated around our bodies aura's if you will. I already have several classes set up I'll have to post them so you guys can get more of an idea. Basically there are Civilian classes, Military Classes and Scientific, the Aura users can use the magnetic energy.

Sounds perfect. They have some type of element embedded into their bodies through surgery which gives them stronger powers. We can add that to the player customization. They can choose to have the surgery and it will increase the strength of their powers, but it will increase the chance of getting a scar or injury. And if they choose to be a thief, they can be detected by some sort of metal detector strewn across the ship. Lol

[Emperor Wilbers]

The concept certainly is very intriquing. What i invision is a sort of dark, almost gothic feel to the main storyline. Where im drawing my inspiration from is the Dark Knight Series. The author of the comics for the dark kniht was a veey dark person and it showed in the comics or movies. I think that we should obviously make the main bad dude very unique, but i dont think the player should meet the bad dude until the next game. That will leave a bit of some suspense, intrigue, and an unfinished storyline which makes a  hell of a transition to the next game. I think that he should obviously be intimidating, and idk, its hard to explain. If youve seen the dark kmight movies then youll know what i mean. In my opinion the game should be no candy land where youre prancing around a magical ship from star trek that takes you practically anywhere you desire, but it should be a corrupted ship with thousands of passengers with a mad man who is controlling the ship and threatening to kill everybody. It should be a pretty kick butt storyline if you ask me.