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POSTED BY: nuclearday
UPDATED: Sunday, December 9, 2007 19:52
VIEWED: 29983
PAGE 4 of 8
i like it, i like it
"Either he’s dead, or my watch has stopped"
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Quote:
Originally posted by Diavo:
...You start the game as Mal & crew with Serenity. You play open ended as you wish, then when following the plot another ship shows up a couple of times to help or such in plot-critical areas.
After you finish the game as Mal, you are allowed to created your own personal character and start with a boring ship...
You can upgrade and such, buy new ships, do random things, take misc mission from job boards, etc. When you finally buy the certain class ship (the one from the first part of the game), you are introduced to your own plot, which will coincide with the plot of Mal...
Ya like? ':-)
--Diavo
That's an intiguing idea... Kind of the best of both worlds. What I'd really feel the need from a videogame adaptation would be the chance to spend more time with the characters and the ship. (Plus, you know, digital likenesses of our lovely crew...) It would also be really cool to try my own hand at living life out in the black. And playing as your own character would help in that it wouldn't alienate those who haven't become irretrievably obsessed with our little 'verse... yet ;p
I'd rather like to run with that idea actually... Being able to play as both your own separate character and the original crew in the same game. Don't think that's been done before, and certainly not with an adaptation of an existing franchise. Certainly an original idea derserving of an original show.
Guess the question is exactly how to combine the two.
For my two credits, hmm... Maybe the best bet would be to find some way to interweave the two? Example: you think you're playing a straight-up game with just the crew. Pretty straight-forward linear plot with little freedom. Serenity is running from the Alliance or the Reavers, what have you, and an unidentified ship shows up and saves the day. Mal asks Wash what ship that is, and all of a sudden the game is asking you to pick a ship ;p
That sort of thing has been done before, where character creation is done during the game, and I've always been a fan of that. (See Morrowind, for example.)
You can keep that going, too. Mal tries to contact the mystery ship, but there's alot of static and interference, the picture's too fuzzy to make out the captain of said ship. You have to stabilize the image then. (ie, pick your face, etc...) Everything else can be picked out in the beginning in the same way, and your motivations would be decided by the dialogue tree.
Next part, Mal asks what brings you to this part of the 'verse... and cue flashback. Some undetermined amount of time earlier, and it's you and your crew on your own ship. You know at some point you'll meet up with Serenity. You just don't know when... Keep things real open-ended at that point, picking your missions and deciding where your loyalties lie, etc. Maybe it turns out that ship you were looking to get the bounty on is the Serenity. Maybe and old friend told you to help out an old war buddy... Maybe you were a browncoat, etc...
Anyways, enough of my rant, back to you guys... ;p
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^Shiny. =)
I loved Morrowind. It's the ultimate single player "MMO"RPG!
I figured planets could be like Morrowind, though the amount of disk space for preformed cities/towns...!! Well, that can be determined later.
I like that character creation built right into the plot.
Perhaps your personal char starts out out solo, with a small craft. [Maybe 1st mission you are Alliance in a personal figher craft (Wing Commander style), then go rouge leaving with your ship and fighting w/ the Browncoats?].
As your personal char's game progresses and you buy a larger ship capable of multi-crew, then you hire/pick up crew members? Possible crew members could be at each locale, with scripted "personalities" and strengths (need to balance mechanics, medics, etc). A loyalty rating based on time you've kept 'em around?
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I've been brainstorming about this topic for a while. It's actually led me to taking some programming classes, and im thinking about getting certified as a vg programmer from my local community college. So that i would be able to contribute to the idea.
Anyway, here's my idea:
I like the idea of it being very free-roaming, but i do agree that i would like a story. I dont believe in playing the characters because you should be your own character in a game, the whole point of a game is to be in the story!(but thats just me, maybe we could play mal or the crew)
I know that a lot of people absolutley hate japanese anime and i've never played this game, but ragnarok seems like it wouldn't take much time or money compared to all of these 3d rendered games that everyone is talking about. Realistically, i think if a team worked on it, we would be able to enjoy it in a few years. Im not big on anime myself, but it would be a pretty fun experience.
To solve problems of jerks playing the mmorpg we could have a solo, offline campaign that you HAVE to finish in order to get online. Then the jerk's would be discouraged because they have to play for several hours before the get online. The solo campaign could include different story lines. EX:
1) Open the game as JOE SCHMOE on 'Earth that was' and you take one last look as you board the spaceship TITANIC, and the ship is so vast it serves as its own in-game world where you spend maybe 30-40 minutes walking around, maybe a small mini-storyline(
2) JOHN DEER wakes up as a worker on a planet in the process of terraforming and stumbles across trouble (
3) Civil WAR! Choose a side, and follow the story. You see SGT malcome 'mal' reynolds. BANG BANG, KABOOM! and the alliance wins. After that, a screen appears where you can fully customize a character and go online.
Then you would be able to open shop, work as a hunter, trader, smuggler, assassin, bounty hunter, companion(not sure how that would work), etc. Live in the 'Verse and be free. Buy a ship, get a small crew together, maybe even a cook. 
Also i was thinking, given the amount of server space, there could be different worlds, maybe keep adding if the game is a success. Traveling from world to world? no problem, hitch a ride with a ship that would actually take a day or two for your character to arrive at the destination. Get bored on the ship? maybe some active chat rooms while you're in your bunk or organize your items, create weapons out of raw materials, make something to trade, or read a book!(zshan yeu? sp)
Meet the crew, badger, nishka, and the mudders! if the actors liked the game they could play too! Well, tell me what you guys think, i hate long posts so sorry if you had to sit through this long post and it wasnt interesting enough. Thanks for reading!
OH YEAH LOOK AT MY SIG. LOL i've had it for a while.
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***someone should make a MMORPG based on the 'verse!***
Geeze i want Firefly to come back!
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^I like the idea of having to play thru a little bit of history before being able to get online with it. Not the whole game, but enough to discourage the immature and encourage the interested.
Ragnorok -- not sure without playing it what it's really like. But it seems easy as far as creating it. Something Ultima Online-like? Might work for the planetside action. Maybe use the arrow keys to move around and mouse to aim/click on things. That'll insure good fire fights.
Else Morrowind had a good interface and ability to switch 1st to 3rd person view; I like the ability to interact with any object anywhere.
Oh one thing on the 3D graphics design -- support for gfx cards that can't do pixel shaders!! (I couldn't finish KotOR b/c of this, tho Morrowind fortunately let you turn pixel shaders off).
In fact, the gfx shouldn't be over-the-top if it's going to be played online...
But single player planetside play I can definitely see as modern FPS games/gfx.
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They're working on a Conan MMORPG at the moment that uses the idea of having to play through a bit as a single-player game before doing the online stuff, and I always thought that was an interesting idea.
Would help to stop the waves of newbs the come through every other MMORPG asking the same questions. (Anyone who's ever played EVE: Online: "How do I fly my ship???" :)
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Quote:
Originally posted by Diavo:
...Perhaps your personal char starts out out solo, with a small craft. [Maybe 1st mission you are Alliance in a personal figher craft (Wing Commander style), then go rouge leaving with your ship and fighting w/ the Browncoats?].
As your personal char's game progresses and you buy a larger ship capable of multi-crew, then you hire/pick up crew members? Possible crew members could be at each locale, with scripted "personalities" and strengths (need to balance mechanics, medics, etc). A loyalty rating based on time you've kept 'em around?
Like the loyalty idea, there, too, and having to pick up your crew as you go. If there was a bit of a challenge in keeping your crew happy and loyal in some manner, that would definately fit in with the 'verse. ("You want to run this ship?" "Yes!" "Well... you can't...")
Be nice to setup a system maybe wherein you can have a hand-picked crew from a wide variety of options and yet they still 'interact' in various ways. Like say after some time one of your crew starts to develop a certain animosity towards another member... It'd have to be open-ended, and done in a way that suprises you. The game wouldn't know which crew you'd be recruiting and in what order, etc... Some sort of random element, maybe? Or each new member falls into a number of "personality archetypes" that determines how they'll interact with the rest of your crew. (You're off on some backwater planet for a mission. You get back to the ship to find two of your crew in the middle of a mexican standoff...)
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Freelancer (as mentioned before) is so closely "Firefly" that it is cool. There is a plot you CAN follow if you want (even has to do with "earth that was" and civil war between the Alliance and the Federation) but if you want, you can just take on jobs or do supply runs.
The FIREFLY mod is very cool, the ship looks amazing (tho I have yet to fly it, I need to fly a couple of missions first before I can aquire it and I just installed it last night...). The plot deals with civil war and starts with an assasination so it even feels like FIREFLY a bit.... I think it will be fun...
The mod explains that the Firefly class ship was recently updated for the trials of this universe to include some weapons (cause you gotta fight in this game...)
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Quote:
Originally posted by nuclearday:
Or each new member falls into a number of "personality archetypes" that determines how they'll interact with the rest of your crew. (You're off on some backwater planet for a mission. You get back to the ship to find two of your crew in the middle of a mexican standoff...)
The game could get very complicated there, but I like it!
Personality archetypes sound good, mixed with profession archetypes. You could have a Doctor that's a tough guy (Jayne the Doc!) and a Gun Man that's a coward (oops bad choice, wish I didn't hire him, better let him go).
There could be preformed crewable chars in various cities on various worlds (so in a pinch you could check an online FAQ and see "I still need a decent mechanic, ooh there's a good one in Paradiso but crap it's on the other side of the 'verse"). Chatting with bartenders about "Rumors" or "Tips" could (among a plethora of random tips on the game/'verse) tip you that "There's a freelance Gun Man who hangs around the Eavesdown Docks, might be looking for work if you got the coin."
Each city would have these characters "randomly" generated in bars and the like, you chat up with them asking "What do you do?" [I'm thinking Morrowind chat boxes] and if s/he's got a skill that may fit as a crew you get an option to offer him to work with you.
A Holy Man could boost the morality of certain crew personalities, and lower others. Depending on who you have on-board it might be beneficial/hurtful to have a Holy Man as crew.
A Companion crew member with the right personality could also boost overall crew morale...! 8-o
Don't forget the Autopilot feature a la WC! Set a destination and push "A" and after a short flying cutscene a few seconds later you've arrived (assuming you didn't run across any hostiles en route).
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Great ideas, I love what I'm reading.
Too bad we're not all eatin' steak. In the mean-time, there is a Firefly mod for Neverwinter Nights. I saw it a while back, but didn't have the coding skills to put together a Persistant World, or even a one-shot.
I'll see if I can't find the link and post it. I know its at Neverwinter Vault, I'm just at work, and don't have oodles of time to go find it right away.
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