quote: The play field of your idea doesn''t suit itself well to computer game. You could buy a field or warehouse or something and have the players use go-karts and laser-tag guns. Its more of an embedded control idea, maybe a lcd display for the radar and damage mounted on the car. Antennas mounted to the cart for free-space tranmission, and you could use differential gps with a known base point gps reciever in the warehouse or field.
You could even affect the manuveroring capibilities of the kart given their damage, forcefeedback stuff on the steering wheel...

I like the warehouse idea, because you could have ramps & multiple levels - it would need to be big though... like mall sized. - Magmai

-Well now, I think all that would cost more than a laptop with internal modem and GPS reciever and gas money. There are also not insignificant liability concerns if you construct an environment such as a mall-sized multi-story go-cart track.
I don''t know if I explained the need for GPS or cars well enough. If you were playing this game, and your radar told you that an opponent was five miles north of you and moving west, you''d have to believe it, because you wouldn''t be able to see them directly or hear them, or otherwise know what they were doing. If you''re playing in a warehouse, and it says they''re 200 feet north of you and moving west, you can just run over and take a look, and know that they are or are not really there. There''s no reason to offer any sort of radar of any kind if the players are close enough that they can quickly verify its accuracy with their own eyes. You don''t need a car for this because car-and-shooting games are cool; you need a car to get around on the (necessarily) vast playing area, because a vast playing area forces you to rely on the radar information.
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quote: Heh, a cool idea, for sure, but doesn''t a game like Laser Tag lend itself to that even better? Basically you''re trying to take an inherently non-social medium (internet multiplayer notwithstanding) and trying to mix it with ACTUAL interaction. - AtypicalAlex

- No, as I said: laser tag does not allow you to introduce any artificial field conditions. That''s why it''s boring. Like paintball. Or I should say, these games ARE cool, the first couple times you play on a field, but after you''ve explored the playing field it gets rather boring very quickly. Laser tag''s (and paintball''s) problem is that you get most all of your information through your own eyes, and so artificial information can''t be used. Like say, if you wanted to be invisible: you have no way of doing that, except using smoke that also affects the range of your weapon and of your own eyesight. In the game I am talking about you can be for practical purposes, invisible: if an opponent is ten miles away from you, and you use a "stealth mode" bonus, he has no way of knowing that you''re in stealth mode and the radar image of you that he is getting is false. The radar here is the way of introducing artificial information: it''s not until he gets within direct viewing distance that he can verify your position, and that distance is well inside everybody''s "weapon''s" range, so all players will tend to trust the radar information rather than risk verifying it.
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GPS accuracy, by the by, seems to be ~7-5 yards on one sample, for most commercial units available in the US. - Lubb

Ok, this is probably going to sound really flat, blunt and just plain mean =) But I can''t think how better to express it.

I don''t think it would be fun.

Imagine yourself being driven around in your car by your mate, you are in the passenger seat looking at your laptop, you can see a dot on the radar, and are heading towards it, in a few hundred metres, you will be able to get a shot in. But at the same time, so will they. Probably, both teams are sitting there with their fingers on the trigger just waiting until it says they are within range. Both people would be shot. And you can''t really do anything about it. Great.
So you manage to pick up an invisibility, yeah, you drive up to someone and shoot them. They are given the suprise of being shot for doing nothing, and you have just got a soft point, there is no challenge in it.

Perhaps if there was more to the game, like if you got the number plate of another person, then it was a launch code for something, but then if you play against that same person again, the number plate is already known to you. Plus, this game would probably only work with friends, and you might even know it off the top of your head (well, you might =).

Prove me wrong, flame me, whatever. I hope I''m wrong, because the industry needs people like you to come up with new ideas, not people like me to disapprove of them =)


"I'm going to live for ever. Even if I die trying"
Benjamin Franklin (I think)

quote: ...... Imagine yourself being driven around in your car by your mate, you are in the passenger seat looking at your laptop, you can see a dot on the radar, and are heading towards it, in a few hundred metres, you will be able to get a shot in. But at the same time, so will they. Probably, both teams are sitting there with their fingers on the trigger just waiting until it says they are within range. Both people would be shot. And you can''t really do anything about it. Great.
So you manage to pick up an invisibility, yeah, you drive up to someone and shoot them. They are given the suprise of being shot for doing nothing, and you have just got a soft point, there is no challenge in it. ....... - ragonastick

- The challenge is cordinating attacks while hiding in clouds, where you can shoot them, but they can''t see (or shoot) you. The way the clouds move is critical; the cloud data would be stored as a 3-D object. The clouds could -slowly- drift north, south, east or west, but the server would also wander randomly through the layers of clouds - so (like in reality) some clouds would pop up and expand out of nowhere, and others would shrink away disappearing completely, exposing all inside. The players wil only see a 2-D slice of the cloud, and won''t have any indication of if it will get bigger or smaller or how much longer it will exist, but they will want to stay hidden as much as possible. If you had 2 or 3 layers of "clouds" overlaid on each other and randomly drifting different directions and appearing and disappearing, it wouldn''t be real easy to plan getting from one cloud to the next, or of choosing a destination and cloud-hopping to get there. That''s why during the game, the weapons progress to longer and longer ranges: to let the players drive around less and shoot more, to force the game to a conclusion.
- As for making money, I doubt it would sell in the conventional sense. It wouldn''t take much programming to do, compared to a "regular" game. And if I thought I could get rich instantly from it I wouldn''t be blabbing about it here; I just haven''t heard of combining a computer and a real-life environment. - Lubb

I smell a law suit for anyone that publishes this game

The first time someone has an accident and are playing the game, they will sue! Hell, ever hear of the incident where the father bought a bike for his sons birthday and after he puts it together its dark... his son hops on, without reflectors, the father didn''t put them on... well the son get run over while riding his birthday present in the dark! They sue the bike manufacturer!!!

I know its stupid... but that''s the way people are.

Another proof of stupidity. The Volunteers law suit against AOL and Origin... Verant and Microsoft aren''t far behind

MMPOGs are going to go through some changes, but they aren''t going to incorporate real life as you suggest. At least not untill all lawyers aren''t chasing ambulances

Dave "Dak Lozar" Loeser

Check Out: GreatShot.com

I''m not trying to bash your game idea at all I think it sounds cool, but this is why it wouldn''t sell very well....
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1. You have to have a car, laptop, GPS, lots of time, and a willing driver to play. Most gamers are kids-teens and wouldn''t have access.

2. Who wants to travel around in a 30 mile radius for hours to play a 2d tank shoot-em-up?

3.No one has the time anymore. Lots of people have jobs/kids/chores and stuff to take care of and can''t go playing a game that takes much time at all. It''s simply not convenient.

newbie : NEVER underestimate the vastness of human stupidity !

Actually, I think it could be doable, but I''ll agree that you''d have to have a slower tempo. SOmething less hectic.

dak lozar : I won''t say anything bad about the american system
I won''t say anything bad about the american system
I won''t say anything bad about the american system
I won''t say anything bad about the american system
...

I think it would be a cool idea if you weren''t in a car and you had one of them things like you see on those commercials. You know those computers that are kind of see through that you wear as a face shield kinda thing. I think the radar could be displayed on that or something and you could see people comin and stuff. That way you aren''t limited in the car with a bulky laptop waiting to push a button. ...eh eh whatta think?

-ME

"One must choose, in life, between making money and spending it. There''s no time to do both."

- Another possible idea: "land mines" - a bonus that "sticks" here you activate it and after a countdown time (say 2 minutes), does damage to anyone that is inside its range (say 3 miles), for another certain amount of time, say 10 minutes.
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- The walking around on foot might be possible. There are Palm GPS adapters out there, I casually ran across two. And Palm computers are cheaper than a real laptop or notebook, but around here, I know more people with laptops than Palms. Do Palms have modem/internet capability?
- The problem with a pedestrian game is still the amount of accuracy of a single GPS sample: 5-7 yards. If you want to have three different "damage zones", that means that you, on foot, as a target, wil be 30 yards across. That''s a lot of running. Rather than using multiple damage zones, there might be some way to logically vary the amount of damage to a single zone reasonably. That process would be run on the (stationary) server anyway, which could be a regular desktop PC. And you need to understand that it is still advantageous to not be on foot, and use -any- type of transportation (such as a bicycle), which raises the safety issue. The only way to insure players don''t use transportation unfairly is to play indoors, and I don''t know if GPS receivers work indoors.
- And people keep mentioning the lasertag guns. The lasertag guns are a liability; let them go, you don''t really want or need them. The best part of this game is that it doesn]t require anything "gunlike", and so it can be played truly anywhere. I don''t know about where you live, but where I am the police react far more severely to reports of someone running around pointing a gun at people than they do to a car going a couple miles over the speed limit. - "Freeze! This is the Police!!! Drop the Palm and put your hands in the air!!!"
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- What got me started on this was that a regular single-player game is totally artificial: it is reacting to artificial information inside an artificial environment. A multiplayer game is an artificial environment with a small amount of real information (the other players). This game is using artificial information in a real environment.
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- - And this isn''t about trying to make money, it''s about having fun, getting famous and shaggin'' booty. I''ll get rich later.
- Lubb