X-com idea...

[muffildy]

So i was thinking it would be really cool if they came up with an x-com style game set in a fantasy type land.
For example....arcanums magic/tech system fighting against evil super advanced tech aliens. Of course would need to beef up the magic a bit by adding anti-aircraft spells and cannons.

 

[a wild nigger]

THIS IS FUCKING AWESOME MAN ID BE SO EXCITED FOR THIS SHIT HELL YEAH DUDE NICE IDEA MAN IM FUCKING LOVING THIS SHIT MAN NOW IM ALL EXCITED BUT ITLL NEVER COME OUT MAN OH MY GOD YOU'RE SUCH AN ASS

 

[Martin]

Ahhhhhhhh sweeeeeeeeeeetttttttttt.



Major codex incline.

 

[Damned Registrations]

That would be cool. Even without the aliens, it'd be an awesome premise. You'd build castles instead of bases, research spellbooks instead of weapons, capture people to perform experiments on, loot magical artifacts and reagents. Fight off hordes invading towns under your protection, invade enemy towns/castles. Construct massive doom golems and summon dragons to break into enemy lair's outer defenses. You could have normal soldiers wielding enchanted gear and wizard apprentices too, with higher magic stats required to use better spells. Start out with a few lousy soldiers with clubs and daggers and maybe one or 2 feeble magelings trying to fight off some zombies and bandits and end up with mounted knights decked out in heavily enchanted full plate and shield and a powerful archmage with the mage equivalent of flight armor tossing around meteor swarms to blow up buildings, conjuring walls of stone, and insta killing people with death magic, fighting against enemies that can do the same or worse.

 

[rpgcodexusername]

i was thinking of making one where its good-guys vs monsters

with cool spells instead of tech-tree

no tech in the game at all

 

[pipka]

Andhaira thread without Andhaira.
Science vs Magic : which is better and why? Discuss!!

 

[Overweight Manatee]

So... you are saying if we copied the Xcom gameplay systems and replaced all of the sounds, graphics and text in order to recreate a different environment, it would still be a great game? No shit?

 

[Flatlander]

I wrote a really long and detailed reply but then I just thought: fuck it.
So that's all that stands in here.

 

[muffildy]

not exactly

Well, no not exactly.
I was thinking more along the lines of removing research altogether but keeping interrogations.
your squads power would be based entirely on their experience just like arcanum. this would change the dynamic of the game quite a bit i think where instead of focusing on getting better tech to beat the aliens you would focus on keeping your people alive so that they could cast better spells. Ie if your squad died towards the end of the game you might be in deep **** since all of your power is experience based rather than tech based.
also, instead of trying to catch alien spaceships on the world map you would be trying to stop them at individual terror missions until you could get a mage powerful enough or techie smart enough to do the anti-aircraft stuff and even then it could be a mini-game where you get a chance to defend an area with that before the ship lands.
Defence of areas would of course require your squad mates to be positioned outside of your usual team.
So for example:
you fight a bunch of terror missions, squad gets experience and you finally can use anti-aircraft stuff. But now in order to use the anti-aircraft stuff the people from your squad need to leave your squad permanently in order to be placed in cities across the land. So you would need to decide on keeping valuable squad mates or in giving cities a chance to defend themselves without tactical combat. Instead it would bring up a mini-game where you defend the city ala space invaders style game play or something.

Of course the way to win the game would be the same as other series - interrogate enough commanders and you get to know where they are coming from. Instead of building a ship i was thinking either a massive teleportation tower would need to be constructed in order to send your team there.

 

[Damned Registrations]

So... you are saying if we copied the Xcom gameplay systems and replaced all of the sounds, graphics and text in order to recreate a different environment, it would still be a great game? No shit?

So why hasn't it been done yet?

 

[rpgcodexusername]

devs dont think people like turn-based, ill probably not do it because it would require a lot of graphics and sounds and time

 

[denizsi]

I'll do half the levels with textures! Now all we need is a programmer, sound editor, texture artist, model artist and some stuff, so come on! Can we do this? YES! YES WE CAN!

That said, I can't help thinking that DAO is such a bambified simple game each time I play the game. They ditched the simulationist sandbox aspects completely so no longer tracking every NPC and a shit load of their stats in every area. There's absolutely no simulation of intelligent behaviour since there's no passage of time and that NPCs are forever stuck where they are, which don't ever need to change except for when a relevant quest was triggered, and save but a few, all NPCs share the exact same animations, about at least half of which seems to have been borrowed from Mass Effect. So much so that it's absolutely retarded that you even need to waste time moving hundreds of times between static NPCs in a static world. They could have easily done it Darklands menu style and switch to animated 3D cutscenes only during dialogue and in combat. And and and... I should make a new thread for this shit.

Bottomline: when you look past the technical challenges of the game (all the animations, lip synching, particle effects, voice acting, 3D sound etc. ), it's is worse than a barebone indie game, featuring nothing stimulating at all, so YES, YES WE CAN DERP.

 

[rpgcodexusername]

what game is DAO

 

[denizsi]

Derp Ape Orgies

 

[laclongquan]

In this case, assault the UFOs would be raid-destroy newly pop-up settlements:

Awesomeness! Now you are a veritable Evilness.

And the dissect, the research is good. You kill some poor suckers, get his corpse back home to perform satanic experiment on it.

The build various bases thingie would need to be opened by research teleport spell.

All in all, a fantasy, EvilOverlord, tactical turnbase Xcom-like squad game like that is a neat idea. Most of all because it allow you to be Evil Overlord to the max.

 

[GarfunkeL]

Re: not exactly

Well, no not exactly.

Oh yes, so it actually wouldn't be anything like X-Com at all? Great idea and I especially love the anti-aircraft minigame idea, it's even better than mining in ME2!

 

[Yeesh]

I was just thinking of something similar:

Mount and Blade except that it's Jagged Alliance.

I'm serious.

 

[denizsi]

Mount and Trigger?

 

[denizsi]

So stop fucking around and do it. What's so stopping you?

 

[muffildy]

lack of expertise

Well, id say the biggest hurdle stopping me is that im not a programmer I dont have any real intention of actually ever making a game or even heavily modding an existing game. I just thought that if there were enough people who thought it was a great idea then maybe an existing modder or programmer would decide to make it.

And yes, i wouldnt expect it to really be much like x-com except that the core gamplay would be squad based tactical combat against aliens.

 

[Cassidy]

a X-Com styled game with its plot inspired by Harry Turtledove's Worldwar could be interesting, and it would have to be really, really challenging, perhaps more difficult than X-Com, but of course, better balanced than TFTD, for you'd start such a game with WW2 tech against aliens.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Something close to this, but still not close enough, has been done. An old game called Lords of Chaos. Many may know it as the game the Gollop brothers made after they released Lazer Squad, and/or the spiritual successor to a small game called Chaos.

In LoC, you created a Wizard and used an XP system to teach him spells. There was a long list to choose from, and almost two-thirds of that list were summoning spells that summoned various critters. These critters were your "units", each with their strenghts and weaknesses. A Giant Bat, for example, was weak and useless except that it could fly and had alot of movement points, so they made great scouts. Pixies were weaker than the bats, but they were one of a handful of invisible critters in the game, so they made good spies. Crocodiles were great for fighting in (the very limited amounts of) water, and Pegasi were decent mounts. Dragons were the ultimate critters, but to summon one you needed to brew a special potion, and the main ingredient for that was very hard to find.

The game was divided into several "worlds". The objective of each world was to be the first wizard to cross through the portal that would eventually appear. The problem was that the portal wouldn't appear right away, and never in the same place, and there were also other wizards around trying to beat you to the portal. Completing a world awarded you XP, so your wizard's stats and spell knowledge would grow as you played on.

The game's only real fault was the lack of maps to play in. The original game only had three (a forest, a cave and a wizard's lair) and the expansion pack added only two more (a series of islands and a tomb). The wizard's lair and the tomb were geared for single-player gaming, so they were tough and quite challenging, while the other maps allowed up to four players to try to wipe each other out.

 

[Chef_Hathaway]

a X-Com styled game with its plot inspired by Harry Turtledove's Worldwar could be interesting, and it would have to be really, really challenging, perhaps more difficult than X-Com, but of course, better balanced than TFTD, for you'd start such a game with WW2 tech against aliens.

I don't know if an X-COM-like game would handle the scale right, because it would be an enormous war fought by all the people on Earth, not just little covert ops squads inserted to fight alien incursions in certain areas.

 

[RottingNaziSurfer]

I wrote a really long and detailed reply but then I just thought: fuck it.
So that's all that stands in here.

meh.

 

[Oarfish]

I like the overlord / dungeon keeper angle to this. Doing horrible things to peasants and teleporting back to your upgradable cave to perform unpleasant rituals. Having some sort of shadowy council backing you up financially instead of the UN.