Mono and WINE do not equal a good gaming experience on Linux, Mac OS X, Wii, or the PS3. At least the Torque engine is cross platform (and the code would run natively not translated with WINE). As for the game, I would image a Mass Effect style game personally. One that allows you to experience different habs, the mesh, and has a general Doom 3/Fear style feel like there is a monster under every bed, and around every corner.

nezumi.hebereke wrote:

This would be a *HUGE* undertaking. The first thing you'll need to do is establish a new forum to begin discussing, starting with the requirements and design of the game, and expanding it to 'what platform' afterwards to see what will support what you're building.

That and a massive investment of cold, hard cash.

As a game developer I would love to help. I think a mod project would be more realistic though, UT3, UDK, Crytek Sandbox, Torque 3-D, or even Source would be ideal engines to start in, depending on where the game would want to go. There are a good deal of 3rd person/1st person scripts that can be written with the Unreal engine itself, which I personally like. We would need programmers and more artists. EDIT: Unity could work too.

You'd have much better luck with doing a very simple 2D or text based game. An EP rougelike actually sounds kinda fun. EP's resleeving does naturally lend itself to some pretty good game mechanics. Something like that could be developed by just a few people (or even just one) and would only take maybe a year or two. A full 3D shooter game would take a team of probably at least 40 people and take at least 8 years (unpaid community driven work is notoriously slow). Even then, forget anything on the same level of Mass Effect. You'd need a lead visionary too. Committee designed games usually don't turn out well. Too many different ideas flying around and nobody has a good idea of what the final product should be. Many development teams break up because of differences in opinion on what the focus of the game should be. A 3D game would also probably be pretty short, where a rougelike could have randomly generated content to increase it's length and replayability. They are also easier to port between platforms (and also just easier to build in general).

Arenamontanus wrote:

A completely different nonvideogame spin-off that I think could be fun: an EP variant of the boardgame Betrayal at House on the Hill ( http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=ah/prod/betrayalhouse ) Characters are exploring a space habitat, encountering creepy things. At some point one of them goes traitor - he is a jovian infiltrator, Ozma active, exsurgent infected, an alien, TITAN agent or something else and various scenarios play out.

Or even better, Arkham's Horror.

what about a mush, with an amped-up Maptooly software

If someone gets this rolling, I'm in. I would to have a setting where quests or scenarios could be easily scripted, which would tie in perfectly with making it an open source project. I was actually thinking about building and designing a small multi-choice graphical choose-your-adventure for EP which is halfway scripted, but it was more a case of practicing my skills at coding than at doing any serious work.

Well, making mods or levels for existing games may be a good place to start. This fellow has, using the level designer for Little Big Planet 2 on the PS3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AE2teQYZ3HA

I dont' want to be the voice of dissent, but this project would involve several orders of magnitude more work than all the Eclipse Phase work ever produced so far. Why not focus your efforts on producing fan material for pen and paper RPG game instead ?

A journey of a thousand mile starts with but a single step. I'm in. I am a hobbits when it comes to coding however. I know C, some java, am currently learning objective C, HTML, and some PHP and JavaScript. Though most of this is not the kind of programming you would need I am familiar with most data structures, know about coding proceedure to the hobbist degree, and am a fast learner. Did I mention that I was eager as well. :) I think the first thing that need to be done is to get a project lead, define our goals with what we wish to accomplish, and then start looking at the design of how to implementnthis into some thing workable. Red

There's just something about "[i]Eclipse Phase[/I] computer game" that screams to me [i]System Shock 2[/i] and [i]Deus Ex[/i], with heavy emphasis on the latter in terms of style and the former in terms of tone, segueing between the two as the game brings the player into different environments, much like the Underwater Lab in [i]Deus Ex[/i] emulated the [i]Von Braun[/i]. Now, because [i]Eclipse Phase[/i] treats the Ego as the player and the Morph as a special form of Gear, I imagine a game should in many ways emulate this - but at the same time, the game should emphasize that your body is not [i]expendable[/i] gear in the same way that a bullet is; it is, after all, something which a lot of transhumans yearn after, and in-game they usually have a price of between High and Expensive, often Expensive+ for special morphs, and that's before all the bioware, cyberware and nanoware is factored in. The exception to this is the Infomorph, which any moderately competent resleeving-facility should be able to make for the player. And at the same time, there's the issue of ego-casting, which means the player should actually be able to bounce between systems as an infomorph, at least as long as to do so would make sense for the plot. ("Mr. Denton, while we understand that the Europan beaches are quite attractive this time of year, that is no excuse for the fact that you're currently [i]not[/i] on Mercury, as ordered.") which should be treated as physical locations in themselves and not just extensions of the Mesh. With reference to the [i]Core[/i]: [list] [*] The player can [i]retrieve[/i] their own body (more about this later) and restore it in an available [b]Healing Vat[/b]. Depending on where the player drags their own corpse, various forms of [b]limitations[/b] could be imposed on this method: a) commercial Healing Vats cost money to use, b) non-commercial Healing Vats cost Favors, or c) a Healing Vat may simply not be available, such as in the Martian outback or on Earth. (In fact, it seems that Healing Vats would resemble Bio-Quantum Restoration Chambers from [i]System Shock 2[/i] in mechanical terms) However, they can also be used as convenient respawn point, if Firewall/OZMA/whoever the player is (currently) working for has a safehouse or base somewhere. Retrieving one's body does obviously not work if it has fallen into lava or down an inaccessible cliff, been dumped out the airlock, shot to pieces or otherwise burnt to a fine ash. [*] The player's [i]party[/i] retrieve their morph. See above. [*] The player can [b]buy[/b] new morphs. Restrictions here obviously include money/rep, but also supply/demand; biomorphs would be harder to get than pods or synthmorphs, and some morphs may simply be unavailable at the vendor, (Especially Reapers, Flats, Futuras and the alike.) or come with disadvantages. (Flats with genetic defects, Aged-class Splicers, Rusters past their expiration-date, etc.) Cases, obviously, are Lemons with low stats, and sleeving in a synthmorph, pod or uplift in general should make it more difficult for the player to interact socially. Hence, if the player dies too much and don't retrieve their bodies, they should be penalized by a) the cost and b) physical and social deficiencies. However, this also adds a dimension of multiple vendors; black markets may have morphs with cool built-in cyberware, but require high G-rep, knowledge of where the heck to [i]find[/i] the black market, and side-plot hooks, as mentioned in the Core. [*] [i]Firewall/OZMA/whoever the player is (currently) working for[/i] pays for the morph. This should obviously not be a free body-factory so the player can bury their enemies under a pile of their own corpses, but Firewall/OZMA/whoever-rep could allow the player a few extra "lives" as long as their Rep is high enough. ("Costly agents are not returned to the field. They're returned to Basic Training, Sentinel.") Depending on the player's standing, Rep and who they've rubbed against, I'd imagine that they'd slide up and down between Cases, Flats/Splicers and Exalts, with regional or situational variations depending on the situation. (Salamanders at the Sun, Aquamorphs on Europe/Ceres, Rusters/Alpiners on Mars, Furies/Ghosts if Firewall/OZMA/whoever expects heavy fighting during the mission, etc.) Rep-penalties would obviously incur if the player loses too many morphs. [*] [i]Ghostriding[/i] is always a possibility if the player just can't afford more than an Infomorph, or are egocasting a lot. This could be in the form of ghostriding a member of their own Party who has the relevant cyberware, or a local Firewall/OZMA/[benefactor] in case of egocasting. While ghostriding, the player can act as the designated squad/team leader (have I mentioned I loved the first [i]Ghost Recon[/i] game?), as a hacker, puppet robots and/or take control during conversations. This would allow the player to play even when they don't have access to a body of their own. - in fact, ideally, I imagine the game would allow the player to play the entire game as an Infomorph. Of course, this would mean that it is in the player's best interest to keep their host([b][/b]s[b][/b]) alive. And unlike the player and (possibly) their Party, local [benefactor] agents may not be the player's to resleeve... [*] The player sleeves a [i]robot[/i], such as a Servitor or Guardian Angel. The morph's stats would be atrocious, and their social abilities would hit a rock bottom, but they'd at least be more than an Infomorph at a lower cost than a normal morph. [*] For one-shot side-plots or opportunity-missions, such as egocasting to remote locations, the player might actually only [i]get[/i] one morph. Since its not the main plot, failing would not affect the rest of the plot (to a great extent), and the player only gets that one chance. [*] The player gets an infinite amount of morphs, but they have to [i]fend for themselves[/i] for a long time; it's long between Healing Vats and no morph vendors in sight. This could/would be the case for missions to Earth or clandestine operations into the Outer System (especially Jupiter). Like in [i]Planescape: Torment[/i] and [i]System Shock 2[/i] the problem is just a much the death of one's Party, lost time, the issues with frequent death (more about this later) or respawning enemies. [*] The player may [i]find[/i] morphs when, say, raiding secret labs, and can carry these to a safehouse or vehicle with a Body Bank to store it for later. With a Healing Vat, the player may even do this to enemy corpses. (Evil as I am, this is where I say "and common enemies are all sleeved in cheap/crap biomorphs, Cases, or blow themselves up upon death, so munchkin players don't harvest [i]every single enemy[/i] they kill as extra bodies. [*] The player may [i]hack[/i] any random transhuman for their morph. This should probably be a) difficult and b) incur [i]massive[/i] Rep-penalties and repercussions if detected by local authorities or friends of the poor victim. [*] [i]General penalties[/i] for death. (More about this later). Death is the issue, not morph avaliability. [*] You're [i]stuck[/i]. Better have saved a lot on different saves, because this game is merciless. (Who saves on only [i]one[/i] save anyway?) [/list] I'm a big proponent of making sure that players don't feel invulnerable, if you can't tell. [b]Death![/b] Because of the way death is treated in [i]Eclipse Phase[/i] it would obviously not do to simply [i]kill[/i] the player and force them to restart when their morph dies. This is where stress, backups, Rez and cortical stacks come in. With [i]Eclipse Phase[/i] it is very possibly to treat Rez as a non-linear form of progression tied to each individual ego. So, when a payer dies, all the experience they've acquired while playing is stored on their cortical stack, which makes retrieving it an imperative. Then the backup can merge (at a stress-penalty) with their cortical stack backup to get their Rez and memories back. (Memories would be conversation options. If you don't remember anything, you can't say anything about it, obviously.) Or the player can chose just to get their memories back to open up conversation options. Stress is of course the other big penalty. Resleeving, death and general inhuman experiences would place a limit on how many times the player can die without resorting to psychosurgery or previous (Rez-deficient) backups. After some time, the Ego may simply be too broken to be played efficiently because they've incurred too much stress. There's also the issue that players may not have the option to get access to all their backups at any point in time. When they're inevitably betrayed by one of their [benefactors], or when they're down on Earth or wherever, the player might only have access to a limited set of backups, and dieing too much will simply mess them up. [i]Planescape: Torment[/i] handled this rather excellently; while the player was immortal, there were some places where you [i]could[/i] actually die, and it did not impair gameplay in any way. (Death also acted as a rather neat reset-button; in the Lady of Pain's maze, death forces the player to repeat their exercise over again in a [i]smarter[/i] manner, without incurring any form of stat-penalty to the player.) [b]The Player's Party[/b] Should be varied, interesting, highly individual and talk amongst themselves. That's my suggestion, at least. Well, that's my thoughts from a wholly design-based perspective. Any thoughts?

Either Unity or UDK, do we have any other developers, I would say we would need at least 3 programmers, 3 artists and 2 more designers.

I realise that something as complex as what I wrote, for an FPP/FPS-RPG, would be [i]immensely[/i] complex and would take a long time for a group of volunteers to make. However, I feel that skimping too much of those features would be skimping on the core gameplay of [i]Eclipse Phase[/i]. (Now, a text adventure would of course not have complexity issues in the same way.) Also, I like throwing ideas around.

I plan to curb my Eclipse Phase video game craving with [i]Deus Ex: Human Revolution[/i]. [url=http://sarifindustries.com]Sarif[/url] has my full support, baby.

seether wrote:

Despite that, I am all for a MUSH style Eclipse Phase. I just suck at PennMUSH/TinyMUSH/TinyMUX coding.

I would push for a MOO, personally - ideally using LambdaCore, but JHCore would be acceptible. With sufficient programming the EP game system could be implemented, but with a good set of players a strictly narrative game would be very easy to run.

The Doctor wrote:

seether wrote:

Despite that, I am all for a MUSH style Eclipse Phase. I just suck at PennMUSH/TinyMUSH/TinyMUX coding.

I would push for a MOO, personally - ideally using LambdaCore, but JHCore would be acceptible. With sufficient programming the EP game system could be implemented, but with a good set of players a strictly narrative game would be very easy to run.

I tend to be more in favor of narrative play in such situations, myself. Keep the dice-roller for the really rough, major stuff, but dont' get too bogged down in mechanics the rest of the time.