Any suggestions for this idea?

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Greetings, everybody! Because of a previous thread in this sub-forum, I am able to begin on my journey towards my dream of becoming a Indie Game Dev using UDK, and I have been watching tutorials during my spare time (when I am not here) and working on codeacademy in my computer class, and I have been formulating the following idea for my end goal as my game, as described below with everything I have come up with...

Name: Fourth Reich Resurgent

Story Genre: Space Opera/ Science Fiction

Gameplay Genre: Real Time Strategy/3d Visual Novel

Premise: After the destruction of Earth's surface through mankind's endless wars, humanity has colonized the stars and integrated itself into the galactic political ecosystem. Though, as the earth died, those who refused to leave the planet colonized the interior of the planet, and after 300 years of a lack of an adequate amount of resources, these survivors led themselves to create a society based around "Survival of the Fittest", and the need to conserve available resources to prevent the entire society from dying, which in turn caused this society to become what it is: a culture of eugenics with a need for "perfect" humans in order to keep their civilization intact, and a hatred of all all things unknown and/or misunderstood. This society's leadership decided that, in order to survive, they needed to have a focal point to subvert the rise of dissidence within their own culture, so they turned to the past for inspiration, and the stars for a target...They were going to destroy the rest of the human race who left earth, and the main character is a pureblood in command of the (soon to be) offensive, a man named "Wolf Reich".

Story Summary: The story would focus around the military campaigns, the political intrigue, and the personal drama that Wolf Reich leads and engages in. It would be a single player only game, completely focused on it's main campaign.

Proposed gameplay features: The game, as stated above, would be an RTS, similar in concept to W40K DOW2, or Starcraft to a lesser extent. Each mission would feature a specified amount of player controlled units, ranging from basic infantry to entire battleships, without the ability to create new units as featured in many RTS games. To simplify things, the units would not be customizable, but the abilities of Wolf Reich would be able to be customized at the beginning of a play through, with more or all meaning lower difficulty and less or none meaning higher difficulty. The player would have to work with what they have in each mission, meaning that if you lose all units before a mission is completed, you would fail that mission with an option for retry. It would be a game of tactics, not requiring excessive micro-management beyond that of orders and/or tactics in combat.

The story elements of the game would work like a visual novel, with a writing style reminiscent of games like Mass Effect, or KoToR, for example.

This is my idea for how I would design the game. If you have any suggestions for how I could improve the story and/or premise, that would be great, and if you like the idea, feel free to say so. The name is a working title. Thanks for reading!

Also, sorry if you think this is a bad idea or a stupid one, or if you have a problem with me posting this here, feel free to say so.

Again, thanks.

I can deal with criticism, so speak your mind. I won't argue, I'll just say "Thanks for the advice!" even if you say something horrible.

I don't think many people would want to play as such a person in such a scenario.

I think it would be better if the elite left Earth leaving the rest of humanity to die. Those that managed to survive eventually manage to claw their way to being able to go to the stars. And they're not going to let anyone stop them claiming their place there.

Playing as Nazis is probably best left to WW2 games. And if you do have an evil playable faction in a game, it's probably best they're not the only playable faction. There have been rare exceptions such as Dungeon Keeper, but those games have a lot of humour in them.

Thanks for the advice!

I get that being space nazis are not for everyone, though I have always been interested in this type of scenario in a science fiction setting, but I get what you are saying.

So, just for clarification, are you suggesting that I make the player's faction seem more justified or to make it more comical?

Also, what do you think about my ideas for gameplay? I think that I could use the existing system of "mutators" for the main characters special abilities, and hopefully this would appeal to both software and hardcore players, as the difficulty would be up to the player, and I have always liked the Idea of a non-micro-manage-y RTS, so it would be pretty fun to plan out and design each mission. I am excited to begin, and for anyone curious, check out those extra credits videos. Very informative.

Thanks!

edit: softcore, not "software". sorry.

edit 2/update: Okay, so I have officially started creating the game. I downloaded the UDK RTS Starter-kit, and am currently dealing with errors with the compilation of the kit's scripts into the UDK. My first goal will be to create a functional system for the special abilities Idea, and then I will begin creating the game from the ground up, and add things as I go along. Once I get farther along, I am considering posting a progress report (around a minute or two long, maybe) on the youtube, but that will be take around a week, a week and a half at the most, to get to where I am satisfied with my (in-progress) work enough to show it. This will be fun!

Again, any criticism/suggestions is/are welcome!

Last edited by cthulhuhead on 07 Apr 2016, 1:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.

You're welcome.

I would go with more justified, but you could potentially go with hammy villains too, and a name like Wolf Reich might well go well with that. It sounds like a cheesy name for a villain. Going back to justified, the Ur-Quan from Star Control 2 are fantastic villains. Terrible villains, yet also sympathetic once you learn why they're doing what they're doing. Your villains so far seem worse than the actual Nazis in terms of being justified. At least on some level the Nazis thought what they were doing was morally right, your guys seem to want to start their war just to cling to power and nothing else. They even chose not to leave Earth so don't even have that going for them. They just seem to have no redeeming qualities and nothing interesting about them.

But you could also simply allow the player a fleshed out campaign from both sides.

I love customisation options for difficulty in games. It's a big plus for me. The best way to do it is give the player full customisation as much as possible, and also some pre-set difficulty settings for those who just want to get into the game. Nobunaga's Ambition Sphere of Influence does this very well. There are 4 pre-set difficulties and you can also have your own custom settings and you even get given 3 slots to save a set of custom difficulty settings in for future use. I have taken to essentially using the Normal difficulty setting of that game, but with AI intelligence and AI aggression set to max.

Hmm...

A relatable yet still villainous character is an excellent idea, and so does the "cheesiness" idea. Maybe a little cheesy science fiction B-Movie type of premise is the way to go, but still retaining my original idea of power-hungry leaders, as that would be the focus of the political intrigue section of the story, like in the battletech universe General Aleksandr Kerensky usurped power from the corrupt ruling class in order to create a stable(r) society.

Also, for the first build of the game, I will have to focus on only one faction, but I would be happy to try that once I finish fleshing out the base-game.

Thanks for the advice. I shall resume the things mentioned in the second edit in my last post.

Again, thanks!

I would be against using the word "Reich" in the game, because people are going to associate it with national socialism.

You're welcome.

I agree with this.

It is a working title. I think I am going to modify the premise a bit too, for a more Sci-Fi B-Movie feel, maybe the type of feel fallout new vegas evoked in that DLC with the cyborg thingies (except in space instead of a very dark post-apocalyptic world, so just the feel that came from that dlc).

So far on the progress of working out the errors in the scripts, I have 4 left to do after I finish typing this post, funny being they all originated from the kit's lack of knowledge on what to do with anything mobile compatible, which I guess is good, because I wouldn't release it on phones. It would kind of limit file size and graphical quality.

Maybe a new name is in order. I will think about it. Maybe...

What about... Empire from the Abyss: Resurgence, for the grounds of political correctness, as a WIP title for now?

I think that sounds good for the concept in progress, to avoid those pesky and unnecessary controversial issue things.

Back to work...



Edit/Update: I realized that the problems I was having was related to the version of UDK itself, because I downloaded the original 2009 version instead of the Newest update of UDK. That does not mean I am "upgrading" to Unreal Engine (insert number here), just means I am updating the version I already have, so yep.

Also, I have revised a few things, so be prepared for the following:

Revsions:

1. Name changed to "Wolf's War For the Cosmos" for the time being.

2. Background Story changed to "A military general, fueled by the hatred of the monarchy that abandoned the lesser born of it's people and the lesser born of it's armed forces, has began to wage a campaign against the monarchy to usurp their totalitarian control of that which he feels belongs to the people. Underarmed and overwhelmed, He must use clever tactics, conservation of resources, and skillful leadership to defeat the corrupt and place his fellows in power. Political Intrigue, Open Warfare, and Personal Drama are just a few of the things he must overcome in order to be the savior of his people, and a hero..."

3. Design Philosophy Decision for the future: No gameplay affecting DLC, ever, is my intention. Also, I will calculate the end price of what will be version 1.00 depending on the average playtime of the game, I.E. 1 hour=1 Dollar in the intention of playing the game at a normal, non 100% completion fashion for one play through to determine it's price via play-testing.

I think that is all for now.

If that download is done, back to work!! !

So, I have an idea for the visual novel portion of the game.

UDK has the potential to be a visual novel, but with actual 3d screenshots of digital materials, instead of illustrations as it would be traditionally.

Also, I will reveal a bit of an idea for the story itself. Feel free to suggest ideas.

So, the player character, Commanding General Wolf of the Insurgent Earth Military and the people's leader, is caught up in the political trappings of the bourgeoisie, the mercantile corporations of Earth's society, as they are the ones who will fund the campaigns, as he also engages in the conflicts of the war for the society of Earth's independence and Birthright, and his own personal life (I have yet to come up with anything really good on that matter, so bear with me as I figure that out).

Thanks for reading, yet again.

Suggestions/Criticism are/is welcome.

Not trying to rain on your parade, just looking to bring some practicality. People don't really care about back-story and things like that, and the story is probably 1% of the effort you will need to put in, yet you seem to be devoting a disproportionate amount of energy on it. The biggest challenge is going to be getting the game just working, and making it fun\good to play, and getting graphics and other assets. Most games (especially new franchises) start with the game mechanics and the story is often worked in later and fleshed out based on the mechanics.

For example the whole premise of an RTS with no building, how do you know that's even going to work? If it worked maybe some other games company will have done it? The thing about RTS games is that you can't feasible control every unit so units are going to get destroyed, and if those units are non-replacable the game could just end up not being fun. Games that play like an RTS that don't have unit building are usually turn based, so that you can devote proper time to each unit to have more control over if they live or die. Units being banded around with little control in an RTS style are going to die and the player is going to get frustrated as there is seemingly nothing they can do to stop the units dying. You might need to develop some kind of hybrid (like Fallout 4) where you can do RTS for enemies you know you can easily beat, but switch to a turn-based mode for the harder enemies.

Hmm...

You are NOT raining on my parade, and I understand your viewpoint.

Xcom was turn-based, which may actually be (hypothetically) easier to design in the end, so yes, that is a great idea, one which may easier to implement than a limited unit RTS...

I feel stupid for not thinking of that.

Oh, and I completely forgot to say to another member, difficulty levels and the special abilities in conjunction would be a good idea.

Thanks for the advice!

I will officially begin binge dev-ing around 6:30 PM, so yep.

"binge-dev'ing" - I like that phrase! Describes my coding times perfectly - hope you don't mind if I borrow it!

Well, The time is 6:30. Time to get to work.

As I said, on Sunday at 6:30 PM, I shall report the results.

Wish me luck!! !

Thanks for the support, suggestions, and criticisms, and i'll be back on Sunday!

An inspirational Quote from RWBY:

"4 Score and Seven Minutes ago, I had a dream, (blah blah blah)"
-Ruby Rose (partial quote)

To work!