Diogo Ribeiro
Erudite
Thanks VD but it's probably best if you go with your sci-fi concept. My ideas weren't particularly novel when I came up with them, what with it basically dealing with the concepts of AI's, virtual reality and cyberspace... But they're more or less just that at this point, ideas.First part concerned a military grade AI being tested on a virtual reality environment to check for its understanding of humanity along with system integrity, analysis and interaction. Basically it would live a fictional life as a human alongside imitations of life (all lower level AI's) completing certain tasks to test it, then report it to its creators. The draw in was that at a certain point the AI and the VR system would be sabotaged (conflicting perceptions of self with the AI thinking it was a human who was hallucinating it was an AI, and it being wanted for murder in the virtual world while being locked out of the real one by outside influences; would require some funky hacking back door access through the computer terminals in order to fix the problem) and the AI had to juggle between reality and the VR system to find out what was going wrong. This was meant to be an adventure game, with a theme of there being a moral playground behind it since the VR system was meant to analyze the AI's reactions. It was also the only reason why I ever installed AGS on my PC and still haven't removed it.
Second part was pretty much after the AI had broken loose from its confines and armed with considerable human knowledge and escaping into the world wide web, was planning to find a way into the real, physical world. Here we'd play some regular PC which would cross paths with the AI - which was also at odds with a previous version of itself rigged by the military to crash it but at some point also wanted to kill the competition and find its way into the physical world. It was basically a race between both AIs to see which would get outside first, and about how the PC would become involved with them. The plan for this one was a more traditional CRPG approach - cyberpunk with turnbased combat, and considerable dialogue and skill use, plus a shopping list of things like item and weapon assembly, cyberspace hacking, random mission generation, factions...
Third part was a bit undecided since I hadn't written the previous parts to such a great extent, but the initial theme was that both AI's had accepted their existence and agreed to meld into one. I hadn't decided wheter they'd both escape into some form of cyberbody, or if the PC of the second game would be their host, but at some point this last part was meant to confront the AIs with their original creator and their intended use.
If it all sounds terribly boring and uninspired well, it most likely is. Considering that much to my disappointment I found some analogues to these themes in other videogames, I was pretty disenchanted with the prospect of investing in them, and I wouldn't get why you would either when you could probably turn to something you'd personally enjoy more and less derivative.
Besides, even if you found this remotely appealing and we did manage to get this off the ground what could I ever contribute to the project? Portuguistan is too far off, and my life at the moment is the biggest mess I ever had to live. I can't find much time to do anything I enjoy, including starting to design a videogame. Add to it that I get ideas for videogames which I scribble down in a hurry at an alarming rate and I can't decide which one I'd even start to work with. So far, I've counted about 12 different game ideas, complete with themes, gameplay style, concepts, some artwork and dialogue. It's ranging from superhero action RPGs, to Mech RPGs/Space Operas, to some adventure game with a kid who wears deity masks which grant him powers, to a surreal adventure game starring an Invisible Man-styled detective operating on a strange city where all washed out comic book characters go to when their titles are cancelled.
And it's all going to slowly burn on some goddamn notebook.
And I don't think what you'd need would be some bloke telling you about his dream game while you were the only one who would work on it, or in most of it. I could find the time to write dialogues, check dialogue structures for errors, provide some concept artwork and design concepts for the gameplay - but I'm not sure if this would work out. Which is too bad, since I think our healthy agreements and disagreements could result in some cool stuff. But I don't think I'd feel right just being the "cool stuff guy", especially considering how this is all potentially uncool, and how it's important to have things other than "cool stuff".
I don't know, VD. You tell me.
