the incredible machine what teh

[Infinyte4D]

anyone ever play the game incredible machine? you ahve to use certain pieces to put together to toggle a switch to run a motor to hit a barrel to flip a switch to hit the endline. that sorta game. you have a bunch of pieces and have to use those in order to reach your objective.

what if someone made a game similar to that. two teams in a gigantic room seprated in half by a giant glass piece. on your side, your team has a bunch of random objects and poles and crap on one wall... and a door 50 feet high on the wall opposite. your objective is for you and your team to use your manipulator weapons to move the objects on top of each other so its stable enough for you all to get to the door.

people can die if teh stack collapses and falls on you etc.

and on the other side of teh glass the other team has their objects and door and they ahve to do the same thing. whoever gets up first wins and everyone is warped to another part of the level which looks different.. harder.. etc.. and you do it again.

would be quite interesting and a good use of the manipulator weapon and physics. :]

i dunno its just somethin i thought up of about 5 seconds ago.

 

[Majestic XII]

I just want to say that i LOVE The Incredible Machine!

Sounds fun but its easy for i tard just to ruin the whole shabang...but still...sounds fun

And it shouldent be too hard to code...

 

[dscowboy]

That's a great idea. Someone mentioned Incredible Machine on the forums ealier, but they were thinking more about making a Rube Goldberg device, like that Honda ad.

Having a 'build stuff' competition would be great. Majestic is right, lamers would be a big problem in a team game. Another idea might be to have each player be on their own team, but also make it possible for people to interact to a certain degree. Like, instead of just having two sides, the map would be like a pie, each player in their own section, but the glass walls in between would be low enough so you could chuck stuff over them. So if one player started getting ahead, the others could gang up on him and knock his stuff down. The problem with throwing too much stuff at other players is that you lose whatever building materials you throw at them, and you need to keep enough to complete your goal.

With a pie-shaped arena players could form alliances and such, and lamers would only be sabotaging their own stuff, not their team's. Does that make sense?

Just a thought, but I kind of like the idea of each player being their own team but needing to form alliances with others to win. In deathmatch, everyone is on their own and there's no reason to form teams. In CS, you're forced to be on a team, no matter how incompetant or counter-productive your teammates are.

Anyone ever play the game Diplomacy? This idea is kind of like that I guess.

 

[Infinyte4D]

ya I was thinking about this idea a little more.. thinking of why it would and wouldn't work and if there is a way around it. but i like the idea where you can interrupt your opponent's work but you are sacrificing pieces of your own. I'm not sure if im with the whole independent thing though. the whole point of the mod is teamwork to reach your goal.. i understand the lamers who will try to ruin the match by knocking over your own team's structure etc but i can eventually think of something that will punish the player with the consent of the team. Also, if everyone is independent then they must have their own set of pieces which can make way too many pieces for the server to handle... what if there is a large number of people in the server.

On the other hand, you can design it so teh level is about twice as long as wide... and all the pieces are in teh center of the level. the teams must build their structure on opposite sides yet at the same time stealing pieces and wrecking the opponent's structure. And throwing pieces at the enemies to keep them away from your structure.

majestic: the only coding required would be removing all weapons but the manipulator... and just coding in game rules

 

[dscowboy]

How about this: Everytime a new round starts, the materials / objects available to build with are somewhat randomized (but each team has an identical set of objects). So each time you play, you have to come up with a new strategy for how to achieve the goal.

It doesn't seem like it would be too hard to randomize the starting objects, as long as the server could spawn them in-game.

 

[Infinyte4D]

ya i would make sure each team started with the same objects. but im not sure it would be safe to randomize the items simply bc i dont know how the objects hold each other with weight and all. for example if you have a crate and stick 2 metal objects on them... with the player on top... will the crate crush? so you would have to make sure that with the items given, there is an actual solution so everyone doesn't get stuck with broken objects.

As far as variety, everytime a team meets the destination, the teams get teleported to a different part of the map... which is seperate from the first part for performance. This new part can have a different theme, style, etc.. all depending on the mapper. But each section of the map gets increasingly harder each time.

At the end of the map the server tells which team won most of the matches and then the map switches :]

 

[lonefox]

I like the idea

I think a cool idea for lamers is pretty simple.

Have it so if someone is being a lamer people can bring a voting menu (only the team with the lamer) and vote to get rid of him. It then kicks him from the server.

Anyways, for gameplay ideas, I think it would be cool if you had randomized pieces...

Also, it would be cool if you could throw unneeded pieces at the other team, and try and knock things down...

Another cool thing is if you started with only like 5 pieces and like every min a couple more pieces spawned in to work with... Expanding on that it would be neat if you started with a low amount and then your team could vote on what you get next...

 

[Infinyte4D]

the pieces wouldn't be randomly chosen by the map, but by the mapper. ofcourse the pieces will be different though, instead of a hundred boxes. the mapper would have to make sure that its possible to complete the obsticle with the given objects.. thats why the mapper has to chose them.

also, you would be able to throw pieces at the other team/team's structure. But then again you are sacrificing a piece of your own and gives them another object to use for their structure. (dscowboy's idea)

thats an interesting idea where pieces spawn ever so often. ill have to think about that.

 

[Hazza]

Or a mousetrap mod! Wow.

 

[Infinyte4D]

mousetrap? the game?

 

[Murray_H]

I've still got the demo disk of it (yes thats right, disk)

 

[dscowboy]

The mod definitely needs monkeys on bicycles.

Seriously though, I kind of like the idea of teams not only being able to attack/disrupt the other team by throwing stuff, but being able to build defenses in some way. Or of having one team on defense (guarding the objective behind walls), and the other team on offense.

 

[Majestic XII]

You can have someone that try to stand in the way of the flying thingys, like a goalkeeper

 

[StardogChampion]

There could maybe be different "classes" e.g. one person carries all the poles, one carries all the boxes etc etc, or maybe that could be just 1 of the gameplay modes.

 

[Infinyte4D]

there wouldn't exatcly be monkeys on bicycles, goldfish, cannons etc... the incredible machine is just where the idea derrived from. just a large bunch of random real world items that you can use to stack on top of each of other. it would be too dificult to program all teh functions and how they intereact with each other if it acted like the incredible machine. rather keep it simple at first.
But perhaps there could be the balls and stuff you can use to hit buttons with. those buttons could trigger platforms and stuff in which you only have a limited amount of time to work with until you have to do it again. thats where the teamplay comes in. that sorta thing...

As far as classes, the game isn't sophisticated enough to have classes.. but perhaps there could be a defense class and a builder class for each team.. like you said. I wouldn't want to break it down much farther than that.

If I did break it down to defense and builder classes.. then I would slightly alter the manipulator gun for them.
lets say.... the builder class would lose the effect to shoot objects from the manipulator gun so they can only pick up and place the objects... like they are supposed to.
And the defense class... would be able to shoot things from the gun so they are able to defend their structure and attack the other... but can only hold objects for about 1 second. this way it will prevent everyone from being a defender if they are trying to cautiously place their pieces.. yet the defenders are still able to give the builders the pieces they retrieve.

im starting to consider this idea more and more as i go...

 

[lonefox]

a cannon would rule... lol...

you could like load people in it and shoot them, lol...