ideas

I keep getting good ideas for video games.

These days I don't play so much. It used to be a hobby I sank serious time into - not just playing but also learning the ins and outs of. Late high school and early 2000s I learned how to make maps for several games (Quake, Half-Life) but I don't do that anymore.

I bought a bunch of games last year that I never played (damn you Christmas Steam sales) and whenever I do play I feel like I'm chasing the feeling I used to get when I was younger. I played maybe 10 hours into Mass Effect 2 over the winter but haven't played again since December (it says when I last played, conveniently).

I played Star Wars: Galaxies to chase the feeling I had with Ultima Online. I played Bad Company 2 to chase the feeling I had with Desert Combat. I played Dragon Age: Origins to chase the feeling I had with Baldur's Gate. Team Fortress 2 to chase Team Fortress.

Oblivion, Fallout 3, and Portal were fantastic. I played those to play them - not to chase anything. I stopped playing Mass Effect 2 because it turned into a grind to play through all the companion NPCs special missions. I am very much looking forward to Portal 2.

Anyways, sometimes I get ideas for games that I'd play. I hope someday I can get to a point where I can actually make them. I'll throw down an idea I had a while back.

1) I really like the idea of asynchronous gameplay. You make your move and send it off and wait for your opponent to make his in response (Scrabble, Words With Friends, checkers, chess, etc). I'd like to apply that concept to a light strategy game - or rather a "real time strategy" that's not real time.

You have five units: two offensive, two defensive, and one "boss" unit that protects the flag (or whatever). So does your opponent. The field is something like a soccer field with the flag your offensive units need to capture in the goal area (or something like that). You can only (at first) see your units. All characters are autonomous and you have to define some basic behaviors.

You set the defensive (two defense and the boss) in positions and define behaviors like patrol pathways and aggressiveness, weapons, and whatnot. Your offensive units you give general directions to go and maybe sacrifice not having weapons for speed. The offensive units are going to "home into" the flag once they get to a certain distance (if they get there, anyways).

So, you and your opponents set units up and then when both are finished (which can be at different times) the system says "ok you're both done setting up so run the simulation" and the game plays out with the offensive units on both teams running across the field to get the flag and encountering the defenses set up. Maybe both teams get the flag, maybe not. The point is you see the results and then can adjust your setup (and save/recall setups) and keep playing. The action of the play can be seen in "real time" since each player will have a view of the whole field (maybe?) when the game is ready to be played and the total time of the play would probably be 15-20 seconds (?).

It would make a good browser or mobile game.