Game Dreaming

Man, I love the game of Risk. It's such a simple, yet satisfying game. The thing that I'm looking for in a strategy game, however, combines the elements of micromanaging and world conquest. The other piece is that I'd really like to have a game where I can create my own worlds. Like, it'd be great if I could play Sim City 4, sculpt my own geography and build a couple of cities, but then plug that information into an RTS where the battles take place in that world. In fact, it'd be truly novel to have any set of games that interacted with themselves in a similar way. The Sim franchise tried doing it fifteen years ago with their Sim Streets and Sim Copter plug-ins, but the technology was still so raw that the end result was a bit disappointing. After all, if you're going to play a racing game or a flight sim, wouldn't you rather play the one that handles better, as opposed to the one that's a gimmic?

But my thinking is that there could be a programming framework that allowed all the different games that people come up with to get stuck together. Kind of like Second Life's doing (and the other ones) with their sandbox designed to let the avatars design on their own. I'm sure that the world is becoming more rich and complete with each passing day, I just don't have the computer or connection speeds to keep up with it all.

Or the patience. I couldn't spend all day modeling myself a pair of shoes. I'm just not that committed to self-indulgence.

And yet I am. But the self-indulgence that I partake in consists of a dreaming, a creation of a world that exists only in my mind. And it's a cool world, it's just that I don't have a good way to market it just yet.

Back to the programming thing. Isn't it possible that you build a programming language within the framework of an engine? Like, anyone can build a level for a Quake/Unreal based game. And people can model, and they can code various things in that framework. Okay, so what if (and right now we're just cross platforming FPSes) Builder A creates a post apocolyptic world with laser sniper rifles, and Builder B is working on a similar thing but he's focused on hover shoes. You'd have to have grafters to splice the two, but the premise is you play A and then walk through a door into B.

And Builder C has this project on Mars, and Builder D is building a Civil War mod. So now you've got to get your grafter to build a space shuttle and a time machine to act as links between them. But the point is that no matter what level gets built, they're all in the same framework. So you can walk seamlessly through each world that's been created.

Now, you could specify- only allow people to work on certain base structures. You've got your earth, your moon, your mars, your past, your future, your fantasy realm, etcetera, and you could even have all of the grafts already in place were you to pull something of that nature. And empty space extending away from the links. That'd be the easiest way to make it cohesive. But the point is that if Builder B's hover boots work in his map, they're going to work on Mars as well.

But that's thinking on a small level.

What I'm imagining is you can have different games within it all. I'm imagining that you can be the president of the country that's at war with the aliens and you can choose to send reinforcements to whatever sector you deem in most need. I'm saying that you can rebuild the bombed out city with whatever utilities and recreation as you want. I'm saying that you can be a god within that framework, sending plagues at your own whim.

There's an adventure game/platformer where you can get wings to fly to the top of a mountain to fight lizard men. Well, the bio-soldiers sent in to protect against the meteor-transported ooze infestation might just stumble upon said mountain, and now they've got flying wings too.

It's the framework that needs to be created. We've gotten to the point that most of what we could ever hope to do with a videogame (visually, and in terms of gameplay) has pretty much plateaued. Now it's time to create a programming language that is all modular. That is from the ground up bug free. Nothing can be created that will cause problems or interference with the rest of the world in which you're doing the creating.