Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Game Idea: The Ultimate Showdown

This game idea assumes the reader is acquainted with this flash movie: http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/285267

I won't go over its popularity with the internet crowd or the quality of the animation or anything like that, I'll just state that the satirical humor of the animation and song are based on the nature of the numerous internet sites that take the concept of "who out of popular culture would win against who" and debate it long past the point where it stopped being funny. Or healthy, for that matter.

But could a game version really exist? Logistically, no. There's way too many copyrights to keep track of and the sheer number of combatants of varying power, size and ability taking part (if we use all the ones in the song) would be too much for any advanced game engine (or computer processor) to cope with at the moment. But what the hell, I'll give it a shot anyway.

Essentially, the game would have to be online (simply because it wouldn't work without dozens of fanboys controlling their favorite characters on a server). That suggests something like Quake or Counterstrike, with a FPS interface and high turnover of casualties per game session. The Timesplitters series specifically is renowned for having many different character types and models - most of which are ridiculous and completely ineffective choices - competing in an FPS arena. Now here comes the many problems with this set-up (and how I've decided to tackle them):


Difference in Power - Simply put, the biggest problem is the fact that some of the participants are clearly stronger and more invulnerable than others. Take Indiana Jones, who's a pretty competent treasure-hunter and gun/whip user. Compared to Optimus Prime though, he's just a tiny squishy human. Rather than go on with reductions in height and power for the stronger characters, I've come up with a Life Expectancy Rating for each character, based on how likely the character is to survive a given "showdown" scenario.

As such, your overall score will not only factor in the the number of kills but the length of time you were able to survive. A person controlling Godzilla (who is practically indestructible compared to the other characters) would have a very high L.E.R., which means that he would be score very lowly upon surviving one game regardless of how many other characters he manages to defeat. This should dissuade power gamers (the ones that are in it for the scores and prestige) to choose the strongest characters and rule over the weaker ones. Instead, that privilege goes to the 14 year olds who are mad at their parents and want to take it out on a bunch of anonymous internet users.

Without going into too much detail about who is stronger than whom, there will be around three or more L.E.R. categories any given character could belong to. If you're playing a weaker character, therefore, you may end up with a multiple modifier to your kill count. As such, here's an estimate (since it would need to be tweaked constantly for balance) about how this modifier would work:

Playing an Overpowered Hero (Godzilla, Superman, Chuck Norris*) - x1 Modifier
Playing a Superhuman (Batman, Shaq**, Zombie Lincoln) - x2 Modifier
Playing a Competent But Entirely Human Fighter (Indiana Jones) - x3 Modifier

*This is the Internet Meme Chuck Norris, as opposed to the real one. You know, the one that has various axioms such as "Chuck Norris doesn't sleep. He waits."

**This is "Shaq Fu" Shaq, the one who knows martial arts and can fire flaming basketballs at people as seen in the (ahem) hit video game Shaq Fu.


...and so on. Weaker characters will be taken out faster, but if they can kill a couple of opponents beforehand the choice will have been worth it. Some of the weaker ones may be designated "runners", which means they'll avoid all confrontations and go for a survival bonus - which would be a fixed score based on the timer, which is also affected by the bonus modifier. For example, a five minute game could give you 3 points for surviving the full five minutes, giving a weaker player 3 x 3 = 9 points for doing nothing but evading attacks. Therefore even if the player controlling Godzilla takes out 8 other characters, he'll still lose to this runner on the score table.


Difference in Height - There will be no shrinking/growing of certain characters to match a uniform height. Instead, there will be at an alternate playing map for players using characters that are gigantic (such as Godzilla or Optimus Prime). The map would just be the map everyone else is using, just shrunk down to match scale. Similarly, all the other characters will appear on that player's map as smaller models too, making them harder to hit (but easier to kill). The technology of FPS games has progressed far enough to allow for massive character models (though there would still be massive slowdown, unfortunately) which is how these
characters will appear to everyone else. Such an obvious target would be in a lot of trouble if the whole playing force gangs up on it.


Different Fighting Styles - This would be a pretty big problem, since all the characters fight differently and would need several unique modes for all the forms of attack they're capable of. For instance, Batman could use Batgrenades, Batarangs, Grappling Hooks and Martial Arts. Shaq would use Martial Arts and Flaming Basketballs. Godzilla would have his Flame (Radiation?) Breath attack, and so on. Programming all of these would be a hassle, so it would be easier to simply give each character a ranged attack and an alternate firing mode (a hand-to-hand attack most likely). Characters who don't use ranged attacks can have a primary hand-to-hand and an alternate hand-to-hand mode. Though limiting the characters to only two attacks would be limiting their fighting potential (since Batman alone is one who is reliant on his clever gadgetry), it's the only way at the moment to cut down on the amount of memory needed to store all these different attacks.


Popularity of Certain Characters -
Can be handily solved like other games with a similar problem: Alternate skins. If two people want to play Godzilla, the second one could play in a Mecha-Godzilla skin. As long as the other character is perfectly identical in every other way (abilities, L.E.R., etc.) there shouldn't be too many disagreements - besides choosing the cooler looking skin, of course. Boundaries may have to be set though since the skins could also take up a lot of memory, so possibly a four person limit for each character would be enforced.


Finally, I'll just mention that each character would have a "Top Trumps"-esque readout for how effective a fighter they are (or how ineffective - allowing for a higher score by surviving in spite of their limited abilities) on the selection screen. Here's two examples:

Optimus Prime -
Armor Rating - HIGH (armor rating would measure immunities to attacks. Optimus wouldn't feel a regular bullet, so his armor rating would need to reflect this.)
L.E.R. - x1 (since he's so overpowered)
Size - L (so he would be on the smaller-scale playing map)

Optimus Ray - 60
Optimus Charge - 75
(These are the two attacks Optimus has: a ranged ray attack and a hand-to-hand charge. The damage they do is relative to a character with Medium armor with 100 Health. So, hitting a character with medium armor with his ray would remove 60 of his 100 HP instantly. A different armor rating would increase/decrease the damage done. Most of this data will be worked out 'behind the scenes' as it were)

Score This Session - x
Total Points Scored With This Character - x
Preference - x%
(These values will be personal to the player choosing the character. Like in Smash Bros and other fighting games, a second player viewing the account can see this player's character preferences and how good/bad he is with certain characters (Player 1 may have won a lot of games by using runners, for example). The second player can then adjust their tactics accordingly.)


Care Bear -
Armor Rating - LOW
L.E.R. - 3x
(suggesting a good runner character to use, if a little ridiculous)
Size - S (This simply refers to their size compared to human-sized characters. A small character will still use the medium-sized playing map)

Care Bear Stare - 30 (AR is N/A) (A care-bear stare does as much power to one
character as it will do to any other regardless of armor due to its magical nature. This makes the Care Bear one of the few smaller characters to damage the huge armored characters like Optimus Prime, above)
Care Bear Hug - 5 (Unlike their powerful Care Bear Stare attack, this attack is almost completely ineffective, as it requires them to hold onto an opponent long enough to give them (minimal) damage)

Score This Session - x
Total Points Scored With This Character - x
Preference - x%



This is another of those game ideas I don't expect to ever get made by anyone, ever. I'm simply using it to stretch my design-power muscles and get around all these problems the best I can. It'd still be a pretty neat project for one of these internet fanboys proficient in coding to put together though.