Hello all,

First of all, I admit I am a new member. Here's hoping for the best.

Second of all, I have an idea that won't go away until I write it down, and I thought everyone here especially might be interested.

I have had an interest in Tron, as a Video Game (especially after Tron 2.0) for a while. The problem with Tron 2.0, however, is that it was very "Linear". Personally, I've always liked the idea of Morrowind, with the sandbox style of play.

That got me to thinking, what if there was a Tron, Sandbox style? The design of Tron is relatively simplistic, and even if you had a 3D design, there'd be little more than a wiregrid for your characters and various NPCs.

And so I thought further. What if we had something like the SIMS, kind of, where you could build your own system? What if you could have a basic system, where the size is dictated by the computer you're on? Say, one square mile (electronically) per gigabyte on your computer. You could have your own small country.

Now, keep in mind, this is only the foundation of the work. You could still include everything from the old Tron to the new one they're working on, Legacy. If you have a program like SIW built in, you could have the program determine what kind of software you have, the age of it, and adjust your "world" accordingly.

From there, you would be able to run your own world, and network to others, perhaps to visit and/or roleplay.

In short, my idea is thus: an open-source networking software, based on a three-dimensional system explorer that would allow you to perform a number of roleplaying elements, both game based and otherwise. The software would be set up with a personal home server, potentially portable configurations, as long as you have an adequate system, with multi-level system capabilities, allowing even low-end systems the ability to play to considerable capabilities.


Whoof, that was longer than I'd expected. I'm sure you can understand why I wanted to get that out of my head. Either way, I'd be glad to know what everyone thinks. Given this day, age, and style of roleplay nowadays, it seems like it'd catch on.

For the Users,
Torano

TRON.dll Wrote:Sounds like an interesting idea, but I dislike the idea of the size of the in-game world being dictated by the total amount of space on your hard drive. The game could become claustrophobic for people with smaller hard drives and only people with large hard drives in the Terrabytes could really have fun with a large and expansive open world. This sounds moderately similar to some of the Tron MMO ideas that were being thrown around by some people here a while ago (nothing official). The biggest issue, though, is parts of the game being affected by your system specs. The game may, as a result, end up not being as fun for one person with a low-spec PC, while it may end up being a totally different and much more enjoyable experience for someone with a high-end PC. I used to have a lower-than-low-end PC and I know what it's like to be singled out when it comes to PC gaming. The idea of the game being different based on system specs means that nobody can experience everything in the game on one computer.

I did realize this issue, though when you look at it right, it would very likely affect it less than people realize. Granted, the bigger the system the better the play, but when it's one square mile per GB, that's a rather noticeable amount of space.

In addition, the gameplay itself isn't affected by the specs of the system they're playing on. It simply affects how expansive the system is. The spec analysis is simply an optimization of the general basis of the system. The "addons" or "mods", I'd suppose, would be able to be run by block size, not by the specs the computer runs on (the obvious aside). So you could still do RPs, FPS, RPGs, and such, without unnecessary hindrance.

I've had ideas like this, too, but as has been said, bad computers come with bad gameplay. Considering my computer sometimes seems like it's old enough to have the entire movie play out in it, I'd be one of the people to rate the game poorly only because of the computer's failure. Still a phenomenal idea, though. Makes me think of something like a Tron Minecraft.