Games Inside a Game

I just remembered that you could play Maniac Mansion inside of Day Of the Tentacle. That was a really fun gimmick and I really wondered how they did that and I still do. How would you put a game inside a game in unity? Would it be possible to put the same game the player is playing inside the game? To create and infinite loop of the player playing a player playing the same game? I really want to do that as a gimmick for a very small game.

 

File->new scene. Hell, what's harder in Unity is making it the same game across scenes.

 

That easy? Wouldn't that reset stats etc.? I mean lets say you have timers etc. running you would have to keep them running and create new instances for the game in the game.

 

I'm still tip toeing in to the new features but so far I've found the multi-scene stuff pretty handy for stats and stuff that need to be carried across scenes. I've split up my managers in to game manger objects and scene or level managers.

 

Nice then I prob. would be able to do that with 5.3 just need to learn more. I think I'll do that as my first learning project then.

 

Like they said you'll need to do a new scene for the "inner" game. In any case you'll need to create a persistent object to store states and values that need to carry across the entire game from scene to scene without resetting. A simple singleton class can serve as a good data storehouse.

 

You can do it with older releases of Unity too. You simply instruct Unity not to destroy an object when loading scenes.

http://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/Object.DontDestroyOnLoad.html

 

Good to know, I'll keep the objects then and hide them and make them reappear depending on where the player is.

 

You don't need to make a new scene to make a new sub-game in unity.
You can make container game objects that would contain different scenes and you would have only one active at a time, which would mean you wont need to use DontDestroyOnLoad and it will make switching faster.

Althiugh this wount feel like you are playing a game inside a game, more like you are just playing a different game.
You can use a RenderTexture to render a camera (of the inner game) onto a surface (plane), which would act like a computer/phone screen in the outter game.

 

All good answers above. The design question is ... is it a good idea?
Gigi

 

If you're not sure then it probably isn't.

 

I stayed subscribed to WOW for an extra 6 months because I loved the pokeman ´inner game´.

There was also a Might and Magic ( I think 7) that had a tower defense/card game that you could play in any tavern, and each tavern had slightly different rules. Might and Magic was great in itself, but I probably spent about 10 hours just playing the mini-game in the taverns.

 

Is it a good idea? Depends - do you mean mechanically, or in narrative terms?

@Arowx made a game for the recent Silly New Years Jam, called Argon. It's set up similar to 'The Last Starfighter': a game within another work. Now, as it happens, the 'real world' mode has no real bearing on much of anything...but it is kind of cool! In narrative terms, this sort of thing is a Framing Device, and enhances the work by providing the feel that you get out of...well, The Last Starfighter.

As far as mechanically, this isn't a new thing. Any game with 'minigames' uses games within a game, but with a result that has some effect on the larger-scope game.

 

Games inside a game? Not to offend anyone, but I think they are called minigames.

A example of games inside a game is Nintendo Land.

 

I think calling them just minigames might have caused confusion because many of us refer to things like game jams as creating minigames. games with just very small scope.

 

I know this is old but...

That or some of us think of mini games like those popup puzzles that you play in some games. Or like the bombchu game, rupee shooter in Legend of Zelda OOT.

A game inside a game is like Doom 3 having Super turbo turkey puncher 3, in one of the terminals and a Bejeweled clone.
Animal Crossings had Super mario and Donkey kong jr math and bunch of others.

 

Yep. And believe it or not, Virtua Fighter 5 is playable, in that Yakuza 6 game.
Cool eh?

 

It's important to note that I've never been a part of these communities, but I've never heard this-- when I hear or see it, "mini game" is always in the context of being given a task in a game, and the player must use temporary, distinct game mechanics to complete it. Completing this task has some effect on the main game.

Games within games are usually a form of easter egg. BoraD gives Maniac Mansion being playable in DoTT as an example. Given that Maniac Mansion is a full, separate game that was released previous to DoTT, I don't think it's fair to call this a mini game either.

I played Geometry Wars in Project Gotham Racing 3 way more than I should have. As long as it doesn't get in the way of the main game and you have the resources to do so, I don't see any reason not to do this if it's what you want to do.

 

Games within games can mean a lot of things. If they are in the form of an easter egg, I wouldn't spend too much time polishing them, but they do give your game's community, and any game press covering your game, something fun to talk about.

Games within games can also be player created. For nearly a decade Eve Online had a player created online poker game with "real" game currency stakes called EOH Poker. A player would transfer in game currency to the EOH Poker corporation, you'd then run a typical online poker client to play the game, and whenever you wanted you could cash out your EOH Poker account back to your Eve Online character in game. Other player created games within games can take the form of mods or custom maps.

 

It has been an old game design theory, to make games out of mini games. Final Fantasy 7 used mini games. The really old games used this theory more often then modern ones. Final Fantasy 7 has a chocobo raising and racing game inside it. It was my favorite part of Final Fantasy 7. I spent more time raising and racing chocobo's then playing the game.