Natural disaster survival simulator!

So, I'm a newbie when it comes to game creation, so I was wondering if anyone liked this idea enough to help... anyway here's my idea:
It would be a Survival Simulator where you must survive different ultra realistic natural disasters including: Tornadoes, Floods, Earthquakes, etc.
Main Features:
Ultra Realistic Physics and Graphics
Interactive and Highly Destructible Maps for a Even More Fun Experience
Character Customization
Items and Clothes to buy with in-game money at the shop
Achievement System
Small MultiPlayer Servers
OCULUS RIFT Support

Hope you guys like the idea and help is wanted!

Cheers!

 

Nothing is preventing you from downloading Unity and start developing

http://unity3d.com/unity/download

 

What you're saying might sound ridiculous to some but a lot of what you speak of in that list is available COTS and assemble and becoming easier and improving all the time.

I'd suggest you first pick the easiest and work your way though them. Floods sounds the easiest but I think they are the hardest so then I'd think then really hurricanes are the hardest. I'd think tornados are the easiest. The ease of prediction of the various phenomena I wouldn't hazard a guess although weather prediction is improving.

Plenty of government sites have many (3D less) weather and natural disaster simulations and prediction software free of charge to use. Then it's simply a matter of learning the software and the theory behind it and porting it to Unity. Unity is already capable of simulating some of it but you will need to extend it in other areas using the government SW. And you will need a very powerful machine.

E.g. If you are an architect you can design earthquake, hurricane, tornado, and flood proof housing and test it in a simulator. You wouldn't need the graphics. The graphical part comes and is useful for getting interest and attention. People tend to ignore dry books of numbers, words, and statistics. Create realistic simulations of disasters and have disaster preparedness training play like a game and you are bound to have better and more memorable disaster preparedness training.

And it might be you have a huge hit on your hands. Remember the movie Tornado? Very popular. The Wizard of OZ. Very popular. The fascination of watching tornado videos and tornado chasing. Very popular.

But war and zombie games are soooo much easier.

 

Yes nice 'idea', but why don't you start by making Pong and a few simple games first from start to finish to get an idea of how difficult and time consuming game development it.

Then work your way up to your idea.
For somebody who is new to game development your idea is way too ambitious.

 

Let me offer some legitimate critique. I want to encourage you to make games, but I see that with your current plans, you are on the way to destruction. You have no chance to survive make your time.

First off, let's get some perspective. Load up your favorite game, the game that you would consider to be the main source of inspiration for this game. If you don't have one, find one. Originality - or more specifically, uniqueness - is overrated. Now, start that game, and find the credits option. Sit through all of them, try to count the names. Each one of those is more than likely a paid professional that worked on the game for over a year before it was finished. That's what it takes to make a game of the scale you want. You are not a professional. What kind of game can one non-professional make? (The answer of course, is a pretty darn good one, but in a completely different way than a AAA title is good).

Next point: right now you have a list of features, not a game. What is the gameplay like? What is it really like to survive a disaster? Are you focusing on the gameplay of surviving the disaster itself? If so, how do you make it fun? Surviving a flood could be interesting, you would have to find high ground or something that floats. Earthquakes - I guess you'd have to keep your balance while avoiding falling things? I couldn't imagine a tornado simulator being too fun, you can't really outrun it and you would die if it got too close, so your survival basically depends on hiding in a bunker (not very exciting gameplay) or luck.

Alternatively, you could focus the gameplay of surviving the aftermath of a disaster, when basic necessities like food, drinkable water, and shelter are scarce. This sounds a lot more fun to me, to be honest, and similar concepts already been explored by a few other games like DayZ and Rust (although the zombie apocalypse stands in for a natural disaster), which means there's a good place to draw inspiration. If you nail the emotional aspect of this idea, it could be successful as a work of art.

So with that core concept in mind, let's look at each of your feature ideas:

"Ultra Realistic Physics and Graphics"
This isn't an idea, this is a design principle, and a severely flawed one at that. Realistic physics in games have yet to be really perfected, but what we're finding is that realistic physics are mainly used for graphical polish - when it integrates too deeply with gameplay, it makes the game less fun. In fact, an entire subgenre of "game with way-too-realistic physics" is appearing, in the form of QWOP, Surgeon Simulator, etc.

As for realistic graphics, just forget about it. A small indie team can't make a game that looks better than Call of Duty, and Call of Duty doesn't even look that great. If you're aiming for the emotional work of art that I described earlier, it's probably better to use a simple, abstract style anyways - it leaves more to the imagination, which actually makes it feel more real. See Papers, Please for a great example of this concept.

"Interactive and Highly Destructible Maps for a Even More Fun Experience"
Destructible maps are a fun idea, but they take a lot of work, especially if you're talking about dynamic destruction like you'll see in the newer Battlefield games. Since I'm mainly focused on surviving the aftermath, the actual destruction of the disaster itself can be taken care of in a pre-animated cutscene, so the destructibility of the environment is less important. Also - I'd challenge your idea that highly destructible maps are automatically more fun. What if you could just blow through every obstacle in a puzzle game like Portal or Zelda? Would it still be fun?

"Character Customization / Items and Clothes to buy with in-game money at the shop"
Why? What does this add to the game? If you're making a game that conveys the emotional horror of surviving a natural disaster, why would players want to play dress-up? Would the ability to equip a silly hat make the game more fun? For that matter, what "shop" are you buying things at? Everything's been destroyed!

"Achievement System"
Call this one a stretch goal. Achievements are a nice low-impact feature that you can to almost any game to lengthen its life, but they do take time that, depending on the state and schedule of the project, might be better spent on the actual gameplay.

"Small MultiPlayer Servers"
Whew, here's a scope explosion if I ever saw one! I'm working on a multiplayer game in my spare time now and believe me, I wish I wasn't. My advice: perfect a single-player experience first. Save the multiplayer mode for "Natural Disaster Survival Simulator 2".

"OCULUS RIFT Support"
Mmmmm, well now this is interesting. It seems to be a perfect fit for a game like this, although only if you opt for a first-person perspective. Maybe another perspective would be better? Also, be careful with the RIFT... it has a bad reputation in the gaming community ever since it was acquired by Facebook. (I personally think this is an irrational response until we actually find out what Facebook's plans are, but rationality and the Internet do not mix) In any case, it's a stretch goal, not something you need to design for right away.

In conclusion (tl;dr) Your game idea is interesting but too big for an indie team, and it's too vague. Focus on the experience, not a list of features that sound good.

 

Dallon nailed it. The first disaster you can try to survive is finishing your first game. If it's the one you mentioned, the odds are stacked heavily against you.

It's a game I'd love to play though so crack on, should take you a good few years.

 

I don't know if OP is still active or seeking to make this project, but I'd be interested in making a joint project with you, if you want to start small and have lots of patience.

 

Honestly from the way the original post was worded I'm betting they were only contributing the "idea" and everything else would have been the job of the remainder of the "team".

 

The OP hasn't logged in since five days after the post. So roughly two years ago. These forums are full of people with great ideas that disappear as quickly as they come up.

Try the collaboration forum instead. Or better yet, look into selling your skills in a commercial venture.

 

Man, I didn't even realize this was a necro post, I almost gave this kid a huge response as if he still posted here

 

And to add on, I'm a one man band, and I've spent over 2 and a half years to complete most of a two-dimensional project with destructible environments - it's plain old hard. It's tedious, hard, and difficult. To create a meaningful "destructible" world in a 3 dimensional game is - let's just say it's super dumb hard to get right. Consider forgetting about this feature if your not backed by a big team who knows codez.

Edit - damnit got necro tricked. Anyway there's my two cents to anybody who stumbles along haha.

 

Well in my defense, I have oodles of time on my hands guys. I'm more or less chained to home and a computer/network (will skills here and there to utilize and more to learn). So might as well work on stuff with my extra free time until I can find a company, that allows a bulk of work from home.

 

Sounds about like my situation. If you haven't done so already you could start working on a portfolio. A simple finished game would be good for showing your skills to a company. You could also try going to the collaboration sections and applying to projects.

http://forum.unity3d.com/forums/non-commercial-collaboration.17/
http://forum.unity3d.com/forums/commercial-job-offering.49/
http://forum.unity3d.com/forums/commercial-job-seeking.48/

 

*tries to be funny*
*tries to be deep*

I just came for the survival sim, I am disappoint.

 

It would have been rather easy to find out by checking OP's profile or writing a private message ("start conversation" on the profile page).



If this forum is missing one feature, then imho it is a necro-warning like gamedev.net has. Is Xenforo able to do that?

 

Shhh. You remember what happened last time we asked for a new feature?

 

I second guessed if I even should mention it, but I was optimistic, that this is a feature that Xenforo has and just needs to be enabled.

 

AFAIK this issue has been talked about several times and I remember people even linking Xenforo addons for Aurore back then. Even without the addons it's a trivial task to query latest post date for a thread and show a warning message div at the reply box.

 

XenForo is able to do quite a lot. I think the problem is more the community managers just don't know how.

 

You can see the origin date before you open it. If it doesn't say "Today" or "Yesterday" or any day of the week, then take a closer look.

 

People need big red warning signs (e.g. for posts older than 2 months) to have a chance for a significant amount of necro posts to be prevented. It's not that it isn't possible to read a date right now, it's that it needs to be in-your-face-obvious for some people. I usually don't necro by accident, but I've failed to realize a thread was necroed many times over, and replied as if it was a recent one.
I'm against auto-locking of old threads and I think there are valid reasons to necro, but I think something like "This thread hasn't seen a new post for 2 months, are you really sure you want to revive it from the dead?" might be good to keep the undead hordes at bay.

 

It doesn't help that the date is at the bottom of each post for some bizarre reason.

(Now I'm imagining a conference room presentation opening with, "We made some strange choices with XenForo, but Lithium gives us the power to screw it up completely!")