History of Invention

This is collection of brainstormed ideas for the most innovative video game since pong. It allows the player to make the human race as alien or native as he or she wants. It allows the player to invent every aspect of the human technology and sociality. Let me run you through a quick game, run at an accelerated pace. A full game is infinitely long.

You begin the game in an environment of your choice, I imaging choosing between environments such as temperate, tropical, artic, desert/oasis, ect. The game starts with an introductory on the beginning of human life or something like that. You’re first job is to help your two people, one male and one female, survive.

There are many ways of surviving, you’re people could be vegetarians, or omnivores, but them being human I must rule out them eating nothing but meat. You also want to increase you’re population. Your young couple will routinely produce a child every few game years or so.

The main tool in the game’s function is to invent tools. It has a perfect physics system. It also has a complex but still user-friendly 3D editing system. Here the player can make anything, from statues to space ships straight out of Star Wars. What constricts the player to evolve slowly (or at least slower than going from cavemen to astronauts) is resources).

The surrounding area and what he or she can produce with the things in that area determine a player’s resources. It’s not like Age of Empires where your amount resources are determined by how many workers are extracting it; you instead get a certain amount of branches or rocks per invention.

So lets invent something to help our tribe increase the income of branches, and tree trunks. Hmmmm… lets say an axe. So we guide one of our tribesmen to find a branch and a sharp stone. This isn’t too hard. Then we bring those back to our camp which currently is nothing but a patch of grass. Then we go into the editor.

In the editor we carve a rough handle out of the branch using the rock. The rock is guided along the stick with the mouse, removing wood from the branch, if we want we can save the leftovers.

So we have a nice looking handle, but it won’t help us cut wood. We need to shape the rock and attach it to the wood. So we save what we’ve done and go out again to find a harder rock than the last one and a sturdy vine. We find a rock and gather several vines.

Back in the editor we similarly shape the old rock, this time we don’t beat it like real life because that’s too tedious. When we’re happy with the rock, we begin wrapping the sturdiest vine around the handle and fasten it.

Almost done. All we must do now is make it useful. Selecting just the handle, not the vine or axe head we assign a “tool part type” to it. These are labels that help the game know how to use the new tool. So the tool part types include “handle”, “wedge”, “sharp end” ect. Apply the label “handle” to the handle of the axe. Now the game knows that the user holds that part of the tool. You may also want to select and designate an area on the handle to place the hands. Now select the rock and apply the label “sharp end” and designate which part is supposed to be used to cut. Do the same type of thing with the vine making it a “fastener”. Later you will be able to open up a list of all the tool part types and apply them accordingly to other inventions.

Now you must apply an action. Select the entire axe and give it the action swing. Now the game knows to swing the tool, how to hold it, and what is does (it cuts), but it doesn’t know what it is to be used on.

Open up a list of known available resources; select the ones you think it can be used to gather. The game calculates how effective it is on each and you get a certain more amount of those resources based on their efficiency. You will now see your tribesmen using the axe whenever he/she goes gathering your specified resources.

The Invention Editor isn’t the only editor though. The other main editor is the Chemical Lab. Here you can mix chemicals together and do other scientific experiments. If you want to make gunpowder, you must research how to, and perform what you’ve researched in the Lab.

An alternative to doing your own research on the Internet would be employing a scientist to research this for you and after a little while he/she will return to you the results on how to make it. Then you can go into the Lab and make the chemical, and then make slight modifications.

Objects made in the Invention Editor can be used in the Chemical Lab, and vice-versa. The hard part about making the chemical Lab is making a perfect science system. You don’t want a senior high school student or a science teacher noticing flaws in your game, or worse, getting mad because they can’t invent something. A solution could be getting high school and university textbooks and basically putting the things in there word for word.

One last major editor is the Structure Editor. This is for making buildings. This is basically the same as the Invention Editor except that it has an extensive this of building and room types to label your buildings with purposes. The labels range from “bathroom” to “medical outpost” to “factory” to apartment building”.

Other editors include military, government, and religion editors. The Military Editor deals with ranks, formations, how to fight (a model poser like person that you can manipulate), and what to wear and wield. The Government Editor deals with important political positions, important buildings, and government type. With this editor the main thing is to easily let the player choose from existing government types or create their own. The Religion Editor is similar to government.

So I present this challenge to you. Can you make the most comprehensive, and involved video game of all time? Can you have the patience to develop this to the full, and not slack off just because it’s been in development for ten years? Of course I have not mentioned everything I expect here. Other things like currency must be included. But I have chosen to email this to you because you are capable of doing it.

Please respond to this email, talk about it with the other people who are working there and decide if you’re up for the challenge. If you decide not to, email me about it and I will send the idea to another company. If you decide you’re up to it, then I will say nothing about it to anyone until you decide to announce it. I ask for no money, the idea is yours to use.

Sincerely, Alex Boer