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Overview: We have plenty of cool ideas, and are currently working on one.Our weakness is that we're humans.And worse.College students.
Update 04.12.2008: We're not college students anymore. Somehow it has been done: we all graduated. Right now we're looking for venture capital companies and angel investors. We also graduated from a single idea and would like to pursue more of them.
Our projects so far: Broken Sundown, Rugged Fun: Socialist Motoring, Vintage Computers. For now, the Vintage Computers have the clearest roadmap on what to do after an investor has been found and investment has already begun.
So I am to spout aberrant comments and descriptions
about a certain project we have been working on for a lot of time.Well then,
I was going to read from the back of the box that we designed from the game,
the box that we got from the distributor as the prototype.But, for some unexplainable
reason, I won't.
If I can't do that, then I should just keep using superlative words about the
game and its' elements, such as "revolutionary 3D graphics", "furious
and intense gameplay", "state of the art game engine", and I
must not forget the almighty etc. That, in order to attract anyone, the more
the better, towards consuming this future product and praising us, its' creators,
through the aid of currency(but not exclusively).Thus making sure the next product
will already have a consumer herd eager to mindlessly pay for it, just because
our brand's image will have made a good impression on each single individual.And
so, the company will grow and grow and try to become the only one that produces
games, taking over any competitors and transforming itself into a badly organised
giant company with a single goal - maximizing profits.Methods include: employees
kept under strict, prison-like control, so that their productivity level is
no less than a pre-established one and high pricing with minimal production
costs.And these are just the basics.
What if I told you we're just honest people that are sick of all that has been
mentioned above, a team that wants to build a game from scratch, not just recompiling
a legally or illegally owned engine that has proven to be good? Ok, let me give
you an idea of what's going on, since it's the first project. About 3 years ago,
some guy wanted to get into the gaming industry. Not having any skills other
than ideas, he failed.So he tried starting his own little group(no you don't
need to know who he is). After a lot of diplomacy and discussions, it was settled. Four
guys, and a project that tries to expand the gameplay of a nearly (or fully)defunct
style of games.
This is Broken Sundown.This is where gamers, each with his own set of gaming
values, gathered to create a game trying to be a little original.Don't expect
a revelation in gaming.Don't expect things that you have never seen before.Expect
a game with elements that we considered "cool".The elder gamers will
probably be able to name other games that had some of this game's elements.But,
as far as we know, they won't be able to name a game that had all of them.
Entry-level groups have no choice but to develop a simple game.This is because
the more complex the game is, the longer it takes to develop.Also, they usually
have some kind of financial support.We don't.And looking at our game's concept,
the only true asset it has resides within the feeling of freedom.Oh, you know,
there's a difference between the idea and the implementation.So the engine must
allow this freedom.
So, you'll be fighting outdoors or indoors, inside a vehicle or by foot.We thought
"the more the shooting lasts, the better". So there are a lot of different
weapons, and a lot of different vehicles.
There is no point in trying to describe the game here. You just have to see it
for yourself. Until then, this site will probably be updated only when a relevant
event occurs. Such as "physics done".Or "artist found dead".
For now, this project is a collection of ideas, artwork and a few scribbled design notes. Should you invest, you would have to know that this one would take longer to develop.
Disconnected...
Decryption failed.
This project is kept secret until the maniac finishes the whole design document.He's doing his best to protect that damn file from "foreign eyes".
How nice it is to play RPG's online.Isn't it? We find the current RPG concepts limited.A hybrid with another type of games would increase the gameplay exponentially.We designed two such RPG games(both single player and multiplayer, only the multiplayer will encourage the participation of many players, so that's why I mentioned online gaming), but so far we can't even manage to put together a game that isn't that hard to realise. And we have also prepared a new concept for online gaming.All these are projects that could only be done by a larger team.So they are to be kept in the drawer until we're ready.
SubZero
Brand new idea (04.12.2008). Instead of offering just content, i.e video games, we thought about also offering the hardware to run them on. So, the idea of Vintage Computers was born.
One milestone investment: The revival of 3dfx Interactive chips, in the same manner as the others. The specific 3dfx cards I'm after "saving" are the Voodoo II 3D accelerator, the Voodoo 5 6000 and the Voodoo Rampage, the last two video cards of 3dfx. Nvidia Corporation should provide the rights to the technology, but I expect this investment to be the single biggest bill we will ever receive.
Holding the rights to all these technologies will, in my opinion, immortalize the company as the all-time archive of technology, a position that will always cash in. Yes, not every piece of technology (no Cray super computers, for example) and not even all the mainstream milestones. Just the computers that were respected, in their times, as being the top of the top of high-end. That best 286 reportedly "flew!" while the best 386 (the AMD 386 DX at 40 MHz) was deemed very fast and very stable (and also, produced in large numbers, making it easy to find and buy, for duplication). The best Pentium III wasn't very well known because Intel had to push the first Pentium 4 models. The best Pentium 4 for the socket 478 wasn't respected, but that was just fanboyism.
16-bit multi-CPU systems didn’t even exist, as far as I know. The first such system was reportedly a 386 with four processors, connected to each other in a very hacked up way.
So, an operating system for such a machine does probably not exist. Wrong.
There are three major directions in which the mainstream PC operating systems went. Command line OSes named DOS (Disk Operating System), made by Microsoft (MS-DOS), IBM (PC-DOS), Calderra (DR-DOS) and several others. Microsoft and IBM also made operating systems with a graphical user interface, Windows and OS/2. And there was also Linux, the free and open-source operating system, having both a command line and a GUI.
FreeDOS is a clone of the other DOS-es, but made for free and open-source. Open source projects are usually made by enthusiasts who feel like creating something they need and that the commercial world doesn’t seem to be interested in. Microsoft would probably never release the source code for their DOS so that it can be updated and maintained by communities. FreeDOS does just that. This version of DOS will be able to run on a multi-CPU system without a problem.
This project aims much higher. They want to create a running clone of Windows NT class of operating systems, from version 4.0 to the latest, that is Windows Vista, or NT 6.0. Of course, they can adapt it in as many ways as they want, unlike Windows who has moved features around, discarded some useful ones with newer versions and so on. By paying them to do the work, we can have a very good, feature-complete OS to put on virtually any of the future computer systems. The current state of the project is not in excellent shape, as they do it in their free time, as a hobby. Still, it does run a few known and useful applications made for the regular Windows.
Both of these can be tailored to run on any of the planned systems and do everything that’s ever needed: infrared and Bluetooth connectivity, wireless and wired networking, watching TV, listening to the radio, recording and playing TV/radio shows, surfing the Internet, etc. Users will most likely want FreeDOS out of nostalgia, or because they might think their old games will run again on that. In reality, ReactOS will cover most of a user’s needs, no matter how quirky. Only a few rare cases will require FreeDOS. However, it should be there as a lighter version for the ones who don’t need all the fancy stuff ReactOS will have.
We can make Amigas once more. Two models should be made, models that didn't make it due to the "ever-evil" economic marketing who doesn't always make the best sold products out of real value. For that, we need a bit of history.
Two chipsets were in the works before Commodore went bust: AAA (Advanced Amiga Architecture) and Hombre. Both should be manufactured in a computer system because the AAA was intended as the "next-gen" Amiga chipset, a natural development over the previous Amiga chipsets. Hombre, on the other side, was the reason why AAA was abandoned, because it was thought that the latter wouldn't be enough to take Amigas back to the top and Hombre development, a bigger leap from the other chipsets, was started.
To find these technologies we would need to find the designers behind them: Dave Haynie for the AAA chipset and Dr. Ed Helper for the Hombre. It is my belief that the systems can be re-made, with an enhancement that was offered by third parties at the time: equipping PowerPC architecture processors on the systems. As far as we know, there was no Amiga offered with a PowerPC CPU right from the start, but we should do this because the last such CPU compatible with the Amigas would probably be much better than the last CPUs Amiga systems shipped with. This is also helpful because of another reason: the operating system.
Yes, the OSes for these two Amiga systems would probably need to be the same two as for any other future system: FreeDOS and ReactOS (the latter already has a PowerPC port in development).
Probably the best place to start the search would be talking to the company Genesi. However, it would be great if any supporters of this (sub)project would tell the two gentlemen about it.
For now, there is just one of us. I do have a rough idea of where to go, who to ask and, most importantly, what to ask to get the ball rolling. I just need the funding and yes, I believe profit can be made, even if it looks like non-profit work. I suspect that after the research for a couple of systems, the company will have exactly ONE employee other than myself, and that would be someone helping out with the sales, handling, packaging and shipping. Maybe the numbers will grow if there is a bigger need for such products than I thought.
The company that would be able to help with designs and also produce most, if not all the components we need is ICE Felix - felix.ro is their website, and here you can find a list of the computer systems they manufactured in the past.
No financial data at all. Sorry, I'm really not good at estimating what I could sell if it could happen so that I could etc. The business plan template was shamelessly inspired from http://www.sequoiacap.com/ideas (who, by the way, did not answer at all, not even refusing).
Tractors! Yes, tractors! This will be a game with a lot of tractors made in the "Eastern Bloc," the former area of influence of the former USSR. There are enough tractor models to suit our purpose.
And since the phrase 'an idea for a racing game' is rumored to have reached English dictionaries at the definition of oxymoron, we would put guns on them and have them do something ELSE. We prepared for this task with a little code and a bit of content: see the news section.
