My attempt at a game with an original concept (MeseVerse)

[Worldblender]

A YouTube video posted on another topic already got me thinking about posting whatever I'm daydreaming about almost every day.

https://youtu.be/Ax9xRCMNDso

Open for discussion But please keep it civil!

Although I haven't watched that video yet, I am aware of the fact that many FOSS games are clones of existing proprietary ones, and I believe this is one of the factors of why most FOSS games aren't that prominent in mainstream pop culture (as in, they're notable enough to be mentioned by mainstream media aimed at non-technical people). However, my daydreaming could result in a good idea for a game concept that I don't think has been tried out by any proprietary game I haven't heard of yet (even if this idea has to build on top of existing ones). I will now give out the details that I have deemed to be firm:

• Title: MeseVerse (the name is a tribute to Minetest; check https://wiki.minetest.net/Mese for more info about this item) (portmanteau of mese and universe)
• Genre: 3D role-playing game (RPG)
• Engine: Most likely Godot Engine, unless there is another superior engine released later on; the game will support add-ons of various kinds (including but not limited to characters, maps, and expansion packs), some of which may have to be paid for (this here is one of the ways I can keep this project funded; the base game will always remain free to download and play, but this will not be true for all add-ons)
• Platforms: PC, and other platforms supported by Godot
• License: GNU GPL v3+ for the main game, GNU LGPL v3+ for the engine
• # of players supported: Normally single-player, but two-player co-op planned; the main game is fully playable offline
• Theme: Mild science-fiction involving playable characters under control of mese-injected computers (note that this means real-life computers with mese-infused CPUs and sometimes GPUs, not foreign futuristic computers)
• Other themes involved: High-tech brain-computer interfaces, building and assembling computers, 3D printing, e-waste and the reuse of many kinds of computers and waste material, travelling around the world and in outer space
• Locations: Fictional version of the real-life universe, including Earth, possibly other planets and galaxies; fictional locations are possible; Earth will most likely be composed of OpenStreetMap data
• Subjects: The United Nations will assume the management of mese and the playable characters; the first character is an adult human that can be freely customized, other kinds can include animals and live 3D models tentatively called Mesenions (portmanteau of mese and minion) made out of mese-powered 3D-printed material; friendly alien subjects in the form of 3D geometric shapes called Geo-Men (portmanteau of geometric and men) are what actually control the mese-injected computers and thus the characters with those computers (they are physically visible during the beginning of the game's story, in dialogs, and after completing the main game)
• Subjects of Mesenions: Almost anyone is eligible, as long as a 3D model exists for them somewhere; characters based on FOSS mascots (likely at least the ones found in SuperTuxKart, and will also reuse models from there) and original characters from FOSS games will ship with this game; characters from pop-culture video games and other media very likely to come with restrictive licensing, so they will have to be downloaded from a separate repository, and won't ship with the base game
• Party functionality: More than one character can be played with at one time, limited by the amount of CPU cores the leading character has (N - 1 is how many more characters can be in the player's party); up to 1000 characters can be saved (999 more can be acquired, as the 1st one out of the 1000 is always taken by the first character created)
• Collectibles: Mese fragments, crystals, blocks, and possibly Meseroids (portmanteau of mese and meteoroid), with each next item requiring 9 of the item before it like in Minetest; these collectibles can be converted to an intermediate form called MeseCoins, which can then be converted to in-game real-world currencies (real money is only involved in the purchase of certain add-ons)
• Item storage: Almost completely digital; physical items are stored on the storage of each characters' mese-injected computers, even other characters; max # of items depends on storage installed in particular computer; all characters can connect to centralized servers to share their items
• Main objective: Find 32 colored mese blocks (each one containing different abilities) scattered across Earth, with colors from https://github.com/OpenRCT2/OpenRCT2/wiki/Widget-colours; some have a boss of some sort that has to be defeated; the game can continue to be played after this objective is complete
  

  

  RCT2_color-palette.png (4.2 KiB) Viewed 6956 times

• Customization support: All playable characters will support some level of customization, in terms of appearance and equipment; a NSFW mode can be enabled through hand-editing a setting in the game configuration files (similar to what has to be done to enable Artist Debug Mode in SuperTuxKart), where it will at least allow full undressing of characters, or making them nude
• Save game handling: Save games will most likely be file-based, and can be either located anywhere on a file system, or be centralized in one directory; format is likely to be SQLite-based, unless Godot does not support such files at all, or I find another format that is better suited for RPG games

In summary, MeseVerse will be a 3D RPG game where the players takes control of characters under control of mese-injected computers, and have them travel all over Earth to find 32 colored mese blocks. More details may be added here at my discretion, whenever I deem those to be firm.

Note that this likely won't be started on full-time until I graduate in May 2020 (although I may work on small bits of this in the meantime), where I will no longer have to worry about school assignments taking up my time. At the time of writing, I currently have almost nothing for this game besides the things that I have stated above, but I hope this won't be out of vain (it will take a long time if I'm the only one working on a quite ambitious game). Additionally, I will be making up the story involving mese (the only lore I have about this item is at https://wiki.minetest.net/Mesecons, where mese is implied to be a conductor of electricity), since Minetest does not include any in-game lore about this item. I really hope to change the perception of FOSS games to something more positive, and I hope that this can be my starting point.

[Julius]

I don't quite get what Mese is supposed to be but the general idea seems interesting. But how do you plan to create the world content? Procedurally generated? Anything other is probably unrealistic, but it is really difficult to keep players engaged in a procedural world as these tend to be pretty bland and repetitive.

[Worldblender]

I don't quite get what Mese is supposed to be but the general idea seems interesting. But how do you plan to create the world content? Procedurally generated? Anything other is probably unrealistic, but it is really difficult to keep players engaged in a procedural world as these tend to be pretty bland and repetitive.

According to how mese is used in Minetest, it is supposed to be an alien material originating from outer space, with electrical properties. For the world content, the real world map will most likely be based off of OpenStreetMap data, plus any 3D models associated with such data. I haven't really considered doing procedural worlds yetm as I haven't determined a good way to make them.
One more thing, playable characters' stats and abilities are affected by the specs of the mese-injected computers controlling them, like how specs in the real world affect computing performance.