Davis Bakker

*This is a concept design for a first person sandbox that I haven't attempted to create yet but I feel would have great potential in the steadily growing VR market. All conceptualization was done by me.*

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Origin: I wanted to create a game that was open ended in its gameplay but allowed the player to play with combining god like abilities. The perspective mechanic would alter how powerful the abilities could be, making one ability to have dozens of effects. This scale would range from omniscient to human. An example of this mechanic in action would be the fireball ability creating flames the size of your fist at human scale would become a storm of fire at omniscient scale with a corresponding increase in damage. What the player does in this world would be up to them as with any sandbox game, but much like the GTA series I wanted the player is just a resident of a world that will continue to run its course even without player interaction. All creatures act independently, with generalized species personality and individual task patterns, the civies (as I generally call them) can interact with their environment to make their own civilizations but the player intervention can massively influence the course of their progression. My final vision for the space is similar to a more involved 3-dimensional version of dwarf fortress. Where the npcs can build up their civilizations and interact with each other on their own but the player can decide how long that takes while plenty of crazy events happen throughout the continent.

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Mechanics:

• Direct tactile interaction with environment and creatures including picking up, modifying and striking the aforementioned. 

• Character POV sizing mechanic that alters quantity and severity of powers used as well as player interaction area to scale with POV. 

• Elemental creation including earth, air, water and fire with synergistic interactions between each. 

• Players can spawn biome restrictive creatures, plant life and other resources. 

• An achievement based unlock system with themed biomes, civilizations and interactions being trigger points for expanding long term gameplay.

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(Expected) Limitations: I see issues right off the bat with creating materials, both the water and earth creation abilities and the preexisting terrain deformation would be very taxing to any computer it was on. I feel that making the ground automatically merge into one simplified object on contact and allowing for simplified deformations would not slow the load times to a crawl because of the object spawns. As for water, it could be emitted from a nod temporarily, deleting the material produced after a duration to cut down on processing. The nodes could maintain a particular level of water unless altered by other sources (ie fire), and could similarly merge with the preexisting nodes when close enough. Furthermore the issue of variable biomes changed through alterations in environment would have to be carefully maintained by specific biome requirements and change only after a few seconds. Depending on the size of the island itself it may need to have sections despawned beyond a certain range of the player to reduce the number of things the system has to work with much like Minecraft.