For the museum, you might also do that part where you visit the museum during the day to determine what to take and what you need, in single player. Guards and objects may have moved by the time you rob, so there is still uncertainty during the night.

The goal of the game can be to steal a specific item in a very highly secured place. But before that, your player steals from less secured places to get money for equipments, and steal from universities directly for the equipments. The ending of the game should reveal something very surprising on why the robberer steals the final item.

You''ll probably need good effects on shadows and light to give a suspense atmosphere.

No violence limits the action elements, but other genres are available. Some kind of mystery is always fun. Myst was non-violent, and quite engrossing (for some).

You could be a detective investigating the museum robbery, looking for clues and interviewing suspects a la Agatha Christie books. Hercule Poirot (sp?) anyone?

Or maybe a nurturing-type game, like Harvest Moon, where you have to care for different things.

Political intrigue is (usually) non-violent, so you could go to conventions, hold galas, fire off e-mails and spies to become a political force for good or evil. Not great for first-person, though.

I always liked the idea of having an environment like The Sims, in which the player took control of one Sim from a first- or third-person perspective, and only controlled that one guy. Sleeping could be time-lapsed away. You would be able to interact with other Sims in much the same way you would expect, but you would actually go to work and earn your money, or work out, or cook dinner, or whatever. When I talk about it, it sounds horribly boring, but so does The Sims, and it''s huge.

Any kind of racing/flightsim game is good, but not conducive to an FPS engine.

A cool element of Myst was the research. Maybe something like Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, but with a full library of books to research. It would be a bitch to code, and nobody wants to read books on a computer screen, but if you could require real-world research to solve in-game problems, people might learn something. This idea came up elsewhere in the forum, and people quickly decided that all the solutions would be on a single GameFaqs document within two weeks, and that would suck, but if it had multiple possible answers/paths, or maybe semi-random puzzles, that wouldn''t happen.

Running a store, coaching a team, building and selling furniture, working as a clown, they all sound like those japanese life-sim games, where your goal is to make the cheerleading squad or something, but really, most games are just gunfighting sims or kung-fu sims or warplane sims, if you look at it that way. Maybe it''s time for other types of conflict resolution to be put into games.

quote: Original post by Cypher Ae
I digress to inform the person who wrote that sports games are non violent is debateable due to death in soccer riots that there is no "Soccer Riot 2003" video game.

There was a football hooligans game I believe.

For adventure games, look at the way Shenmue was constructed. There are violent elements in there (fist fighting, no blood) but they could very easily be removed. You basically walk around asking people questions and writing any important facts down in a notebook. You can then look at the information you''ve received and work out where to go and what to do next.

Im writing a RTS game for kids, also with a non-violent theme.

While trying to define my game I came up with a ''search'' idea where the player must find certain items to win. These items are placed in logical places (eg a horse in a stable). By building logical relationships between locations and objects the learning part of the game is created.

I like the idea of a detective game and am trying to work out a FPS version of Cluedo - wandering around the mansion looking for various clues - like the candle stick under the bed... By moving this into a more generic system you could have investigations in hotels, museums etc.

A detective game could allow you to gain certain skills/tools to aid in your investigations. Like a criminal database, like a fingerprint kit, like assistants etc. Possibly to the point where later you dont investigate you only run the investigations department (5 detectives and only 1 fingerprinter etc).

Have fun

quote: Original post by fisheyel83l
Pizza Delivery. Think of it as a racing game with time limits. Be sure to include the ability to throw the pizzas to shave prescious seconds off the delivery time. Gotta have modes of transportation too, like bikes and cars. Maybe scooters if your car can''t squeeze through an alley. Hmmm...this reply started as a joke, but I''m kinda getting into it.

Seems fairly similar to Crazy Taxi... but what about after you deliver the pizza? If half of your trips are to the same location (the pizza place) it''d get boring fast. Crazy Taxi avoids such round trips.

How appropriate. You fight like a cow.