Aramstudios hit it dead on.

If you''re going to make anything offensive in your game, no matter if its the good guys or bad guys doing it, it should be suggestive at best. Creating a religion, a god and all that that has some similarities and whatnot to a major, real religion is the best way to go. Naming exact religions in a story will raise a lot of alarms.

As a general rule for my own projects, I never make games involving God, Jesus, Allah, Buddah, Satan or any major deities, for good or for bad. You can make a god and religion that might have some qualities associated with these gods, but its best to leave it generic. If you make a Christian game, for example (down guys, down..Im Chrisitan too..put down the flamethrowers) a lot of people are going to find it preachy. In this modern age no one really wants to hear Sunday mass material when they''re playing video games. In general, people dont want to be preached to about ANY religion...So, putting actual religions in their faces might not be a good thing.

Conclusion? Just make some generic fictional religion if you insist on making a game involving gods.

Pseudo-religions are safe and easy to handle. Remember the Ogre battle games'' "Holy Lodis Empire"? Crap in a hat, if that wasn''t medieval Catholicism then all the history books are wrong. The genius of what they did there, though, was to create a religion that wasn''t just a representation of an existing religion, but a representation of one view of one period in the history of an existing religion. There were a few hundred years when the Roman Catholic Church behaved that way, but modern Catholics don''t take offense to the portrayal, since the church is profoundly reformed.

Or you could just target a wicked small demographic, like druidic shamans or something. You seem to be set in a fairly scriptural scheme, though, with the duallism and all. Maybe you''d be better served to structure it around a less formal, "folk" interpretation of the church? People love to hear about angels, and demons, and all kinds of other demigods that aren''t actually a major component of the judeo-christian belief system. In fact, they are more reminiscent of the old animistic pantheism of "pagan" religions. You''re "War in Heaven" idea lends some weight to this option. Imbuing angels with free will or somehow mitigating the omnipotence of God can lead to far more entertaining stories and conflicts than the usual "God did x, some people didn''t like it, they were smoten."

All in all, don''t let political concerns intimidate you so early in the planning phase. Build yourself a world, make it inhabitable, and then worry about making it acceptable to an audience.

Go ahead and incorporate real-world religions. Fistful of Boomstick had a priest in it.

If you''re too shy to tell us what you''re thinking about, how can you possibly release a game about it?

If you''re afraid we''ll steal your ideas, let me assure you that most of the members of this forum have placed bets on when you''ll give up on making your very own video game, and the optimists give you a month. Making it from the heart and expecting to get turned down (by who?) are a sure-fire recipe for losing interest the next time you think about breasts.

Just about everyone here has a game or two started on text files that current software can''t even open. My first design doc is still on my old Macintosh, but it''s in ClarisWorks 4.0, and there ain''t nothing in the world that can interpret it. Not that I''m interested in reading the background of Conrad Huxley and his team of freedom fighters anyway. I still think it was a good idea, but too many of the components have been thought of by other people, and the romance is gone.

Anyone around who was on the Black Hat project? I''m sorry to see that the board isn''t there anymore. We had some great ideas. I''d like to confess that a good chunk of the Fighting Report was drawn from the realm of Conrad Huxley. I dedicated enough man-hours to make me wish I''d done something that paid for that time, but my greatest regret is that the ideas we all had are now lost to everyone. And that was just last year!

So go ahead, Kingzoolerius666, do whatever you like. If it doesn''t actually happen, you''ll at least learn something. I always do.

quote: Original post by Iron Chef Carnage
Or you could just target a wicked small demographic, like druidic shamans or something.

Even then, you''re playing with fire...even going with the smaller factions of neo-pagan relgions, if you dont do the proper research on the group, you''ll piss someone off. All it takes is one of them to be some type of journalist to give you enough bad press to drive you into the ground.