ROCK ONLINE – Da Blueprints

So you get into the main menu of the game, and you click Start New Game or whatever, and it leads you into the character creation menu. You pick a character model, something that looks like a converted KOF sprite, or maybe Street Fighter; a good sized fighting game sprite. Except they’ve been converted to look like your average punk. You’ve got the dog collar, paper clip and safety pin punk. You’ve got the hoody and cargo pants punk. You’ve got the makeup and died hair goth punk. Plus preps, nerds, hippies, a nice selection of character looks to choose from, each with Male and Female models.

Once you’ve got your character model, and a name, a short survey of pop culture determines what statistics you get. Example: Favorite Movie? If you choose Pulp Fiction your character has higher stats affecting stylishness and gunplay. If you choose The Matrix you get more skillful and speedy stats. Maybe you are asked what your dream job is. If you pick butcher, you start the game with a cleaver, if you pick taxi driver, you start the game with discounts on public transportation. Not great examples, but you get the idea. It needs to be balanced, and complicated enough that they can’t easily get exactly any character they want just by choosing a certain order of answers.

The game would start with your newly created character in the downtown mall. Here there are shops which sell munchies and sodas (the game’s health replenishers), Instrument stores (where you buy instruments that can also double as weapons), Clothing (which affects stylishness, speed, defense), and also shops that sell music. Here’s the biggie. The game doesn’t have background music, per se. What you have is music that your character purchases and then becomes your personal playlist as the game’s soundtrack. You start the game with a gift card for Sam Goody or whatever and that allows you to go to the shop and pick out five or six songs to get you started. The selection is limited, however, until you progress in the game and make it to uptown, featuring bigger music stores and stuff.

Perhaps a system could be implemented where certain areas of the game are marked as having “Scary Music” or “Dramatic Music” or something and you assign any of your purchased tunes to these slots, and when you enter an area that is supposed to have “Scary Music” whatever song you set in that slot plays automatically.

A few other shops I would like to implement, perhaps at a later date, would be pet shops (where you could buy a cat or dog or bird or something to follow you around and kick ass), and tattoo/piercing shops (which would increase your stylishness and other stats, depending on what tat or piercing you get and where you get it…)

So here you are at the mall, picking out music and examining your characters attributes. Somewhere at the mall there should be a tutorial character, y’know, show you the ropes of playing the game. I had a funny idea for this. When I went to the ’05 Van’s Warped Tour there was this guy wandering around with sunglasses and a cardboard sign that said “Ask me anything.” And he didn’t pretend to know anything either. He was just kinda low key about it. You’d ask him “Where’s stage 2?” And he’d be like “I dunno. Find a map.” And then you’d get smart and ask “What’s the meaning of life?” and he’d reply “To die.” 
I just think that would make a great introductory character.

Anyway, once you’re done with the mall, you step outside and start wandering the mean downtown streets. My initial idea for this game was a sidescrolling action adventure game, something like Super Metroid, or Castlevania: Symphony of the night. You progress around the world in a non linear fashion, not forced to go any one way, but having several options. At the same time, though, you are cut off from certain areas due to inexperience or not having the right key to open the lock or whatever. Once you gain more experience in the game or find that key, you can progress to this new area.

After some thought, I’m not so sure that a traditional run and jump platforming adventure would work here. I’m starting to lean more towards a Metal Slug kind of experience. Plenty of arcade action, branching paths, and lots of shit to break. Another thing I would borrow from Metal Slug is the way chunks fly everywhere when you shoot stuff. You blast a mummy with a shotgun and its skull flies out the back of it’s wrapping like a marble. There’s always STUFF flying everywhere. Lots of fun to watch. Also, the backgrounds can be shot up and interacted with. Windows shot out to reveal new areas, doors kicked back to reveal girly posters, mailboxes broken open to find money, things like that.

Still, I like the RPG element of having statistics that can be improved with more game play. I don’t like the Massively Multiplayer Online RPG method of people having level 60 characters who can’t even be touched by level 5 characters and shit like that. I would favor a much less steep curve, focusing more on gaining cool moves like backflips and new martial arts styles and shit like that instead of really improving strength stats or whatever. It would be cool to focus more on having a wide selection of weapons and stuff to play around with rather than worrying about getting the highest attack rating out of them.

The easiest choice to organize all this would be an equipment menu. A menu where you can choose between different weapons to use, different clothes to wear, and stuff like that. I enjoy a game where I’m not always shooting a pistol, or always swinging a sword, I like it when I can suddenly find a rocket launcher, or a chainsaw, and switch between them.

My idea for weapons and combat was that there would be a stock of weapons to choose from on the menu, and you would pick out two. One would be your distance weapon, like a gun; The other would be your close combat weapon, like brass knuckles or a lead pipe. You would have a button on the keyboard that would shoot your distance weapon and another button for the close combat weapon. Another thing I’d like to implement would be multiple functions for your weapons. Like the melee weapons would have a Street Fighter system with one button for quick hits, and another button for slower, more powerful hits, and then the third button for kicking or something. The guns and stuff could have a primary and secondary fire, like in a first person shooter game. The primary button fires the rifle, and the secondary button fires the underslung grenade launcher. 

(Cute Idea 1: Rockstar energy drinks that double as grenades. Freakin acidic!) 
(Cute Idea 2: You could have a portable amp on your belt and melt faces -literally- with killer solos)

It’d be cool to have characters look different pertaining to the different clothes they equip, but that’d be an awful lot of detail to screw with, so I’m keeping that idea on the backburner.

So here you are, wandering the streets fighting stuff with your shooter and switchblade. What are you fighting? And why? Whats the point and goal of the game? The big overall picture of the game I’m going for isn’t just wandering the streets and killing stuff, that’s just half of it. The other half is putting the money you earn on the streets to use in the concert hall when you put on shows as a musician.

Once you begin gaining experience and such you can start advancing your musical stats, like guitar ability, percussion ability, vocal ability, etc. Once you purchase an instrument you can start playing shows. I haven’t entirely worked this part out yet but somewhere in the game you find, like a managing service or something that will have a list of places to play at and you sign up for, say, the coffee shop as your first gig and front the money to play there. Once you play there and get a little crowd respect you can try the big concert hall, and your popularity grows the more successful shows you pull off, and the bigger shows you can play and make more money from.
	
So how do you play a show? I wrestled with this problem for a long time, but I think I may have come up with a solution. Supposing you played it like a traditional RPG battle, where your band is on one side of the screen and the screaming crowd is on the other side. You attack with “Killer Riff Lead-In” and they retaliate with “Angry Jeering” which reduces your Crowd-Response meter, so now you can only do “Crazy Drum Solo” but luckily they respond this time with “Wild Headbanging” so you have enough juice in your Crowd-Response meter to finish up with “Feedback Squeal W/Stage Dive” (if you have high enough guitar skill and Stylishness to learn that particular move).

There would be many options for band set up. You could have a two person band like White Stripes, or you could have a four man set up like Metallica, or any number of other lineups around, behind, and in-between. Singer/Harmonica player with back up singer who plays bass guitar. Drummer and Guitarist who switch instruments in the middle of songs. All sorts of options. And each combination of band members has specialized combos they can perform. Example, if the Guitarist and Bass Guitarist both have learned the move “Crazy Guitar Solo” they can face each other and have a play-off between them. I need to research more on stage techniques to get a better idea of what kinds of moves and combos to utilize.

So you can have a band? Of course! Since this is an online game, you could hook up and play with your friends. Bob has high Percussion Ability, so you put him on the drum set (purchased at the downtown mall) and Matt has a decent Vocal Ability so you have him up front singing on the generic Mic you can buy at the second hand store. Jimmy has good vocal ability too, but his Guitar Ability is higher than Matt’s so you have him on the Fender “Devil” Strat you found in a tomb at the cemetery after fighting through a crowd of zombies.

You could have a concert arranged at the managing service and when your band members are all online a message pops up in the corner saying “You are clear to perform at the coffee shop!” And if you all get your asses over to the coffee shop you can start up a show. If multiple bands sign up for the same place, and arrive at the same time, there could be a battle of the bands with competition for crowd support.

So you wonder around the online city, beating up hobos, stray dogs, zombies, vampires, and various other worthy opponents, collecting instruments (both to use as weapons and on stage) and cash to front concerts. It would probably get pretty tiring after a while having to walk from one end of the game world to the other manually, so there should be some sort of function for getting around quickly. Solution? Subway stations at various intervals around the game landscape. You pay for a ticket to your destination (more expensive depending on how far away the destination is), and ride the subway to that station.

Naturally, the progression of the game would be starting out with second hand instruments and not many venues, then getting more fame, better instruments, perhaps adding more members to the band (Donnie just started playing! Lets make him the keyboardist!). Eventually, you work your way up to the upper levels, playing sold out shows, wearing fancy tailored suits, and fighting bad-guys with only the finest flame throwers, shotguns, samurai words, nailguns, whips, guitars, and what-have-you.

There could be featured minigames, like going to the park and seeing which drummers can draw the biggest crowd by drumming on trash cans, hand rails and various other structures. Or going to the arcade and playing old school Contra, Bust-a-Move, or Bomberman.

It would be really cool to have support from some actual big time bands, and have albums and songs approved for use in the game, but I KNOW that ain’t ever going to happen. Still, that leaves plenty of room for garage bands who like the project to donate tuneage and sound effects to compliment the concert segments. There’s gotta be crazy drum solo audio tracks and killer intro riffs to go along with the visuals!