So my summer project mentioned also in the design forum is a walking tank game and I'd like to throw up what I'm thinking about a story. Without going into whether I'll actually implement a story...

I've been thinking about China's F-22 clone and the generally accepted notion that walking tanks are stupid as hell.

While I normally don't like to rationalize stupid things (people happily accept walking tanks) I had this idea:

It's the 23rd century or something. The main character finds a walking tank while dumpster diving behind Futureland, an amusement park. The walking tank is a ride or a "theme appropriate" guard uniform or something.

He decides to fix it up and put armor on it and winds up using it in (insert reason for battle) to defend the city.

The antagonists see it, decide the protagonists must be on to something, and they pour all their resources in cloning them. They build the F-iWalkerBox-360-22, which has motion controls, mold lines visible from orbit and no matter what it does, it's five years too late to be relevant.

So now there's robots everywhere. Insert rocket, have climax.

Clearly I'm just brainstorming here but... Any thoughts?

Maybe make it a TV show. People are abducted and hard-wired to walking tanks, they fight for their lives and the satisfaction of the blood-thirsty crowds. As a bonus, the families of those that are abducted are on board -- you die, they die too.

I liked the idea with the walking tank being found in a garbage pile -- reminds me of Megas XXL. If you don't know it, I urge you to watch that TV show. It is an animated series, but takes on the subject of giant mechs with the dose of humor you just did. You might find great inspiration for a totally insane plot there.

And why does the player character have to be the protagonist? Make him be the evil dude. It has become a trend as of late, I agree, but there is much fun in stomping and leveling buildings, especially if you are an unstopable machine of war, destruction and mayhem!

I'm crossing some lines here (most likelly), but why not make it a game about a cult? The player finds a mech and starts rampage. People start showing up who worship him as some titanium angel of death, a silicon messenger of apocalypse. You could then slap a nice semi-RTS/TBS feature where you have your followers take care of the small fry (such as those pesky guys with rocket launchers, ugh), abduct women for your harem, forge your followers into an unstopable army etc... Something like Ass Creed: Brotherhood, now that I think about it.

That's not crossing a line at all. Cults are great. In fact, I had an abandoned project about a guy who starts a cult. Maybe I'll show it to you later. (I decided I wanted to write it in prose instead so it's my next book project.)

The story is being envisioned as a sequel to the Spell Tanks story which, <i>originally</i>, involved a UFO cult but I had cut these details from the script.

"Megas XXL" sounds super familiar and I will check it out.

"And why does the player character have to be the protagonist?"

In principle he doesn't. But...

"there is much fun in stomping and leveling buildings"

Absolutely! Maybe I should throw out some details about the game world; we're leaning towards reusing the one from my last game.

The game world has everyone moved into arcology-style city-states with nuclear powered farm towers so that the land can be returned to wilderness, so between the cities there's a lot of abandoned buildings and things to smash and militias playing paintball in the woods on BBQ day.

The protagonist, Frank Hank, is a rocker \ war hero from the 1970s who was brought to the future by the city-state of Portville, which is made up of vegan hippies who needed help when they were attacked.

Gavin Wentworth is the villain, he has an army of robots and in the previous game is fighting with Portville over what to do with an impending alien landing. It ended with him and the Mayor of Portville (I never named her) locking themselves in a bunker to hide from the alien while the alien goes off on a road trip with Frank Hank, Sean the minuteman and Red Elk.

But of course I'm not married to it and haven't 100% committed to having a story at all.

I kind of like the idea of robot wars meet mechwarriror. The player could be competing on fa uturistic tv programs where mechs battle it out in ruined cities for prizes and glory.



The player starts out scavenging parts from the junk pile, can later sign up sponsorship deals, and have access to better parts. The tv show could also be future war alternative where city states battle for control of territory and resources in these mech battles instead of direct combat. Which would fit in well in ruined earth scenario.

"[color="#1C2837"]battle it out in ruined cities for prizes and glory"

[color="#1C2837"]Oh, I didn't think about having that in the ruined cities. That's something.

[color="#1C2837"]This could work with these ideas I was thinking about with militia fighting with paintball every weekend in the woods for shits and giggles; there's this big wilderness with cities and ruins and overgrown stuff and wild animals, it seems like a huge playland in some respects and would be great for robot battles.
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[color="#1C2837"]--EDIT--
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[color="#1C2837"][size=2]My co-conspirator likes the sponsorship idea.
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[color="#1C2837"][size=2]I dislike the area concept because it is too formalized and bureaucratic, but it got me thinking about how wars these days can be televised, right? So what if there are war reporters, and you actually have sponsors and logos on your robot because it'll be on TV. I'm thinking about folding some aspects of this into the plot without the formalities.

[color="#1c2837"]I dislike the area concept because it is too formalized and bureaucratic

I can't recall who actually made an idea that it should be an arena True, having them roam about in an urban jungle is way better.

Maybe walking tanks would make sense _inside_ cities - like an urban warfare sort of setting, or exploring the ruins of a high-tech alien civilization. Walking tanks might be uniquely good for a setting which had a lot of stairs that normal tanks couldn't go up.

"[color=#1C2837][size=2]I can't recall who actually made an idea that it should be an arena"
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[color=#1C2837][size=2]I mean a TV show, like a game show.
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[color=#1C2837][size=2]"[color=#1C2837][size=2]Maybe walking tanks would make sense _inside_ cities - like an urban warfare sort of setting ... stairs ..."
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[color=#1C2837][size=2]We thought about this early on but I think it kind of runs up against our production abilities, and we wanted bigger robots, like 3 meter tall type.
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[color=#1C2837][size=2]But it's all good ideas. Thanks for the input, everyone!

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[color="#1C2837"]"[color="#1C2837"]Maybe walking tanks would make sense _inside_ cities - like an urban warfare sort of setting ... stairs ..."
[color="#1C2837"]We thought about this early on but I think it kind of runs up against our production abilities, and we wanted bigger robots, like 3 meter tall type.

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Maybe you could make really simple buildings with rectangular bases and use that environment?
Did you guys try "Walker" for the Amiga? I played it a lot back in its day, maybe you could catch some inspiration off that?
http://www.lemonamig...ils.php?id=1118

Personally I like Zethariels TV show idea. Makes me think One Must Fall 2097 or Unreal Tournament.
A walking tank version would be awesome. ... Combined with a little QBasic Gorillas or Midway Rampage perhaps?
Then i guess the buildings wouldn't be so simple after all.
-But a few decals and smoke particle effects would do wonders...

[font=arial, verdana, tahoma, sans-serif][size=2]We started talking about doing the plot as a Battle of Los Angeles parody where flying saucers show up and they assume it's the Chinese trying to steal their "grain, gold and women", but we're instead going to pitch that for an unrelated animation project.

I seem to be alone in my reaction to the TV thing The artist did decide against it as well for different reasons, but I'll note for Zethariel that he did like it in and of itself. It's not what we want to be doing but it is a very good idea.

Right now I'm actually thinking about having it so that some units can go into buildings. It's a bit to think about in terms of what we can make, but I like the idea of smaller support units that can go into places.[/font]