What to do with my little people?

[techbear]

As a research exersize, I tried to make 3D human figures in a few polys as possible. The result is shown in this image: http://www.exegame.com/littlePeople.jpg

This shows 1400 little people walking, with good framerate on my 800Mhz Pentium 3. Each figure is just 10 triangles. Each torso, arm and leg is formed from two intersecting triangles (at right-angles to one another), and painted with a texture that shows the body part in front and side views (with transparency). The assembly of the form is clearer at the bottom of the picture, where the closest figures are.

Because the legs and arms are one piece, with no elbow or knee joints, they goose-step pretty visibly. Bisecting the limbs would result in better animation, and increase the triangle count to 18 per figure.

Now, I'm fully aware that today's hardware pumps polys at such a rate that there's no real speed difference between an 18 poly mesh and a 180 poly mesh. There are also several other considerations, like further code to guide the figure's movement, or different textures for the little people. That's not what I want to discuss.

Knowing that I can have hundreds of tiny people walking around in a game, what sort of game should I make? A Sims-like game? A SimCity-like game? A Giant-monster stomp the city game? An alien spaceship abduction game?

I'm not seeking to "steal" anyone's ideas, I'd just like to participate in a brainstorming session with all my creative peers on this board.

Thanks!

[mahlzeit]

Lemmings. :) That game actually started as an animation of little pixel people who were disfigured in several imaginative ways. One thing leads to another and before you know it, you have a hit game. (Or not.)

[Sergey Komar]

what about a completely new genre? "little people tycoon" is a catchy title ;) reminds me of lemmings though...

What about a strike- or soccer hooligans tycon, or maybe some kind of revolution simulation? Starving people willing to kill the mean dictator fight the police and you are the police chief using tear gas and cold water and other legal and illegal means to stop them.

[BigZaphod]

I really love simulations... How about a cool looking top-down god-style game of life sort of thing? Hundreds of little people wandering around eating, sleeping, fighting, breeding, and you get to influence their lives by dropping food on them or something. :)

Or you could make a slightly larger poly ape and do a planet of the apes-style human hunt... Hmm...

[DavidRM]

The original "Indie Jam" was based on a similar concept...the participants came up with a number of interesting ideas based on the idea of hordes of NPC's. I'll dig up that information again.

-David

(Edit)

Here it is:
Indie Game Jam 0 (http://www.indiegamejam.com/igj0/index.html)

[Anthony Flack]

Hmm, yes, something involving very large crowds, where you can get some good emergent group behaviour going.

The men look a bit crappy so they should never be seen close up. But if they were limited to a massive, teeming crowd it could be quite impressive.

[papillon]

I think giant monsters would be fun.

Freedom Force style city fights where you can pick stuff up and throw it around and make building collapse... and little people fleeing madly, and then you can try to SQUISH THEM!

Extra fun with extra physics... herd enough terrified fleeing humans onto this bridge and suddenly the bridge will collapse and doom them all...

hrm, two-player fighting game taking place in the midst of this chaos, and bonus points acquired for the number of humans squished in any individual event... should things crushed under you when you are knocked down by your opponent count as squishes for them or for you?

See, we girls aren't all cookies and flowers. SQUISH SQUISH SQUISH! :)

[beenThereDoneThat]

Well if they would just finish They Came From Hollywood (http://www.theycamefromhollywood.com/) already, we could all have a bunch o' people stompin', building crashin' fun!

[whisperstorm]

You could do a remake - dupe of this game:

http://www.gamingw.net/games/499

its called the Sandbox of God. It's pretty fun, and you might find it of some inspiration

[moonpxi]

What about human fishing? The player controls an invisible alien ship which must lure humans and "beam them up". Of course, to lure they need bait, and so on...

[MirekCz]

what about crowd-control simulation game?

You simple have got some police officers/cars with water/gas/whatever under you and a simulated crowd going berserk and wanting to go into city center/destroy stuff etc.

Your duty is to take as many of them as possible and force them to:
1.Move to a safe place (like close them on a bridge so they can not leave)
2.Control them to the railstation so they leave
3.keep them from attacking one target (gov building)
4.make them go home - push them to form small groups which you take out one by one or sth like that
5.One of the above things or a mix of them

Score could be based on:
1.Stopping them from destroying targets (city center, cars etc.)
2.percentage of controled peoples (moved to save place/railstation)
3.nr of deaths/injuries both in crowd and police officers

Let me know what you think about it so i can charge my royalities ;-P

[stan]

Following on the previous idea.. Why not a "Resident Evil" viewed from the top? Infected people could be drawn in a different color, and you'd place cops/soldiers at strategic places to prevent them to contaminate other people... Whatever :)