Idea for a new game

I have been playing a wrestling simulation text based game called Extreme Warfare Revenge and can't believe how much fun I've had with it. I also like the Championship Manager Soccer games but I suck at soccer. Anyway, with these text based great efforts I can't believe someone hasn't made a racing simulation game like this. It wouldn't be impossible for someone to do but I am not even remotely capable of this kind of work. Anyway, I think it would go something like this, assuming this is a Nascar sim. The possibilities would be endless as you could make it any kind of racing sim you would want after it was programmed. You would be able to choose your path and start out either on the career path in a low level team and work your way up or choose an established team and try to stay there. You would be the "team manager" or something like that and hire and fire crew and drivers and be responsible for sponsorship obligations. Then during the race, you could choose auto crew chief or you could do it yourself and watch the race unfold in text and make decisions that may help or hinder your progress. If you started out as a low level team in year one you may have to choose races to go to based on budgets and you could build cars for specific tracks and some would run better than others depending on the ratings of your fabricators, engine department, etc. Your driver would have different ratings for each track and various other driver specific ratings like aggression. You could even go further and have a rating for a driver where they could have a specific "enemy" on the track like Spencer/Busch or whatever and you could develop feuds throughout the year by being involved in accidents with certain drivers. If you pick, say DEI as your team, you would automatically have 2 teamates on the track that would help you. Also, if you worked for DEI as a team manager for one of the cars then you could share info with the other cars or they could give you advice if your car wasn't up to speed. If you were in a single car operation you would have to make all decisions on your own. I could think of a million things that could be done to a game like this. After each year the drivers ratings would automatically change based on performance from the previous year and age would be a factor. With age your driver would gain experience but lose "reaction time" that would possibly get him out of accidents earlier in his career. Also, you could build in retirements into the game with your drivers and crew and contracts where drivers could change rides and sponsors change. It seems like a lot of work to do but I know the EWR game I've mentioned was done by one person alone and its very deep in what can be done. I like N2003 but I really would like a game that made you make managerial decisions and you could have career after career with different results every single time. What do you all think? Just a thought. Oh, and by chance, there isn't any game like that out right now is there? I know if anyone would be willing to try their hand at designing a game like this I would offer my time to help get all the information needed and I'm sure this sim community would be willing to help out too. DD

"DownNDirty" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:[email hidden]... > I have been playing a wrestling simulation text based game called > Extreme Warfare Revenge and can't believe how much fun I've had with > it. I also like the Championship Manager Soccer games but I suck at > soccer. Anyway, with these text based great efforts I can't believe > someone hasn't made a racing simulation game like this. >"Grand Prix Manager" came out about 5 years ago and is 'somewhat' along those lines. I'm not sure what you mean by "text-based"- something like Pursue the Pennant baseball, in which the player selects options/game decisions and the results are displayed textually? I would think that would destroy the flow of the race. I've been wrong before though. Tim

> "DownNDirty" <[email hidden]> wrote in message > news:[email hidden]... >> Anyway, with these text based great efforts I can't believe >> someone hasn't made a racing simulation game like this. % gpl -rast TTY -t monza -noquals You are on the grid at Monza in your Lotus. You are in pole position. To the north there is Curva Grande. To the south is Dan Gurney. Cars around you rev up lots. > inv You have: 34 gallons of fuel. > toe down Vrommmm Vrommmm. The green flag drops. > rev to 6,5000 and select first gear. Vroom, Clunk, Screech. You're off! You are doing 53 mph. > select second gear. . . . You are approaching Parabolica. There is a Honda in your mirrors. He's getting closer. > brake a bit, just past that big board, change down to 3rd, turn in nicely. Bang! Something hit you. You are upside down in the gravel. > Shift-R Car reset not allowed. i know the original question was about text based management games. i just couldn't resist! :-) dr martin

[email hidden] wrote: > % gpl -rast TTY -t monza -noquals gpl -rast TTY -t monza -noquals | emacs :)

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> You are approaching Parabolica. There is a Honda in your mirrors. > He's getting closer. > > >>brake a bit, just past that big board, change down to 3rd, turn in nicely. > > > Bang! Something hit you. You are upside down in the gravel. > > >>Shift-R > > > Car reset not allowed. > > > i know the original question was about text based management games. i > just couldn't resist! :-)

Incredible nice concept! I just have to load up my old Infocom games again! But seriously, this concept sounds a bit like Car Wars where you take movement decisions for the coming thenth of a second? /S

<[email hidden]> wrote in message news:[email hidden]...

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> > "DownNDirty" <[email hidden]> wrote in message > > news:[email hidden]... > > >> Anyway, with these text based great efforts I can't believe > >> someone hasn't made a racing simulation game like this. > > % gpl -rast TTY -t monza -noquals > > You are on the grid at Monza in your Lotus. You are in pole position. > To the north there is Curva Grande. To the south is Dan Gurney. Cars > around you rev up lots. > > > inv > > You have: 34 gallons of fuel. > > > toe down > > Vrommmm Vrommmm. The green flag drops. > > > rev to 6,5000 and select first gear. > > Vroom, Clunk, Screech. You're off! You are doing 53 mph. > > > select second gear. > > . > . > . > > You are approaching Parabolica. There is a Honda in your mirrors. > He's getting closer. > > > brake a bit, just past that big board, change down to 3rd, turn in

nicely.

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> > Bang! Something hit you. You are upside down in the gravel. > > > Shift-R > > Car reset not allowed. > > > i know the original question was about text based management games. i > just couldn't resist! :-) > > dr martin

xyzzy ! Elrikk ;o)

Ok, I will try to further go into what I was talking about for this game since I'm at work and have plenty of time to goof off in between ballgames here at the radio station :) The entire interface of the game would be text based with the only graphics being in cutscenes between loading screens. It would be cool to have a loading screen of each track when you go to race it in a season. The game would be very open ended and allow you to do many things with it but I'm concentrating on it like this is a Nascar sim. You could pick an established team in Nascar to join and become the team manager and handle aspects of the race team such as: Hiring and firing of crew, crew obligations and time alloted to certain cars, sponsorship negotiations, driver discipline, and many other duties carried out by managers. You could help renegotiate your drivers contract or try to find a new driver. The fun of the game would be you could pick any team you wanted to take control of. The biggest fun would, to me, come from the fact that you could also start up your own team and pick from drivers in a "pool" that the game would have. The game would follow the actual Nascar schedule and have the actual crews and drivers and ratings and everything. So, the "pool" of drivers would include drivers currently looking for rides, or drivers in the Busch Series or Truck series or any other drivers put into the games pool of drivers. If your an upstart team the chances of total failure would be pretty good so it would be a challenge just to stay afloat. There should be a difficulty slider to make it less tedious to actually be successful in the game, however on the hardest level it should mimmic the hardships of small funded teams. When you start this "Nascar Simulation" you would be asked to either choose the established team or start your own. From there, assuming your starting your own you would need to do various things to get your career started. I would have the game start near the end of the actual 2002 season if you started as an upstart so you would have opportunity to pursue drivers before the start of the next season and get some crew and cars ready for the Daytona 500. With your limited funds as a new owner you would probably be getting second or third rate crew members. The "skill ratings" of the crew members is how you would determine how good the cars being built were. Some people you could hire would have a better skill at building cars for Superspeedways while others would shine at short tracks. Or you could get some crew that was all around about the same skill at each kind of track. Being a new team and first time owner your not going to get a marquee driver either. Something I would want built in the game though is drivers contracts. Say Ward Burtons contract is up in the game in 2004 and he's not been running so great he may move to another team if they have an opening so drivers and crew could move around. There would be a "probability of move" rating for each driver as well. Like Jeff Gordon's probablity of moving from Hendrick would be less than 5% or something but a driver like Jimmy Spencer would have a much higher probability of moving. Also, in the drivers ratings you would have a "axed" rating where the driver would have a rating where they could be fired as well. Back to the new team thing. We have hired our small crew, just enough to get by, and hired a driver. For simplicity sake I guess I'll say I hire Steve Grissom. He's a driver that has basically ran out of chances in Cup so he would be easier to hire, plus he's got some experience. Remember, were trying to stay afloat and there may be some 19 or 20 year old drivers available that is willing to drive for us but his experience rating would be very low so he is more liable to have an accident. If we only have one superspeedway car we don't want to crash it in practice before the race even starts. Each race would have certain travel costs alloted to it so some races are out of the question. We could choose to go to Daytona since its the first race and its got a bigger purse and hope we win enough money to finance the building of a say, short track specific car. If I designed the game I would allot enough money to have the small team enough money to go to Daytona automatically and enough money to build the superspeedway car and a choice of 2 other cars. You could build another SS car, a short track car, a road course car, or a speedway car. Everything costs money so you go down to Daytona and when you test, it costs money. You have to decide how long you want your car out on the track and things like that because we don't want to ruin our engines if we only have a couple. The caliber crew chief you hire will reflect in practice sessions to a point as they will be responsible for setting up the car. If your crew cheif has a great rating at Daytona that will be a good thing as they may be able to get you into the show by setting the car up right but if their ratings suck at the other tracks you may have problems making shows elsewhere. Crew chief ratings, car ratings (built by crew at shop), and driver ratings would all factor in how well the car will run. I would pick a crew chief that had a slightly lower rating at the SS tracks to have a better balance. Grissom's rating at SS should be decent, and my car shouldn't be too awful great. When you go through this game you go day by day so you move every single day through the calendar. It could get boring but you always have mail in your inbox to deal with and sponsors and things like that. In your mailbox would also be other changes in other teams and things like that. So we go to Daytona and when you test the game would show all test speeds for all the drivers so you could see where you stack up. However many full time teams there are in WC would be represented each week with some teams choosing races to come to. So there will always be more cars attempting races at Daytona, Lowe's, and Indy. Just like our team, other teams could also go bankrupt and shut down and new teams can spring up each year. When you practice it would go to a screen that shows the track conditions and drivers lap times and car condition. You would have the option to take control of the crew chief during the race weekend and actually coach your driver through the race. There would be many commands you could give such as hold back, go for it all, hold your position, etc. During the race, assuming you make it, it would be much the same. You wouldn't see graphics of cars going around but rather a list of drivers positions on track, intervals apart, track conditions (track temp/wind speed), and flag conditions. You could set this by mouse click or something like each lap would be ran in a single click and brought up on the screen. You could give your driver commands to try to improve a position, hold position, and other commands like that. You could also tell him to get more aggressive, less aggressive, and the like. Of course, if I actually had my driver make the Daytona 500 and I knew he wasn't a great threat I would probably have him hang towards the end of the draft if he could even keep up with that to try to avoid the big one and maybe get a better finish. I don't know these are just ideas I have but I think this kind of game could be killer. If you told your driver to push the envelope he could very easily crash the car or crash someone else. If you start new you wouldn't have no feuds but if you dumped someone into the wall at Daytona you could instantly have a rival for the year. Likewise, if you get dumped you could choose to have a rivalry with said driver. If your driver has a gripe with another driver they are more likely to beat and bang while racing one another. But be careful, too much beating and banging could lead to another crash and if you crash too much with drivers your feuding with you may be parked by Nascar. I would also have the game build injuries into it for drivers. Nothing morbid like death but there could be a chance a driver gets banged up at Dover and is 75% for the next event. Or even a driver get sidelined for a few races and a replacement driver has to be called upon. Maybe this text based thing isn't possible but after seeing all the things that was done with the Extreme Warfare Revenge wrestling simulator I believe its possible with time put into it. Sorry if I rambled too long or didn't make sense. I have it in my head, its just harder to put on paper. DD