What's Cheese Up To These Days?

About These Concepts

The items listed here are brain dumps of concepts that I would like to someday see realised, but do not have the resources or motivation to work on them at the moment. If anybody is excited about tackling them, they are welcome to do so. I enjoy collaboration, but if you're keen to pick up one of these projects and run with them, that's fine too (a mention would be nice).

Flash to Black (Fade to Black fan re-make)

Status: Concept

Flashback (Flashback: The Quest for Identity) was a critically acclaimed science fiction cinematic platformer released in 1992.

A sequel named Fade to Black was released in 1995, featuring full 3D environments and an over-the-shoulder third person view. Whilst this game sold well, many players found the camera view and 3D mechanics to be awkward.

To pay homage to both games, I'd be keen to see/play a fan re-make that re-creates Fade to Black's setting and progression as a 2D platformer in Flashback's style using the fan created REminiscence engine.

Fonterator

Status: Concept

A F/OSS typeface generation tool which allowed for dynamic glyph morphing by adjusting common variables (eg: stem width, serif length, line roundedness, ascender height, x height, leg angle/length, etc.).

  • Range of base font templates to work from (possible)
  • Slider based controls
  • Live preview
  • Export to OpenType and TrueType font formats (export to FontForge's .sfd format?)
  • Export to raster image

Apocalypse Master (L4D2 Mod)

Status: Concept

Left 4 Dead, Valve's zombie-apocalypse survival shooter series, employs some fantastic algorithms known as the "AI Director" to schedule game events in ways that create compelling and engaging situations for players to experience.

This role seems awfully similar to that of the "dungeon master" (DM) in table top RPGs, where one person envisions and dictates the world in which the players find themselves.

This role in itself exposes some interesting and enjoyable gameplay, as evidenced by the rise of "tower defence" games, but is relatively unexplored when it comes to creating contexts and challenges for other players in real time. Several "FPS/RTS hybrids" (such as Nuclear Dawn, Tremulous, Natural Selection, etc.) offer a "commander role", but this doesn't quite provide the asymetric play that is seen in table top RPGs.

I'm yet to do any real groundwork on this idea, but L4D2 seems to have great potential for realising this kind of game, given that it already has very well balanced and polished 4 (survivors) vs 1 (AI Director) mechanics. If it's possible to decouple the game from the AI Director, such a mod could be achievable in a fairly short timeframe, making use of existing L4D2 logic and assets.

  • 4 v 1 gameplay
  • DM interface should be focused on monitoring survivor progress, tracking spawn cooldowns, and directing mobs, and most likely be reminiscent of an RTS?
  • DM should have the ability to optionally take first person control over a zombie to help offer more varied/less tedious gameplay

Open Support Register

Status: Concept

An open source automated networking/matchmaking/ticket service aimed at pairing computer users who need assistance with experienced users who have declared skill sets that overlap the problem at hand.

The aim would be to facilitate the growth of local F/OSS communities and provide some level of visible support infrastructure to newcomers who aren't familiar with the concept of community support, and also provide a parth of low resistance for support providers looking to target customers using F/OSS.

  • Integrate with asterisk to provide non-computer access via gated menus and audio recording
  • Allow helpers to specify paid/volunteer rates, availability and locale in addition to skill sets
  • Allow users to blacklist/whitelist other users to prevent undesirable matches
  • Skill sets may consist of specific software (eg: Linux, Open/LibreOffice, or Firefox) at varying levels (eg: Beginner, intermediate or expert) and topics (eg: Graphic design, networking, or gaming)
  • Helpers should be able to easily manage (sort, search, reject, clear, prioritise) queues of issues

@Cheeseness