A Series of Tubes

Ok this is the “second draft” of the post I lost…

While I was sitting in school getting bored (what else is new these days?) yesterday, a great idea struck me for a video game. It would be called GodMod – The Game. It’s a flash-based two person online game, mostly text based but with a few animations.

I made this mockup image to help explain:


(yes, those avatars are temporary placeholders, not final 😉 )

The idea is this. You have 1 minute to type the most godmodding (see excerpt) description of your opponent’s death you can think of. This can involve anything you want, from Seppeku to dinosaurs to landmines to just plain fire to rabid hamsters. So you type it in Area 1, then after one minute has passed the entries are submitted (regardless of whether you’re done or not).

This is where the code kicks in. The program scans the entries for keywords (such as Hari Kiri, Dinosaurs, Flames, etc.) and key phrases, and scores each entry according to how many keywords were used and how descriptive they are. The winning entry is displayed in Area 2.

As a bonus, the winning entry is then animated in Area 3. The losing character acts out the description (approximately), according to what keywords/phrases it found in the winning entry. For example, if the word ‘fire’ was found, it would burst into flames. I think that the game would be hard to make, but very rewarding.

Godmodding refers to when a player describes the outcome of their own actions against another character. For example, player A stating, “A strikes B and B takes damage” would be considered godmodding on the part of player A in most situations. In the game, you wouldn’t include yourself in the description, just the outcome.