Concept - lukebergen/the_editor GitHub Wiki

Setting

Zelda-ish fantasy time period

Locations:

  • A central hub city of medium size (maybe 1 city is larger and 1 or 2 cities equal it in size)
    • 3 districts
      1. The poor district
      • The boy’s home is here
      • Some of his friends live/lived here
      • Despite being poor it’s got a nature-y homespun beauty to it
      • ...
      1. The market district
      • shops
      • ...
      1. The 'rich' district
      • This is where “the organization” is headquartered
      • The school is here
        • tutorials
        • training

Story

Prologue

Normal life (goes to school, etc...). Something bad happens to break him out of his normal life (family/friends/? die/leave/imprisoned/?) Small interaction with someone/something sinister (the bad guy, so foreshadowing) Bad guy knows what this kid is capable of and is trying to squash

The organization

Finds organization (or organization finds him. Maybe organization saves him from the interaction at the end of the prologue). Informs him that universe is a game that is at risk of not being interesting enough for publication Something about promised one who is an avatar of the/a creator who can make/re-make the game as he sees fit as he gains training licenses, 5 of them or something

Making the world more interesting

Many quests/missions Gains first 3 licenses granting editing abilities

  • Editing ability 1 (fill out with details later)
    • Recruits to the organization all start here
  • Editing ability 2
    • The bulk of the organization is here
  • Editing ability 3
    • The really elite are here

Threat to organization

Something bad happens to the organization or some big threat occurs.

More quests

Gains ability 4

Till now only the leader is this high

and 5 (some kind of super supreme editing feature of the game)

Only rumored to exist in myths and such (the protagonist is the first to achieve this level) Basically license 5 is equivalent to just opening the game’s source code and modifying it freely. Great potential to really fuck things up. Requires some backup method in case the user really screws things up. (We shouldn’t allow them to break their copy of the game). Tests?

Threat resolved but enemy escapes somehow

Return to old levels and collect bunches of stuff that maybe wasn’t gettable before.

Thus allowing player to move on to...

Final confrontation

Basically a final area/boss battle with the main enemy Ending

General concept

The game progresses from more of an adventure/exploration/rpg to more puzzle based gameplay. As the protagonist gains more powers the challenges become harder to solve by “jumping just right” and rely more on modifying the situation so as to make level-grinding or more conventional rpg solutions/mechanisms unnecessary. By the end, it pretty much stops being a standard rpg and is almost exclusively a kind of disguised programming challenge with an infinite number of possible solutions from quirky screwing with clipping type solutions to boring old “player.inventory.add(key)” type solutions.

Quests

Quests are the kind of thing like "Help me get my kitten down from the tree" sort of scenarios. They're basically like in-game events. They don't move the story along and are not strictly necessary. They tend to reward the player with money/items/extras but are otherwise just filler. They do, however, contribute to the total game complete percentage so completing all quests is necessary to reach 100% (if such a mechanism ends up being built).

The main distinction between quests and missions is that quests come from other NPCs who are not aware of the nature of the world. They need help with everyday problems and are unaware of the idea that the world needs to be made more interesting/bug-fixed.

Missions

Missions are assigned by the organization and are always aimed at saving the world by means of making the game more interesting, eliminating bugs, etc... Missions come in two flavors.

  1. Primary missions
  2. Secondary missions.

Primary missions move the story along and usually result in new quests/secondary missions opening up. Secondary missions are only necessary in the sense that all missions must be cleared in order to get to the final confrontation.