CompBiz? CompCorp?, Just an idea for a future project.

New idea for a Velosi Games game: "a computer company simulation".
My ideas for the game name: CompBiz, CompCorp, Computer Inc., SystemBiz, etc.

The following includes my ideas for the core gameplay and features:

1. Creating hardware and operating systems.
-a. Researching new technologies.
-b. Making deals with other companies such as Firefox to package/sell their programs with/on the operating system.
-c. Making deals with hardware companies to use their computers as a platform for OS.
-d. Making deals with companies to use their parts to make your own hardware.
-e. Using sliders to adjust focus and attributes of OS (i.e. graphics, stability, speed, processing power, innovation, etc.).
-f. Reverse-engineering other OS to improve your own.


2. Upgrading and developing new file formats and file utilities.
-a. Puting time into research and development to create new and better file formats for your OS and maybe others.
-b. Creating new utilities and new ways to manipulate programs and files.
-c. Adapting other companies' OS features to your system.
-d. Creating security features (i.e. anti-malware, firewall.)


3. Marketing and advertising your OS and hardware.
-a. Paying other people/organizations to endorce your products.
-b. Re-designing/adapting OS to help sell better (i.e. quality translation, special hardware).


4. Player-A.I. should play a larger role than in other games.
-a. Companies should be able to perform hostile takeovers or merges. The player should be prompted to do this by non-player companies.
-b. The power to buy franshises or companies should be included. Other companies should be able to iniciate negociations.
-c. Companies should be able to make contracts or partnerships that could share sells or help each other make sells.
-d. Companies should go bankrupt. In GameBiz 2, I noticed that companies did not die, only their gaming consoles did. I suggest that competition should rise and fall with the times.
-e. Sabotoge should be avaliable to both the player and other companies. Hackers stealing/destroying information, sending in a mercenary to lay mines in a rival company's factory, etc.


5. Milestones, achievements and historical events that can occur.
-a. Major projects that can be done while researching new technology (i.e. development of Internet, first computer game, etc.) that will boost sales/public opinion of products.
-b. Major events that can affect your company, such as a market crash, a manufacturing factory getting destroyed, a computer virus outbreak, etc.



With the execution of the technologies, I would want it to be in the style of the "Civilization" tech trees. It should also be very long to help keep players waiting for new technologies to improve their product and therefore increase gameplay time and interest.

With your past games, you have lacked a decent ending or storyline. You should add some storyline, like a A.I. trying to destroy the Internet, or at the end, explain that the way humans interacted with computers went to a higher level, and it became a Matrix-like world or something like that.

I know this calls for some major programming, but it may payoff with the right advertising. Scenarios should also be included, though you can ask for volenteers to do this.

I believe you should also make the interface very simple, straight-out, and embellished. You don't need a hundred text links, a few big buttons could do the job. Symbols, and mouse-over descriptions should do the trick. A few menu animations could really improve the game. With a computer company in mind, you should make a computer-orientated interface, with electric blue and a machine-like color scheme.

Oh, and when making alternate names for OS or platform names such as "Windows" or "Dell", you should do puns instead of alternate spelling, such as "Ceiling" or "Smells" or "Pear Computers". It would be much better.

And please, PLEASE beta test the music. Make like five or four selections and ask the Velosi Games fans which to include in the game. I found the GameBiz 2 music annoying at times.

This project could maybe take around three or two years. I really don't know.
I don't code.

But anyways...

This is my suggestion, and I give Velosi Games the right to use and develop on this idea and the right to claim it. I also give them the right to share it with other entities of their choice.

A More In-Depth Look for the Suggestions for "CompBiz"

1> Features: 1a and 1f.
-I think researching new technology should be the main way to advance your technology and reverse-engineering an OS should take up a lot of time, but will update your knowledge base if you are behind the pack.

2> Feature: 1e.
-The sliders should work the same way that it did in GameBiz 2. Though, the graphics should be more outstanding and more noticeable; it was troublesome trying to see the little traffic lights in the "Game Development" screen in GameBiz 2. The sliders should be bigger.

3> Features: 2a and 2b.
-These two should go hand-in-hand. File formats should be developed by you and other companies to improve public opinion and innovation attributes on the OS. The file utilities and file manipulation should again be just an add-on to raise public opinion on the OS.

4> Feature: 2c.
-This feature can be cut into two - taking traits of the file formats, utilities, and manipulation ideas to improve your own and adapting/porting file formats from one OS to another. The former is just like feature "1f", but the latter is a double-edged sword; it increases public opinion and software sales, but it also lowers the technology level and innovation traits on both OS's.

5> Feature: 2d.
-Security features, such as malware or firewalls should also play an important role in the game. Not updating your security for a extended period of time could cause a rapid decrease in sales due to viruses and malware infecting more computers. Updating your security could insure this would not happen, and only as an event.

6> Feature 3b.
-This should occupy be a window with the feature "3a". After choosing your native market, you may expand to other markets. It should be harder, time-consuming, and costly to translate to foreign countries that do not mix easily, such as North America and Asia. I visualize a world map that where America is on the far left and Asia is on the far right. The farther you are from a market/country on the map, the more difficut and costly it would be to do a smooth localization of your OS.

7> Stats.
-I believe there should be four general pairs of stats and to adjust during the development stages of the OS. The pairs will contrast, like if "Complexity" was at 42 points and "Speed" was at 58 points, the pairs will always add up to 100 points. I think they should be:

• Complexity & Speed
• Stability & Creativity
• Manipulability & Simplicity
• Design & Programming

These eight will determine four independent stats at the end of the development stage for the OS. I think they'll be:

• Manuverability - Should affect "Public Opinion"
• Reliability - Should affect "Public Opinion"
• Moldability - Should affect the quality of programs on the operating system.
• Innovation - Should affect the quality of programs and "Public Opinion".

I don't feel 100% confident about how the logical relationships between the stats will work, but it seems like a starting point.

I don't know if I'm going to add more, but I feel I've gone in-depth about my suggestions. I hope it's possible to code!

Welcome to the forums, Arndtdk is already planning a lot of what you are suggesting is to go into GameBiz 3, maybe not the OS part, but the A.I. will be much more realistic and challenging than GB 1 and GB 2, as for the Music I don't mind as long as we can mute it when ever we want to, so we can listen to our own tunes.

Also we are expecting some hardware management ability this time around so that we could make our own chips for the 'consoles'.

What I like about the GameBiz series is it is evolutionary, with each new release adding and refining on the old one, and yeah it will start costing us but I mean shouldn't we pay for one programmers year or 2 years worth of work. To realize how much this guy does alone for his game is quite astonishing.

Though I do believe he might get some help for some parts of his game, though don't quote me.

Welcome to the forums, your ideas might one day be apart of GameBiz 4 or 8 haha.

Good ideas. Maybe Arndtdk can change the focus of Gambiz from just videgames to computers (i.e. software, CPU's, GPU's, file formats, etc...).

Also, does any know how many people work on GB? Or does he do it all alone

He does it all alone A genius at work hehe.

He does it all alone A genius at work hehe.

Wow. I'm amazed.

Too bad we can't get people to help him. His games are great to play, but the UI of 'em seem to need some glitter

Looking very interresting. As redunion wrote Some of the ideas or parts of it will be in gb3

Yes, I develope the games alone, and this means some bad UI I hope to get some help on this on my future games. Also Stigern helps me out testing and son on and Ben did some of the graphics fior the game.

Wahaha..
Thats so funny make CompBiz

I will help make the design.

Thankx