Ok listen i am expecting a massive amount of comments from the makers saying...

"Thats too much"
"great idea but its not possible"
"the will take years to make"

And a bunch of comments from onlink players saying...

"omg great idea"
"wow i want to play right now i can't wait!!!!"

Anyway thats what i think the replys will be.

Here is my idea (warning its long)

Ok first of all i got this idea because the developers said they wanted to make it from scratch with a new interface.

Most people get bored with uplink after a week but if this is made it will keep people entertained for years (or at least 3 months)

Does anyone get bored with the same interface or the uplink operating system?
Does anyone get bored with all the companys having very identical operating systems?

Well if you can just read for the next 5-10 minutes all this will change:

My idea:

The game starts of some time in the 1970's you have very limited hacking abilitys since the computers of this time were not really made for hacking and even if they were theres no internet. (thats what you think anyway)

The computer available are very crap but at least you have a small variety of brands to pick from such as imb. Also theres not a variety of operating systems and programing languges. If you want to get programs you would have to pysically go to a shop(i have no idea how they would put this in the game)

The computer you have should be using real world name processors and ram and these things are only available from when they are made. Real release dates is a must if possible. The computer you start with (sorry didn't do much research on this) should have 256kb ram 512kb proccessor 10meg hard drive....

So the game starts of with just trying to work your way around your crappy computer and crappy operating system since it is 1970. Then eventually a secret hacking community starts sending you messages. Unfortually they are not emails since theres no "internet" and there are not email programs on your computer so instead they send you messages in the mailbox.

The messages should have something along the lines of:
"We have discovered that the government seem to have some type of weird futuristic software that allows them to connect to some computer without a cord. They may even be tracking what people are doing on their computers. One of our agents was able to steal the hard drive of a govenments computer so you can Analise it. If you can find out how too work this weird operating system the govenment has and work out how this tracking program works then you can join us..."

Soon you are able to start using this tracking software to ahck other computers untill eventually the internet just comes out anyway which will make your job a lot interesting.

anyway back to the early stages of the game.

You can't just buy a new computer you have to upgrade different parts of the computer such as ram spu and hard drive (also internet speed later) You also have the choice to upgrade the operating system. There are a bunch of different paths you can take with the operating systems, (there should be about 100 in the game) If you stick to one path such as "windows" when you come to upgrade it, it will be cheaper then buying a whole new operating system. Aslo you got to be cafeful when buying and operating system because if your hardware can't handle it, well you might experience errors and lag or worst of all an unbootable computer. So its important to make sure you have enough hardware resources to upgrade the operating system.

The operating systems themself should be exactly the same interface as the current real word operating systems such as windows 95 or mac os 4 or linux whatever... So this means that there is not need to have to draw the graphics yourself which is great.

another thing that is important with the operating systems is that software may only be compatible with a certan operating system such as only avalible on commadore 64. or some might need a newer operating system to run on such not compatible with windows xp need windows vista...

Anyway the companys also have different operating systems usually poorer companys have older or cheaper operating systems and the rich companys may even have an unreleased operating system thats about to come out(which you might be able to steal but whats the point when many things may become incompatible with it.)

Also the amount of control you have over a companys operating system should change if you get better software. It should start of as very basic access such as command line or very low... i don't know. The real thing you are trying the do is get full control with over the internet full access with the whole graphical userface.

There also needs to be different virus scanner products with updates and version numbers and the ability to put viruses on other companys computers. Also you got to be careful not to get a virus yourself otherwise you need to get virus protection or manually find it and remove it.

The ultimate goal of the game should be to first upgrade to the bect computer parts and the latest operating systems e.g. windows 7, mac osx snow leapord. Then since the governments technology is 30 years ahead of the world you can try and steal and hack it to your own advantage. The government should be hardest to hack since they have futuristic operating systems and extremely powerful security. there should be a massive govenment secret on how they are planing to take over everybodys minds with computers or somthing but you can either stop them or use what they have made so far for your own purposes.



Anyway thats just about it.

Now you can see why i really think that it is a bit too much but it would be the best game every, much more fun then what your turning onlink into now.

So please read all of my ideas and think about them and reply here what you think.

I am just a 15 year old kid so sorry if i sound dumb not knowing much about computer history.

Also i really think that this is the quailty of an EA game which would be much more then just a mod.

It would take EA 6 months to make but it would take the developers on these forums 3 years.

So let the discusion on my idea begin!!!!!!!!

Well, you obviously didn't take your time browsing the forums to find out about us!
Well, I for one never get bored with Onlink.. at most, I start playing another game. But when that game bores me, I go back to Onlink.
Although this looks like a good idea at first, wouldn't it become quite boring to hack the same server for, like, 20 years? I mean, specially since you were all, like, "Onlink is boring because you hack the same servers"?
Ah, 15 is a great age... you don't have petty worries like copyrights and such...
You know, I believe excessive ego is enough reason for a ban on these forums....
Oh PLEASE. this quote would be shameful even if you said something like "Bethesda Softworks", "Bioware" or "Blizzard", but EA games? C'mon, it would take them 3 aeons to make a game as awesome as Onlink, and they would still manage to destroy it.
(Don't get me wrong on this one, their driving and action games are awesome, but that's about it. When it comes to a game that involves a serious storyline, forget it.)

I think that crosses the line where realism stops being fun because it's, y'know, basically the real thing.

I don't know what games you've been playing, but BioWare is friggin' kickass.

@OP: AFAICT, development has shifted focus from Onlink to a new game called, for the time, Cerberus - and Miah has hinted that it's going to be more than just about hacking (too lazy to go find the post where he dropped that hint).

-- Griffinhart

Well EA was the only gaming company i know of so...

Anyway yea did not think about copyright so i guess that destroys my idea.

Oh and last of all whats wrong with making it more real?
I mean wouldn't it be much more fun having real operating systems and real hardware units instead of whatever is in gigadogs (sorry forgot what the units are in onlink) I mean i think it would be more fun to have kilobytes megabytes gigabytes terabytes petabytes... and so on.

Well sorry if my idea sucked i just really have wanted a game like this for so long.

Anyway i am sure the current cerberus thing they are making now will also be good but it will probably take years to make it. I hope they have some beta versions before the end of this year. Subversion will probably come out by the time cerberus is ready.

Anyway thanks for at least liston to my idea (sorry it was bad(well thats what the comments are telling me))

I know, that's what I meant - Bioware, Bethesda, Blizzard, all great to me. But none good enough to desing a game like Onlink.

@OP: I'm sorry I was so harsh on you kiddo, I was in a bad mood at the moment and let it all loose at you. It's not a bad idea to make things more real, it's just that more important than realism, is the balance realism/fun. Your ideas seem to tilt the scales to realism, leaving fun aside.

Heh, I remember when I was younger and had crazy ideas for games that would be so awesome, but now that I've grown up a bit I realize that most of them were really terrible. I used to play zelda a lot and my friend and I would spend hours making lists of these awesome ideas for items and quests and features and stuff we wanted to see in the game and we thought these ideas were absolutely amazing. Turns out one of them (the iron boots + magnets in twilight princess) was actually developed completely separate from us, but pretty much all the other ideas sucked looking back on it.

Don't give up. Keep trying to come up with ideas for things that will make great games. Take the criticism as advice and use it to tweak your ideas for the future. Someday you might make a great game developer, you never know. For now, though, your try to take real life and alter history, which would make for a great science fiction story, but the playability is lost. Yeah, you can upgrade your operating system and hack other people, but it seems like more of a tedious kind of thing (which some people still love) than a fun thing to me. Focus more on gameplay in future designs.

Assuming Cerberus turns out as we have it planned, I think you'll all find it really intriguing. It should be different every time you play. Technological advances, politics, economics, everything.

I thik I just wet myself!

Politics? Now I want Cerberus to come out even fasterer so I can figure out how you guys implement that bowl of shit.

-- Griffinhart

We could take the easy way. Spreading freedom of democracy/efficiency of communism/power of dictatorship by bombing the shit out of our neighbours. But that would be a cop-out. Also a bit too much like Risk.

No, we will probably be using stress points. Economic downturn isn't usually going to be enough for a full on revolution (a shift, yes), but add to that a few more stress points: high tariffs, food shortages and stagflation, suddenly you have a recipe for revolution.

Or perhaps overworking one's military. Might lead to a military coup d'état.

Or even just total random happenstance. Jon Doe decides it would be a super awesome idea to kill a head of state and it has far-reaching consequences.

The variables are numerous.

You guys do realize the game you're developing will be a revolution comparable to all the greate gaming revolutions, right? (Not gonna cite all of them, and won't cite one or two 'cause it wouldn't be fair)

Eh, it basically just sounds like a less complex version of Dwarf Fortress, only a modern/future version instead of a fantasy world.

I've never been able to play DF, so I only know of it what people tell me.

Which is sad. It looks like hilarious fun.

Come on, you and I both know that's not true! (I'm supposing you're referring to Cerberus, not to the OP)