Basejumper.com - archive

Following up on an earlier post I made, what's your take on a BASE video game?

Imagine a non-violent GTA style free-roaming environment in which you can go anywhere you want. Gaining experience opens up new objects. Earning a reputation gets you invited to events. You get to decide what gear you use and what your setup is (slider-down, -up). You can do aerials, you can pull low, you can fly your wingsuit past downtown buildings. You will have to sneak into buildings and past guards. It could have Metal Gear Solid style sneaking and Jet Set Radio style chases all the way up to being chased by cops, the NPS and the army (with dogs and helicopters). Online you can do multiways.

I'm not sure what the objective of the game would be though. Get your BASE number? The game would be over too early. Do you get points awarded for your jump, based on several criteria?

Share your ideas in this thread.

Aside from whether or not such a game is feasible from a business and marketability point of view, I'm more curious if you feel this game destroys all that is BASE and its associated image of being an underground sport.

Cheers,

Jaap

Edited to add: Let me clear up that in no way would this game try to get close to representing what making a BASE jump feels like. That's not what it is about. It's about taking a great sport and using it as inspiration to make a fun game in the spirit of Tony Hawk's skateboarding.

Jaap Suiter's Pro-BASE'er.... I can see it now.

You could make it an option to go through a FJC to learn the controls.

I was gonna go with Miles Daisher actually.

Yeah, the first chapter of the game could be called the FJC and it could happen at a model of the Potato bridge. As you gain experience and prove your skills, new areas will open up.

You could have cheat codes that would enable some type of tribute to the great fallen jumpers. Kind of like hidden tracks on cd's

I F***** HATE VIDEO GAMES.

But jaap, if you made it, i would buy a Xplaystaionbox64 thing and play the hell out of it. Cheers.

For the record, I'm with ya brother. I used to play a lot when I was in university, but ever since I've become a professional developer I've stopped playing them. Right now my only console is an Xbox, but I only have to watch DVDs. I don't own any video-games. I rather play outside.

Sometimes I feel like a drug-dealer. In manufacturing, but not a user himself; keeping lazy kids on the couch in front of the telly instead of sending them into the great outdoors.

Oh well, we all have to make a living somehow. It was that, or prostitution. And with Abbie on the scene, being a male gigolo just didn't cut it anymore.

The object of the game should be to survive. :)

I'd buy it for sure.

Best wishes,
Gardner

Jaap... a gigolo

I would pay u the market price of batteries, more if ur worth the price of a gas powered kickstart vibrator

You could let people select "characters" with different skill sets. So be "Dwain Weston" and have amazing aerobatic skills, or be "Lukas Knutsson" and have outrageous forward speed on a wingsuit.

And (this is the part I'd like best) only have jumpers who've gone in be named in the game. It'd be a tribute to the fallen, and teach some of the history, but never be used as a marketing tool by any specific jumper who might want to use it that way.

....

On the setup of your character you could choose to be a euro, northamerican or from down under. you could choose which route you wanted, low cliffs, nice 'safe' bridge, or the big walls of norway as your FJC. then you could have a death camp too!!!

you could also earn your pilots ticket, for scouting out obj, and helis for when your lazy.

i'll buy 2, but gotta jump, for real.

no jeb?

i think that however cool said game could be, i dont forsee any major consoles picking it up, or for that matter, not much of a demographic for it either...say every basejumper and uspa member bought it... what does that amount to? a few thousand copies sold? i dont have any experience at all on the "inside" of video game development/marketing so i may be wrong..

also... you would have to look at the other aspects..(without starting up the videogames influnce behavior argument) what can are you opening up basically laying out in the public domain "how to base jump"?
(i understand the internet,dz.com,and basewiki are all public domain, but thats a bit different from a vg that plays out right in front of you.....)

isnt that what all the site naming rules are about? not just here but in the real world as well? to keep people without the prerequisite experience from using whatever gear they can find and hucking thier dorm? and that b was only 90 feet tall... oops...

now, dont get me wrong... if said game did exist, i would buy and play the hell out of it, but i dont really know how i would feel in the electronics section watching johnny 8yearold saying "im going slider up" or to the next level, watching him take a digital dw into the talus/sidewalk/river over and over....

i think if such a product were pursued, it woud be best fit as a pc based game, distributed amongst friends, not as a national level, "extreme sports" style game....

until then, we've always got gta...

jeb's not dead


There must be lotsa gore...the splatters must be good

It would obviously have to stray from realistic BASE to make it appeal to more than just us. I do think it's possible though, the same way Tony Hawk is played by millions of people that don't actually skateboard.


Yeah, that's what I'm curious about. Hence the poll.


Yeah. Although I think if we present it in a semi-realistic way I don't think too much harm is done. Obviously there would be no packing instructions in the game. And also, there's still Darwinism.


Knowing Dwain's reputation through close friends, my guess is he'd be laughing if he saw it. I'm not sure about other jumpers though, not to mention the families of said jumpers.


Unfortunately it'll take a team of 60 people about fifteen months to make a game like this, let alone the required budget for such a game.

I had read "dw into talus..." as "downwind landing into talus/sidewalk/river."

That's another interpretation...

Nonetheless, rest assured that with the right amount of physics in the game, people will abuse its mechanics to create accidents. In fact, I'll be in front of the line to create the funniest and goriest looking accidents in such a simulator.

It's a challenge for the game designers to make safe landings more gratifying than accidents.

Wouldn't it be cool to have the FJC instructor be Carl Boenish?

~Bonus points for cutting JA's lines with your hook knife as you track past him
seriously,Go Jump!
...seriously.
~J

Jaap... I don't think you're good enough to do it.

Touche, touche...

It's probably a great idea for wuffos who want to live the "extreme life" from the safety of their couch, but for myself I'd find it kinda like just "pretending" to jerk off.......

I forsee a wave of er visits starting with "My son jumped off of our roof with a bedsheet tied to some rope and stuffed in a back pack"

A base game would be cool and there is no reason why it can't be just as successfull as tony hawks game

I have played the skateboarding game and I'm not a skateboarder.

most people who play violent games aren't murderers

The game just needs a company with enough vision to create it.

would be cool if the physics were correct, so fall rates increased at the correct rate etc.
would be cool to see how many back flips ya can really do off the twin falls bridge.
6.5 ?? if ya playing as dwain maybe.
or 6 if ya hit the deploy pilot chute button at the right moment.

How would tracking be accomplished? One should have to keep the joystick in a "perfect" position... not too far forwards, not too far back, so as to actually turn it into a skill. Also knowing when to start the track. Start it too early, bad news. Start it late, you don't get as far. That sort of thing. Do it right, get another "tracking" character point. Before you know it, the talus will be cake.

You could start out as an old school jumper with a hand-me-down wonderhog and a clapped out skydiving main. you could work your way throught the velcro revalution, move on to pin rigs, bottom skin inlets, smoking pants wingsuits... all this could be going to comps the old BD, RG GoFast, Malasia, the Moab boogies, and evading cops. And maybe if Hookitt had his way you could throw in some crack heads to foil your plan, and get your gear confiscated for a couple days. haha i am having to much fun at work.

 

 

I think for the game to be successfull ya would need to be a drug runner or something.

ya go around the world delivering ya goods and just hide in the BASE crowd,
and there could be lots of ilegal jumps and shit where ya gotta get to the top of a building without getting caught.

or it could be if ya don't get caught you get to hang out with a new more advanced crowd, so that way there is levels and stuff to pass in the game.

so to go to get a position on a trip to some other country / location ya need to do some particular jump and not get caught our broken lol

would actually be an exciteing game, tracking from the mountain in GTA was fun, but it needed arials and stuff

Oh, this is easy!

"He who dies with the most toys, wins"

bsbd!

Yuri.

How about making it more like a contest?

Where you have to come up with the coolest stunts possible to entertain the crowds.

You could situate it all at a/the bridge, and just focus on aereals, pulls, weird combinations.
People throwing a pilotchute over and over 7 times (before 1 persons pulls and then deploys for the person whos pilot he is holding etc) Throwing pilotchutes over and over whle including flips etc. Adding things like a pilot getting caught in a burble or on someones back
You could even add a swimmingpool with a diving-board for practice (and make it a 2 player game ofcource, so you can practice together:)

And tracking jumps from the bridge (maybe make it 2 or 3 bridges ranging from a couple of 100 ft, up untill a 1500 ft bridge, for diff. stunts) and have people do stuf like catch 2 balloons in freefall or fall/track through hoops etc.

You could even go as far as making the water underneath 'bubbly' so people only go for a swim and break a leg when they screw up (not to make it a 'dying' game) and after 3 failed jumps you get excluded from the "Go Bull" contest :)

If you need a modeler/animator...just howler

Yo !

Okey, here is a full-functional game preview:

http://joecartoon.atomfilms.com/pages/livenletdive/

bsbd!

Yuri.

Or you burn enough sites that a crowd of jumpers shows up, trashes your rig, and leaves you covered in tar and feathers?

Zed's dead, baby. Zed's dead.

I don't play video games but I guess it would be cool.

Features like making big ways, WS jumps, introducing rand () variables to get line overs, line twists, canopy collisions.

But you might end up with an ordinary "boring" game and we don't want that.

Of course you can improve things by adding features like running away from cops, shooting NPS with fully auto AK47s. You know things like that. Then the more illegal you become the less you can participate in events, the less people want to jump with you, the more cops after you and things like that. But if you make a very high profile jump while the FBI is after you and you get away you earn more points.

You definitely should be able to kill people and other jumpers, swear like a dog, get into fights, temper other people's gear, suck them low, shoot them in FF, steal their gear and girlfriends, disguise yourself as NPS and shoot everybody, jump off cliffs with cars, motorcycles, then jump off the vehicle and shoot the gas tank in FF and open the canopy in the explosion. Well you get the idea.

Don't make it too real or it will be boring. You need an outlaw and delinquent environment to make it really cool.

Call it OUTLAW BASE!

Lots of games you start with a given small quantity of $$$ to spend right at the get go. This you can spend how you like at the very beginning of the game on whatever’s in this limited budget.

You could have the option of paying for a FJC which shows you some basic skills and controls etc (as well as significantly increasing your skill stats to make sure it continues to remain relevant after you first learn the keys).

Greater skills allow better control or something. I presume building skill sets will be pretty integral to the game.

Of course having paid for the FJC you’re only going to be able to afford an old racer and a crapped out old main for your first few jump… but those are your choices.

On the other hand you could always go down the route of simply buying some BASE gear and mushing random buttons in freefall... you’d have nicer gear but your characters skill stats would not be as great.

Perhaps also have the option of meeting a guy in a bar and being hucked off a bridge the next morning with some last minute advice about “yonkles” ringing in your ears.

As you earn money (however you work that) of course you buy more gear, nicer gear, battle gear etc. Perhaps there could also be the option to spend a block of your earned cash on an overseas trip. Take a trip to bridge day for example. Cue flight/trip sequence and you now have a totally new area to play in – although it could be extremely limited in size by comparison to the main game area. This would be Bridge day – you could do some bridge jumps against new scenery and dramatically increase your bridge jump skills in only a couple of jumps (to represent learning from all those around you). You could allow similar trips to big walls in Europe – maybe increase your tracking skills in Norway or maybe a wingsuit camp in Italy for example.

Can I get a job in the QA department testing this game you wish to develop? It would be super fun to have a game like you speak of. But I also question if such a game should be made available to whuffo teenagers who trivialize the dangers of life. It could be disasterous. But as I also said, super fun for those of use who do realize the dangers we put ourselves in. One of the things I really like about GTA is exploring the town looking for new sites. And this game isn't ever geared towards BASE like the game you speak of. How cool would it be if similar real world scenarios existed in your game.

PS: I've done a piss poor job of trying to get in touch with you to meet you in person. My bad, not yours.

I think what's really needed is a multi-million dollar testing budget, to verify the realism of the ingame physics. Clearly, jumpers need to be equipped with a bunch of testing sensors to precisely record opening characteristics and altitudes, and perform thousands of test jumps. In order to maximize realism, testing will need to be done from hundreds of different objects of various types, all over the world. I'm willing to do this testing, provided sufficient budgeet, for a relatively modest sub-contract fee.

And you could pre-set winds, problems, malfunctions, and the cops coming, as random or specifically. "A 180 to the right, please."

The game needs to be open ended so you could model your own sites. Manufactures could build accurate models of their latest and greatest stuff and release it through the game. A virtual fly before you buy.

The files for jumps would be like flatiron.sit and we could share them, "Oh, sorry Brother, didn’t ya get the update?"

NickD
BASE 194

For a game to get mass market appeal and to become profitable, I think it has to encompass a huge amount of skydiving and BASE sport. Regular jumping, BASE jumping, swooping, you name it, the whole echilidia. So that it can appeal to a skydiver audience and a BASE audience. It could all use the same 3D graphics engine, and reuse a lot of the same 3D models (with a few minor tweaks). Then maybe it'd hit a big enough market to actually be profitable.

While I am just a mere skydiver and I am looking forward to my first Bridge Day jump, or similiar arch bridge trial jump someday in my lifetime, I would think that broad appeal is needed in order for such a game to be made profitable.

///

If this is a grassroots effort only, another idea is a Total Conversion style modification of an existing videogame, to turn it into a BASE jumping video game. This might be a lot easier, depending on the game. (Could GTA theoretically be modded to become a BASE jumping game with BASE specific goals?)

Actually, the skydiving and BASE audience combined would not even be close to a market big enough. An average console game today needs to sell a million units to be considered succesful. Few games actually sell that much but publishers offset the twenty failed games they release with their one eight-million unit bestseller. That's what makes it a risky business to begin with. EA is one of the few publishers that manages to work outside of this model by generating revenue with nearly all their releases. This is why they are so succesful.

A BASE or even a BASE and skydiving game would target wuffos and nothing else. Experienced skydivers and BASE jumpers would be at the very bottom of the list of target demographics. If BASE jumpers happen to enjoy the game as well, that's just a lucky side effect.

I think the number of active skateboarders versus non-skateboarders that play Tony Hawk Skateboarding is easily one to a thousand. Of course the difference here is that most people have tried skateboarding at one point in their life. Fewer people have flown a canopy.

Quite true. The golden days are gone that selling just 10,000 units made the game profitable.

Maybe an Extreme Sports Adventure Pack covering a lot of extreme sports activities -- then now we're getting somewhere. Close enough. Maybe. Assuming the game engine is flexible enough to make it pratical to program so many extreme sports in one. Only if it does not become a crappy jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none...

Or, scripting and modding might be the best way to pull this off in a grass roots manner... Total Conversion, Expansion Pack, etc. Those don't need to sell nearly as many...

... Which is where the drug-running and jewellery heists come in. You used to work a normal job. Then you started BASE jumping. Really got into the culture. Now you get your kicks hucking yourself off of stuff, and on occasion find yourself and your crew using that skill to get drugs, jewellery, money, etc. out of places that are otherwise secure. Getaway isn't just to avoid gear confiscation -- you're looking at years of accumulated felonies if you're caught on this one.

Sky diving games are for chumps

you will need to have the game so ya travel the world but need a problem that you need to over come to get to the next place, I say drugs and guns, ya sell drugs and guns to get ya plane ticket and new gear etc.

that way you can say sell some drugs to some big crime gang, then once they pay, gun them down and get ya drugs back, then ya pretty much always on the run through out the game, on the run from the gang and the cops, so ya simply move on to the next country/location using the cash ya made.

the guns and drugs part are so the game is controversial like GTA, part of its success is due to its controversy, when it comes to game the old saying applys that "there is no such thing as bad publicity" if the game gets banned, more people want to buy it etc.

 

Yeah, but then how are you going to work in the guy named "Swoop", who won't talk to you unless he's jumped with you? Dude.

Edit to add: Seriously, though, I think it'd be nothing short of miraculous if a game based strictly on BASE jumping (ie, without some other angle) failed to suck. With another angle, it could be the sort of thing that would make me head out and by a console. Without it, though... My experience has been that fictional worlds are universally less fun to play in than the real one -- moreso the more they try to pretend that they are the real one.

Flight simulators that allow creating own models could be a starting point. There are paraglider models that could be adapted to canopy flight.

(e.g. http://www.xplorer.co.za/hangsim/)

Wingsuit could be approximated with a "delta glider" profile with L/D around 2 (The ailerons and elevator controls must correspond somewhow to human limbs, with or without coupling)

The whole VR part is dealt with quite comprehensively including famous bridges, cliffs,and buildings etc.. and programmable and downloadable sceneries.

A custom supersonic helicopter would provide means of transportation from place to place.

There's already a flight simulator with a wingsuit plugin. I don't remember what it's called, just that there was a discussion about it in the wingsuit forum a while back.

Just point me in the right direction to preorder it when you convince them to make it Jaap

I think X-Plane has a wingsuit plugin... but I can't find it because the people on X-Plane forums are a bunch of tight asses who don't want anything like a combat or skydiving plugin ruining the "purity" of their fake flying.