My Dropped Ideas

Last Update: 2022-07-16

Ideas are part of the creative process. Most of those ideas will go unused.

Ideas themselves are inherently useless unless we do something with them. We over-attribute ideas to ourselves, as if somehow our identity was at stake if others used those ideas. The value of those ideas, though, is the degree that they actually improve reality.

Some ideas are good, but can’t fully actualize:

  • There aren’t enough resources to accomplish it.
  • There’s not enough time to do that project in light of other projects.
  • The technology simply doesn’t exist to accomplish it yet.
  • Social fashions presently prohibit that idea from actualizing.
  • The idea was sound, but it’s outside your specialization to accomplish it.

I’ve come up with these ideas but have no direct plan to do anything with them. I want someone else to use them. Maybe I’ll make them myself someday, but probably not.

If you’d like, we can collaborate on it. Otherwise, feel free to run with them. Please notify me if you do something with them, though, since I’m a human, and humans like to feel important.

Deferment Life Sim Game

Inspired by: Alter Ego (an old MS-DOS game)

Make a “life sim” choice-based game where the choices don’t come into play until later.

  • Someone decides not to do chores and slacks off. It means they later don’t have the discipline to study for a test.
  • They skip out on cooking something basic and later gain weight from not being able to pace their diet.

The cycle:

  1. Mundane decisions (like doing dishes) that affect stats
  2. A larger, eventful story that plays out based on those stats, with no player interaction
  3. A “what did you learn?” phase, which dramatically alters the stats

Interspersed with “moments of truth” events

  • Provides defining introspection periods where experiences dramatically rearrange stats
    • e.g., discovering religious beliefs from upbringing had errors in them
    • e.g., decided to center thoughts and become more focused on long-term goals
  • It will basically operate as a “curve”, where it starts out catastrophically but yields the highest gains in the game
  • It’s essentially a Chekov’s Gun for all little, unimportant decisions

Constraints: time, game dev experience

Vimthm Game

Make a rhythm game, but uses vim commands.

  • A bit like Vim Adventures, but using music as a mnemonic to make it more fun and memorable.

Constraints: Time, game dev experience

Project Management IDE

Make an IDE that also functions as a project management system for developers working on a team.

  • Has the ability for programmers to use notes inside it (like with Notion)
  • Has a built-in chat system (like Slack)
  • Has built-in support for calendar and email protocols

Constraints: it needs multiple protocols, has many components, I may end up designing it someday for something else

Dirtfinder

Plug into all the government APIs and social networks for all related information about crimes and background.

  • Use a machine-learning algorithm to process the information.
  • Basically, a poor man’s NSA database: search a name, get all the information.

Constraints:

  • I’d likely need to be a private investigator or police officer to gain access to at least some information.
  • I have zero desire to wage lawfare over this sort of thing.

Squid Ambulation

Supersedes the propeller-inspired means of underwater conveyance (which borrows from birds). Instead, push the water in a waveform pattern (like a squid).

Reasoning:

  • Modern watercraft screws have been around before aircraft. It came from the back end of the First Industrial Revolution. The Wright brothers created flight through years of bird-watching, so we can still learn a lot by watching deep-sea creatures.
  • Some water-based animals, such as the humpback whale, are more hydrodynamic than our modern submersibles.
  • It’s not unattainable, and if invented, it could severely cut down on turbulence.

Constraints:

  • It would cost more than a stamped-out propeller. Thus, it’d only work for specific use cases where money isn’t as much of a concern (luxury craft, military).
  • I have no desire to specialize in the mechanical engineering necessary to even try doing it.

Less Well-Established Ideas

GoHostMe

  • A decentralized hosting solution, where people pay other people to use hosting.
  • But, unlike conventional hosting that’s “blind hosting”, let people choose who they host.

Rabbit farming

  • Rabbits go from birth to puberty in 4–5 months. This means selectively breed them to be slower and stronger (hence more meat) wouldn’t take long. There’d probably be results as early as 5–10 years.
  • After breeding a population to be slow, the primary challenge would be predators and large-scale feeding. This could easily involve roaming and electric fences.