An story.

"Rainbow" (rainbeaux) 07/24/2019 at 06:56 • Filed to: None

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The year was... I dunno, 2010 or so? I was playing GTA IV and had an idea. What if we had a deathmatch mode where the entire map was used, there were no player or weapon blips, and everyone only had one life? I told some people about it and they seemed to think it was a bad idea, so I sort of forgot about it.

But holy crap, I could be rich right now if they just gave me positive feedback and I could have been the one to invent the battle royale genre.

Has anyone else come up with an idea before it eventually became a reality for someone else?

vondon302 > Rainbow 07/24/2019 at 07:15

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Remote control blimp. Thought of over 30 years ago.

RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars > Rainbow 07/24/2019 at 07:25

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I have a story where a thing we figured out became viral before viral was a thing and before anybody else figured it out. I was part of a PC gaming clan back in the early - mid 2000's called <>.

We chiefly played Unreal Tournament 2004, specifically a mode called invasion where aliens of various strengths and sizes spawn in at random and the players have to keep killing them until all the players died. It was basically about lasting the longest.

Unreal Tournament 2004 had vehicles:

https://unreal.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Unreal_Tournament_2004_vehicles

All the vehicles had a primary and secondary weapon fire mode. One of the vehicles, the Raptor, is basically a helicopter/jet thing that you can fly around in - primary fire was a sort of laser, secondary fire was a seeking missile.

Another vehicle is the Leviathan - a massive mobile fortress. It had 5 player seats - 4 smaller gun turrets players could individually control and the driver drove the vehicle and had a primary fire that controlled the large rocket pod. The secondary fire ‘unfolded’ the Leviathan and large clamps clamped it to the ground (think outrigger stabilizer arms on cranes or bucket trucks) so it s massive laser superweapon could be used. In this mode, it was immobile.

We accidentally had a Raptor sitting on the ground one day in Invasion mode right next to a Leviathan when one of us activated the Leviathan’s immobile superweapon function....except we found out that because the Raptor was next to one of the four ground ‘clamps’ the Leviathan clamped to IT. You could actually get into the Raptor and fly around with the superweapon mode Leviathan clamped to the Raptor, it was hilarious. Within days the trick spread across the servers and it was patched out of the game as a glitch a few weeks later...

Of course, I have no proof that we discovered it, but I am 99% sure we did as I had never seen it in any game mode prior to that back then and as a PC gaming high school nerd I played UT2K4 a LOT.

I can only find old forum posts which reference it now... and I’m not sure where my ancient backup DVD with my screenshots is.

It was hilariously fun while it lasted though! :D

I like cars: Jim Spanfeller is one ugly motherfucker > Rainbow 07/24/2019 at 07:40

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So Oldschool Runescape wilderness?

Mercedes Streeter > Rainbow 07/24/2019 at 07:49

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Flexible smart phone tripod.

I had this old camera tripod and combined it with a phone cradle. Did some searching and confirmed such a thing didn’t exist, not even as a patent.

I p osted mine to GE’s ‘Quirky’ site trying to get it patented and made. Never got more than 5 votes of the required 200 . Fast forward a few years later and my exact idea (and I mean EXACT) is on the market.

If you have an invention, DO NOT host it on Quirky. You’re basically advertising your ideas for people to steal them.

Snuze: Needs another Swede > Rainbow 07/24/2019 at 09:56

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My college’s engineering department had a partnership with a large tool manufacturer. Part of this arrangement included “ sponsoring ” the junior year product development course, which is required for all mechanical engineers. Students worked in teams and the company provided each team a tool (the semester I took it each team got a reciprocating saw) and also provided a few competitors tools. We had to benchmark the tools, develop an improvement, build a prototype, re-test it, and then write a report about the process and give a presentation. Executives from the company came to watch the presentations.

My team decided to improve the tool by reducing vibration felt by the user while cutting. We developed a test method for this since it wasn’t one of the normal benchmarks, did some research, and ended up creating a rubberized grip to dampen vibrations . We re-tested and sure enough, we could prove that it reduced vibration transmitted to the user. It was a great success!

About 2 years ago I was in a Home Depot and noticed this same manufacturer advertising a new and improved reciprocating saw with vibration reducing grips.

The real bullshit part of the story is that at the end of the class we had to turn our prototype back over to the company since they provided the saw and sign a legal document essentially saying we had no claim to our work, so if they liked something we did they could take it and we had no claim and they didn’t owe us a penny.

On a more uplifting note, I was at a trade show recently and saw a thing that I worked on as an intern about 7 years ago. At that time the project was in its infancy and we only had one working prototype, and it was rough. However, w e proved the concept would work and laid out a roadmap to eventually get it to production . However, w hen I left the internship to head back to school it sounded like the sponsor had lost interest and didn’t want to continue funding the project . Well apparently sometime in the last 7 years they got re-interested because now it’s a real thing!

Khalbali > Rainbow 07/24/2019 at 10:31

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I made my own Pokemon Monopoly set when I was like 12 and then the next year it was in stores and my mom got it for me for Xmas.

facw > Rainbow 07/24/2019 at 18:37

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