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By nine81
#4205
My idea is to combine a virus scanner with a 1st person shooter (eg: quake). The program could be run in different modes:

1/ Scan your machine for viruses = serious virus scanner with std anti-virus type gui.

2/ Play the built in game independently of virus scanner = self explanitory.

3/ Scan your machine with game front end = Game starts - virus scanner scans your machine in the background while you play the game. The game would be just like any other 1st person shooter - mazes, bad guys, etc. Any viruses found would spawn new "Special Bad Guys" in your vicinity in the maze - a new bad guy for each virus found. The bad guys could have descriptive labels above their heads to signify that they are indeed a virus, and of what variety. When you kill the bad guy, the virus is deleted. At the end of the scan you would have the option to continue the game, or quit. Quitting would automatically delete/cure any viruses that you missed killing off in the game. If your machine is badly infected and there are too many bad guys to kill off - you would be presented with an option to return to the serious antivirus front end to save on system resources.

Reward: Free product and lifetime upgrades
By Lblitzer
#4275
There is one big problem with this idea:

1. When running most virus scanners, most systems suffer in their performance. I have a P4 2.53ghz processor with 512mb of RAM and I can barely even run Mozilla without lag. playing a fast paced FPS would make it much more worse than it already was.

I would think of more, but I'm at school working on a project. I am intrigued by this idea, though.
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By Steve
#4281
The problem I see: people will start hunting the net for exotic and nasty viruses so they have more fun in the game! :-B
By nine81
#4296
Ah well - You know what they say... "It's the thought that counts" LOL :-D

Then again, perhaps searching the net for exotic viruses to kill off wouldn't be such a bad thing... who knows.

Thanks for the reply guys :-)
By renrutv
#4975
I remember reading in Linux Journal about a year ago that someone created a Quake (or Doom or something) front-end for killing tasks in Linux. Instead of typing "kill <pid>", you run this game and you see all these zombies waliking around with a pid (process id) number floating over their head. Your mission is to shoot the zombie with the right pid. Then the corresponding process is killed. God forbid, if you should happend to miss and shoot the wrong zombie though!
By dmacdonald95
#9463
1. Yes, it was Doom

2. This virus scanner would need to have amazing timing, you can't remove viruses in real time and what would be the repercussions of them fighting back?

They shoot you until you're dead. You die, virus scanner ends. Now, you need to restart. If you happen to have the luck of having safe, MyWife.E on your system, it might happen that while you wait for your archaic virus scanner to start up, MyWife's payload hits. You now have no ZIP/PSD/DOC/XLS, etc. files
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By Steve
#9464
I thought that MyWife just deletes the MSMoney files? :-D
By meinsla
#10631
I'm sorry man, but this is a horrible idea. This obviously wasn't thought all the way through.

1. Most virus scanners are passive, in the way that they are constantly scanning the computer in the background, and many are free (go avast!)

2. Someone could just easily play their favorite game while scanning their computer. Chances are their favorite game would be hugely more fun to play due to the fact it was most likely made by a large corporation by expert programmers rather than a person or few people that just came up with an "idea". Integrating the virus scanner into a previously made game of today's caliber would be virtually impossible for a number of reasons.

3. It is <b>rare</b> for me to ever find viruses on my computer. If I myself were to play such a virus scanner game, I would most likely never see any enemies.

All in all, I'm not saying it isn't impossible but it really seems like a lot of work for a poor result.
By RustyStrings
#10638
Hmm. How about if the game referenced the virus log from your antivirus program and generated enemy 'viruses' based on the real virus's type and location? Your AV program would work as normal, and the viruses would be gone, but the game would let you have the joy of destroying a representation of it. Perhaps it could be a simple core program to which you could apply a 'skin,' to suit your preferences and maybe even the theme of your OS. It would have some kind of algorithm for turning your folders into rooms and buildings, and perhaps the names of certain files could be included as 'civilians.' It wouldn't do anything to the actual file if you hit a civie. Or I suppose it could...
By CODsniperkid
#21388
You know what would really excite users. A real virus game. Lets say you have a virus on your computer and you dont know about it. While you are waiting, the program alerts you have a virus. This will bring up a diolog page asking if you want to simulate a game or not. If the user clicks yes, then the antivirus will start removing the virus and it will have the user pretend to destroy the virus. If the user doesnt play the game, then the virus will still be removed, but the game will not come up. I think this would be a fun way to run a scan and encourage more computer scans so that users computers wont get infected as often.
By Jras
#21497
Lblitzer wrote: I have a P4 2.53ghz processor with 512mb of RAM and I can barely even run Mozilla without lag.
I think the ram is your problem.U need At least 2gb.
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