What do you want to see in game?
OK this cannot be done over night so don't expect anything amazing. But right now I MUST create a kickass video game. Not only for school, but so that I can look back in time and say, "Hey, I made that".
Graphics
Well, the graphics cannot be that great, in fact, no 3D. Not that I can't do 3D but I want a more simplistic feel to the game, meanwhile keeping a more complex internal system.
Graphics would be somthing along the lines of a Game Boy advanced to Flash animation in appearance. In fact this would be created in Macromedia Director. 3D can be done, but only as a trick of the eye. Like I said, I am not really wanting 3D in this though. Not yet at least, 3D is something I have yet to really learn, but will touch up on in school later.
Game Play
I would like to create an RPG, not only would I think this appeal to the majority of people out there, but that it would also allow me to code more into the game itself and thus teach me ALOT.
One thing I just have not chosen is how the game is played, where and when it is based, and on who. Basically, the 5W's; Who, What, When, Where, Why... plus how.
Why?
Learning, Experience, Doing something not everyone can do or is willing. I want to gain more from this, and maybe even get a kick ass job from this project.
Testing
What I am thinking right now is that anyone who helps me out testing both Alpha and Beta models will of course get credit. On my site about the game and in the Game itself. Online or Real Life names.
When it comes to testing, there wouldn't be any forms or anything... nor can I really prevent a mass of people from taking my idea and throwing it out in the wild to be stolen or whatever. So a limited amount of people, based on different variables, would test the game. No NDA or anything.
Fact is about testing, I ain't anywhere near it at the moment. So there are no rules right now. Basically, ideas would be greatly appreciated. Anything you can think of.
Example
An RPG style game in which one character starts from a low level position as a technicion for Mechs works his way up the ladder of a Mercenaries group to eventually save the day as a hero and become a Mercenary of his own with a salvaged Mech. In the game you can pick up various different weapons, both handheld, or even aquire a mech as you work alongside others.
Just whatever you think of, no guarantees on anything, and I like to mix ideas alot too. To be one of a kind these days, is very difficult
Graphics
Well, the graphics cannot be that great, in fact, no 3D. Not that I can't do 3D but I want a more simplistic feel to the game, meanwhile keeping a more complex internal system.
Graphics would be somthing along the lines of a Game Boy advanced to Flash animation in appearance. In fact this would be created in Macromedia Director. 3D can be done, but only as a trick of the eye. Like I said, I am not really wanting 3D in this though. Not yet at least, 3D is something I have yet to really learn, but will touch up on in school later.
Game Play
I would like to create an RPG, not only would I think this appeal to the majority of people out there, but that it would also allow me to code more into the game itself and thus teach me ALOT.
One thing I just have not chosen is how the game is played, where and when it is based, and on who. Basically, the 5W's; Who, What, When, Where, Why... plus how.
Why?
Learning, Experience, Doing something not everyone can do or is willing. I want to gain more from this, and maybe even get a kick ass job from this project.
Testing
What I am thinking right now is that anyone who helps me out testing both Alpha and Beta models will of course get credit. On my site about the game and in the Game itself. Online or Real Life names.
When it comes to testing, there wouldn't be any forms or anything... nor can I really prevent a mass of people from taking my idea and throwing it out in the wild to be stolen or whatever. So a limited amount of people, based on different variables, would test the game. No NDA or anything.
Fact is about testing, I ain't anywhere near it at the moment. So there are no rules right now. Basically, ideas would be greatly appreciated. Anything you can think of.
Example
An RPG style game in which one character starts from a low level position as a technicion for Mechs works his way up the ladder of a Mercenaries group to eventually save the day as a hero and become a Mercenary of his own with a salvaged Mech. In the game you can pick up various different weapons, both handheld, or even aquire a mech as you work alongside others.
Just whatever you think of, no guarantees on anything, and I like to mix ideas alot too. To be one of a kind these days, is very difficult
0
Comments
Well I may have come up with a cool idea and I am beginning work on it soon... today.
There's this plumber, right. He's trapped in this magical land of mushroom people, and he has to save their princess from and ancient and evil turtle-dragon. The twist? There are eight different castles that she could be in and seven of them just have one of the princesses servants locked away, dressed as the princess!
That's what keeps me playing a game.
Story:
Rich billionaire gets finances wiped out by the mob and is forced to go into hiding, without any money to help. So, he becomes a homeless guy with nothing but the clothes he was wearing the day he lost it all. Now he has to deal with the everyday problems that a homeless guy has to face. After many months of being homeless, learning how to cope, he makes a costly mistake when he decides to sleep in a dumpster, that happens to be outside a chemical factory.....continue with a Toxic Avenger type storyline... except he is only mangled and has yet to figure out his new body.....continue with Spawn type storyline. Revenge on everyone that screwed him, including his wife and kids who left him to be with the mob.
Setting:
Gritty grimey streets of an imaginary city.
RPG elements:
Guy learns how to be homeless in a big city. Transforms. Guy figures out new abilities resulting from his accident.
Everything else comes secondary to this. Take Disgaea, one of the my favorite RPG's for PS2. The graphics aren't the latest, but who cares! The story is engaging and the characters are very well done.
Also, you'll have to think carefully about how the battle system will be. Will it be a tiled based battlefield a la Final Fantasy Tactics (or Disgaea)? Or will it be encounter based (the mainstream Final Fantasy games). Will it be turned based or real time? How complex will it all be? How quick should the pace of battle be? Lots of questions, lots of solutions, but only one will show itself to be ideal through tons of game testing.
Dude, thanks for writing a serious post. You brought up questions that I had not figured or thought of yet too much. I don't know what that PS2 game your talking about is like, but I will look into that. Just finished my one class of today, and have the rest of the day to chill out on my PC figuring this stuff out.
The plot has to be decent but don't go overboard with fantasy or sappy dialogue.
I've always liked FPS games, but unless you're playing against real people in a deathmatch or against a well-programmed AI in deathmatch... It continues to play the same way over and over again which can get boring. The Serious Sam series gets around this by bombarding you with tons of enemies at once.
I'm still addicted to Unreal Tournament '99 (I just love blasting the heck out of all the bots in practice sessions), but Unreal II was only good the first time through...and if the ending sucks, don't expect me to play it again.
I like going around, hunting after keys, relics, and bits & pieces of things, merrily blasting away and making a mess the whole time, a la Turok, Serious Sam I/II, Indiana Jones/Infernal Machine (can run over enemies with the Jeep
I also like to throw a wrench into the works every now and then just to change the gameplay, a la Mutators/Relics in UT, ChaosUT, Unreal4Ever wacky weapons, etc.
The graphics have to be well-done, and definitely in 3D. Serious Sam I/II and UT are perfect examples, having a high level of texture detail and the use of vivid and appropriate color, not just Id Software Brown.... :shakehead
Downloadable 3rd party levels are a plus, so is the ability to create your own without being a codemonkey or having the editor crash out every 20 minutes... are you listening Epic?
Cutscenes are OK, but only if they are absolutely necessary to the plot and can be bypassed with the fire button, with the option to view a list of mission objectives later in case one forgets or misses something. Unreal II is a big offender in the non-bypassable cutscene department... I'm here to play a game, not watch a d*%n movie, OK? I like to participate, not just observe...
I don't like games that are short. I find myself at the end asking myself, Is this all? I installed 2+ CDs worth for this? If I can finish within 12 hours of starting then it's too short.... on that note, there must be an option to save anytime, anywhere within the game so that all the time spent doesn't amount to having to start over. Serious Sam I/II will quicksave automatically at certain points in the game so you don't have to remember.
The enemy bosses have to be real bosses... none of these bizarre anime characters that are confused about their sexual identity throwing funky glowing nerf balls around... make me soil myself with fear and surprise, not laughter... Have a T-rex or something nasty jump out from nowhere, I have a 100W sub...
My most recent gaming console is a Nintendo 64. That's it. No more consoles . I don't care if it can microwave pizza, do my taxes, and return my calls while I watch a movie and mow the lawn with it. So that means PC only, preferably with a Linux version in tow so I can dump this Microsoft curse once and for all. It also has to run fast...on my hardware.
Music... keep it appropriate. I don't want to listen to Bach while hauling ass in some supercar in the alps. I also don't want to listen to techno while watching Hitler shoot himself in a bunker. Allow the option to play in windowed mode so I can manage a playlist in Foobar2000, Winamp, or XMMS.
Weapons... most everyone has hit it on the mark so far... there may be one or two that totally suck, but I can't think of any right now.
Sequels... Never EVER *EVER* make the sequel worse than/completely different from the first one. You may think that you can make up for a bad sequel by releasing a third in the series better than the first two, but after blowing it just one time your sales will never be the same again.
//edit, see what you can do with the old 3drealms duke3d engine its pretty simple and hell its DUKE NUKEM!!!!@!@!!@!
LOL!!!!
A good 2D platform side-scroller type game, integrated into a non-linear RPG style world (kinda like what mario world did, but I was thinking more in-depth and story based, with quests and stuff). Also not just your normal side scroller, instead of jumping on their heads, or shooting with a gun, have street fighter like moves and stuff
:Canflag: (why the flag? I don't know)
Just so you guys know... this project is due Wednesday(this Wednesday).
The biggest hardest part of what I have done so far is the artwork, I wanted it to be very cool looking, and had a fun time doing so. I like how it is so far and hope you guys will enjoy what I will have done when I post it up in a matter of days.
What will be posted is only a Demo of what I plan to have coming out, with a great storyline I have been working my ass off putting together and have yet to be fully satisfied. I am asking myself the impossible and so far am on the way to making a great game.
Best of all it will be free. Lots of hard work will be put in, not to mention I have had to put my friends and gras.... err fun time herbs on the hold for the past couple weeks now.
But seriously, I am totally excited right now sitting in lab waiting to get home to work on it some more and finish this demo.
Just one last thing I swear. A note on this demo, like I had said before... it is DEMO to kinda test my abilities, and the game I have planned will look similar but be much more indepth and complex while remaining relativly simple to play.
Wow, short deadline. If you ever decide to go into the game business, I'd like to see another game that handles like Bahamut Lagoon. It's a totally linear tactical RPG with memorable characters & a good plot. It's made by Square and it's in japanese for the SNES, so you'll need a couple of other things like the translation patch and whatever emulator you like best.
I have yet to see the most memorable parts of Bahamut Lagoon become part of any other game. The game is chapter-based like FF: Tactics (a bunch of the guys that made Bahamut Lagoon worked on Tactics), and each chapter features a plot scene which is either in auto-pilot or semi-auto (no menu or anything but you walk around and talk to people). At the end of the plot scene there's a battle.
Battles take place on massive maps laid out in squares, 1 unit per square. You alternate turns with the AI, where you move your guys, attack, defend, do a special move, whatever. There are hazards like stationary guns that you can destroy with lightning spells, rivers you can bridge with ice spells, poison bogs that can be turned to water by cure spells, etc. Similarly ice bridges can be destroyed by fire, drowning anyone on the bridge; and clean springs can be poisoned by poison spells. Dams can also be burst. Different types of terrain affect the distance your parties can move. You can control up to 6 parties of 4 characters each, and every party is accompanied by an AI-controlled dragon that you set the behavior for. It's a real simple AI: Seek out and destroy enemies, Assist party by healing or attacking nearby enemies, and Run like a scared little girl.
Like in FF:T, many battles have objective like Protect X where X can be anything from a party to a dragon to a structure. Other times, you don't have to wipe out all the enemies, just their leaders.
Attacking an enemy can be done two ways, by doing some sort of long-range attack like a javelin throw, black magic, summon, etc., or by direct engagement where you get into the adjacent square and enter attack mode. Attack mode is just like in any other SNES Final Fantasy: you're on one side and they're on the other. The only difference is that both sides only get one move (attack, defend, cast spell, or special move) before the fight ends, unlike in FF where the fight is over when everybody on one side is dead. Attack mode can be initiated by either you or the enemy.
You gain characters to put in parties by going along with the plot. Character classes are fixed and are minor variants of the standard Final Fantasy jobs. Variable classes would be cool, but it wouldn't fit in the context of Bahamut Lagoon's plot. Leveling if necessary is done in canned battles where you just fight stock bad guys for treasure and experience. Dragons evolve through various forms that change their behavior and artwork. Their stats are modified by feeding them different things between battles, and their evolutionary state is determined by their stats. Each party is dependent on their dragon for their stats also (spell strength, attack, and defense), so letting your dragon get K'Oed is a bad thing. That party becomes essentially useless, hence the "Run like a scared little girl" AI mode.
One of the biggest problems I had with Bahamut Lagoon had to do with getting bad guys with large amounts of HP dead. Since the map was squares, at a maximum I could have four parties wailing on him per turn. If the map were hexes, I could whack on him with 6 parties at a time
Project Management: Get your best friend taking Music Theory to help you out with music and find some friends-turned-sprite artists to draw everything. There's lots of Open Source stuff out there that can bring it all together, so all you should really have to worry about is coding the game engine.
Anyway, good luck and have fun. I look forward to the demo.
-drasnor
The full version of the game I have in mind wouldn't be out until Q4 2004 anyways, so plenty of time. Keep the ideas coming though, I really do want to get into my own Game Development fun.