I've been talking with Rikus about an idea I have. For starters, here is a concept pic:
I want to start a large project. The vision I have for this game is far too large for one person with a life to pull off. The idea is this:
I want to create a game released in episodes like a tv series. My idea is to create "Episodes" (5 in all) and release them one per week for five weeks. The game would then be called "(Game Title Here) Episode One, Season One."
Now, about that concept image... *rubs hands together gleefully with evil grin*
The guy in the skull mask: his name is Edward Crane. He is a professional thief. A cat burglar if you will. His family has been doing this for generations.
In the game there are:
Vampires
Mafia
Nazis
The game begins with some backstory. (Pardon me if this seems thrown together. That's why I need writers too!)
417 A.D. Two brothers are fighting over a diamond. The diamond has some sort of power (haven't quite worked out what yet.) One brother is evil, the other is good. The diamond belongs to the good brother (it was passed to him from their father.) The evil brother kills him.
Scene cut. 1937. In an operating room. Doctors are just finishing giving a man a lobotomy. They talk for a minute.
Scene cut. In an interrogation room. The hero (we'll call him Eddy) is being asked his name. Eddy begins to tell the story. Which is where game play begins.
Early on it's discovered that Eddy's family (his wife and son) has been taken. Reason being, he now has the diamond. (One of his ancestors stole it hundreds of years ago) Apparently someone wants it, and is using his family as ransom.
Eddy discovers the mafia is involved (think Dick Tracy era mobsters with machine guns.) He makes his way to Chicago. Through much blood spill, he finally comes to the conclusion that if anyone is responsible, it must be Al Capone. (history says in 1931 Capone was put in jail, and was sent to Alcatraz in San Fransisco, Ca in 1934.) So Eddy goes to Alcatraz.
Being the cat burglar that he is, the plan is to break into Alcatraz and find Capone to find out where his family is. But when he arrives, he is not alone. By amazing chance. He is not the only one attempting to break in that night.
He discovers that it is men loyal to Capone. It is revealed at this point that the mob is controlled by the vampires. It's also revealed that the man at the beginning of the game being operated on was a double for Capone. These men are here to make a switch. (history says that Capone had syphilis, the disease that eventually killed him) The man was given a lobotomy (a surgery performed during this time, to remove part of the brain to treat mental illness. It would often turn people into vegetables.) while Capone was acting sick for months for the setup. A doctor had been payed to come and diagnose Capone.
The switch is made and Capone is free. He explains that he knows nothing of Eddy's family, but tells him it must be the vampires in search of the "stone" (the diamond). He hates the vampires and refuses to be their pawn anymore. Being the former mob boss that he is, Capone has access to the latest "technology" from the army (30's era "high tech" like walkie-talkies, ect...) and Eddy teams up with him to bring the vampires down and get his wife and son back.
(This is the GIANT GAPING STORY GAP!)
I have no middle of the story but I do have an ending:
Eddy ends up in Germany. He fights the man responsible for taking his family. The man is a vampire who's name is Siscera. He is the one that killed his brother for the diamond in the beginning of the story. Eddy kills him. Yadda, yadda, yadda. He then gets captured by the Nazis.
Which takes us back to the interrogation room, which is revealed to be the place Eddy has been telling the story.
The End. (I left a bunch out...)
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Structure:
Season One
Episodes (5)
Levels...(not sure on number...)
The first episode will be released with a menu that will load the new episodes as they are installed each week (after downloding from TDC of course.) The final episode will be released with some special features. Perhaps a full "Season One" will be released for download.
Features:
* The game will control like a FPS (A & D = Left & Right, Space = Jump, Left Click = Shoot, Right Click = Bullet Time)
* Parallax scrolling
* Bullet time
* Close combat takeouts (think Prince of Persia style mixed with Splinter Cell)
* Interchangeable Weapons (maybe, maybe not)
* Vehicle Levels
* Sword wielding
* Look and feel of a graphic novel (see pic above)
* True stereo sound engine
* Ragdoll physics (maybe, ???)
* HWA DX8 (maybe, ???)
Anyone interested in helping me assemble a team to work on this? I really want this to be a large community effort.
n/a
Peblo Custom ratings must be 50 characters or less
Registered 05/07/2002
Points 185
27th March, 2008 at 02:50:45 -
You aren't allowing much freedom for your team, and you're promising an awful lot. Normally people pay us for this kind of work. Or at least some form of motivation.
The idea is nice and all, it'll just be hard to get people to make you all this stuff.
"Isn't it always amazing how we characterize a person's intelligence by how closely their thinking matches ours?"
~Belgarath
Originally Posted by Peblo You aren't allowing much freedom for your team, and you're promising an awful lot. Normally people pay us for this kind of work. Or at least some form of motivation.
The idea is nice and all, it'll just be hard to get people to make you all this stuff.
Nothing is set in stone. That is just a basic outline. When people get together, things change and I'm fine with that.
Originally Posted by Neo Monkey
Well, it sounded good, until I saw the features... I tink you are biting too big slice of cake in one bite.
Yes perhaps it is too big for one man. But I believe if everyone had an individual piece to concentrate on, it can be done. Ex: One guys says he'll do the sound engine, another says he'll help write the story, ect...
Well first off, what type of game is this? Platformer, top down?
Second off, it sounds like you have very little experience with Click products; that being said you're likely not the best candidate to be project lead on something like this.
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* The game will control like a FPS (A & D = Left & Right, Space = Jump, Left Click = Shoot, Right Click = Bullet Time)
If this is a platform game like I'm assuming (From your DLs here on the site), and you're going to use A&D, I'd definately suggest having W & S do something. Making W jump would probably be the best bet, cause you're not making an FPS.
* Parallax scrolling
Easy
* Bullet time
Fake bullet time is pretty easy. Real bullet time is kinda easy too, but you have to plan for it long in advance or it's a lot of time consuming, mind numbing work later on.
* Close combat takeouts (think Prince of Persia style mixed with Splinter Cell)
Careful how this is implimented, I'd hate to be aiming at someone across the level, only to have my guy pull a CC move because another enemy is close to me.
* Interchangeable Weapons (maybe, maybe not)
Easy
* Vehicle Levels
N/A I have no experience with vehicle levels
* Sword wielding
Same comments as the CC. The best games I know of for sword "feel" is the Megaman Zero games; but those aren't free aiming, so something like that might throw off the feel of this game.
* Look and feel of a graphic novel (see pic above)
Uh, considering that graphic is just a single panel, and not a game mockup; it's kinda hard to know what you mean.
* True stereo sound engine
Focus on sound design first. Well designed audio beats out the novelty of stereo sound (in klik games) anyday.
I do have a some experience in TGF and MMF. (see my older downloads) I know this can be done because I was making headway in TGF with the engine a couple of years ago.
The game is a side-scroller.
About the CC moves, in theory they would only activate if the cursor was on the enemy within range and the "E" key was pressed instead of left click.
The vehicle levels would not be drivable. They would drive themselves as they are still in a Side Scroller environment. (if you have ever played the Dick Tracy game on the old Sega Genesis you will know what I mean.) Shooting would be from the vehicles as the character rode in them.
Sword wielding would take the place of the CC in the certain levels were you wouldn't have a gun.
The ragdoll stuff is a big maybe...(depending on if someone on the team knows how and would like to implement it.)
I know I can make the game look close to the pic posted above. (minus the overhead light) all the sprites would be back lit, like the pic above. I made that pic in less than 20 mins. Not that hard to do in photoshop quickly.
By true stereo I meant small noises like enemy voices, gun fire, footsteps, ect. All the ambient noise would be pre-recorded.
I don't really like the story that much, but I have to commend you on the graphics. I tried to do something similar. Giving too much freedom doesn't help, it only scares people off. Arranging a team is half the battle. In the Click Community, most of the work is in trying to keep the team together.
I'd oppose against the "Controls like a FPS" - FPS controls do not work well in klik products. Choose either a top-down shooter or a platformer.. klik can only handle 2 dimensions without problems. Me and Peblo once tried to add a 3rd one.. turned out a bit messy
I have a parallax engine on TDC somewhere. It's cute, simple, flexible, and bug-free. I can do interchangeable weapons with no problem, and I've messed around with close combat and weapon wielding a little (my first game used a lot of swordfights). I'd say the hardest bit would be bullet time and ragdoll, but I've seen it done very well in other klik games. Stereo sound also sounds like a good idea.. I've been wanting to do something where the sound fades with distance, but I never had any real sound effects to start with
So.. deal is that I'll help you out on some coding, on the condition that someone will trade the secrets of real bullet time and ragdoll physics I'll even throw in a realistic physics engine if I feel like it.
Disclaimer: Any sarcasm in my posts will not be mentioned as that would ruin the purpose. It is assumed that the reader is intelligent enough to tell the difference between what is sarcasm and what is not.
It's actually not that hard Muz. I'll attempt to explain it horribly. Keep in mind that this is probably not the best/most efficient way to do it though.
Basically, you've got a counter (CountBul) that is added to every loop. In the code for enemies and bullets, add this event CountBull = 1, so it's only run then. The player movement code (This is assuming you're not using any type of built in movement BTW) should be CountBull > 0 so it's run constantly. Then it's a few simple events
Normal Time
CountBull = 2 => Set CountBull to 1
Bullet Time
CountBull = 3 => Set CountBull to 1
In this case, you'd be at about 50% speed decrease.
I can dig up one of my old examples if this confused you.
mmf should have a built in runtime speed option. when making games in c++ to slow it down or speed it up the main game is run in a loop. in the loop, computations are only calculated a certain amount of times based on a function call with a number as its parameter. the function uses the cpu's clock tick count per second, current time, and the amount of game cycles within the last second to calulate the fps. then it uses the fps and the number from the parameter to determine a delay. or something to that extant. i do it different ways everytime but that was the most effective and consistant and is cpu independant.
@shab - the way you are explaining it, it would be adding a delay to slow down any and all movement? which would be how i would do it by increasing my delay number in the function call (the easy way out)
to me this is not real bulletime. it just slows down the movements frame rate. i percieve bulletime as not a speed decrease but a movement decrease. so the movement moves in smaller increments in the same amount of time. making the movement more fluid while in bullet time.
i'll explain it this way.if the movement is originally 2 pixels per second, using a delay to make it half the speed, it would then become 2 pixels every 2 seconds. this means it would only move the character and draw to the screen every two seconds. instead if you use a movement decrease, it would be 1 pixel every second, still moving the character (only a shorter distance) and drawing to the screen every second making it look more smooth.
i hope that made sense. maybe an example would be better lol. now im gonna try this.
thinking about it now. with gravity and other physics and such it wouldn't be practical to use the decreased movement method, at the loss of smoothness.
Hmm.. I got that. I wonder what it'd be like to combine that with a physics engine. With my original physics engine, every movement is based on the time... slowing down the movement rate would actually be easy
Disclaimer: Any sarcasm in my posts will not be mentioned as that would ruin the purpose. It is assumed that the reader is intelligent enough to tell the difference between what is sarcasm and what is not.
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