Collaboration Game?

Collaboration Game?

rbwhitaker 28 Sep 2016 02:20

This is the place to discuss what type of game we should work on.

In the past, we've tended to stick with cloning an existing arcade-style game. That has some pretty big advantages. You don't have to spend much time talking about game design and how gameplay should work. You're cloning a game, and it works like the game you're cloning. Plus, there is usually art you can borrow or rely on to build your own art. And an arcade-style game is usually simple enough that you can get a functioning prototype in a single day.

Having said that, especially if most people who join are people who have been around for a while, maybe we're ready to do something different.

I'm going to leave the suggestions wide open. If you have a suggestion for what we could do for the collab, post it here.

We're not just limited to cloning arcade games.

I'm not opposed to picking a huge game, and just seeing what we can make in 8 hours.

Perhaps a board game that you want to try making a digital version of.

Maybe a subsystem of a larger game that we could make, rather than the whole game.

All ideas are welcome!

Re: Collaboration Game?

PiscesMike 29 Sep 2016 05:22

I don't have any suggestions for the moment. I've had a pretty heavy hand in the choices in the last couple collaborations, so it might be time to let some one else get in a few good ideas if you have them!

That being said, I still do like the idea of doing clone games for the collabs. Like RBWhitaker has said above, it solves a lot of issues with design, game play, and artwork that would normally take a huge chunk of dev time.

I'm not opposed to doing something original though, I mean that is where we're all heading for the future.

I'll probably throw up some games to clone a little later once suggestions get rolling. Good luck all!

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"May the mercy of His Divine Shadow fall upon you." - Stanley H. Tweedle, Security Guard class IV, The League of 20,000 planets

Re: Collaboration Game?

PiscesMike 29 Sep 2016 13:28

Well, this has taken an interesting turn!

UI dev was something I had considered. I think it's an interesting idea, and even if RBWhitakers version isn't quite ready I think we could work out some design elements and throw up a working version that should prove useful.

For what it's worth, I'm on board with that!

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"May the mercy of His Divine Shadow fall upon you." - Stanley H. Tweedle, Security Guard class IV, The League of 20,000 planets

Re: Collaboration Game?

Brett208 29 Sep 2016 11:55

RB, any chance we could work your UI library into the collaboration. I am curious to check it out. Even if it is just to setup a main menu for the game or something.

I feel the same way as Piscesmike that I have had a lot of influence on the choice for the last couple of collaboration s.

Re: Collaboration Game?

rbwhitaker 29 Sep 2016 12:25

My UI framework probably still has a long way to go before being very useful. For another game, I was strongly considering giving Empty Keys a shot. Liru has used that one in the past and it seems like it might be a good choice. I was planning on playing around with that a bit more over the next couple of weeks. If it's any good, maybe we could use that instead.

At any rate, I'd be happy committing to focusing on the UI for this collab so they we've got a game that actually has an example of that.

Re: Collaboration Game?

PiscesMike 29 Sep 2016 13:28

Well, this has taken an interesting turn!

UI dev was something I had considered. I think it's an interesting idea, and even if RBWhitakers version isn't quite ready I think we could work out some design elements and throw up a working version that should prove useful.

For what it's worth, I'm on board with that!

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"May the mercy of His Divine Shadow fall upon you." - Stanley H. Tweedle, Security Guard class IV, The League of 20,000 planets

Re: Collaboration Game?

PiscesMike 29 Sep 2016 13:29

Sorry for the double post, I hit the wrong thing to start, and can't delete it!

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"May the mercy of His Divine Shadow fall upon you." - Stanley H. Tweedle, Security Guard class IV, The League of 20,000 planets

Re: Collaboration Game?

Brett208 30 Sep 2016 12:38

Empty Keys looks interesting. I had not heard of it until now. It looks a lot better then my mash of UI code that I fiddle with as needed.

Re: Collaboration Game?

Brett208 06 Oct 2016 02:36

I'm going to start throwing some specific ideas out there. Below are some projects I would be interested in.

• Blockade with network play (See below for specifics)
• 3D Tank game (I am interested in seeing how the terrain is applied in a 3D game) https://youtu.be/omAcgnZdTyE?t=103
• Continuing with Xevious (maybe adding menu, fixing network play, and adding dedicated levels)

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Concerning Blockade from RB in an earlier collaboration:

I'm going to make another sales pitch for Blockade in 3D, because I think it's a good choice for us. (Don't get me wrong, if we choose Xevious or Dvorak, or anything else, I'll still be fine.)

We've made the game in the past, but I think we could remake it within the time frame and add networking and do it in 3D. I'm not saying we have to do that, but contrasted with Xevious, I think we have the option if we want. It has been so long since I looked through either codebase that I'm less excited about digging up those old bones. Reusing the code makes more sense if most of us worked on the original version and less sense if most people are different people. (It looks like me, PiscesMike, and Brett were involved in Xevious, while for Blockade, it was me, PiscesMike, Swatacular, and Marcus.)

The art for Blockade in 3D would be ridiculously simple. We could go with straight up colored cubes, or we could get a little fancier and make them look like little crates or something like that. But contrasted with Xevious, the art is really simple. (Having said that, if we do Xevious, I might be less inclined to want to work on networking code, and would be happy to make some 3D models of those alien ships for Xevious. So perhaps not such a big deal.) It's not like the art matters much anyway, since we're not selling it (yet). So even with Xevious, if we just used spheres and boxes and so on, I won't be too sad. But either way, Blockade's art is simple, even in 3D.

Networked multiplayer. I think out of all of the options on the table, this one is the most likely to end up with an actual game that all of us can play together at the end of the collab. Which, to me, is an incredibly enticing aspect.

Networked AIs. Perhaps even more exciting, we can implement additional AIs and have them compete against each other to see which one is the best. This is actually the biggest reason I've made Blockade my #1 choice: it is quite possible we could have 8 player battles with four human players and four different AIs at the end of the collab. It's a stretch, to be sure. Especially if we start from scratch. But it is a possibility. (I don't think we'll get nearly far enough with Dvorak to make this a reality. And with Xevious, I'm still trying to figure out how to make the game work with two players, let alone all of us human players plus some AIs.)

Re: Collaboration Game?

rbwhitaker 12 Oct 2016 23:00

I'm definitely on board with any of these.

Continuing with Xevious may make less sense if we have a lot of new people. I'd hate to throw them into the mix of an existing codebase, but based on last time, I'd say there's a reasonable chance we won't have a ton of new people. Perhaps I should make a sign-up list and see who's actually coming.

I lean a little towards Blockade because I think we could get a lot done there, but I think doing a more complicated game like the tank game could be more exciting to people. (After all, we've done both Blockade and Xevious before.) It is more complicated, especially because we have nothing to clone. We'd be doing some game design on the fly, on top of coding.

With respect to the UI conversation that was happening earlier, I don't know which one would use UI the most, if that's where we want to go. I'm guessing that maybe the smaller the game, the more we can put UI to work, because we'll just get further into it.

At any rate, I don't have a strong preference for anything, but if you were thinking about posting other suggestions, do it now because we've only got about 10 days left!

Re: Collaboration Game?

PiscesMike 16 Oct 2016 11:00

I'm going to cast my vote for Blockade.

Xevious would be cool to continue actually.. but I'm not quite ready to tackle that mess at the moment. Xevious has a lot of promise, but it was actually never designed for network play. There's nothing wrong with that. I think the results are still pretty danged awesome!

Before continuing on it though, I think the entire code base needs to be gone through and organized with some structural efficiency in mind. If we don't do that, then we will lose out on it's full potential.

Blockade would coincide nicely with my plans to get my server(s) back online - if we do it with the 3D and network play. Any networking aspect would be good. So, I'd say that's a major target for this collaboration.

Given the mixture of networking and simplistic art, it seems Blockade would be a great goal. If we pull that off, I'll be very impressed.

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"May the mercy of His Divine Shadow fall upon you." - Stanley H. Tweedle, Security Guard class IV, The League of 20,000 planets

Re: Collaboration Game?

Brett208 17 Oct 2016 01:19

Networked Blockade with a UI sounds like a solid choice to me as well.

I wouldn't mind staying 2D art in order to focus on the UI and networking.

Re: Collaboration Game?

Brett208 18 Oct 2016 07:30

After the discussions this weekend on the forum, I believe we all came to the conclusion to work Blockade with Network play and a UI.