Game ideas for community game

[diordna]

Post them here. Voting will begin on Sunday, unless there are objections.

This thread is for ideas only, use the original participation thread for discussion.

[maximile]

A game similar to Shufflepuck Cafe (http://www.vectronicsappleworld.com/macintosh/shufflepuck.html), but with 3D graphics and accurate physics (Chipmunk?).

[diordna]

I propose some sort of shmup, be it sidescroller, vert scroller, Galaga knockoff (ala Artack), or top-down Sketchfighter game. Such a game would have a modular design, so less experienced coders could more easily contribute by creating enemies and powerups without knowledge of the rest of the engine.

[AnotherJake]

I'd say side-scroller or vert-scroller would be easiest to implement if you're going for scrollers. Free-scrollers like Sketchfighter can be tricky, unless you did something like Wing-Nuts where you don't really have to worry about terrain/map/etc. collision and it just wraps around. Although collision might be a moot problem if using Chipmunk, but map editing might still be tricky.

[diordna]

Top-down free-flight collision isn't as hard as it sounds. I once wrote an engine for it in BlitzMax, but I'm assuming we wouldn't be using that. It didn't include rotation physics, but I don't think that would be a problem.

[Joseph Duchesne]

Chipmunk is very well suited to this task. I must say, every time I have thought "wouldn't it be nice if it could..." I have been pleasantly surprised that it could.

I suggest that no matter what the game is, that its mechanics are 2D (3D graphics are fine, but most game play should take place on the y,x plane.

I would really enjoy helping with a side-scroller or something like that.

[unknown]

I agree with Joseph Duchesne, a physicsy sidescroller would be nice

[diordna]

As long as it's modular and newbies can easily code new individual objects, I'm all for it, so the side scroller sounds good to me too.

[wyrmmage]

Plus, if we make a side-scroller, it'll be easy to make a level editor for it, and probably even a simple custom scripting language :)
-wyrmmage

[ThemsAllTook]

So, a sidescrolling shooter with Chipmunk physics? This actually sparks my interest, since I was thinking about writing a similar game a few months ago...

[Skorche]

A physics-y sidescroller. I'll be darned if I haven't been wanting to make one of those since I started Chipmunk...

I might just have to cave in yet...

[diordna]

I'll throw one in for variety - a standard platformer.

[AnotherJake]

Actually, a platformer isn't a bad idea! I would absolutely LOVE to help out on an old Metroid 1 knock-off.

[Skorche]

I'll throw one in for variety - a standard platformer.

Something like this perhaps: http://files.slembcke.net/idg/Platformer.tgz

;)

Regardless of whether you want "fancy" physics or not, I'd still promote that Chipmunk is going to make your life easier. Fast collision detection, easy to have moving objects, no need to fudge any of the physics when you stand on a moving object. It just works.

On the other hand, I'd like to add that having physics just for the eye candy often can make a game really frustrating, (I'm looking at you Deus Ex 2) letting you interact with the environment just enough so that you realize it doesn't matter. While you can bump over barrels and such, it has no bearing on the gameplay.

[aarku]

Speaking from the sidelines, here, you guys really ought to use Chipmunk. It's one of the coolest things someone in the iDevGames community has ever produced, and it's even open source. It satisfies the 2D requirement, it's really fast and a stable system, there are a ton of game possibilities to be done with it. If there is a problem or question about it, well, Scott obviously hangs around here. The benefits go on, and I can't think of any negatives, frankly!

Chipmunk!
http://wiki.slembcke.net/main/published/Chipmunk

That is all.

-Jon

[unknown]

Metroid on SNES oh yeah!

[AnotherJake]

How about an old-skool Metroid-inspired (overall gameplay-wise) platformer with cmd-r (the iDG mascot in the upper left corner of the home page) being the hero? I don't know how good he'd (she'd/it'd?) look from the side though... Maybe even include the little robot on the forum pages? The theme of the game might be to stop the evil invading viruses/worms/malware or something where you eventually work your way into the CPU to fight something like the Mother Brain (from Metroid) or something...

It might be a stylized adventure inside a Macintosh computer with levels following themes that Apple has put out over the years like: the candy interface and brushed metal and so on, and maybe even Classic themes. I'm not saying it'd have to be exactly using theme elements, but rather `inspired by'.

You could also have computer terminals to jack into from time to time like the ones in Marathon which give you a little bit of the plot as you go along.

For the record, I'm all for using Chipmunk. I think it'd be great in a platformer to have bits of baddies bouncing around the floor and boxes falling and things swinging with physics. I think platformers are natural fits for 2D physics libraries in general.

[Blacktiger]

How about a game like the incredible machine? If we did a simple scripting language and a good physics engine, people could easily add new components. Also, the game could have the map editor built into it so while the community could make maps, so could anyone who downloaded and played the game.

[aarku]

How about a game like the incredible machine? If we did a simple scripting language and a good physics engine, people could easily add new components. Also, the game could have the map editor built into it so while the community could make maps, so could anyone who downloaded and played the game.
That makes a lot of sense to me. A sidescroller would need more focused artistic direction (hard with loosely associated volunteers) and more complicated art. (Drawing animating sprites well alone warrants "complicated" in my book. I think those who have done it before also would agree.) iDevGames is historically and currently is short on artists, with no change in sight.

The development of an "incredible machine" seems more separable, too.

Blacktiger, is this about what you were thinking of? Could you expand on it more?
http://blueballfixed.ytmnd.com/

...................On the other hand, sidescrollers are cool! ;-)

Cheers,
-Jon

[AnotherJake]

I definitely agree that a cohesive art vision is likely the weakest spot here. I love `contraption' style games (for lack of a better term) like Incredible Machine and Enigmo, just as much as I love scrollers and platformers. I also have to agree that I think the art may actually be more attainable/easier with the contraption genre. But, with the contraption genre the gameplay maybe isn't so easy to iron out since I don't think it is as well-known or simple and intuitive to develop for, so that may present a problem on the other hand of things. I mean, the `group-think' on establishing the gameplay for a contraption game seems a lot higher than with a scroller or platformer -- I could be totally wrong about that though...

[adding] On a slightly different line of food for thought: Microsoft had an intern program to develop for the Xbox 360 and that intern group wound up developing an excellent side-scroller called Aegis Wing. I've played it. I love it! There is something to be said for the simplicity and fun of a good ol' side scroller!

[diordna]

A sidescroller doesn't necessarily need to be art-heavy. One frame per ship would do for a simple game, or maybe two layers which rotate against each other, or maybe a couple of extra frames. At any rate, it's nothing one artist couldn't handle. For an "incredible machines" game, you'd arguably need more art, because you'd need to draw each individual piece. In a sidescroller, you just need a handful of ships, powerups, and obstacles.

[AnotherJake]

Actually, there would be zero need for any frames of art for a side scroller since they could all be 3D meshes. That's what they did with Aegis Wing and it is stupid simple and looks fantastic! It is hard for me to describe how they did the foreground and the background, but let me give it a try: For the foreground, imagine a side scroller without any background graphics (no parallax star fields, nebulas etc). All you see is enemies to shoot and mines to run into. All those are 3D objects drawn in a flat layer or possibly ortho view. Then, for the background is an entirely separate but completely 3D scene which is `scrolled' through by simply having a camera following a beziér (spline) path through a space station or debris field or city street looking 90 degrees to the left. The background camera is like looking out the side window of an airliner, and the foreground camera is just a side-scroller drawn in front of your face. It's an amazingly simple concept but totally modern and visually stunning. It gives the illusion that the game is all full 3D and much more complex. It's genius!

[aarku]

When I spoke of sidescroller I was imprecisely referring to the Metroid idea. That'd have characters.

Static ships and stuff are no problem, indeed.

-Jon

[Bjoernke]

I remember having a nice lode runner like game on my Mac SE/30. It had a kind of stick-figure which you guided along, and which would splat when falling onto the ground. Great fun, and graphically a low demand for the developer. Maybe a similar approach could be taken?

Alternatively (or additionaly), moddability of graphics would be nice. I don't know how easy that is to program in C and it's offspring. But that way, we could make a beta, and then ask on deviantart and other image or 3d art related sites for people to make graphical plugins/mods. Maybe a contest for the "official" look could be made, with the top three entries being bundled?

[Blacktiger]

Blacktiger, is this about what you were thinking of? Could you expand on it more?


Sure Jon, the idea is that you are given some simple task to perform (such as pop a balloon or get the mail), a set of components that you could use to complete the task, and an environment to work in (walls, floors, some components the player can't mess with). Basically the player gets a set of these tasks/puzzles and they build a Rube Goldberg machine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rube_Goldberg_machine) to complete them.

I also like the idea of a lode runner style game. They're pretty similar to the Incredible Machine when you think about it, since they consist of a set of puzzles to complete and could easily have a built in level editor. The one thing I really liked about the old lode runner was the two player mode, since later levels in that mode required both players to work together to complete the level.

A side scroller would be good too. One idea that I had wanted to do for the classic game remake contest was to make a galaxian style game with 3d graphics for the ships, but then have it rotated at an angle or have certain levels from different perspectives (ie looking 'downrange').

[diordna]

Actually, I really like the Lode Runner idea. Kinda like Water Tower and the now-long-gone Space Station Pheta.

[AnotherJake]

I agree that the Lode Runner idea is a good one too. But as Jon pointed out, it will involve character animation, like a platformer, but even more, which is a particular graphics task which may be a problem pulling off with time and talent constraints.

[diordna]

Actually, you really just need a set of animations for the main character. Everything else can be static. If everything were tiny, like in Water Tower, it would be even easier.

[PowerMacX]

Stick figures as stand-ins? Once the project is advanced enough, I'm sure it won't be hard to find some artist willing to contribute.

Has anyone tried the last version of Pixen (http://opensword.org/pixen/)? It now includes animation support: screenshot (http://opensword.org/Images/r3b2/animation.png)

[AndyKorth]

One possible compromise is a sidescroller where you drive some kind of a vehicle.. perhaps a tank. It has more of a traditional "on-foot" side scroller feel (as opposed to flying a spaceship, which I feel is a slightly different genre). It's also easier to make art of vehicles than running people.

Furthermore, I have seen firsthand how nicely chipmunk can be with vehicles with moving wheels.. Very cool ;D

The vehicle can still jump, so lode-runner gameplay is a possibility. After all, vehicles HATE falling in pits.

[Bjoernke]

Side note:
Yes, I meant spacestation pheta, and it seems it still exists: Some Screens (http://www.tandtsoftware.com/main/Pheta/MacintoshSampleScreens.asp?Platform=Macintosh)

As usual I am disappointed with the colour version of a game I only knew in black and white. Soooo.... Any chance of limiting the engine of the community project to only b/w? ;)

[Hog]

The vehicle can still jump, so lode-runner gameplay is a possibility. After all, vehicles HATE falling in pits.

The lode-runner couldn't jump

[AnotherJake]

Side note:
Yes, I meant spacestation pheta, and it seems it still exists: Some Screens (http://www.tandtsoftware.com/main/Pheta/MacintoshSampleScreens.asp?Platform=Macintosh)

As usual I am disappointed with the colour version of a game I only knew in black and white. Soooo.... Any chance of limiting the engine of the community project to only b/w? ;)

If you mean grayscale, then drawing everything desaturated is not a problem. You just have to calc luminance values for glColors, which means that the engine mustn't call glColor directly but rather through its own custom luminance calculator. And, it will have to calculate desaturated versions of all textures, which can either be done as a load option and save VRAM at the same time, or be multi-textured with a saturation value mix. I'd say reload the textures as desaturated versions and be done with it unless someone really wanted to get fancy.

If you mean just pure black and white, then everything could probably be drawn with intensity textures using the same technique as above, but then you'd probably have to do some kind of dithering on top of that for the shades of gray, which I don't know how to do but I'm certain could be done.

[adding] I'll bet someone could make it even easier by writing a GLSL shader to do B&W dithering on the fly. Of course that would limit the amount of machines it could run in B&W on, but hey, it might be kinda neat.

[ThemsAllTook]

[adding] I'll bet someone could make it even easier by writing a GLSL shader to do B&W dithering on the fly. Of course that would limit the amount of machines it could run in B&W on, but hey, it might be kinda neat.
Ahh, modern technology... where we need to have high-end graphics cards to be able to render color graphics in black-and-white. :lol:

unknown wrote a pretty cool 1-bit color OpenGL game a while ago. He'd probably have some insight on the matter.

[EvolPenguin]

I like the Platformer/Load Runner ideas. Especially the one with Cmd-R as the hero, it would fit the site well ;).

Alex

[Skorche]

So I've been thinking about this some more, making an Incredible Machine (TIM) like engine could work out really well regardless of what kind of game people want to make.

The cool thing about Incredible Machine was the game was the game editor. Essentially the game would consist of the following.

A UI for placing the different kinds of objects.
A UI for setting triggers that invoke arbitrary actions.
An API or GUI tool for creating and scripting new objects.
A library of interesting objects.


One thing that the TIM didn't let you do was to interact with your objects. You placed them on the screen and then hit a go button. A fairly easy addition that could be made is the ability to trigger actions from keyboard/mouse events. This would open up a world of other possibilities that you could build with the editor. Imagine how easy it could be to make a pinball game, or even a simplistic sidescroller game.

[Skorche]

I'd like to add that I don't mean for it to become a generic game engine or anything, but a sandbox that can be used to make a bunch of loosely related puzzle games of varying genres.

[Blacktiger]

One thing that the TIM didn't let you do was to interact with your objects. You placed them on the screen and then hit a go button. A fairly easy addition that could be made is the ability to trigger actions from keyboard/mouse events. This would open up a world of other possibilities that you could build with the editor. Imagine how easy it could be to make a pinball game, or even a simplistic sidescroller game.
That would certainly allow for vastly different game mechanics. TIM didn't let you interact with objects because you are building a machine that should do something without any human interaction other than to start it.

We could include some way of creating new components in the editor. That way users could also add new components as well as creating new puzzles.

[Najdorf]

I'll re-propose on this thread the idea of different minigames with the same character(s)-setting ("iDev the Robot"?), each of such minigames making up for a level of the game, tied into some kind of story (nothing fancy, just something to tie up what gets actually done). People that agree on making one of these minigames together in 2 or more (like say those that want to do a load runner game, those that want to do a shmup, etc) are welcome to do so making private arrangements.

It's not the most collaborative project and it will be of uneven quality but at least it's got a decent probability of getting done, as everyone can help even if they want to do different kind of games, use different technology, have different skill levels, have different ideas, while still allowing those that find a match to work together in a more integrated fashion.

[Carlos Camacho]

I haven't read all of these posts/threads but I'm wondering if anyone brought up the last community project, Hooptie? It has game assets and could use modernization.

Cheers,

[unknown]

Where is hooptie?

[diordna]

Just got your PM reply, Carlos. I wish this forum had notifications for that sort of thing.

I don't know who has the Hooptie stuff.

[Carlos Camacho]

A good title, "Where in the world is Hooptie?" It COULD be on SourceForge. I'm sure someone in the community has the code and game assets. I have them SOMEPLACE.

[diordna]

I'd still like to work on this, though, we have good mojo for these ideas. None of us are familiar with the old code base.

[ThemsAllTook]

Here's a version of Hooptie I had on my hard drive. Dunno how outdated it is...

http://www.sacredsoftware.net/temp/hooptie-cocoa-0.2.5.dmg

[aarku]

I can say with certainty that isn't the absolute latest (last) version of Hooptie, sadly, because at the very minimum there is another music track I wrote that was in there. (There were two of us contributing music.) But it's pretty close! Thanks!

Cheers,
-Jon

[Josh]

Here's a version of Hooptie I had on my hard drive. Dunno how outdated it is...

http://www.sacredsoftware.net/temp/hooptie-cocoa-0.2.5.dmg
Oh man, that brings back all kinds of good memories...

[Kjurtyl]

For the record, Hooptie can be found at:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/inkubator

The version on DMG (v.0.2.5) does not appear to be the latest one, though the cvs version should be the latest. I have v.0.2.7 on my HD, I presume that to be the last build made but that may not be the case.

The level editor PenguinEdit is also at sourceforge. That one should be at version 1.0 (referred to as v.0.1 in the about box).

If there is any demand, I suppose I could put together a .dmg with the definitive versions of both.

I don't particularly see Hooptie as incomplete: the first milestone release was achieved and it gathered absolutely no interest upon release. There is no real reason to pursue development of a product that has no audience. Perhaps creating a game that would have a larger audience would prove more successful.

The stated goal of Inkubator at the time was to produce a game with both experienced and inexperienced programmers. That goal was achieved as far as I am concerned. What is the current objective of creating a community-built game?

- Kjurtyl.

[diordna]

Individual motives may vary. My personal objective is to learn and have fun.

[Josh]

For the record, Hooptie can be found at:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/inkubator

The version on DMG (v.0.2.5) does not appear to be the latest one, though the cvs version should be the latest. I have v.0.2.7 on my HD, I presume that to be the last build made but that may not be the case.

The level editor PenguinEdit is also at sourceforge. That one should be at version 1.0 (referred to as v.0.1 in the about box).

If there is any demand, I suppose I could put together a .dmg with the definitive versions of both.

I don't particularly see Hooptie as incomplete: the first milestone release was achieved and it gathered absolutely no interest upon release. There is no real reason to pursue development of a product that has no audience. Perhaps creating a game that would have a larger audience would prove more successful.

The stated goal of Inkubator at the time was to produce a game with both experienced and inexperienced programmers. That goal was achieved as far as I am concerned. What is the current objective of creating a community-built game?

- Kjurtyl.Oh dang, where the heck did you come from and where the heck have you been?

[Nick]

Individual motives may vary. My personal objective is to learn and have fun.

Mine is to finally take part in creating a whole game. Most of my "games" turn into experiments and quickly degrade to me working on a single piece forever and never finishing. This will be a good way for me to observe and help make a full game and get to see the entire code of how it gets structured.

The fun is also a good part. :)

[Bjoernke]

Please add your reasons to the wiki under MissionStatement (http://bjoernke.com/idg/wikka.php?wakka=MissionStatement).

If you can't edit, you need to register (http://bjoernke.com/idg/wikka.php?wakka=Register) a nickname with me.