Possible project

edited in Projects
I am aiming this primarily at Wits game design, but all are welcome to contribute. What I want to start is a small project just to get more of the game design students involved in the process of making games. To this end I am making an open games project anyone can take part in and contribute too.

I propose a fighting game. I realize and I am aware of how difficult they are to make, and I am aware of how huge the sprite sheets are. However doing concept art, thinking of theme, setting and back-story, and making back drops are all welcome additions to the process.

This is not exclusively for artists we also welcome programmers and sound designers to provide anything from movement code, collision detection etc... and for sound designers small sound bits or songs will help the design process along.

Anything helps.

The theme that I am proposing for this project is American 1920's prohibition steampunk fighter. All things mystical and magical (within reason) do exist. ( this theme is open for debate if anyone wants to change it, or has a stronger theme).

I hope everyone provides a little bit of something to the process, and think of it as fun

Ah and the reason I chose a fighting game is because it has a large character roster and many settings, so people can feel free to design anything they want really.
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Comments

  • Ok let me get this started with some character designs. Here is the "Paper Boy"
    fighting game char.gif
    128 x 128 - 6K
    fighting game char drawing.gif
    1240 x 1748 - 513K
    paper boy.gif
    1240 x 1748 - 110K
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  • Everyone from wits game design - roll call! :)

    And I must say, this is pretty ambitious, aiming to do a fighting game right out of the gate, I'm not sure if it's the perfect item to get people "familiar with the process"... And I think if you want to get to know the process, character design is/should be one of the last... From assimilating everything that's been said around these parts, the sooner you make a "game" and not "art" the better.

    Perhaps someone else can comment?

    That said, really cool character :)
  • edited
    I would be willing to help with some code. But how are we going to organize this if it's to be done? @TasticLuc, will you organize and bandage all the parts together? And are we going to use Gamemaker or Unity or something else maybe?

    Edit: I don't know, this sounds like fun...but it's going to be a bit tough to pull off with just random people providing random stuff. Maybe you could start by getting a volunteer group that want to contribute on a regular basis and then ask for very specific things from the rest of the community?
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    What I want is less to aim towards a finished project, but more to get people involved with making parts of games in whatever way possible. That said I do hope that people come together and provide a lot of content and interest. With people willing to engage, and people willing to teach, I hope we can expand the community.

    The reason I chose a fighting game is because I like themes and I think a fighting game theme will encourage people to get creative. It also opens up a roster of lots of weird and wonderful characters.
    In addition I will also be willing to take concept art and make full sprite sheets of them if there is enough interest. I enjoy the practice.

    Also here is a quick fix of paper boy
    paper boy.gif
    1240 x 1748 - 112K
  • Ok, I see what your trying to do and I don't want to sound like a negative nancy(mainly because my name is not nancy) but I don't think this is the best approach.

    Recently @ProjectX tried to get people to participate more by organizing monthly challenges. At the moment they are a little bit in a state of limbo but after a long discussion (found here) it was concluded that there isn't really a problem with motivation and ideas. I would say the problem is focus.

    So the solution is probably trying something along the lines of what the art competition that is currently running is doing. Using constraints vs open ended themes. So instead of having a largish open ended project that doesn't really have any direction or focus. Rather hold regular narrowly focused and constricted competitions that might develop into larger projects should the people working on it feel like it.

    just my 2c.
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    @Tuism: Commenting! :) So, yes, the game prototype is totally important. But concurrently, it's cool to be having artists (or really, anyone else who's working on the project, like sound, or writers, or whatever) prototyping other stuff too, like art.

    What's important then though, is that the art prototype really is an art *prototype*. Just like with game prototypes, it's much better to have hundreds of really quick thumbnails, silhouette block-ins, mood boards, colour palettes, photo reference, R&D place-holder art if it's an engine I haven't used before to try and catch its quirks early on, etc. than it is to have one polished painting or textured 3D model. The goal is to try lots of different things, be brave, figure out what works and what doesn't, and shotgun ideas all over the place. Most of them will be shitty, and they're just as useful.

    So right now, if I were part of a team that was at the start of a game production cycle, as an artist I wouldn't be making actual pixel art (except, maybe, as an option for the art style, or unless this was -- by some miracle -- faster than sketching). I'd be looking at making lots of sketches of stuff, with the aim of throwing my net super wide, do things that are perhaps more unexpected, and getting as many contrasting ideas down as I can. It's much easier to rein things in afterwards. The art doesn't need to look good, necessarily, so much as spark ideas and conversation, and get people thinking. :) And to get everyone involved early on in art too, so that there's more buy-in, and get the disagreements and discussion going early on, before the artist starts working on the actual in-game assets. (Because at that point, every iteration becomes much more expensive.)

    Then, when there's a game prototype that people think is successful, and everyone can agree on exactly what the game camera's expected to do, and what the scale is of the characters and environment, and all the art prototyping has revealed the direction the art should take, are artists in a position to think about making actual game art assets.

    It may (for some people) be more fun to jump right in and detail the crap out of stuff. And that's fine if it's for fun, or if it's meant to be a portfolio piece or something. But in production, that's SUPER risky, and just generally a bad idea. Of course, if you feel you're learning a lot doing that, then that's good for you. (But it's not good for the project! :P)
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  • what he said :)

    for example, my dwarves - they actually came from a lot of other sketches, the pixel artstyle was arrived at almost accidentally, and then I decided to stick with it. Linking it in case you were curious, I could show a lot more than that if you'd like, from my sketchbook. I think it's a decent enough practical example.

    http://www.thesteventu.com/dwarf-animation-test/

    The current art comp has no pretences of anyone's art becoming a game - in fact everyone's only encouraged to participate to improve and learn about pixel art - it's a super focussed exercise, and alleviates apprehension. If you say "let's do some art and design characters for a fighting game - GO!", that's kinda focussed.

    If you say "let's all do some stuff and make a game together!" everyone flounders and wonders which part they can/want to/would do, etc, (I mean it goes from concept sketches, setting design, story, narrative, sound, background, coding, modeling, animation, blah, etc) and we all end up with a lot of stuff (or not a lot of stuff) which people haven't any cross-context in - all of this I think we learnt in our past challenges here which said "go do stuff", and people can't really discuss the same kind of thing with each other, as everyone's doing something really completely different :)

    I really enjoy this format of comp that we're having now as everyone's learning about one thing, and it's accessible to everyone too. I'm thinking it's a good start but hard to maintain, but it's something to be aware of and continuously work towards! :)
  • Might I point at M.U.G.E.N in the hope that a tool built to make fighting games might come in useful? ;)
    Thanked by 2Tuism hanli
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