Game Genre: FPS RPG
Story Genre: Sci-fi Cyber Shooter
Engine: Dynamic Raycaster with voxel stage.
Language: QB64 GL
The Gameplay:
It's hard to target all my influences.
I'm basically taking every Cyber, Horor, Sci-Fi, Cyber game i ever played along with films & books and trying to out match what i have learned with textured sprites and blocks.
As a new player you begin by choosing a class and stats by navigating a small skill tree.
Choosing some skills will lock out others so choose wisely.
Story: You are you.
You don't know who you are, you don't know where you are.
All you know is it's darker than hell.
The game provides actual story telling via messages, logs, notes.
Some are visual.
Some are audible.
Messages may provide clue's, objectives, ect.
As a member of the "censored"
You find yourself in a airlock the door being broken with no memory of how you even got there.
From here the gameplay begins.
Using whatever items or skills provided you must escape the airlock before it decompresses, time is against you.
1. i could use the emergency axe that i found in that security chest.
2. i could use a multitool to bypass the door's power supply, by playing a small mini game.
3. i could find the "censored"
Well lets leave that at that ^_^
As you progress you slowly unwind the story thru 3 different endings.
These endings are chosen by your actions.
Along with the heavy puzzle elements and story mechanisms you will have to fight and survive waves of enemy swarms using a variety mod-able weapons the player can aggressively interact with enemies and swarms.
Just as a player may gain experience so can enemies.
Enemies that leveled up may evolve in several ways.
Those enemies will become even more menacing over time, earning traits and sometimes even turning on their own kind.
Killing a enemy results in experience gain and the hope that a useful item will drop.
Of course the player will be well rewarded only if his efforts.
Items range from equipment, weapons, health, weapons mods, ect.
Weapons mods can give weapons unique abilities and stats.
This can be very useful to overcome those more menacing enemies.
After completing the game players can choose nightmare mode.
Allowing players to complete the skill tree and try to beat ceberon again.
This time without constraints to the enemies.
Skills and Perks:
1: Hard boiled meat (makes all health sources 20% more effective.) "a perk"
2: Weapons maintenance (Allows modification of weapons adding speed, damage, effects..ect.) "a skill"
Just 2 of several perks and skills.
After completing a mission skill points are given rated by several factors in the players performance.
Other Skills:
Hacking..
Repair..
Marksman..
Survivalist..
Cyborg..
Metabolic synapse..
Cyrax..
Assassin..
Doom Trooper..
Chew Toy..
Lead Man..
The Engine:
The basis of ths game lends a bit from minecraft, Doom-RPG and pre-era raycasting.
The engine does a single cast and identifies the walls and hands that to a buffer.
The buffer is sorted back to front using mechanism for detecting any non visble left over surfaces.
The buffer is the used as reference and walls are drawn as flat surfaces.
The system relies on OpenGL ES 2.0 HW acc allowing me access to render targets.
Meaning shaders can be applied to surfaces giving me plenty of room to make the game shiny for a sprite based game.
The engine will also feature a Chromdepth mode.
Where the game takes on a more stylized look.
http://www.halloweenforum.com/members/terra-albums-tutorial-designing-chromadepth-3d-haunt-images-picture44678-colors-final.jpg
^^ these colors and shades represent different depths.
When combined on black and shaded it can create some interesting 3D depth effects.
http://www.programmerart.org/pics/chromadepth2.png
Levels:
4 difficulty levels "each one following the next"
Each section it's own "level of difficulty".
Several levels "6", "1 hidden" per-section
More about this project later ^_^
Story Genre: Sci-fi Cyber Shooter
Engine: Dynamic Raycaster with voxel stage.
Language: QB64 GL
The Gameplay:
It's hard to target all my influences.
I'm basically taking every Cyber, Horor, Sci-Fi, Cyber game i ever played along with films & books and trying to out match what i have learned with textured sprites and blocks.
As a new player you begin by choosing a class and stats by navigating a small skill tree.
Choosing some skills will lock out others so choose wisely.
Story: You are you.
You don't know who you are, you don't know where you are.
All you know is it's darker than hell.
The game provides actual story telling via messages, logs, notes.
Some are visual.
Some are audible.
Messages may provide clue's, objectives, ect.
As a member of the "censored"
You find yourself in a airlock the door being broken with no memory of how you even got there.
From here the gameplay begins.
Using whatever items or skills provided you must escape the airlock before it decompresses, time is against you.
1. i could use the emergency axe that i found in that security chest.
2. i could use a multitool to bypass the door's power supply, by playing a small mini game.
3. i could find the "censored"
Well lets leave that at that ^_^
As you progress you slowly unwind the story thru 3 different endings.
These endings are chosen by your actions.
Along with the heavy puzzle elements and story mechanisms you will have to fight and survive waves of enemy swarms using a variety mod-able weapons the player can aggressively interact with enemies and swarms.
Just as a player may gain experience so can enemies.
Enemies that leveled up may evolve in several ways.
Those enemies will become even more menacing over time, earning traits and sometimes even turning on their own kind.
Killing a enemy results in experience gain and the hope that a useful item will drop.
Of course the player will be well rewarded only if his efforts.
Items range from equipment, weapons, health, weapons mods, ect.
Weapons mods can give weapons unique abilities and stats.
This can be very useful to overcome those more menacing enemies.
After completing the game players can choose nightmare mode.
Allowing players to complete the skill tree and try to beat ceberon again.
This time without constraints to the enemies.
Skills and Perks:
1: Hard boiled meat (makes all health sources 20% more effective.) "a perk"
2: Weapons maintenance (Allows modification of weapons adding speed, damage, effects..ect.) "a skill"
Just 2 of several perks and skills.
After completing a mission skill points are given rated by several factors in the players performance.
Other Skills:
Hacking..
Repair..
Marksman..
Survivalist..
Cyborg..
Metabolic synapse..
Cyrax..
Assassin..
Doom Trooper..
Chew Toy..
Lead Man..
The Engine:
The basis of ths game lends a bit from minecraft, Doom-RPG and pre-era raycasting.
The engine does a single cast and identifies the walls and hands that to a buffer.
The buffer is sorted back to front using mechanism for detecting any non visble left over surfaces.
The buffer is the used as reference and walls are drawn as flat surfaces.
The system relies on OpenGL ES 2.0 HW acc allowing me access to render targets.
Meaning shaders can be applied to surfaces giving me plenty of room to make the game shiny for a sprite based game.
The engine will also feature a Chromdepth mode.
Where the game takes on a more stylized look.
http://www.halloweenforum.com/members/terra-albums-tutorial-designing-chromadepth-3d-haunt-images-picture44678-colors-final.jpg
^^ these colors and shades represent different depths.
When combined on black and shaded it can create some interesting 3D depth effects.
http://www.programmerart.org/pics/chromadepth2.png
Levels:
4 difficulty levels "each one following the next"
Each section it's own "level of difficulty".
Several levels "6", "1 hidden" per-section
More about this project later ^_^
LogoQB64_blue_alpha_high.png
800 x 600 - 672K
Item09.png
64 x 64 - 1K
Item01.png
64 x 64 - 868B
Item47.png
64 x 64 - 602B
Perk12.png
48 x 48 - 2K
Perk9.png
48 x 48 - 3K
Perk11.png
48 x 48 - 3K
Perk5.png
48 x 48 - 2K
Perk8.png
48 x 48 - 2K
Comp2.png
64 x 64 - 1K
vend1.png
64 x 64 - 4K
Comments
The whole chromadepth and voxel-based blah thing doesn't seem to give you anything you plan to use to enhance gameplay. And your collection of skills and perks is similarly bad at creating an image of the game in my mind.
Flesh out your gameplay before you start toiling away at random technical systems that don't add anything fundamental.
What do players DO, moment to moment?
What about the things that players do is fun?
How can you, as a lone developer, build a system to explore that fun without wasting loads of time?
That's why it's incomplete.
I only became free again today. "bachelors party"
will try to flesh it out more with gameplay details.
Chroma depth is almost like 3d anaglyph.
But bumpmapping comes from open GL and shader code. TY very much.
Once that is in place fps can get up to 1400Fps
I will see how many devices i can support.
But yes the PI is on the list of devices i'm looking to have it running on.
But depending on the final build of QB64
Android
Windows
Mac
Linux
R-pi
and a few other devices hopefully.
Most of these may even feature 4 player Co-op play.
Have a look at these images.
Um.
Pick up a copy of PC-format this month and you will have a pair.
It's a set of clear glasses that break images into a spectrum that hits the eye at certain angles depending on the "hue"
Ray casting? Really? I built a raycasting engine earlier this year for fun and although it's an enjoyable project, it's sort of obsolete. No offence, aren't you just making more work for yourself? If it's only for the sake of aesthetics, you'd be better off working in OpenGL triangle strips or something, and emulating the effect.
And voxels? I remember when everybody thought those were the bees knees, and sure they still crop up every now and then but do people actually take em seriously? :D
Anyway, if you're intent on using these then I think that's cool (old school!) , but I ask why you would use those old algorithms that scale badly... I mean, just kick up the resolution on a ray caster and watch your PC die a little bit inside.
This raycaster lends much from john carmacks newer Doom RPG caster.
The idea is to be amazingly fast even without GPU acc so that even small hardware can handle it.
The nice thing is that once qb64GL gets in a more complete phase i can easily switch my "draw plane" to OpenGL's sexy triangles.
Just take my X.Y.Z.Angsin.Angcos from my wall buffer and dump it into GL instead.
I'm doing this project for two reasons, fun and i love telling stories.
Other that this game is sounding a bit weedy on the graphical side i hope that i can pull off the gameplay and story to keep players wanting to return to ceberon.
But it's the fact that i'm trying to make the engine as light as possible for low end devices and some effects that would make MR carmach proud.
I guess shodan screwed with my head when i was a kid.
The sci-fi horror genre had always been one of the section of gaming that broods the best out of the gaming worlds.
I come to you as a programer and writer.
Joules Verne, Kevin Levine as they wished to inspire generations, so do I
XD
@Jdog my math is about as new school as i can think of.
The trick is that nothing is drawn in the casting loop.
Instead of scanning each pixel to be drawn I only use it to get info on wall and sprite placement.
This and the sorting algorithm takes up the least amount of power.
But as i said i'm waiting for galeon to give me the new release of qb64GL.
Once that's ready i can make my draw code GL specific and optimized.
-legion
Barrier 1: Waiting for a new version of BASIC. So that you can program in BASIC. When there are other programming languages that let you do exactly the same thing without being, y'know BASIC. The reason for forcing BASIC seems to be nostalgia on your side, no player is going to care what something was written in.
Barrier 2: Once you have a new version of qb, you'll build a whole custom rendering system. Is that necessary for your gameplay? If it is, do you have to write it yourself? Surely those chroma screenshots came from somewhere, maybe you can use that? I know there are raycaster engines out there that are free to use.
Barrier 3: You're going for this retro feel for your game, so players are going to have to meet it halfway and suspend their trained sensibilities in order to play it, but you're not gaining anything from the process: You're not producing the game any faster because of it... If players are going to have to meet you halfway anyway, why not start with a card-based prototype so that you can get your story and combat down and awesome first?
... I dunno, maybe I'm weird, but it just doesn't make sense to me to add more barriers that you have to surmount in order to do something that's already so hard that you've never done it before.
P.S. Jules Verne didn't invent his own book binding mechanism or typefaces in order to tell his stories. And Ken (not Kevin) Levine didn't code on Bioshock, other people did that. If you want to work on story, then work on story.
I'm using the stable SDL release currently.
But once i switch over to GL i wont have to change any code.
Once it gets into GL i can do :
Parallax bump mapping.
Glow & bloom shaders.
Distorted & Warped surfaces.
If i had used geometry and 3d models this would severely add to my payload of work when almost 55% of my sprites are already done.
I could probably do this in GM, it would be easier to get to the fun parts, but i am very strapped for cash.
2. Now where is the fun in that?
My code works fast and will do what i want it to.
There will be very few changes and only a few additions to the engine.
3.That may be a good idea.
-about story telling.
True.. but that would let me lose control of whats happening.
-Gameplay no. it's currently no burden on the gameplay and getting that side of the game up to spec.
See.. i have full control.
Next version of GL does not have network support but will be out in 3 weeks.
Galeon does a new version every 1 month so it's a bit of a waiting game.. yeah
The croma detph "i know everyone is worried." is only a feature.
I will have Anaglyph support too, but as i said it's only a feature.
Players can save their eyes by just toggling a switch.
I will always find a flaw or a lack of certain control or power.
Writing it myself will ensure that:
-: Everything does what it should
-: No one has a clue about it's inner workings
"cripple's hacking and cheating to a degree"
-: The pride of seeing your own manual labor turn into something.
No offense dude.
It's like you are approaching gaming from a very top down perspective.
Remember that developing games is not just click and punch.
The methods you speak of is what we call duct tape development.
IE anyone can make a game regardless of skill or not.
Yes choosing a engine from a well sought after company is nice to quickly make games but you lose out on alot.
You seem to considering it all from a game reviewer perspective.... that is not how all games are made.
-no offense ment
Errr. No.
"IE anyone can make a game regardless of programming skill or not."
Why should you have to be a pro programmer to make good games? that's like saying... only people who can build their own guitars should be allowed to make music.
PS: I think what you are doing is really cool, even if you are making more trouble for yourself than you need to. Looking forward to seeing your progress :)
Since you can say that you need your own hardware to have the exact control you want.
And you need your own mine to make sure you get the right silicon.
And that you need your own universe to make sure that the electrons spin correctly.
Here is a question. If you're a good programmer why can't you just make the engine do what you want.
And if control is such a large issue then why:
Does every person who I know on this forums with a BSc Comp Sci (or equivalent degree) work in Unity.
Do AAA studios use the Unreal 3 engine instead of writing their own.
Batman is nothing like UT3, but they use the same engine. Deus Ex: Human Revolution is nothing like Tomb Raider, but they use the same engine.
Hell Half Life was made on the Quake engine.
In all these cases there are programmers working on engines, and tools, to make games, and I am sure in many of these cases their programming skills were far superior to yours.
---
If you are wondering why people are going on about this. The site is MakeGamesSA not MakeGameEnginesSA. And your inference about using engines is kinda a bash against most of the industry, not even just the people of this forum.
Nope i guess in walks of life there are many way to tell a story.
Regardless of skill or qualification.
If I have a drive to do something must I ignore that calling.
I cannot afford any quality tools, my internet is very limited.
It's a fact of doing what i like doing the way i like doing it.
Not expecting for this to make even a penny.
Just doing it for the pleasure of watching pixels communicate with the world and tell a story and have fun doing that.
What if minecraft was harassed for the use of cubes and sprited 3d models?.
: (
Why is it such slander to make your own coffee?
And then share it?
Suggest me a list of engines then...
There's no harm in wanting to build your own engine, but don't let lame external influences stop you from building your game or engine. If you're going to have to wait for someone else to get something to done before you can build the engine you want to build (because hey, if engine tech is where you get your kicks, good for you, it's just a hobby for you). Use something that's available now to build your engine.
If what you want to do is build a game, and you think building your own engine is the only way to get there, well then you're mistaken. There are some great already built engines out there. So listen to that drive (and the helpful people here) and find solutions to your obstacles. Unity is FREE to use. You don't have decent internet? Come to a community meeting and get the installer from someone else. Too far away? Surely you must have a friend somewhere that can mail you a CD :)
I don't think anyone was offended, not really anyway. The point the other guys were trying to make(if I can speak for them) was that you are making it difficult for yourself. And that might lead to not completing your game. Which would not be good, because it sounds like fun and I want to play it. :P
I don't think it's a problem if you want to design and code your own engine, it's just not the most effecient way of making a game. So if your goal is to make games, like the primary objective of this site and it's community is, there are better ways to do it. The community is going to try to assist you and point out that it is better to use a game engine that is already built. Especially if your time/experience is limited.
As far as a list goes:
http://unity3d.com/
http://www.yoyogames.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_XNA
Those are three prominent ones I know about. Also, all three of them have some sort of free version to download.
I shall, however, issue you a challenge to complete a fun game. In all honesty one of the greatest experiences I have had is seeing a person have fun playing my game. So as fun as making an engine may be seeing a person having fun with your game is a scale of magnitude greater experience.
I've mentioned before on my thread about unity and alternatives that I enjoy working on a lowish level and having access to things. So I get you, @Legion. For every API bug or design flaw that has held me back or frustrated me. For every time-consuming GUI that obscures debugging output and "helpfully" hides implementation details which make it a nightmare to get to the bottom of bugs.
I've banged my head against the wall many times because of things like flash. It may have it's uses but fuck me, I don't like the way it works in many ways. I don't like actionscript, I don't like javascript. And although I'm going into Unity in good faith, I can tell that it will make me very angry sooner or later.
I greatly value understanding how things work, because I feel they give you real power and make it so much easier to deal with any hiccups that can and will occur.
But whether I like it or not, javascript has become the glue that holds the internet together. And yeah, I might be apprehensive regarding the object-centric nature of Unity, but at the same time I'm impressed by how quickly I've managed to get going in it.
So, in the same breath, you're being very ambitious and a little bit presumptuous too. Remember, raycasting was created to run 2.5D environments more quickly on very outdated hardware on a 16-bit system before the days of commercial graphics hardware acceleration of any kind.
Frankly, I can churn out better graphics and 20x performance using a bit of openGL in a scripting language than I can using my ray caster written in C. If you're writing a ray caster for speed, you're doing it for the wrong reasons. You're better off using "real" 3D.
But I wish you the best of luck either way.
We're all creatures of habit but sometimes it pays off to swallow our pride. </philosophe>
This post turned out MUCH longer than I intended :P
(Note that "good calls" in this case are defined as things that make you producing a game that other people can play more likely. Also note that I've made more games than you, plus I have a CS degree and have built more engines than you have too, so yeah, internet-buttsniffing over, k? I'm aware that this is slightly dickish, but I feel that arguing over this level of stuff is stupid - I have made games AND am a technically minded person, take advice from that perspective)
Nah, your game can get hacked just as easily. Memory editing tools just flag values that seem to change less regularly, or have changed after specific events. It's really easy to find the single value that corresponds to health or whatever and create a macro that keeps setting that to 1000000000 for as long as you want. Writing your own stuff is no defense against hacking if you're handing someone the code to run on their own machines. Even if you understand hacking it's really tricky to proof against it and generally not worth the effort unless you're Blizzard and hacking is going to destroy your auction house economy.
Personally, the pride of seeing something you built work is pretty cool. I don't see how that's in any way diminished by not building everything yourself... If anything, I find it way more rewarding seeing someone else playing a game I've built and having a good time, PLUS I get the extra pride of seeing my hard work come to fruition. I really don't understand why so many people seem to think that the "game" part of building a game is easy. 99% of people who think that haven't actually done it, it would be like me (who has never done plumbing, only moistly watched) saying that plumbing is easy so I'm not going to bother fixing this leak yet, I'd rather go build a new kind of spanner to do it with. That's so backward. It's not even as though people who use existing systems PUT LESS EFFORT into their games, it's actually COMPLETELY THE OTHER WAY AROUND: Time and again, the roll-your-own crowd give up and never finish a game, while the use-other-people's-wheels crowd sticks it out for way longer and actually produces something. So you get more satisfaction in more ways from more work by focusing on completing a game instead of being some sort of control freak that has to rebuild everything from scratch. Likewise. I'm approaching game development from the perspective of building actual games. So far, every person that's been focusing on building their own engine or tech or whatever has completely failed to actually build a game. How long have you yourself been talking about super technical stuff as it seems to catch your imagination? How many playable games have come out of that?
I'm talking about game development as I've experienced it. I built engines for ages, I thought I had to know C++ and get as close to the silicon as possible. I have 0 games to show for those years. I don't even have valid experience from those, because most of the actually useful stuff I learned, I've learned by using and then replicating systems that I've needed elsewhere. Or I've been engrossed in trying to solve the problems that emerge from the particular game I'm currently working on. Having a playable system that just begs to be fixed is much, much better for learning than having a system that might one day be playable. This speaks of another common misconception: People keep assuming that the "hard work" of game development lies in writing these glossy and alluring "engines" that people keep talking about. Nothing could be further from the truth! Engines are easy. Engines are solved. Engines just implement algorithms that are known. But writing an algorithm that pushes lag compensation into your particular gameplay without feeling like it's getting in the way of input? That's different for every game. What about writing a system that simulates whatever economy that you've got going in your game so that you can have a solid heuristic for your AI? What about optimising your enemy interaction so that the game doesn't slow down on specific hardware? What about catching that fucking bug that nukes level 3? What about tweaking your particle systems to produce specific emotions more reliably? What about creating believable character engagement? What about, y'know FUN?
None of those things are solvable by just googling a paper or reading existing engine documentation, that's the real bleeding edge of game development and in my opinion, everybody that focuses on writing their own engines is a lazy coward for picking the easy option with an easy out - All they have to do is go "Oh, this crap is too hard and it's not working right and I don't have a game anyway" and they've justified stopping.
That's why I talk about removing barriers that you're creating yourself: I think people tend to create fake barriers all the time, just so they have excuses to stop when things actually get hard. Because, guess what happens AFTER you've done all the "hard" engine work and you've miraculously got something you can build your game in? That's right, you still have to do the whole building the game part. Which is provably harder. I'm curious, what do you believe people lose out on? I disagree. All games are made through focusing on gameplay. Sure, not all software is going to be a game. Engines aren't games. We don't make stories with books, we make them with words. A book is useless without words, just like an engine is useless without a game.
Also, inb4 someone goes "Har har, graphic novels!"
@Legion: I think another way to think about it is to realise that any (video) game is supported by different pillars, including the game mechanics (the rules, the design), the aesthetics (the art, the sound), the technology (programming), the world (story, narrative).
Each of those pillars is a speciality in its own right, and it's difficult to build a really great game if all of those pillars don't support one another. If you're going to focus a lot of time on building your own engine (i.e. the technology pillar), because you enjoy it and have fun, then that's great! :) But realise that if you're spending time on that, then that's time you're not spending on the other pillars. It's hard enough to come up with solid, refreshing, fun game mechanics. It's hard to make appealing artwork. It's hard enough to write.
So, if you're a one-man team whose aim is to *finish* a game, then it makes sense to skimp on as many of these things as possible. If there's ready-made technology, that could save countless hours of time. If there's ready-made art, that saves time too. If it takes place in an already-established world. If you're cloning someone else's game mechanics.
The thing is, if I want to be an artist, then I make art. I paint, I sculpt, I draw*. Art exists outside of the realm of games. Similarly, If I want to be a writer, I just have to write*. If I want to create worlds, I can do this outside of games too. If I want to be a programmer, I program*. There are some great real-time renderers that help offline-rendering folks (film and advertising usually) visualise what their result is going to be before they commit to days of rendering. The tech is similar to games, but isn't a game in itself.
But if I want to make great games, then I focus on game design. Those two are inseparable. Game design is hard. It deserves respect. So when you say stuff like "anyone can make a game regardless of skill or not" it starts to scream how little you know about the subject. :P (Or, more accurately, "anyone can make art regardless of skill or not" is probably true too... but how useful is that kind of thinking really? What's the difference between "anyone" who just picks up a pencil, and the dude who's been drawing for years? Who's more likely to be paid to do this kind of work? And why? :) )
So if you want to program, and you want to write game engines, and you want to build your own renderer, because you enjoy it, then that's great, and don't let anybody stop you! :) But then realise what it is that you're doing, and what it is you're not doing. What you're doing is making a game engine. What you're not doing is designing a game. The end result might be a cool video you can show off and a list of features. You'll have gotten better as a programmer. It's very unlikely that it will be any fun though, in which case it might as well not be a game, right? :)
If you take an existing engine, you've got your tech. Check. Pick a super basic art style (like, all flat colours), so art becomes much faster to make. Check. Now you can focus on story (yay! one of your goals!) and gameplay (creating fun! yay! another one of your goals! Unless you meant programming for fun, in which case there's *still* LOTS of programming to do anyway, in terms of bringing the design to life, and tweaking things so that they feel really good).
(*: Making art for games, writing for games, and programming for games are all specialities. I'm not saying writing novels and writing games are the same thing -- they're not. But if *writing* is one's passion, then one can write great works without being tied to all of the constraints that making games brings. If I went to a game-making community, and wrote out pages and pages of world lore and character history for a game, that's fine, but it's not really a game I'm making yet! Same with art; I post some art I'm working on. It'll be art that can go into a game, sure, but I don't claim that it's a game, because it's not.
And that's what's happening here, I think. Posting lots of tech, and programming stuff, is all fine and well, but it's not a game. I think if you just claimed to be writing an engine for fun, for yourself, and not claiming to be making a game (yet) a lot of this discussion wouldn't have happened. :) You've posted some idea stuff in the first post, but there's no evidence yet of actual *game design* thought, and without that, your game's... just an engine, y'know? So just be clear -- especially to yourself -- what it is you're trying to do.)
Really don't want this little project to fail.
I have actually been at work on this for 3 weeks putting in 3 to 7 hours into the game per day.
But i have been thinking about it for years.
I want to share more about it.
I hate playing the waiting game as well.
I should have actually waited with this whole post.
I'm sorry.
Just for interest sake.
I state again, the casting may seem 2.5D but everything Drawn is indeed located in a 3D space.
um.. what would you suggest to record on the desktop.
I use Fraps, I know a couple of other people use Camtasia. With Fraps if you're looking to record audio, make sure you're not running 5.1 sound, that killed me for a day: Turned out I had to force my hardware to 2 point stereo and then I could actually do things with the captured audio stream.
And yeah, don't be sorry. Be productive ;) We're just trying to help you be as productive as possible... I would ask if you're sure a large project like this is the best place to start, but that's probably a discussion for another time/thread.
Can we like get past this already. From what I can tell everything in this thread has been constructive. So what if somebody disagrees with what anyone else is saying here. All points of view are valid in some way.
@Legion I think what we are really looking for is a larger description of the game play (you don't have to describe each and every skill or whatever, but just a slightly more detailed description than what you have given). We'd like to know what kinda game to expect!
After choosing your level 1 perk you will be locked into a Class tree
"Soldier, Engineer ,Sci-ops" depending on the perks chosen.
This class will govern a lot about everything you will encounter in the game.
Each with it's strength's and weaknesses.
As players begin to explore they will gain experience for fixing, breaking, hacking, modding, discovering and even killing things.
when players level up they are allowed to upgrade or or choose a new perk or skill.
In some condition this may mean not having certain skills, weapons, equipment or perks could hinder a path to a objective so a alternate path must be found in some cases brute force, clever thinking or hidden path's.
Every section has several ways to overcome obstacles.
Stealth being one of them.
Lighting and Sound plays a role in the game other than providing fine ambiance it can lead to alerting everything to your presence making the path to victory a horrid one.
On your way thru the levels you will begin to encounter more and more menacing monsters and puzzles per section a level section may only be 32 x 32 but there will be several of them each with different story elements, puzzles and foe's to fold some spanning over several sections.
Finding weapons alone is not enough.
You need to mod them.
Gaining the engineers advanced modding skill will allow for better and more advanced mods.
When you break a chair for example a "part" may appear.
Some parts can be used as parts for weapon mods.
Weapons can be fitted with makeshift scope's, silencers, special magazines ect...
There are some interesting way to obtain parts, some more fun than others.
Doors in game.. are a hazard when they built the place they never thought so many airlock failures would occur.
Being able to break.
And being able to fix them is nice.
But is the room next door pressurized?
Only one way to find out.
I think these small idea have some wicked properties.
Once you gain LVL 6 you gain a very special skill.
A skill that will help you make it or break it.
This leads a lot into manipulating the "cencored" dimension of game-play.
questions? comments?
^_^
I could go on an on about details like these.
Just take it minecraft, doom 2 and system shock 2 has some influence here.
I'm really just having fun making it.. i hope every moment is a pleasure to explore, play and discover.
Anyway... been chatting and coding most the the day, time to watch some thing.
"Watches episode 12 of mirai nikki"
Galeon is pushing a few of the GL functions for me.
He sees we need them and he said in about a month to 2 most things should be in place.
Actually. yes one influence you found.
But not the cherries on the cake ^_^
It's not a simply classed as a single class.
As difficulty levels increase and your level gains you will begin to take skills from other tiers, mixing up and building your character.
It's all about mixing it up once you get to higher levels.
Great news.
I can now size my maps to the size of skyrim's epicness with a teeny tiny speed drop.
But i'm having a small bug that stopping me from populating my sprites beyond 32 for some odd reason now, I think it may be a issue with the sorting or galeon somehow capping for overflow integers, but why 32....
As you mod weapons and add level's and properties to them.
Properties are shown as colors. red, green, blue, yellow.
Weapon mods can be removed with the correct skill levels and can be replaced with other mods.
As weapons level they gain their own stats... some good, some bad.
Keeping weapons working is a task too.
As parts will slowly wear on some weapons.
Armour.
Some attacks are so severe that they can smash a entire piece of Armour to bits.
Shops.
In game shops will let you spend a currency to help round off your character.
But many good item shops will be hidden.
the 32 limits have been broken without compromising speed or compatibility.
I really want some input please.
1. What elements barring what I have said so far would you expect or want from this game?
2. As the game will support co-op what tools will be most useful to make MP more pleasurable? chat systems, ect..
I really want to know what other players and developers would expect, do or want.
Oh.. i loaded 55% of the game content to see what impact it has on memory.
Not a flinch
:edit
Galeon has released v2 of qb64GL.. nice
But dude, I'm talking about things I want, not what you want to build. And right now, noone really knows what you want to build.
So either it feels like you want me to give you ideas, or you want me to tell you about my ideas so you can tell me how much your ideas aren't like mine.
Either way, I don't get it.
I used http://camstudio.org/ to record a prototype I was working on and it was way easier to just link a youtube video that ask people to download a 100mb file. (of course it took a little time to make a demo, do a couple iterations of a very amateur voiceover and upload it and so on, but was worth the effort in the end)
Bear in mind this is a compromise, you will never get proper feedback from just a video, a full demo will almost always be better. But with a video it might be easier to get feedback than screenshots, especially if your demo isn't playable just yet, also allows you to specifically point out to users what you want them to see. Which is again useful if you are at early prototype stages (but opens up a whole other discussion about responsibility that I won't go into ;) )
I donno, this is my limited experience. Any of the more experienced people out there agree/disagree? Or have anything to add about screen recording for game demos?
I will keep that in mind and try to get a demo in the works.
^_^
@Tuism
What you are describing is some thing almost like a project a buddy is busy with on couch of evil "skype group"
Quite a bit of work is going into my sprites to make sure they look the way i pictured the game.
Look i have a bunch of developers on skype and they trust my ability to bring fun and interesting game idea's.
I spent about 4 years just thinking about this game and it's details.
I'm making this game for pure fun... for me to have fun... and for others to enjoy it too.
Not even going to charge a penny for it.
Here are a few weapons sprites!
-UAC Militry Issue Boot
"mapped to a quick hotkey" this melee tool can be pulled out at any time without interrupting gun play.
-UAC Standard Fire arm
one of the 64 mod able weapons I am going to let people play with.
-UAC Ripper Rifle
Armed with a scope and a large clip the riper can mow down foes.
It's a effect heavy driven weapon that cut downs low to medium level foes.
-UAC Pump Action Shotgun : AKA The Legend
Now also mod able the classic shotgun will bring new lulz to old technology.
No offense dude, but that phrase always scares me... You don't need to justify yourself or prove anything (besides, who are these developers on skype? Have they made rad stuff? How are they convinced and I'm not? Is that something you should even be caring about?) but you do need to get something playable. Otherwise you're going to find that you'll have spent 5 years thinking about this game and its details pretty soon.