LIMBS OFF (GPLv3) is what we, the developers, call a phun-fysics game. phun-fysics is the term we have coined to describe our way of trying to recreate complex real-life physics, but with certain liberties. whenever we feel a minor "adjustment" to some law of physics will make the game more entertaining, we take one of these liberties.
background
we have been working on this for a long period time, as opposed to for a long time. the distinction here is that we are not working full-time. so even though the first commit was in September last year, we haven't actually worked efficiently 8h a day since September last year. not even close. this "we" is me and my friend, Stian. we are students with more than a passing interest in free software game development. this game was part of our Bachelor Thesis in "Free Software Game Development", but we started hacking it before that, and will be continuing to hack it post-thesis.
current gameplay
right now LIMBS OFF is a humble three limbless characters running into each other on a tiny planet. when they hit each other, their mass is decreased. when the mass is too low to support the character, its body parts are unlinked. here is a demo video. it is slightly outdated since we now have character sprites, but it will serve well enough: https://secure.plaimi.net/games/limbs-off/demo.php.
future gameplay
in the future we want to have a bunch of characters running into each other on a bunch of characters, with inter-planetaray travel by way of cannon. we will have online multiplayer and all sorts of neat things. including the ability to actully punch, kick, and throw, like is ordinary fighting games.
art
we do not provide any art with LIMBS OFF. this means that there are no sprites, only some quadrilaterals (screenshots are from an older release, where we didn't use sprites for characters) running around a circle. there are no sounds either. in the future however, we want to hack the code so that people can make art and install it for use with the game. as of now (in the git source), it is possible to make character sprites and a background picture and place them in the graphics directory. in the future the game will provide an easier way of handling and changing between graphics - as well as sound.
help needed
our main problem with development has been, is, and will no doubt continue to be that we are not able to progress it very rapidly on our own. during this summer vacation we have other engagements (though we'll hopefully find some time for LIMBS OFF as well), and we are both going back to school in August - this time without any courses we can justify spending on LIMBS OFF development. so we need coders to help us out. instructions and todos can be found on github, and you may of course ask me anything in this thread. we also need artists to hit us up with sprites and sounds, but of course the code is more important at this moment since it doesn't actually use sounds, and the usage of character sprites is a bit eeeh. ;-)
links
homepage with downloads: https://secure.plaimi.net/games/limbs-off/
direct link to source: https://github.com/stiell/limbs-off
