FreeGameDev

==Idea Number 1==
A tile-based topdown arcade game with a graphical look maybe similar to bomberman or pokemon etc.
You playing a drunken guy (so movement is exaggerated and hard to handle) who is in the highest top of a tower (maybe even a modern office building) full of zombies and it is your job to escape.
Your only way out is the stairway, which for some reason isn't one, but several parts. The point is, for each level you have to cross the map to get to the next part of the stairs. The less time you need, the more points there are.

In alternative, you could be a ninja, which job is to clean the tower from the zombies with fast forward moves.

==Idea Number 2==
A simple falling game. You play an living egg (i know it's pretty crazy) that is just simple falling down a level (with some kind of speedline?). You can only move on the X-Axis in the middle of the Y-Axis. It's your job to collect coins, gems, whatever and watch that you don't get hit by spikes, stones, birds etc. Maybe it would be cool to make the graphics in aztec or thinker style.

Discuss!!!

Sauer2 {l Wrote}:==Idea Number 1==
A tile-based topdown arcade game with a graphical look maybe similar to bomberman or pokemon etc.
You playing a drunken guy (so movement is exaggerated and hard to handle) who is in the highest top of a tower (maybe even a modern office building) full of zombies and it is your job to escape.
Your only way out is the stairway, which for some reason isn't one, but several parts. The point is, for each level you have to cross the map to get to the next part of the stairs. The less time you need, the more points there are.

In alternative, you could be a ninja, which job is to clean the tower from the zombies with fast forward moves.
Hm. Sounds like something like http://zahmekatzen.net/vocfi.html + zombies and bigger maps.. Although I can't imagine how the 'drunk' movement can be done in 2D.

Sauer2 {l Wrote}:==Idea Number 2==
A simple falling game. You play an living egg (i know it's pretty crazy) that is just simple falling down a level (with some kind of speedline?). You can only move on the X-Axis in the middle of the Y-Axis. It's your job to collect coins, gems, whatever and watch that you don't get hit by spikes, stones, birds etc. Maybe it would be cool to make the graphics in aztec or thinker style.

reminds me of http://www.pixeljam.com/dinorun/ ,where you have full control, but really only one way to go.

Well, yeah, the ideas are similar. Althought the second one is not supposed to be an escape-game.
Maybe those would be even possible on smartphones, using balance detectors (are they really called that?).

Some kind of concept *cough* art.
I know there is stuff missing like birds, background arts, etc. Anyway, if someone makes good art, i feel kind of forced to try to make the code.

Some more, but still not much detailed stuff. Not sure, if this style looks so good. On the other hand, I'm also not sure if more details look good on a 320x480 screen.

Sauer2 {l Wrote}:Some kind of concept *cough* art.

The attachment concept.png is no longer available

I know there is stuff missing like birds, background arts, etc. Anyway, if someone makes good art, i feel kind of forced to try to make the code.

Easy as pea pie! I learned a lesson: if you want to make good bg art, simply copy everything the LÖVE artist does in colors and style! I demonstrated this to be true just yesterday!



Now that you showed a concept screen, I'm again reminded of something..

I like the coin! (Might be hard to see, we'll see what background will be used..) The player.. well, he's good too

Yeah, that's a good idea. I think, I will try to create a green background (or an orange one, but that would maybe cause infreakments with the coins) to better fit with the players color.
The question is now: Should it have a gradient or should it have a constant color for vertical parallax scrolling?

BTW: I think, using Love isn't an option this time (as nice as it is) , because:

-I wanna learn C
-they often break the API downward compatibility
-maybe i (or someone else) want to port this game to Palm Pre or other Smartphones, hence the game solution 320x480

Sauer2 {l Wrote}:Yeah, that's a good idea. I think, I will try to create a green background (or an orange one, but that would maybe cause infreakments with the coins) to better fit with the players color.

I think the best/safest thing would be to give the coins/everything another border that is black or gray or white. or the negative color of what is behind it .

What I think is important is moving background. so suppose you would use my bg as posted above, the planets and clouds would have to slooowly move around.

Sauer2 {l Wrote}:The question is now: Should it have a gradient or should it have a constant color for vertical parallax scrolling?

SOLID!

But that's just like my opinion, man. ;D. Gradients don't always have to look bad. If you have gradient ideas, please up them and I'll comment on them/tweak them if I have ideas...

Sauer2 {l Wrote}:BTW: I think, using Love isn't an option this time (as nice as it is) , because:

oh don't worry, I'm not too fond of love as the api any more, until it reaches 1.0 while I'm very fond of the minds behind it and the community in front of it

Sauer2 {l Wrote}:-I wanna learn C

That's good I think hardly anybody appreciates you programming in freebasic ^^

PS: cmake is a nice build configuration system - http://www.cmake.org/cmake/help/cmake_tutorial.html

PPS: I really like how in slime volley, the eyes of the players always look at the ball. I think in your game, the player char should always look at the nearest coin maybe? or if you use mouse to control it (like in the giraffe game, which I linked, which you hopefully were able to play).

On the topic of game engine, and i don't want to just jump in here and say "Wooh, we're made of awesome and win!!111eleventy", so i'll just point out that the as-yet unreleased Gluon might be an option for what you're after... Since we are aiming to have the possibility of running the games on various smart phones, as well as desktops... And are resolution independent... Dunno if that's of interest to you, just thought i'd point out the option

qubodup {l Wrote}:

Sauer2 {l Wrote}:Yeah, that's a good idea. I think, I will try to create a green background (or an orange one, but that would maybe cause infreakments with the coins) to better fit with the players color.

I think the best/safest thing would be to give the coins/everything another border that is black or gray or white. or the negative color of what is behind it .

Black borders have the best contrast, i believe.

qubodup {l Wrote}:What I think is important is moving background. so suppose you would use my bg as posted above, the planets and clouds would have to slooowly move around.

About moving, you mean something similar to the Secret Maryo Chronicles intro? Or do you mean both horizontal and vertical?

qubodup {l Wrote}:

Sauer2 {l Wrote}:The question is now: Should it have a gradient or should it have a constant color for vertical parallax scrolling?

SOLID!

But that's just like my opinion, man. ;D. Gradients don't always have to look bad. If you have gradient ideas, please up them and I'll comment on them/tweak them if I have ideas...

Well, my idea was to make a green to green white gradient, but i think a) the colors are oldschool and don't fit in an "inkscaped" game and b), I would have to make the clouds as seperate objects and that would suck for me and maybe some weaker handhelds performance, because more pixel must be drawn. So let's scratch this, or shouldn't we?
The clear advantage is, that you can make clouds move with different speed this way.

qubodup {l Wrote}:

Sauer2 {l Wrote}:BTW: I think, using Love isn't an option this time (as nice as it is) , because:

oh don't worry, I'm not too fond of love as the api any more, until it reaches 1.0 while I'm very fond of the minds behind it and the community in front of it

Yeah, i just hope, they maintain Version 1.x longer, like the SFML- or the Allegro-Team does.

qubodup {l Wrote}:

Sauer2 {l Wrote}:-I wanna learn C

That's good I think hardly anybody appreciates you programming in freebasic ^^

Freepascal, actually, GREAT DIFFERENCE!!!111einself Also, because, after only 1/5 year of Java beginning in school OOP feels like overkill for small problems. It's similar to C++, I won't use it, if I don't use it for a job.

qubodup {l Wrote}:PS: cmake is a nice build configuration system - http://www.cmake.org/cmake/help/cmake_tutorial.html

Well, things like headers and build systems have kept me away from gcc, etc. Is it really worth the trouble for, let's say altogether 10 files?
Not that I don't like the concept of not having any scipt language dependency for that...

qubodup {l Wrote}:PPS: I really like how in slime volley, the eyes of the players always look at the ball. I think in your game, the player char should always look at the nearest coin maybe? or if you use mouse to control it (like in the giraffe game, which I linked, which you hopefully were able to play).

That's a point, thank you very much for posting it. Also i think, mouse control is much easier playing Breakout. Poor giraffe, btw.

Sauer2 {l Wrote}:About moving, you mean something similar to the Secret Maryo Chronicles intro? Or do you mean both horizontal and vertical?

Well, left-to-right and vice-versa would be good, additional rotation or diagonal movement would be a good bonus. Top-down movement would be useful to simulate depth - objects in the foreground (mountain close to camera/screen/player) would move faster than objects in the background (mountain far from camera/screen/player).

Sauer2 {l Wrote}:Well, my idea was to make a green to green white gradient, but i think a) the colors are oldschool and don't fit in an "inkscaped" game and b), I would have to make the clouds as seperate objects and that would suck for me and maybe some weaker handhelds performance, because more pixel must be drawn. So let's scratch this, or shouldn't we?
The clear advantage is, that you can make clouds move with different speed this way.

IMHO there's no "inkscape style", you could draw word war vi or oldschoolgravitygame using inkscape, as you could draw secretmaryochronicles. And if you have ideas, draw and upload them! Much easier to understand what you mean this way.

EDIT: the obvious solution for low-tech systems is that it must be possible to disable the background elements!

Sauer2 {l Wrote}:Freepascal, actually, GREAT DIFFERENCE!!!111einself Also, because, after only 1/5 year of Java beginning in school OOP feels like overkill for small problems. It's similar to C++, I won't use it, if I don't use it for a job.

Lulz, sorry! Freesomething it was!

Sauer2 {l Wrote}:Well, things like headers and build systems have kept me away from gcc, etc. Is it really worth the trouble for, let's say altogether 10 files?
Not that I don't like the concept of not having any scipt language dependency for that...

Kay, don't worry about it. If you can write a makefile or command for compiling it shall be fine and you/we can get help using cmake later if necessary. It's easy enough so even I was able to write a CMakeLists.txt a while ago with some #freegamer help!

Sauer2 {l Wrote}:Also i think, mouse control is much easier playing Breakout.

That's pretty subjective though - I can only recommend including both mouse and keyboard controls.


I remember how you like really hard games... man.. lives... no checkpoints... instant-death... *sight* I see what's coming. =D

Guess that should work better. Thanks for the clouds, btw.

qubodup {l Wrote}:I remember how you like really hard games... man.. lives... no checkpoints... instant-death... *sight* I see what's coming. =D

Hahaha, you got me dude. Here's some yet unreleased draft.

PS: The live sign (I think, 3 lives pro game) and a block sprite.

That's a (not optimized) demo, how the background could look. A binary for x86-Linux is included, you need SDL and SDL_image. What do you think, any ideas, also for better background color(s)?

Video: [edit, whoops, where did it go?] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybIVvd3H7K4
Well, you could have 3 layers of clouds, which would move at different speed and perhaps have different size-classes and/or border width.

You could make it so that the clouds 'merge' when overlapping. (the overlapping border would not show) you can do this by rendering the images of the cloud filling at 100% opacity and separate filling and border images, then render all borders in the back and all fillings in the front.

They might be moving too quickly in general too perhaps..

About colors: I don't know. How about having some animated birds fly around?

Hi qubodup,
thank you for your response

1. Great idea.
2. Great idea.
3. Great idea, too. But hard, do you know a way to make the birds fly that would look cool? Or should they behave similar to the clouds?

best regards

Sauer2

PS: Nut-Case-Game-Idea of the day: "IKickYou", a game for admins. You have to play a minigame. Who is done first kicks his opponent.

leinir {l Wrote}:On the topic of game engine, and i don't want to just jump in here and say "Wooh, we're made of awesome and win!!111eleventy", so i'll just point out that the as-yet unreleased Gluon might be an option for what you're after... Since we are aiming to have the possibility of running the games on various smart phones, as well as desktops... And are resolution independent... Dunno if that's of interest to you, just thought i'd point out the option

Sorry, I didn't want to drop you, I simple forgot your post. Gluon looks cool from the describtion, but there are two big disadvantages.... C++ (like I said, not for home) and Qt-Libs (SDL runs on much more platforms, at least version 1.2).

Well qubodup, since merging clouds work (only one layer for performance reasons), how should the birds fly?

Sauer2 {l Wrote}:Well qubodup, since merging clouds work (only one layer for performance reasons), how should the birds fly?

I was thinking about http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brrxoEeS4YA -like birds.

By the way: Is the vertical movement of the clouds part of the 'falling' simulation?

Okay, I'm going to try this the next days. About the clouds: Yes.

@Sauer2: roger!

Merging clouds video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1NkkLNrrnw

qubodup {l Wrote}:roger!

Birds are ready.


BTW: Is it your computer lagging in the video? That's bad, maybe I should use hardware acceleration in SDLSetVideomode. But that's strange, it's only filling a big surface + blitting 32 surfaces...

Sauer2 {l Wrote}:BTW: Is it your computer lagging in the video? That's bad, maybe I should use hardware acceleration in SDLSetVideomode. But that's strange, it's only filling a big surface + blitting 32 surfaces...

Are you sure it's lagging? Could it be just YouTube lagging? Or because of screen capturing? Can you tell me what seconds at you see lag occur, or do you mean the frames per second being low in general?

birds video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PSheuEgbcw
The birds don't look good at all.. the animation timing is good though I think.

I suppose I'll try to make a bird in style of something like http://falling-mood.tumblr.com/tagged/bird unless you think it'd be too much attention-drawing to have a full-shaped bird.

qubodup {l Wrote}:Are you sure it's lagging? Could it be just YouTube lagging? Or because of screen capturing? Can you tell me what seconds at you see lag occur, or do you mean the frames per second being low in general?

I'm not sure. Maybe it's Youtube (long live Vimeo ) But I rather guess it's the way your screen capturing program is recording, because it seems to be a constant low number of frames.

qubodup {l Wrote}:The birds don't look good at all.. the animation timing is good though I think.

I suppose I'll try to make a bird in style of something like http://falling-mood.tumblr.com/tagged/bird unless you think it'd be too much attention-drawing to have a full-shaped bird.

That would be cool, thanks for your efforts It will raaiiiise the game difficulty.

Sauer2 {l Wrote}:It will raaiiiise the game difficulty.

No! No! You got it all wrong! The birds are power-ups! D: They are gooood birdies!

We will totally need a "wimp"-mode with unlimited (or at least 65535) lives and lots of checkpoints!