What type of game

[aiaf]

Hi,

Lets start disscusion.

Im thinking everyone to come up with some ideas and then we vote

[gamecreator]

I'll post here the suggestions I posted in the status update.  What I like about these is that all of these can start simple but can be expanded, given time.

Top-down space shooting game - We could start by just exploring space and fighting other ships.  Can be expanded to visit planets, upgrade your ship, including more ship styles, etc.
Third person, low-poly, world exploration/monster fighting - Run around in a world and kill monsters.  Lots of possibilities beyond that.
2.5D platformer - Mario-style platformer but could be any theme
Racing - We could start the racing game in anticipation of Josh re-releasing vehicles
Fighting - Street Fighter-style

These are in order of my preference, first being the top.

Thinking further, we could also do a simpler version of Worms, where players just shoot at each other turn after turn.

[aiaf]

Top down shooting game - like this one

Tower defense - using platonic solids, cones, spheres for enemies , cubes could be the towers and use particle system for attack effects

You just need to defend using towers , the good part is there will be low graphics needs (just for hud and gui, we could use models with no textures), and we could do a unique feel to the game by using different shapes.Physics could be used also to drop enemies of a path maybe.

Quest game - thinking myst, on programming side will be easier, but since we are limited on graphics side go again with some kind of stylized geometric world and few textures

[Rick]

I usually think of the coding side when thinking about games created in this kid of setting. Coordinating is hard even when in person so doing it over the internet is even harder. So I'd prefer a game where we can have many pretty isolated scripts vs the bulk of the game being in 1 script (like the player script). This makes it easier to give someone a small script to create as long as the functionality is defined. Even if they don't know all the details about all the other scripts. It makes helping be a low barrier of entry I think. Nobody wants to read thousands of lines of code just to get caught up to help. It also makes it easier to expand on the game later.

For that reason I personally think the Third person, low-poly, world exploration/monster fighting is a great choice. Each monster can have it's own script with their own personalities. Can have power-up type scripts that alter the player in some way. We can make some interesting level puzzle scripts.

[gamecreator]

True.  It's valuable to allow multiple programmers.  I wonder if that could be made to work for the space game, maybe one person doing the player, another doing enemy ships, another doing planets.

[Rick]

Yeah, we probably could, but whatever we pick I'd like to have that in the back of people's minds. Will said project be easy to divide scripting (and probably models as well) so we don't end up with a monolithic approach to the development.

[aiaf]

I wonder, so far i only used c++ and created models from code no map. How will this work in case multiple people modifying the map? and commit to git.

We need to think about this things before we start.Lets have discussion on discord.

[Rick]

When Tim and I were teaming up this was an issue. Because it was the 2 of us it was easier to manage but even then it did sometimes cause issues. Ideally 1 person would own the production map file. We would have our own map files if we were testing some code out that had visuals.The main map owner would implement any functionality though ideally via instructions by the content creator of said thing.

[gamecreator]

I was just about to post similar.  We don't have a large enough group to step on too many toes.  We just need to compartmentalize things.  People work on their own Lua scripts, one person can work on the map (or it can be switched off every week if more people want to work on it), one person can create/gather/convert models, another can gather music/sounds (which we can save for close to the end).

I think more importantly we should figure out who wants to do what and then assign//take tasks based on that.

I can do either the map, models or music/sounds.  Or more than one if I need to pick up some slack.  Admittedly I'm not an artist so if someone is more graphically skilled, I'm good with them doing any of this.
 

[Thirsty Panther]

My preference would be for a Tower defense, space shooter or a 3rd person world exploration game.

The advantages of these type of games is that we can divide the tasks up among several people. Player script, enemy scripts, maps and character modeling can be done by different people and keep the project moving. The death of LCP 3 was a lack of momentum of the game. People lost interest and the it died a slow death.

Looking forward to see where we take this.

[Rick]

Perhaps a tower defense with space ships as the enemies (I've never seen that before so it could be unique)? The map can just be space with some planets in the background which makes that easy. The enemies can be different kind of ships. Small & fast ships with low health, big and slow ships with high health, etc. Maybe the place where we can put defense weapons are marked as planets and the weapon sits on the planet?

[Slastraf]

Im up for the 3rd person world exploration game. 

just throwing in some ideas:

Pixelated surreal look and feel, with many but not so bright colors and sharp low poly models. Good but simple real time lightning and moving scenery stuff. Terrain to move on is made to look like actual terrain , but has mainly only flat surfaces. (but still different heights and so on)

Doesn't necessarily need to be an open world rpg, I'd be fine with "Levels" , but which are in itself very explorable and don't force the player to move forward ( It would also be easier to chop the whole project down into microtasks )  

Weird "cosmetics" that fly nearby or are worn by the player which are an indicator of what he has achieved. Also could buff the player's stats.

Point of the game: It could be a little bit like mario 64 (have never played it) but the concept of having a level where you can choose what sub-level you want to go in is cool. And also that you need to have some type of currency (stars or cosmetics ..) that unlock new levels. Inside each level you could fight against or talk to enemies, and just let yourself immerse into the world.

Example: The player chooses to go inside a cave which he could open by burning away the bushes with something that he found before. finds himself in a pit, and on the bottom of it there is an stranger who has been in there for a long time and can't find out. [...]  Player helps the stranger but now he has full energy and is actually very evil and was in a prison or something. Fight. The player uses his ward to fire a slow moving projectile which follows the stranger and hits him, and then goes behind a stone which gets broken by the former but now the player has not much cover, and uses his ability to push a stone from the ceiling down on the stranger. ...

Example 2: Now on the surface , the player finds an old run down building made out of stone with many windows. He joins a conflict between the inhabitants and mutants , and forces the mutants to go back into one of their l holes which sunk in from nothing from time to time. Gets rewarded a new ward from the inhabitants who can't use it for themselves.

___________________

How we should start

Make a short design document about your game and join this poll .

Make any third party managing/productivity software ( I would be for Trello )

keep up-to-date. I think I will make an own thread for organisation stuff. 

How I would want to take part in the Project in that order : Lua/c++ Programmer, Modeler / Level designer, Story writer, organisation

Sorry for language mistakes, I wrote this pretty hastily.

 

[aiaf]

We still have mdgunn and burgelkat to answer to this thread.

Poll can be created on this forum to pick the game we going to make.

I think is good idea to keep all related to development on this project forum.In fact discord should be the only other outside tool.

 

Have a look at this post :

 

 

[mdgunn]

Been trying to reach a conclusion on this. Overall Third person, low-poly, world puzzle/exploration possibly mosters/enemies appeals a lot to me and is something LW is most closely set up for out of the box. I think to work we'd have to have a super limited scope and feature set as it's also a genre in which you can REALLY REALLY kill your idea if you get ambitious.  I'm not much of a VR head (though I own a PSVR and have hooked it to Leadwerks briefly) but I'd like to have kept the door open for a VR mode but not at the expense of the project.

Tower defense would probably be my second choice.  Sounds very doable (I think) but I imagine balancing issues could occupy much time. 

I've tried to plan out a few games a bit before so have about practical limitations a bit before.  I think we have to be brutally about limiting scope and features.  I think it would be smart to try to make a game that 1 person COULD make alone (maybe if they had more time than each of us might be able to supply) and then hopefully we end up with a finished game, or a game less people than now could finish if it comes to that.  Gotta be brutally realistic.

My suggestion would be something similar in scope to The Atlas Cube

https://store.steampowered.com/app/252550/Qbeh1_The_Atlas_Cube/

 

I once did some prototyping of such a game that was to be a combination of this and aspects of another game called 'Against The Wall' that I put money into in a kickstarter  about 6 years ago that never got finished by the developer (NOT ME).

 

This is a screenshot from the game I started making in Leadwerks. I usually set up a Trello board or do a very rough document with some game ideas but in this case I'm not sure I did (or I haven't located the doc yet).

 

The screen above is an in-engine LW shot overlayed with a logo in PS. The basic idea was that there would be a few different towers, maybe designed around a theme, such as the bird one in the picture.  This way you're also sort of climbing a creature (which could even be allowed to mechanically move) so gets some strong character or life into the game in a cheap way. As it's a tower/temple it doesn't have to actually MOVE anywhere, speak to you, have convincing AI etc.  You'd be able to move blocks or place blocks in certain places to allow progress through the tower and there might be multiple routes.  E.g. move a stone to climb the wall or move a stone to enter a partially accessible corridor inside.  So it had defined but limited mechanics (others may unfold during game) so that the player can understand what they need to do and combine mechanics rather than being 'key fetch quest'  or difficult adventure quests where you combine obscure objects. 

Not necessarily suggesting we make this game. Part of me wants to make it myself but then I suppose part of me would like to just play something like this anyway so it would be nice to have something made in LW like this. 

Maybe if others have some ideas of games they have wanted to make and have done parts or and might have screenshots or docs for then this might help settle on a project.   Maybe someone even has a half done project. 

Not getting  the project done would probably be my No.1 concern.  If someone has a solid vision or a partially executed idea already then I think we have a boost on getting the thing finished and avoiding paralysis by committee.  There are probably down sides to taking on someone else's idea especially if it's a good one and it actually becomes commercially viable and things get complicated.

 

Edited October 9, 2018 by mdgunn
Edited to make clearer I was not the Kickstarter dev but a funder.

[burgelkat]

Hi , Top down shooting Game I tried to create during the summer holidays. I wanted to introduce it to the next event, something like "Halloweeen Event" by Josh. At least my Light version. I called the project "Blue Max". Maybe someone still remembers the old game on the Atari 2600. A screenshot I had set on Discord. Light version because my programming skills are very limited and I am still learning and trying hard so there are still bugs in it . You could also "pimp it up". It based on Joshs Game "Astroid"

Other wise, I had the days also thought something like "International Karate" but with new Game Engine