Proposal for a community game project

42 posts / 0 new

Mon, 03/07/2011 - 01:06

Junk_Diver

Alright, here's the deal: I've been floating through the various inf communities for a while now, but I've never contributed anything since my art and story-telling skills are, well, mediocre at best. I've come into a bit of free time recently, however, and I think I've figured out something that I actually can do. I'm going to try making a simple game. Rather than flail about blindly, however, I want you all to help me out.

Here's my proposal:

a) You all submit suggestions on the content of this hypothetical game via reply or PM. Whatever you want to see included, let me know. If you want to help with art, music, story, coding, ANYTHING, let me know. As I said, my skills are mediocre, and if I could sign on a few of the more artistically inclined, then bonus for all. I'm also going to need playtesters. It's more work than just play/comment, so be a little bit serious (and a little bit rock n roll).

b) Taking your suggestions, I work out what I believe to be an enjoyable game and write up a rough design document, which I will post up here. You get another chance to suggest changes to the core mechanics of the game.

c) I make the game. I'll try to keep everyone informed of what's going on, and release demos whenever it's practical. As a general rule, the more you pester me the more likely I am to get things done. Keep suggesting tweaks if you want to, but they're less likely to be implemented unless they catch my fancy.

d) After a while, I'll call it done and release the source code for others to build upon if they wish. I may pick the game up again later, or maybe not.

And that's the plan. If I don't get any suggestions at all, I'll probably just do something really basic to test the waters. Either way, if responses are favourable, I'll repeat the process whenever I next have some time available. Now, I do have a few ground rules I should go over as well:

#1: Anyone who suggests an MMORPG gets kicked in the duodenum unless they include some sort of plan for hosting and managing such a thing. This rule, substituting appropriate internal organs, stands true for any such expansive concept. I am a programmer as a hobby, not by trade, so I tend to stick with the simpler stuff.

#2: I have a sneaking suspicion that most community projects that sink do so because the author realises that they can never take public credit for all their hard work. I'm doing a side project here and I'm not going to pretend I can devote all my free time to it. Primarily, this means no polygons, because I am really crap when it comes to 3D work. Back in my day we had sprites, and we liked 'em.

#3: If you think that I suck and you could do a better job, then go ahead and do it. I'm not being childish here, literally do it and make a better product. I'll help you out if you need it.

That's all. Let me know what you think.

Mon, 03/07/2011 - 11:10

rjp101

Almost right on #2 but not quite.

The big projects fail because after a short while the person who came up with the whole thing in the first place realises they've bitten off far more than they can chew. They lose that burning enthusiasm they had when they started and don't have the free time any more. Once they begin to lose interest there's nothing driving things along so the whole project slowly collapses in on itself.

Without their leader, the people who put work in are a bit miffed but none of them are crazy enough or enthusiastic to take the thing on themselves so it just becomes another half finished collection of concepts floating around on the net.

The only way I've ever seen this kind of thing work is when it's a single person doing almost all the design/programming work, then they get someone else to produce the art/effects. Those projects tend to be much more small scale and managable though.

Mon, 03/07/2011 - 11:29

kidquetzal

Interesting. I can sort of do art, and might be inclined to help.

Mon, 03/07/2011 - 17:20

fwoomp

No meeting place, no community. You must be talking about a standalone game, because servers are way too expensive. No one wants to pay for it.

Ping complete

Mon, 03/07/2011 - 23:29

pballooned

Sounds interesting. Do you have any samples of programming works made by you(even if is just a hobby)?

I think in order to attract artists with similar tastes, it would be a good start to say what you like and what turns you off. By instance, I like women with clothes that usually cover most of their skin(when they are at the beach, I like they wearing the kind of swimsuit that covers their belly too, not that much the bikinis if they are going to be inflated). I didn't at first, but I do like breasts inflation now too. I like the beach setting, the premise of a nurse dealing with a tank of oxygen, or the air devices to inflate the tires at a gas station. I'm kind of old fashioned.
I'm turned off by piercings on the characters, usually also when the events are too sexually oriented, and other things I can't remember now.

I like your approach of making a simple game. Old games like Pacman or DigDug or other old arcade or early NES games were and are still today very entertaining, at least for me.

Another way to attract artists I think, to show the game you are making, even if it doesn't have any graphics. Use simple shapes like rectangles or circles and tell people what they are supposed to be, they will use their imagination "This game is pretty entertaining, would be awesome with graphics". Some artist that enjoys the game might offer himself to do the drawings.
By instance, I made this Felix the Cat videogame(no inflation involved): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRQIF5pXRoc
A static image of Felix was the only graphic made(just for my visual enjoyment) until I finished making the whole game. The rest, the dogs, mouses, clouds, cherries, etc where different colored rectangles. The last thing I did were all the drawings and animations. It took me six months but at the same time I was busy with animation exercices from an animation teacher(though I've been practicing animation on my own since I was seven, I was and am now again self taught).
There's other game that took me about 17 days to make(no inflation either): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pGR9VPr1Pk

I think that with teamwork a simple game could be done pretty fast. I like way better to draw over programming(though Game Maker simplified it for me, I don't know much programming). I even thought sometime to ask if there was someone interested in programming and teamworking. But I felt that people was very busy, and having the same tastes and working for free would be too difficult to find.

One work I did for free was the images for Inflate123's Red Riding Hood story. For the comments he makes in the forums it was clear for me that he was a very nice person to deal with, even if it is for no money. Plus he had recently open a page called Airy Tales which looked good for me and I thought "Nice place to put content". I read that Riding Hood story and liked it(I do not read many infation stories, though, I must admit). The story was already done, and stimulated my imagination, so I proposed to do the drawings. http://airytales.net/tales/AiryTales_LRRH_Inflate123_Pballooned.pdf
I think Teamwork is a wonderful thing if you get along well with your coworkers.

Here are two "infation" games I made(I announced one of them here in the forums):

Space Balloon http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBFF6WMz7qI

Christmas Lake http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HO8z1UsBkno&feature=related (Shame I didn't mention this one on December)

Well, as some of you say, here are my two cents.

Tue, 03/08/2011 - 10:01

IronHead

pballooned wrote:

Sounds interesting. Do you have any samples of programming works made by you(even if is just a hobby)?
I think in order to attract artists with similar tastes, it would be a good start to say what you like and what turns you off. By instance, I like women with clothes that usually cover most of their skin(when they are at the beach, I like they wearing the kind of swimsuit that covers their belly too, not that much the bikinis if they are going to be inflated). I didn't at first, but I do like breasts inflation now too. I like the beach setting, the premise of a nurse dealing with a tank of oxygen, or the air devices to inflate the tires at a gas station. I'm kind of old fashioned.
I'm turned off by piercings on the characters, usually also when the events are too sexually oriented, and other things I can't remember now.

I like your approach of making a simple game. Old games like Pacman or DigDug or other old arcade or early NES games were and are still today very entertaining, at least for me.

Another way to attract artists I think, to show the game you are making, even if it doesn't have any graphics. Use simple shapes like rectangles or circles and tell people what they are supposed to be, they will use their imagination "This game is pretty entertaining, would be awesome with graphics". Some artist that enjoys the game might offer himself to do the drawings.
By instance, I made this Felix the Cat videogame(no inflation involved): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRQIF5pXRoc
A static image of Felix was the only graphic made(just for my visual enjoyment) until I finished making the whole game. The rest, the dogs, mouses, clouds, cherries, etc where different colored rectangles. The last thing I did were all the drawings and animations. It took me six months but at the same time I was busy with animation exercices from an animation teacher(though I've been practicing animation on my own since I was seven, I was and am now again self taught).
There's other game that took me about 17 days to make(no inflation either): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pGR9VPr1Pk

I think that with teamwork a simple game could be done pretty fast. I like way better to draw over programming(though Game Maker simplified it for me, I don't know much programming). I even thought sometime to ask if there was someone interested in programming and teamworking. But I felt that people was very busy, and having the same tastes and working for free would be too difficult to find.

One work I did for free was the images for Inflate123's Red Riding Hood story. For the comments he makes in the forums it was clear for me that he was a very nice person to deal with, even if it is for no money. Plus he had recently open a page called Airy Tales which looked good for me and I thought "Nice place to put content". I read that Riding Hood story and liked it(I do not read many infation stories, though, I must admit). The story was already done, and stimulated my imagination, so I proposed to do the drawings. http://airytales.net/tales/AiryTales_LRRH_Inflate123_Pballooned.pdf
I think Teamwork is a wonderful thing if you get along well with your coworkers.

Here are two "infation" games I made(I announced one of them here in the forums):

Space Balloon http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBFF6WMz7qI

Christmas Lake http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HO8z1UsBkno&feature=related (Shame I didn't mention this one on December)

Well, as some of you say, here are my two cents.

Hey Pballooned, long time no see. You know, if you're cool with it, they could work on that inflation fighting game you made.

Tue, 03/08/2011 - 10:03

Junk_Diver

@rjp101
Yeah, that's a better way to put it.
@kidquetzal
Alright, you're on the list. It's... It's a short list right now.
@fwoomp
That's exactly what I'm talking about. Think Nintendo/Super Nintendo.
@pballooned
Samples? Well, a lot of what I have is tied to me, so... I can post this.
http://s637.photobucket.com/albums/uu97/Junk_Diver/?action=view&current=Contraption_Demo.mp4
It's a demo I more or less threw together to test a concept which I ultimately decided not to use.
Re the next section, honestly, the part where I make the game is what gets me. I'm cool with pretty much anything, and as long as things aren't too niche, I think the result will appeal to most people. For now, I'm just looking for some simple ideas to work with, and I'll see what happens after that.

Tue, 03/08/2011 - 16:19

pballooned

@Junk_Diver
That looks pretty good.
I wonder if you are able to rezize sprites, or have a function to draw circles. This helps a lot when it comes to show a character inflated in a lot of different amounts. Anyway still many things can be done without that.

@IronHead
I'm fine with it. I must admit at first I was very excited about the challenge of making a fight game. But it turned out to be more difficult than I expected. I was hoping to finish it within a month, but it took me several months. Also the Artificial intelligence was a problem, it was either too easy or too difficult to beat the opponent.
I can give the editable game maker file, but I think he would be more comfortable starting programming from scratch. I can give the sprites too.
From what I understood, Junk_Diver wants to be motivated by the community's excitement, so I think it would be a good idea to open a new thread for this fighting game and check people's reaction. IronHead, I can upload it to yoyo games and link to it in a new thread if you want. I would write there that the game was commissioned by you(your username).

Tue, 03/08/2011 - 16:56

kidquetzal

I propose a full next-gen FPS, with full dynamic lighting and normal mapped characters and environments. You should be able to collect an arsenal of about 50 different weapons all with different effects to use on sexy female (or male, depending on your tastes) ninjas who attempt thwart you.

(I'm kidding)

Maybe something along the lines of 2D tower defence? You have your little evil mage tower, and you have 2 or 3 spells you chuck down as they come at you? Fully inflating your victim causes them to roll back down an incline, or float away (or pop :P). I know its already too ambitious, but it's my two cents.

Tue, 03/08/2011 - 19:37

#10

pballooned

I didn't know Tower Defence. I checked it on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyoirR0F7Z4&playnext=1&list=PLC60EB56F79C38BF5 . Not a bad idea, I think. I imagine it somewhat like this:

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

Anyone feel free to use these as sprites. Only tell I made'em if you do so.

Tue, 03/08/2011 - 22:47

#11

kidquetzal

Yes, that looks sweet.

Is flash a possibility? Even still I am fairly unfamiliar with how that works, but the idea of bigger, bolder graphics excites me!

I have mocked up an image of what I had in mind if something like this were possible, which is a more platformy type of deal. The idea is that the enemys approach the tower, stay there and attack until you get rid of them. At the very basic level it would include-

Two states for enemies, inflated and uninflated.
Health for your tower.
One spell
One kind of enemy (Flying most likely)
One environment

If time/ resources allow it would be nice to have-
Two or three spells (Air, water)
A few more frames of inflation for enemies, including attacking frame.
Two or three enemy types (flying, ground and tank unit)
Two environments.
Popping state if enemy is over-attacked.

Anyhoo- here is image.

Wed, 03/09/2011 - 02:04

#12

Anonymous

I always wanted to see a game like Team Fortress but with an inflation element, you could possibly use the Source engine to help the process of the game along. Wouldn't have to change in regards to environments if you wanted to, but your character models would obviously have to be tweaked to show the expansion. Possibly a way of slowing the character down in movement due to the pressure. Melee kills could just be a stab of a needle that rapidly inflates a person, and one more stab or shot to pop them, medics can deflate people, thinks that include a blast radius could be some sort of gas that induces inflation, everyone has a pressure gauge on their hub, etc. I would love to see something like that go down, I think it has potential.

Edit: Idea of possibly making a custom map that has close quarter areas that would either get players stuck or pop if they are inflated in that area, like a narrow hallway. I was also toying with the idea of how you could work floating with helium in there somehow, but I can't come up with anything right now.

Wed, 03/09/2011 - 02:35

#13

pballooned

kidquetzal, nice pic, I see you are pretty good at drawing too. That's a good alternative I think.

Wed, 03/09/2011 - 06:48

#14

kidquetzal

Mixmaster, I would love to see something like that too, and its a great idea. Unfortunately the source engine can be tricky to dev on and it sounds like a LOT of work (months and months, many many hours), especially when dudes (possibly dudettes) aren't getting paid. It's good to hear input though but its also vital to not be too ambitious when we don't have much idea what we are doing as it is.

I don't have huge ideas of this even coming close to being made (not to sound pessimisstic) but I'm willing to proactively put in a bit to see where it goes.

I'm going away for about 5-6 weeks. So its unlikely I will contribute anything solid for a while.

Thu, 03/10/2011 - 05:12

#15

Junk_Diver

Interesting stuff so far.

I like the tower defense game from a technical standpoint (nice and straightforward). I personally prefer the side view since it makes things a little more visually interesting, and that style is a lot more interactive.

As for that shooter idea, uh, maybe a bit ambitious. Scale that sucker back to, like, Wolfenstein. Then we'll talk.

I'd really like to hear some more ideas, so keep the suggestions coming.

Thu, 03/10/2011 - 06:18

#16

CreepingInflator

A side scroller would be cool and simple enough to contribute. An FPS however would have to use an existing engine such as source or doom engine.
Note: there are various doom engines from Zdoom to skulltag.
I have seen Independent games made from the doom engine such as Urban Brawl, SRB2, and HACX. They now count as mods (except for SRB2) but don't require the doom IWAD.

Source engine has independent games of its own as well such as garry's mod and Contagion but garry's mod uses recycled files from other games that use the source engine (since its purpose is to just have fun) and Contagion is still WIP. It will take more time to work with Source engine.

Side-Scrolling games are simple enough to create but it's your choice if you want to create something interesting.

Thu, 03/10/2011 - 06:21

#17

kidquetzal

I wonder what sort of theme we could take, personally I've always had an attraction to the bad guys winning, dungeon keeper style.

Maybe theres a flash template source code somewhere for this kind of game? There are many of them online.

http://www.lostvectors.com/prelude/index.html

Is similar, but there are a lot out there.

If anyone has a tutorial for making different art for flash I would be interested in taking a look.

Thu, 03/10/2011 - 08:44

#18

doubleintegral

The tower defense idea is very unique and easily adaptable to our interests. I'm jealous that I didn't have the idea first.

I'd be happy to help out however I can. I'm no artist but I used to know a few things about Flash/ActionScript. I'm way behind the curve now, though. However, I do have some knowledge of coding (depends on the language) and could be a good troubleshooter if nothing else.

A while back I had an idea for an inflation version of a web game like Earth: 2025 (if any of you have ever heard of/played it), like a massively multiplayer turn-based strategy game. The way Earth: 2025 worked was each player only got a certain number of turns a day (I think it was one turn every 45 minutes or so) and turns were spent training military forces, researching technology, spying on other players, and attacking other players. When you used up all your turns in a day, you simply logged out and came back later. Games lasted 60 days and whoever had the highest net worth (accumulated via money, acquiring other players' land, etc.) was the winner.

In Inflation: 2025, each player has their own character and they can interact with other characters (inflate each other, or team up with or against other characters) as well as a number of NPCs (mostly female). But you can't just walk up to any random NPC and inflate her; you have to build up a level of trust. Once that happens you can try to inflate her forcefully, or if you're lucky, she will let you inflate her. Inflating other characters gets you points; getting turned down for an inflation makes you lose points. If you get inflated to the point that you can't do anything, you simply burn enough turns until you deflate. At the end of the game the person with the highest point total wins.

I probably know just enough PHP to pull that off, but it would take forever to write.

Stories I have written

Tue, 03/15/2011 - 07:20

#19

Junk_Diver

Alright, unless there's anything further, I think we can agree on the side-scrolling tower defense plan. From here on out, we're going with that unless someone blows our minds. Time to discuss the mechanics.

Right now, what we need to figure out is the exact form of the game on a technical level. Are we playing for points? Is it just wave survival or is there some sort of secondary goal? Heck, how does one attack the enemy, and how do the enemies attack you? There's a lot of ways to go with this idea, so, um... Where to?

I've had a bit of time to mull this over, and I do have one idea to start off the brainstorming. I'd like to expand a bit on the air/water thing I saw mentioned earlier.

Let's say that attacks have a heavy/light property, and aside from pressure (which acts like health in reverse and is aways increased by attacks), enemies also possess mass (which goes up OR down based on the attack type), controlling walking speed and if they start floating around. The game might then be designed be to create a tactical choice between just hitting a target with whatever until they cark it, or carefully manipulating their mass to extract some benefit (i.e. making an opponent float away is more efficient/uses less resources). Maybe how high they're floating affects how they attack you (i.e. imagine five 'tracks', representing the ground and four levels of altitude. You can move people between tracks with your spells, and you have to protect all five floors of your tower.)

This is just a rough idea, and again the intent here is to provide a starting point for brainstorming.

Also, on a side note, I'd like to suggest the idea that we can add a goodly amount of variety with selectable options for the more niche stuff like gore, male (is it really niche?), futa, etc. since they would just be simple sprite swaps. Of course, I say simple, but someone would have to draw everything. It might be fine just to leave things open enough for anyone to insert their own custom graphics, but that usually leads to nowhere fast. Just something else for y'all to weigh in on.

So? Suggestions, objections, alternate plans, wild drug-induced paranoid ranting? Let me know what you'd be interested in seeing happen here.

Tue, 03/15/2011 - 07:24

#20

Junk_Diver

Heh, forgot to mention: I liked all the suggested ideas, but overall I think the side view TD game is the most generally acceptable, as well as the most practically feasible.

Wed, 03/16/2011 - 03:13

#21

doubleintegral

When I think of a quintessential tower defense game, I think of Desktop Tower Defense and Bloons Tower Defense. Both are 2D and fairly linear in their attack patterns. A 3D approach like yours may be too difficult to be good at, but what do I know? I'm just some moron on the Internet.

I've got some ideas. Sorry that these aren't terribly organized, I'm just throwing it out there.

Instead of the traditional TD game where you try to let as few enemies as possible through the maze, perhaps the goal of this game should be to not necessarily stop them completely but instead requiring some sort of minimum inflation level before they leave the maze. For example, in a normal TD game if 50 enemies get through you lose 50 lives. However, in this game you may let all 50 through, but as long as all of them at least have their bellies inflated then you don't lose any lives.

The more shots a woman takes, the more they will inflate, and early in the game they will be relatively easy to inflate. However, early in the game your towers will also have minimal inflation power. They should be upgraded throughout the game, but the enemies will also become harder to inflate. I see this as being similar to the Starcraft system of attack and armor; a tower may have attack value X and an enemy might have an armor value of Y, so the actual damage dealt is X-Y. However, by round 3 (for example), the enemy might have armor of Y+1, Y+2 by round 5, etc.

Although the goal is to at least cause belly inflation (by reaching some damage threshold), bonus points/dollars can be accumulated for additional inflation beyond that point. Breasts, butt, near-full-body, and full-body inflation each would score a bonus, as would inflating an already-fully-inflated woman even larger. While these are bonuses, later rounds would depend on them as the incremental cost of upgrades would go up drastically to keep the game from being too easy.

The different types of towers would include the obvious: air, water, helium. A "magic" tower would inflate the woman by magic. You may also have a "stun" tower to stop an enemy in its tracks, to give other towers more time to shoot it. The enemies would come in a number of varieties, some of which would be immune to the effects of some or all of these towers. For example, a "waterproof" enemy could be inflated by air, helium, or magic, but not water. The completely immune enemy would not inflate at all, but could, for example, be stunned and then flattened by an air- or water-inflated woman, or carried away by a helium-inflated woman.

I know all of that is dreadfully low on a lot of specifics, but those were just a few ideas I had in the car this afternoon.

Stories I have written

Wed, 03/16/2011 - 03:25

#22

doubleintegral

Forgot to add this:

This is also a great opportunity to throw in some inside jokes and satire related to the community and fetish. For example, the "naughty button" would send all of the inflating enemies into orgasm (a play on the oft-used inflation=sex concept), causing them to slow down and get shot more. However, this button could only be used a certain number of times per game. LVKane's "laws of body inflation" could be a great source of material for an achievement system. And some of the more iconic characters in the community (e.g. BerryGirl, some story characters) could be bosses.

Stories I have written

Wed, 03/16/2011 - 14:18

#23

Junk_Diver

Quote:

When I think of a quintessential tower defense game, I think of Desktop Tower Defense and Bloons Tower Defense. Both are 2D and fairly linear in their attack patterns. A 3D approach like yours may be too difficult to be good at, but what do I know? I'm just some moron on the Internet.

This brings up a point I hadn't really defined, namely what I meant by side-scrolling tower defense. In my mind, this refers to the style of literally defending a tower on one side of a 2D map from enemies approaching from the other side. The view is sideways (as in super mario bros.), and it's about the player throwing out attacks rather than building automated towers. Earlier on, near the beginning of this thread, kidquetzal drew out a mock screenshot that explains pretty much what I mean, style wise. In this way, you can see that my '3D' is actually still just 2D. Again, I prefer this style because visually, you get more profile views and larger sprites (maybe), and you don't need four directions worth of art resources. Hope that clears things up a bit.

Moving on,
You mentioned the letting them through with restrictions idea, which I could envision as holes in your tower/home base that you can pass enemies through for bonus points (research subjects?).

You also mention the standard level up situation with better attacks for harder enemies over time. I guess this would imply an upgrade system of some sort (this could tie in with the research thing above), which makes sense. I find many games of this type ramp up the challenge unnecessarily fast, though that could just be me sucking, but that is neither here nor there.

I like the idea of resistances, as well as the idea that enemies can interact with each other. As long as it can be broken down into a simple set of rules that can then be played towards, we can get some pretty complex tactics on the cheap.

Lastly, inside jokes, satire, parody, I wouldn't have it any other way, but I'm terrible at that sort of thing. I'll leave that part to the suggestions of others.

Sun, 04/17/2011 - 02:57

#24

Junk_Diver

Surprise! Alright, if you don't want to read all this, synopsis: follow link below, try game prototype, leave feedback.

I'm sure you all thought I gave up on this thing. Actually, I just had a metric ass-tonne of work dropped on me, so I was too tired to walk to my computer for most of the last two weeks. The good news is that I did manage to scrape together four or five free evenings, and I threw together a line-based prototype of the engine as I see it. It's primitive, but I figure it's better than a twenty page text document anyway, considering what I'm trying to do here.

I would like to build a campaign or something around the battle scenes, with upgrades and a plot (I prefer comedy) and whatnot, as well as supermoves for the individual characters (also not created yet), but that's all for later. For now, prototype inflation themed tower defense game, working title Amp:

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=SW0N9RQL

Quick breakdown of the menu items, starting at the top: You can apply a global growth over time effect to all units on the field with the top check boxes, with an equivalent attack power of one. [He] causes lift growth (reduces mass, counteracts gravity) and [H2O] causes drop growth (increases mass, reduces ground speed). The invert mass button multiplies all units' masses by -1, thereby, err, inverting their masses. Beside that is the spawn cooldown. Increasing this number reduces the rate at which enemies appear, and vise-versa. The big block of stuff below that is the attack menu. select from one of several attack styles and try 'em out. as with the spawn rate, you can tweak the weapons' power with the text boxes. You'll see that the last two attacks have a cooldown, displayed beside [CD], limiting usage rate. Finally, to the right of the attack block, you can select the element of your attacks, just like the global effect above, using radio buttons.
You'll notice right off the bat that certain combos are straight broken, but remember that I don't intend to include all the permutations in the final design. Also, there are some bugs, particularly since I really cheaped out on collision detection (the shot will pass through things pretty often).

Lastly, to add a little flavour, there is indeed a touch of backstory. Four people live in this tower:
Chemist Elrica and her assistant Fume live on the second floor of the tower. Their attacks are chemical based, involving an arcing trajectory and ending in clouds of stuff which cover a wide area and stick around for a while (R. Bomb, S. Bomb). Her supermove is to pitch Fume out the window at the enemy, who is usually carrying about 9 billion potions on her person at any given time.
A mechanic, Mavi, lives on the upper floor. Her attacks tend to possess straight trajectories and deliver their full effect all at once, making accuracy the focus (Beam, Shot). Her super move is to summon a giant, player-controlled, robotic, ... Thing, that'll light up the field with beam attacks in techno-rave fashion.
There's also a spellcaster, Curious. Technically, she lives on the elemental plane of opulence, but her front door's at the top of the tower so, y'know, vested interest. Her attacks have no trajectory at all - pick a target, click 'em, and you're done. Slow, though (Spell). Her super move is to actually care enough to step into the same plane as the battle, and temporarily ignore all of her cooldowns.

Okay, test it, tell me if it's worth pursuing or if I need to start over, what you liked/hated, what you'd add/remove, etc.

Wed, 04/20/2011 - 08:15

#25

Junk_Diver

Oh damn, more words.

I still want feedback on the prototype, but I also wanted to lay out a concept for sprite layout (how exciting, I hear you cry). I just want to see if anyone has a better way of setting things up then I'm about to describe.

Here's the idea: The units are made up of two sprites which are divided by the beltline (more specifically, a line from the top of the rump to bottom of groin) As long as that border remains static, the two parts can be overlapped seamlessly. Of course the belly can drop below the line, it just has to attach to the body at or above the line. We have two areas, then - Legs and body.

The legs are concerned with the state of motion (walking, floating, or falling), with lets say 6 frames for walking, 4 for floating, and 4 for falling. That's 14 total. Now, the legs aren't really the main attraction here, so we can skimp a bit on inflation detail. Let's say 3 sets of animation for increasing levels of fullness, for 42 total frames. The animation speed can be tweaked to match walking speed easily enough.

The upper body is where the detail is put in, and I personally much prefer actual image progressions over scaling an ill-defined fleshtone oval whenever possible. So, let's say, at the moderate end of smooth transition, 10 states of fullness with 4 frames of animation for jiggling and whatnot. That's another 40 images.

The total is 82, but doing the same work for a one-piece sprite would call for something around 140 images (10 fullness states * 14 motion states). If we went with an even higher resolution, like 20 states of body fullness, the numbers become 122 vs. 280.

I guess my point is this: If you are interested in contributing art, you should know how many individual images you'll really have to be producing considering the dynamic nature of the topic (It's more than most people probably assume). I'm offering this alternative as a potential time-saver, and I'm curious if anyone else has a better approach.

Wed, 04/20/2011 - 08:41

#26

kidquetzal

Sounds good, but im not sure how effective this will be for some nice spherical progression. It would probably work well for boobs, belly, ass though. I suspect flying enemies will not need as many walking states at least...yeah no idea.

Wed, 04/20/2011 - 22:46

#27

Blue_Eyes

Spent a couple of minutes with your demo, has some great potential. Looking forward to more of your work.
As for the sprites and such, myself have no skills or anything, though I do know someone who might be available.
If I can get them signed up I will send you a PM for you two to start something up.

Those of you who volunteered to be injected with praying mantis DNA, I've got some good news and some bad news. Bad news is we're postponing those tests indefinitely. Good news is we've got a much better test for you: fighting an army of mantis men.

Sat, 04/30/2011 - 10:40

#28

Junk_Diver

Don't get excited about the link, it's just a thing to test another thing.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=5QYVUDQB

So, you'll run it and see a somewhat unrealistically-proportioned woman, about 50 pixels tall and rocking NES quality detail, running in place on a hill. What's important here is that her torso, arms and legs were separately drawn up, then assembled by the system at runtime.

Why did I post this? To remind everyone that I'm not dead and to show what that sprite idea I suggested earlier actually looks like. Bonus, it looks like I can get away with a lot fewer frames than I thought.

Why did I post an EXE instead of a gif? Well, it has the same core module as the final game will have, so It'll tell me about any compatibility problems you guys may have. Also, anyone who wants to can try playing around with the sprite set. Who knows, maybe it'll convince someone to join my superhero team. Seriously, you don't gotta be Rembrandt to draw tiny sprites of balloon people.

Lastly, I happen to work on a giant monitor and this is probably super small, so if you run Windows there's a program (Usually under Start>Accessories>Accessibility) that you can use called "Magnifier" to see what in blue hell is actually happening.

Mon, 05/02/2011 - 13:46

#29

kidquetzal

This is great stuff again dude. Tried fiddling with the sprites but didn't get too far, could I please have a rundown on how to make them work correctly?

Also, not to be a picky bitch, but any chance all graphical tiles they could be isolated to a single 1024x1024 image per character or something nice and big like that? How big can we get before it runs like ass?

Mon, 05/02/2011 - 20:36

#30

Xane

well... i don't know if it's much help... but i can make 3d images (would be good for detailed sprites?). i have no programming knowlege.
i have lots of ideas for games. all sorts of things ranging from side-scrolling mario things where your character has to escape something and everything wants to make babies in you (health bar would be a waistline indicator. game over when you're too big XD)
all kinds of things like that... but i'm sure you would need more than that.
I offer any skills i can in testing and the such.

Writer, Artist, Morpher, Computer Animator... the list is long and the time is so short...

Tue, 05/03/2011 - 01:16

#31

Junk_Diver

I've finished my newest revision of the prototype engine, so here's a link below.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=V3LP3UTI

In lieu of long, rambling statements, quick rundown:
-Sprite graphics implemented.
-Second Sprite Set added (Futa).
-Particle Effects added (traditional tan rubber + shredded fabric, optional guro bitz).
-'Rose Bush' mechanic. Bushes destroy targets who enter with HP below a given threshold. Current threshold is 25% (where the leg and arm graphics change).
-There's a thing that makes loading the graphics take abnormally long. It's going out next revision.

I think I now have a good enough grasp of how everything is going to work that my next step will be to begin work on the engine proper. As always, I hope for suggestions along with feedback of any kind.

Xane: Certainly, 3D has the advantage that you can easily crank out lots of transition frames, which is important in this type of work. You can always alter my sprite sets to try stuff out, or just post up the images here for me to work with. If you have game ideas that you honestly want to see made, talk it out with someone to figure out how to make the idea work (i.e. It better be feasible to make and fun to play).

Kidquetzal: I totally don't care if you're a picky bitch. If you're changing the sprites, just change the bitmap. Keep in mind that all spatial relationships (how the images line up, and the distance from the body to the ground) are fixed. If there's more than that, you'll have to let me know. Also, I'm not quite sure what you mean by isolation. Could you elaborate a bit? I can say that in-game performance is only really affected by how much is being drawn at any given time, and the size of the bitmap itself only affects load times.

Tue, 05/03/2011 - 13:02

#32

kidquetzal

Ok, so lets imagine you are talking to a monkey :P.

I take it the green colour is alpha right? So anything that colour is transparent?

Is there a particular bit rate the image needs to be?

I can't seem to just resize the entire bmp without any problems. How do I know or change which particular frame the game will read and in what order or the rate at which they change? Or how many frames there are and what size they will be. When i think sprites, i kind of think at least odin sphere sizes- http://ps2media.ign.com/ps2/image/article/782/782698/odin-sphere-20070423114403870.jpg

Is there a way I could make the distance between the enemies heads and the ground higher if i wanted their bodies to swell up very large?

Can we have it so we have one image per enemy? At least for now.

Yes i understand you're doing all the work atm, but i have a feeling once we have an easy system for implementing nice graphics, good things will happen.

Tue, 05/03/2011 - 18:29

#33

Junk_Diver

Right, I did neglect to explain any of that, didn't I? Didn't really think about it after I set it up, y'know.

Well, as things currently operate, the pixel in the top left corner is used to define the transparent colour (so yeah, it's that sickly green shade). Everything else is fully opaque.
As for size, the prototype assumes that the bitmaps have exact dimensions, so nothing can be scaled. You would have to scale your images down to fit in the available boxes. Note that the Engine proper will not have this restriction, and as long as you take the time to edit a list of constants defining sizes, offsets, etc, you will be able to import things at any scale you please. Until then, I'm afraid you're stuck with my microsprites.

One image per enemy is certainly no problem, and for now we'll stick with .bmp files (any format) for ease of manipulation. I just this moment came up with an idea I could try that would make things super straightforward on the artist's end and would allow for all sorts of nonstandard connections, so I'll try that out in the next couple of days.

Thanks a bunch for the feedback.

Fri, 05/06/2011 - 19:17

#34

pballooned

I've just tested it. Good job! These sprites look pretty good too

Fri, 05/06/2011 - 19:32

#35

pballooned

Having winter and summer is a nice touch. By the way, what is that red spot that the blue pants girl has on the belly?

Wed, 05/25/2011 - 06:58

#36

Junk_Diver

Quote:

By the way, what is that red spot that the blue pants girl has on the belly?

Well, you see, that isn't a belly... Since I'd only intended to do placeholder art, I figured I'd play to a couple of my preferences.

Moving on, the bad news is that I lost a bunch of free time recently due to a little work snafu, and that 'little brainwave' I had? It opened up a logistical can of worms. Also, as I am wont to do, I'm spending way too much time on the petty details.

The good news is that I'm still fitting in time where I can, and I hope to have something to show by next week. The main upgrade you'll notice relates to the aforementioned worm-can, allowing for easy sprite modification (for enemies, at least).

Thu, 06/02/2011 - 11:51

#37

Junk_Diver

All right, Let's all say hi to version 3. Again, feedback and suggestions yadda yadda:

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=QDCKVDXM

I rebuilt the entire prototype using more respectable programming practices, and I added some polish. A little how-to doc covers the basics of how things work now. I could say what I did gameplay wise, but it's simple enough and the .txt file lays it all out.

Biggest news is that it's now much easier for artists to change the enemy sprites around. Again, it's explained in the how-to file, but just to give a quick overview: It's one bitmap to an enemy, and plugging in new ones is a piece of cake - make file, add to catalog, done. In terms of how to actually make the image, there are restrictions on how individual frames are aligned, but they're straightforward, plus size is no longer an issue. The only tricky part is adding things called 'infoboxes', which are used to assemble the parts into a complete figure. you pinpoint spots on the first frame of each part using same-coloured pixels around the box, and then the system figures out the offsets so those points line up when the whole thing is drawn, i.e:

Really, the best thing to do is to read through the how-to and play around with the premade bitmaps.

Let me know how it goes, especially if anything is broken or, more likely, wildly confusing.

Thu, 06/02/2011 - 13:17

#38

Yrrall_Dlok1

On using the AMP.exe

"Run-time error '429':

Active X component can't create object

Fri, 06/03/2011 - 03:41

#39

Junk_Diver

That means the system failed to switch to 16-bit fullscreen. Try running it with the commands -f24 or -f32 for different colour qualities, and if all else fails go with -w for windowed mode (there should be a shortcut to do that in the zip).

Mon, 06/06/2011 - 11:46

#40

kidquetzal

Hey there. Nice work!

I will probably be doing other art stuff for a little while, but will hopefully look into this soonish!

Sat, 07/09/2011 - 07:09

#41

Junk_Diver

Okay, there's a link down there somewhere, but as long as you're here, you may as well read this whole thing.

First, I'm proud to say that the engine is more or less complete from a mechanical standpoint. Things still need to be balanced, and I haven't scripted the story mode levels yet, but at least arcade mode is good to go.

Now, as you may note, things took a while to get done. This is primarily due to life, but there is something else I should mention. My original intent was for this to be a group project, in that a bunch of people would each contribute a small piece that we could then stitch together into a whole product in a relatively timely fashion. Unfortunately, that didn't really take off, so I've been running solo, with massive delays resultant. To celebrate the fact that I didn't just ditch the project when things got tough, let's change that.

Of course, as always, I want anything you all have to offer, but let's work on specifics for a change. Aside from people to chime in on balancing and level design (scripting), there's two key spots that need filling:

Musicians!
Music, sound effects, all that jazz. The engine already has the capacity to do it, I just need the actual sound files to plug in. Don't need massive orchestrals, just some ambient whatever and some fitting SFX.

Artists!
Seriously, I've been ripping off the 8-bit era like a fiend up until now, and this thing would really benefit from some diverse art. In fact, I would love it if a bunch of people would draw one character each, and we could have a neat hodge-podge of styles (I can dream).

Last note, from here on in, I'm mainly only going to add features if someone asks me to, so don't expect massive overhauls in future unless there's a bunch of input to match.

Alrighty then, here's your newest build:
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=FDFI9AEJ

Hope it's interesting to you, I hope you'll provide some feedback, and mostly, I hope you'll decide to contribute something to the project.

Sun, 02/19/2012 - 07:30

#42

kidquetzal

Sigh, damn megaupload. Any chance of a re-up?

Proposal for a community game project

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