Guys, what are we building?
It’s December already. 30 days to go
Guys, what are we building?
It’s December already. 30 days to go
Just a heads up for anyone intrested in games coding, I just noticed this in the Humble Bundle books page
Books get outdated fairly quickly. That being said, there’s something about having a solid A-Z reference that walks you through everything. Sometimes, without that, you end up not using features etc. and making your own life much harder.
I’d like to quickly reconfirm our team and responsibilities as we move into month 2 of our project.
@ashes987 - Project Manager
Does this sound about right?
While we are welcome to contribute to any aspects of the project we are able to, it would be good to keep a clear outline of what our roles and focuses should be.
I also consider myself code monkey, although I probably haven’t been pulling my weight enough on that side.
BloodMoney is out. RIP.
(No, he’s not dead, just busy with new job stuff and doesn’t want to commit and be dead weight.)
Roketfiq is also quite busy IIRC, I’ll ping him on Discord and see if he’s in. It would be nice if you could hop on discord every now and then.
(Moved: reply to this thread post)
Your idea of design-docs, design-first, etc. is what the gaming industry tried (and perhaps still does, sadly) in the late nineties / early 2000s. Like Waterfall software development, it doesn’t work because what sounds good on paper may not be fun in reality.
So the “new” way is to prototype rapidly (as fast as possible) – no UI, coloured squares, etc. because if it’s fun at that level (like that other game you described), adding polish and properly theming etc. will rock it. But if it’s not fun, no amount of shine can make it a great game.
With our small time commitments (not putting it down, saying: compared to eight hours a day), we drag out if we do that. We tried that with the PCG shooter and sort of were prototyping until the last week.
Please pick the new game/genre. One thing that works for me is “dream the best version of the game and slice the smallest possible MVP you can.” For you, one thing that works is “what can I make in X dev time that I will play for X+Y game time?”
RPGs, MMOs, and anything with networking are probably too big to bite off. Then again, if you’ve played Final Fantasy VI, they have this awesome “collesium” which is basically an autobattle of you vs. an enemy. That, or FF7’s “Golden Chocobo” arena sounds fun (TLDR: you vs. seven rounds of enemies, and after each round, something random breaks, like all spells, or all summons, or your sword, or your level cuts in half, etc.)
Can we please move this back to the gamedev thread? It’s not really about the PCG shooter any more.
Alright @ashes987 lets do this thing.
If you are sure that rapid prototyping is the way to go with this, then we will give it another shot.
Following our experiences from PCG, I think our next project should have more of a story focus.
I understand from your perspective that you want to use game developement as a medium for teaching Islamic themes so lets roll with that.
For the moment we will have to assume that we are down an Art director and Game designer, leaving us as a Coder/Manager/Maybe writer? and a Coder / Artist to cover the full project scope (No hard feelings to the departing brothers of course), between us we will have to estimate roughly 120 hours of dev time across the month.
Our current skill base is more mechanically inclined rather than Artistic, so I am thinking perhaps an RPG or some form of Stratergy rather than Adventure which would require more development of an Art focus.
I am not looking for an Epic story like Finay fantasy, maybe something focused around a randomly generated dungeon with a connected town and story elements. IE reach the next floor of the dungeon, unlock more items and story progress back it town.
Proposal: Top-down ARPG
Now, to cut down on development time and lower our requirements for a MVP, how about we canabalise part of our engine from PCG and make a Top-down ARPG in the style of something like the early Zelda games.
We can add characterisation for the protagonist and story integration to make it a more worthwhile product.
For an MVP maybe start with a smaller scope
No more - No less to start with
If all goes well we can expand scope
Keeping in mind we ONLY have ~120 hours dev time so… Focus on Depth over complexity.
Adding more content won’t fix a simple system that just doesn’t feel fun.
I haven’t had sufficient time/brain-cycles to fully digest your proposal, so please forgive me if this response is … odd.
Sorry, I have to truncate this post abruptly. I’ll try to edit it later.
Rough notes:
I thnk for tech-stack stick with: Pythong + Pyglet so we can build on what we have already instead of retarting from zero. We built PCG from 150 - 200 man hours with this new project sitting in the 60 - 90 hour range, so this head start should Insha Allah at least make this project viable.
From PCG import obj (Spawning, Sprite management & Collision)
From PCG import proc (Screen drawing & Input handling)
From PCG import Tutorial related functions
Remove :
Add:
Events:
ON start: [Map ID = 1]
ON collision with transition (Blue bar)
Calll event: ON start [Map ID]
On Keypress [ i ]
Game Pause
Render Item window
On Event: Dialog
Game Pause
Render converstaion window (Bottom screen)
Load Dialog tree
Iterate through tree structure
Sorry about this.
To resume:
Moved to the January/2017 game thread.
Guys I know you’re still in Ramadan mode; are you still interested in making a game next month?
I pencilled you in as a “maybe” @AbrarSyed @BloodMoney @roketfiq and @asad3ainjalout
Aye or nay please.
@Wulf you’re always welcome to the party.
Lol funny today I did some game dev in a very long time. I don’t really have time to do anymore though lol.
Lesson learned: when there’s hype, don’t wait, cancel existing projects and bring the Code Brotherz on board.
Thanks though.
Yeah team hype is hard to maintain.
Ive always was interested in developing video games. Dont delete this thread. Im new and this thread is perfect!
@roketfiq I definitely don’t have capacity for anything right this minute, but I guess it depends on who’s interested and what role they want me to play (dev? manager? QA?)
Who’s in?
Haha no worries bro. I just pointed them towards the forum. Got a lot of new coders recently. Doesnt have to be now.
Coders are cool. Folks with other skills are also cool (QA, art, audio, game design, etc.) Worst case, training people is always something I’m up for, even if they have “no useful skills.”
@here sorry I should clarify.
I probably won’t be able to contribute code, due to time constraints; but I’ll work on other things, which could include:
What I want to know is, who’s willing to team up? The scope of this project would be:
We’re all doing this on our free time, so there’s no hard requirement about time; but there is accountability. If you say you do X, we will all depend on you to get it done.
Who’s willing to try this out for September?
Pinging @AbrarSyed @Rec and @Severok because it would be fun working with you guys again
I’m in inshaAllah.