Interested in Game Dev?

Games GameDev
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That was not meant in the scope of this project.
As I said ‘one day’.

I have had 3 ideas for games so far, but I am not sold on the ideas yet.

The first:

Deck/tile based sim game.
Like Pipedream Vs Sim City.

Player has a 20x20 grid in the center of the screen and a column of tiles that drop down on the left.

Tiles have a randomly selected colours (Green, Blue, Yellow and some special tiles), each tile except for the special have a set of lines indicating road placement (Vertical line, horizontal, T-junctions, corners and intersections).

Game starts with a set of 10 randomly placed tiles on the board that the player can build upon by clicking and dragging tiles from the left, as each tile is placed new tiles are dropped in to the column. Player can only place tiles so that the road markings on the placed tile link up to existing roads on the grid.

Game is part puzzle, part city building sim. Allowing the project to be broken into 3 major parts (UI, Puzzle, simulation) to allow better team cohesion. As the player drops down tiles onto the grid, the city recives additional zone designations allowing the simulation aspect to develop.

Green = residential, blue = commercial, yellow = industrial. Points are awarded on a per zone basis, each due to the criteria of that zone type. Matching colors together expand zones.

Residential benefits from close proximity to commercial, but is decremented by close proximity to industrial.
Commercial benefits from proximity to both residential and industrial. Commercial development is limited by availability of industrial.
Industrial benefits from proximity to commercial but is limited by availability of residential.

Player has to decide which tiles to place where to not only expand their network of roads and potential build space, but also pay attention to the colors they are placing in proximity to each other to maximize the available points.

Round ends when player has no more build-able space or willingly ends the stage (IE any remaining avaliable placements will lower the player score).

2 Likes
158

The 2nd:

Grid/physics based design game. (I belive I may have pitched this one once before).

Player has a grid and a limited selection of part types. Has to design contraptions that fill a specific function criteria.
Player area consists of a 20x20 grid bordered by walls with Inputs on the left side, Outputs on the right side.

Player has a tool kit of a few part types that can be placed on the grid to build their design.
Parts include angles mirrors. sensors/switches and gates.

Once the design is made, a simulation is run where the inputs will spawn a series of charged energy balls over time, the specifics will vary level from level and be displayed to the player before hand on a chart.
The input to be delivered is displayed on the left side of the screen near the inputs, the desired output is displayed on the right side of the screen near the outputs.

The ball objects have the properties of charge (Ie +2, +8, -3, etc), and vector. (8-directional + speed).
Balls in play interact with eachother on the basis of Charge difference and proximity (Like repel, opposite attract).
Balls colliding fast enough merge, adding their charges.

Player must build their design playing off the mechanics of these balls so guide the machine provides the desired output.

IE a stage to create an adder: Input: 1x +2, 1x +5, Output: 1x +7.

As players complete stages, a part with the functionality of the level they just completed becomes available.
IE on the completion of a level where the player must create an OR logic gate, the player recives a new part: OR switch.

Players can select and complete stages in any order allowing them to strategically progress by building collections of useful parts to help them complete other levels.

Possibly: the players solution to any given puzzle (Number of parts used, how long the solution takes) determines the quality of the resulting part (IE complicated solutions cost more points to play, Slow solutions make a part with a larger delay, ect) encouraging players to go back and redesign their previous puzzle solutions when they have access to better materials.

1 Like
159

3rd:
Not so much of a puzzle game;

Tile/Deck Space sim.

In a similar vein to idea #1, a tile based strategy game underlying a higher level sim.

Deck based FTL vs Minecraft

Player has a ship that must survive getting from point A to point B.
Main panel takes most of the screen, the lower 80% displaying the ship outline with a series of boxes representing subsections of the ship (Weapons mountings, engine, shields, ect).

The top section of the screen has 2 rows of tiles, the top indicating approaching events, the lower being the cargo bay.

As the game progresses, materials enter into the cargo bay depending on what event is occuring, while older materials are pushed out.

Each box on the ship contains a 3x3 grids acting as crafting windows in which these materials are placed. Placement of these materials into these grids will result in the formation of different objects.

IE traveling though a debris field, the player can pick up scrap metal, batteries, ect.

Placing them in the right combination on a weapon mount grid forms a basic cannon, the properties of the cannon (Fire rate, damage, accuracy) depends on the type of cannon formed by the grid placements and the quality of the materials placed.

The player has to decide how best to use the gathered resouces in producing which solutions to their grids, the performance of their ship determines how the can handle different events they come across.

IE the quality of the shield reduces the penalty experienced during damage events.
the quality of the engine gives the option to skip undesireable events.
the quality of weapons gives higher chance of having a positive outcomes from dangerous events, etc.

Win condition: reach the destination
Lose condition: dont reach the destinattion.

2 Likes
160

Javascript is a seperate language from Java.

It is pretty easy to pick up though so no worries, I was brand new to the language myself at the start of the last project.
I have never learned Java but was able to put together a simple game in less than a week using JS and the library we are using for this project.

Outside of making games I have also briefly used it for some client scripting for a website. It comes in pretty handy alongside HTML or ASP for when you want some functional scripting like a client side callback for an object event.

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Javascript is a seperate language from Java.

I know, I know. All I said is that there exists some similarity in syntax.

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@Severok your ideas are all kind of complicated. I like the third one most; I was hoping for a simpler idea though (I don’t know what yet). Something with a small, fun core game loop that we can expand, like a single mechanic to start. Again, I don’t know what.

I had this horrible/great idea years ago for a “Super Masjid Brothers” game. It’s a platformer like Mario, except you have little quests; eg. you have to find/collect three screws + metal beams on the first level, and use that to fix a door. Stuff like that.

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Idea #1: Snaky Snake / USA Space Trooper roguelike. Check those links, then imagine it as an RPG-light: you collect treasure, walk into enemies to ignite battle, collect potions to restore health, and ultimately find the stairs down. We can do it as a 2D infinite-scrolling game instead of 3d.

Easy to start with a simple scrolling map + a monster + stairs, and expand items, equipment, special monsters, skills, etc.

2 Likes
164

Idea #2: Parappa the Rappa meets Kirby Samurai battle. Watch the video; instead of 1v1, monsters keep spawning on both sides; you need to press a specific key, or solve a math equation (3 + 4 = ?) or something to kill them. Game ends when you eventually take too many hits and die.

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Idea #3: Kind of like color switch but themed as a virus/hacking game. You’re an AI, and you have to “hack” from PC to PC to move forward. The screen keeps scrolling, so you die if you’re too slow. Machines have things like firewall (rotating shield) and stuff that make it tricky to time it just right and progress.

2 Likes
166

Can we get a vote from @Rec and @ala about which of the six/seven ideas sound good to work on? I like Sev’s #1 and #3, and my own #1 idea.

1 Like
167

I’ve always had a soft spot for RPG games, so your first idea sounds good to me. @Severok’s second idea is amazing, too. Others are cool as well, but these two are my favourite from the bunch.

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Final vote from @Severok please?

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Virus/Hacking game really rings my bell.

Can we re-brain storm the specifics of this pitch though and make it a little more puzzle focus?

Maybe something like you have to progress though a series of defenses, but instead of being reflex based it is more strategic?

How about:

You play a virus, trying to escape the research lab you were created in out into the wider internet.
You have to move though a network of machines to reach the gateway server to freedom.

Each machine has a series of barriers in place with anti-virus software. the player has to move though each puzzle stage breaking though the barriers without triggering detection and deletion.

Movement based pathfinding puzzle game with scrolling stages. The player must move around a scrolling space hitting triggers to lower various barriers while avoiding triggers that will cause it to be detected.
The player can not move over areas they have touched before, so they have to plan their approach to each puzzle.

The game looks sort of like Light-Bikes (Simple geometric graphics, almost '80s era vector graphics maybe?) where the player leaves a trail of color in their wake, touching this line is insta-death.
Screen is a grid with various obstacles, touching these squares alerts the anti-virus to your location and insta-death.
The grid has some green squares the player must touch, when all the green squares on the screen have been touched the exit barrier blocking progress is lowered.

Grid is constantly scrolling (Admin is searching for the virus, so there is a time pressure to escape each machine), so they player has a time pressure to break though each barrier.

As they progress though the stages, they reach more secure systems with harder puzzles.

Kind of like Ashes #3 Vs Snake

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I really didn’t like the virus idea initially, and I read your proposal three times before selectively understanding parts of it. If @ala is okay with it, I’m “game.”

What I extract from your proposal:

  • It’s like those “snake” games. You’re on a grid, you have to avoid red tiles (and any of your previous moves)
  • There are green tiles, touch them all before you can exit
  • There may or may not be time pressure (let’s prototype it and see what we like)

This sounds kinda like Fidel Dungeon Rescue (which I’ve heard good things about), albeit you have to grab “keys” to unlock the gate before you can escape.

I like it. I can go with this, or the infinite scrolling roguelike.

@ala / @rec ? Let’s finalize this so we can start working inshaAllah.

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I’m fine with any of these ideas, truth be told. So you could say that I can go with this.

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Motivation is the #1 thing that makes or breaks whether most people complete their game or it fizzles out in the middle, in my experience.

We have two votes for the roguelike-RPG and two for the virus puzzle … we need a tie-breaker.

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That’s the thing-- I find all of them pretty enjoyable. I think I’ll do just fine.

On an unrelated note, how are we going to be communicating? Which platform? Is the game going to be open source?

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Let’s go with the virus game then. As much as I prefer the other option, I won’t be the main coder, so my motivation is less important.

Forums are fine. I’ll PM you my email address and you can ping me on Google Chat during working hours Monday to Friday if you like.

Yes. We have a MuslimGamer account on GitHub. I need to add you to the team.

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LET’S GO VIRUS GAME!!!

At first glance, this doesn’t seem to be my kind of game… but I have a feeling you’ll surprise me. :smiley:

1 Like
176

Let’s move this discussion here.