Hello. I've just decided to start making a game again, but there's one big problem: I'm not sure what to make. There's no point in spending another 3 years on a game, only to realize that there's one small flaw that I left out that shattered the whole game balance or a design flaw that killed the tempo of the game making.
So, no more of that. This time I'm planning it all properly. I'm a bit low on ideas right now. Most of my best ideas I've gotten while discussing a game with a friend, so I hope to get someone to discuss my game with here.
Preferably someone who has too much time on their hands and is in it just for the fun of making a game.
Oh and my internet connection is a bit spotty, so don't feel too offended if I'm not online all the time.
Disclaimer: Any sarcasm in my posts will not be mentioned as that would ruin the purpose. It is assumed that the reader is intelligent enough to tell the difference between what is sarcasm and what is not.
Well, one game I've wanted to make forever but probably never will is a warehouse RPG. Kind of like Harvest Moon but with forklifts and things like orders that need to be pulled, shelves need to be stocked, etc. I started a game sort of like this a long time ago, but with a pet store theme instead. I have about 8 years or so total warehousing experience so I know all the different kinds of things to put into a game like this. It sounds pretty uninteresting, but then again so did Harvest Moon the first time I heard about it, and those games are great.
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"Del Duio has received 0 trophies. Click here to see them all."
"To be a true ninja you must first pick the most stealthy of our assorted combat suits. Might I suggest the bright neon orange?"
DXF Games, coming next: Hasslevania 2- This Space for Rent!
I have a gazillion game ideas. You're bound to find an idea or two in there that interests you. What kind of games are you into? Can you give us a genre or something to help narrow it down? I admire your focus on game design and gameplay. I'll also add that I think that early testing of a prototype is important.
I'm all set to collaboarate here... Just give some more details and we'll be off and running.
Hmm... a warehouse game sounds... unique. Lol, I dunno, I liked the Harvest Moon concept, it had all the elements of a good game + relationships + special events which really did good for a break. A warehouse game seems a bit dull, but what would I know, I never worked in one . Still, I enjoy playing those industry tycoon type games, so it could be fun.
Disclaimer: Any sarcasm in my posts will not be mentioned as that would ruin the purpose. It is assumed that the reader is intelligent enough to tell the difference between what is sarcasm and what is not.
I dunno, my other idea is some sort of forklift racing game lol..
I really like operating forklifts, it's one of my favorite parts of my job (even if it happens rarely). I put a forklift in Hasslevania that I made for the warehouse RPG, but updated it a bit. I think it'd be hard to do right, but who knows? When I'm done with Hasslevania I wanted to continue on Equin 3, but that will for sure take me at least another year. Maybe I could whip up some sort of little warehouse RPG. Hopefully, it wouldn't be too bad. For stats you could have Order Accuracy, Sweeping, Forklift, Computers, and Attitude. Hahaha, maybe have your help call in sick sometimes when 80,000 lbs. worth of copper pipe come in that you have to unload yourself!
Maybe, maybe! I'm sure I'll make it someday. Lab Rat was one of those "for laughs, in-between" games so this'll probably be one too.
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"Del Duio has received 0 trophies. Click here to see them all."
"To be a true ninja you must first pick the most stealthy of our assorted combat suits. Might I suggest the bright neon orange?"
DXF Games, coming next: Hasslevania 2- This Space for Rent!
Oh, another idea I tried making before but failed miserably is a two player game where they both play at the same time, but against each other. Get this:
It was called "The Return", and at the beginning of each level two wizards come out of their coffins, one red (evil) and one blue (good). There's a timer, see, and the object of the game for the red wizard is to escape the level before time runs out. The objective for the blue wizard is to make sure the red wizard doesn't escape before the timer runs out. Both wizards can hurt each other by firing a limited number of fireballs. The blue one also could operate special cage-like traps that were designed to hold the red wizard for a little while. The red wizard had more punch to his fireballs to balance things out a bit. There were also hazards in the levels like gas fields that hurt whoever went into them, spikes, etc. There were gold and silver clocks that either added (if the red wizard got it) or subtracted time (if the blue wizard got it) to the clock when you got one.
So anyways, like a lot of other games I started making I never even got close to finish this one, but I always liked the original idea. Plus, replay value could be pretty decent, since each wizard played differently than the other one. It'd kind of always have to be two players though, unless you knew how to make some amazing AI for the unused wizard, which I absolutely do not.
Just throwing ideas out there.
Edited by the Author.
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"Del Duio has received 0 trophies. Click here to see them all."
"To be a true ninja you must first pick the most stealthy of our assorted combat suits. Might I suggest the bright neon orange?"
DXF Games, coming next: Hasslevania 2- This Space for Rent!
Hmm.. I like that Return idea. It reminds me of a few fun games I've worked on. In fact, it has elements similar to my Trap Designer/Dungeon Maker game, but with not as much emphasis on it. Wanna discuss it further?
Disclaimer: Any sarcasm in my posts will not be mentioned as that would ruin the purpose. It is assumed that the reader is intelligent enough to tell the difference between what is sarcasm and what is not.
I wish I had more time to devote to it Muz, but I'm up to my eyeballs as it is. I might still have both the wizard sprites lying around on my old computer somewhere. If I can find them I'll make them available to you if you want. They looked decent at least.
All I know is that I was aiming for a level-based game (like bubble bobble or a zillion others). A little like Lab Rat, you start out at the bottom of the dungeon, trying to get to the outside world above you. I actually got that idea from my failed "Return" game. At least something of it made it in somewhere, right?
The problem with thinking of new games, although fun, is then I start thinking of how it will look and how LONG it will take to draw everything for it. Seriously, graphics must take up about 50% of a game's development, at least for me they do. Maybe when I'm on my old computer back at home I'll see what else never saw the light of day and share some info about those too.
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"Del Duio has received 0 trophies. Click here to see them all."
"To be a true ninja you must first pick the most stealthy of our assorted combat suits. Might I suggest the bright neon orange?"
DXF Games, coming next: Hasslevania 2- This Space for Rent!
Bah, coding, artwork is no problem. I just hate spending about 5 months or even 2 years on a game, posting a preview on it, then someone points out an obvious flaw that sets me back 3 months. Of course, something simple like this shouldn't take up too much time, which is why I love the idea. I thought of more a maze-like dungeon style game, similar to those roguelike games, but in real-time.
On the other hand, I just thought of a new idea for a kind of RPG (or even other genres) which basically chronicles the tales of some scientists who, long story short, discovers 'mana crystals' left there. And to make a even longer story short, they decide to look for more by using them to teleport to other worlds where they lie in abundance. The catch is that when they get there, they need to establish a proper base to get back.
When they get there, they end up having to face whatever is on the other side. One person may end up in a barbarian civilization where he has to save a tribe from destruction through combat and designing magic weaponry. When he gets back, he'll end up with big muscles, a magic sword, and some improved skill. In another game, someone else could end up in the court of an ambitious king. In exchange for firearms, he trades gold and crystals. When he gets back, he'd end up as a suave, but somewhat morally loose arms dealer. Another might end up in a dark elven prison and be forced to learn to cast spells to free himself, eventually becoming the master of dark elves and returning as a powerful archmage.
Just an idea for a theme that has a lot of potential. Still, I'm very bad at storylines, so I need a bit of help with that.
Disclaimer: Any sarcasm in my posts will not be mentioned as that would ruin the purpose. It is assumed that the reader is intelligent enough to tell the difference between what is sarcasm and what is not.
Sounds like that old show with Jerry O' Connell where the 3 guys and the girl jump into different dimensions. That sounds like a great idea but VERY ambious. That would be a huge undertaking, but would make a killer game. Maybe a bit like Chrono Trigger where they jump around, only not back and forth through time but to different worlds?
EDIT: Actually, rereading your post, that sounds like a killer theme for a good strategy RPG. Where each time they jump into a new world it could be a new map. Some levels might have killer robots, others would have knights, some aliens?
I just hate spending about 5 months or even 2 years on a game, posting a preview on it, then someone points out an obvious flaw that sets me back 3 months.
Yeah, like Hasslevania's old shitty gravity / jumps. Set me back a lot, but now that I look what I have, I'm so glad people suggested that I change / fix it. I feel your pain!
The main reason to make any game (IMO) is to make a game that you yourself would play and enjoy. I have a lot of old or unfinished stuff on my old computer made in VB that only I saw. Although it might seem like a waste now, I still had fun making those games and you can always build upon the experience later down the road (or borrow ideas from unused things and put them into a new project.)
- - -
The thing I'm making now is a mini-game for HV that's going to be a bit like those old first person space shooters. It's really small though. I've never made one before so I hope it comes out okay. It SEEMS like it'd be easy enough, but who knows?
Edited by the Author.
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"Del Duio has received 0 trophies. Click here to see them all."
"To be a true ninja you must first pick the most stealthy of our assorted combat suits. Might I suggest the bright neon orange?"
DXF Games, coming next: Hasslevania 2- This Space for Rent!
I say work on a simple platformer. Something basic - a custom movement engine, perhaps based on the Platform Movement Object, just so it reduces the amount of work you have to do with coding it.
Then work on making its design and story fun to work with. Build it with the intention of being easily extendable. You could base it on a kind of energy system, where enemies leave a glowing energy imprint when they die. You pick up their imprint and develop their skills.
Perhaps your character somehow enters a magical world while he sleeps, Nights style. But unlike the natives, he can absorb the powers of creatures he kills. So you start off with a basic attack, and have to find ways of killing tougher animals.
An example may be a really strong monster, like an elephant. Perhaps one is near a cliff face with a sign saying 'unstable rocks'. Perhaps you gotta make it charge at you, hit the wall, and then die in a rock fall. You can then collect its energy and woohoo! u're super strong.
It could work, for the most part, by enhancing basic abilities that you already have.
E.g. You already have:
- Run
- Jump
- Swim (top of the water)
- Swim (under water)
- Lift/Pull (basically, strength)
- Block attack
- Attack
But these start off very weak. Now you're teh elephant slay0r, and your strength has gone from 2 to 20, you can lift boulders that previously were too heavy.
Quantity may also help; your first elephant perhaps gives you +20 strength, and each subsequent elephant you kill gets you +5.
If you kill a fish, you may get to hold your breath longer underwater. Perhaps after killing 10 small fish, you can't advance your air meter any more, but killing one will still give you can instant refill of air?
Killing a frog monster may enhance your jump, or give you wall-jump abilities.
The gist is that most advantages would be gained purely by increasing variables and keeping tallies of how many of each monster type you've slain. So from a coding standpoint, it's fairly simple. Yet it still adds a playability factor.
Then you could have a few bigger abilities, perhaps gained by vanquishing bosses. Like being able to fly, or being given new attacks and weapons.
But for the most part, variables would do it. It'd be amazing to be able to watch your basic jump, swim, lift and punch become steadily more effective as you progress.
(EDIT: It might also add that extra playability factor of seeing an impressive monster early on in the game and being able to think "Woah... at some point in the game, I'm gonna be able to do that!!" If you really covet his uber Hammer-Of-Thor attack, or ability to turn invisible, then you're more likely to keep trying when confronted with a difficult boss. You know from the start what your reward'll be.
You could also at some point develop an immunity to certain small animals, making it unnecessary to kill them (since after you've killed a lot of a certain animal type, they'll cease giving you any further improvement). Perhaps when you've reached this saturation point.)
Oh my god, thanks DeadmanDines. You just encouraged me to do such a game. Though I already got other projects (I bet we all do when starting new games lol), but such a game sounds awesome. A game with much forest-ish environments and with like wisps all over the place (I'm thinking in the directions of Heart Forth, but a little more FFX-ish). And with very very calm and soft melody-music.
You could have this giant cameleon as a boss, and when you kill him you'll be able to turn invisible (kinda), and then you'll be able to pass a place with a huuge guardian, like a giant cyclops or something guarding a dungeon.
When you kill this Bull-boss, you'll be able to ram a big rock-wall.
Of course there'll be secrets which you'll only be able to acquire after you've killed a certain monster or a certain amount of a monster. Some monsters should also be hidden, thus giving these secret monsters' abilities more rarity.
But there has to be something that makes you want to play the game again, other than for the fun or some difficulty settings. Let's say you've found and slayed every monster and gotten to the point when you've done like everything? Therefore there some kind of level-up skill-system with different "paths", or change character in the beginning or something.
The ideas for this stuff are never ending.
I had a game a long time ago called (incoming generic title alert) "Magic Sword", where your guy started off as a serf, turned into a knight at level 10, and a paladin at level 20. He only had three stats to worry about- Owl, Bear, and Rat. (IQ, Strength, and Dexterity- roughly). Anyhow what made it fun was that when you leveled up you had to choose which of the three to increase, like in Zelda 2. Depending on what you leveled, you'd get different skills or other bonuses. The jump from level 1 to level 2 went like this: Owl= +1-6 Max MP, Learned: Read Texts (ancient books or signs you found). Bear= +2-6 Strength (damage), +1-4 extra Max HP, Learned: Resist Poison (a small bonus to avoid toxins). Rat= +5-10% to hit skill (accuracy), +1-3% dodge skill, Learned: Pick locks (for chests). Of course, it's been done a million times, but since they were named after animals I figured it may fit in with Dine's idea.
If you wanted to limit the player a bit for increasing skills from killing different animals, you could do something like what I did for Undertown with the player's weapon skills too. To increase a skill every time a weapon connected, something like the following was used:
Current weapon skill score:......Percent Chance to Increase by +1 upon successful hit:
---------------------------......-----------------------------------------------------
0-24................................................33%
25-49...............................................20%
50-74...............................................10%
75-99................................................5%
100..................................................2%
What makes this system good is that the player will see immediate results from killing monsters (or animals in this case), and it will give him a lot of reason to keep on killing and raising his skills. And it wouldn't really allow for a lot of abuse, because it gets really hard to raise his levels to the max 100. I used the numbers above as plateaus also- You got some minor bonuses at 25, 50, 75, 99, and a huge bonus at the master level of 100. I even used different colored text for each plateau so the player could see gradual improvement graphically- red, orange, yellow, green. I'm sure if you used a similar animal skill development system, it'd be perfect for a game like this.
Edited by the Author.
Edited by the Author.
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"Del Duio has received 0 trophies. Click here to see them all."
"To be a true ninja you must first pick the most stealthy of our assorted combat suits. Might I suggest the bright neon orange?"
DXF Games, coming next: Hasslevania 2- This Space for Rent!
I dunno, some games are meant to be played to completion. You can eke it out for a little while by adding minigames, additional quests, etc. But sooner or later, people wanna play your sequel. So don't worry about that overly.
A few things to enhance gameplay might be:
MINI GAMES/Sidelines
THEODORE
A very competetive athlete who likes to beat people at stuff.
He challenges you to an obstacle course, which may involve basic running races, perhaps lifting rocks or jumping large gaps.
If you lose, he taunts you cockily; you win, and he flips out and swears he'll beat you.
When you return, you find he's trained to become faster, or stronger, and has a new challenge for you. Sometimes, rather than just doing a harder version of the previous game, he may focus more on another aspect of skill. So if you wupped him at strength, he may try a speed game, or a swimming/diving game, or an obstacle course that involves all these things.
Gradually as you progress, he gets more desperate to win. You start to see him eating weeds and stuff in the foyer (so he's obviously started trying to increase his powers by unscrupulous means. He'll deny it, of course). Finally, when he's been beaten at every game (but is now immensely fast, strong and skilled), he goes absolutely nuts.
If you've got one or more spare lives left, he'll pull a gun and shoot you.
If you're on your last life, he'll sulk saying stuff like 'Yeh, you just come back here when you're stronger, I got one last game, hehehe...'
When you return, and have more lives, then he'll shoot you (so he never gives you a game over).
Once he's shot you, you come back minus one life, and he takes the energy you left. So now you're absolutely equal in power (you don't lose your abilities, he just copies yours). In this final battle, he's able to copy your attacks. Make him HARD to beat.
When you finally beat him, he learns his lesson about the competetive spirit, and becomes a pipe-smokin' spiritualist who sells life potions, LOL.
FINDING EMO
A mum has mislaid her psycho teenage daughter, Emo (who dresses emo). She went off to sulk in a cave after an argument and never came back. You have to lift the rocks from the entrance, and inside there's a water boss (perhaps related to any water bosses you face in the main game storyline).
You beat it, and it hides from you, saying you'll have to use your brain to save Emo. There's a pool behind where the boss stood, and you have to dive in it to retrieve clues in treasure chests. The clues refer to tasks you face further in the cave (on dry land, in deeper caverns). Each completed task opens another tunnel in the pool, letting you go deeper.
This way, the Find Emo storyline requires a mix of beating the tasks/minigames in the caverns, but also acquiring the ability to spend more time underwater (cos the pool gets VERY deep).
In the deepest part, you find another boss underwater, holding Emo in a bubble. The hole you came in from closes off, and the fight begins. If you don't have unlimited air by now, you'll drown (cos the fight takes too long).
When you finally beat the boss, it explodes, launching you and Emo back up to the surface. She's really grumpy still, like "Yeh. Thanks. Whatever" and walks off back home.
That's the last you hear of her, but you can visit her in her home. She's still grumpy, but her room's absolutely covered in posters and pictures of your character.
ABILITY IDEAS
NightCaller Monster
.In some areas, monsters come out the floor at night. The NightCaller monster can shriek and cause the night to come, making monsters come out and attack you while it makes its escape.
If you kill it, you get its night summoning ability (but have to use it when you're standing on stone, because monsters may come out the soil and attack you).
DayCaller Monster
.Related to the above. It dwells in patches of plants that open in daylight and retract at night (which bite when they're open, so they're not too healthy). If it sees you at night, it sings the sun up, causing the plants to come up and bite you if you're close. You have to kill it one of these ways:
-- Shoot it from a distance at night, before it notices you. Doing this in daylight is useless since the arrows hit the plants and do no harm, as with any other attack against the plants.
-- Creep up behind it at night so it doesn't see you, and then attack.
-- Using a flame attack at daytime, torch the plants. They'll die and the flames will kill the DayCaller too.
IcePhaser Monster
. In one dungeon, you have to save yourself from monsters by hitting/shooting ice columns so they fall and block the way. But when the IcePhaser comes to an icy wall, stretches its hand and (with effort) slowly phases through it. It's surrounded by a freezing cloud, so:
-- Arrows/Projectiles freeze and shatter on impact
-- Bombs are disabled, or their flames are neutralised by the cold
-- Kicks and Punches obviously do no good, cos you'll freeze
You have to slow it down using the ice columns and reach a higher level (where you can still just see the monster moving below you). There's a seering boulder - normally you'd just jump over it with a learned double-jump move. But if you have enough heat resistance, and strength, you can lift the boulder and drop it down onto the IcePhaser's head, killing it. Drop down and steal his energy to gain the walk-thru-ice ability, and a lot of ice and heat resistance (flaming arrows will now extinguish and become normal arrows when they hit you).
Ice Wolf Monster
. Ice wolves obviously add to cold resistance. But they can also run on ice without skidding. So that's the skill you learn. It could help you playing a hockey game with eskimos too.
Wow, you guys have a lot of unique ideas. Too bad they're just not the type of games I like to make. Lol, the community is full of platformers, top-down shooters, but I'm more into RPGs and turn-based strategy. I think I'm in the wrong community
Disclaimer: Any sarcasm in my posts will not be mentioned as that would ruin the purpose. It is assumed that the reader is intelligent enough to tell the difference between what is sarcasm and what is not.
I was playing Advance Wars on the shitter last night and really wished I could make a game like it. Those types of games are so much fun, and a lot better than staring at the wallpaper or something on those special occasions.
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"Del Duio has received 0 trophies. Click here to see them all."
"To be a true ninja you must first pick the most stealthy of our assorted combat suits. Might I suggest the bright neon orange?"
DXF Games, coming next: Hasslevania 2- This Space for Rent!
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. Still, I enjoy playing those industry tycoon type games, so it could be fun.
Edited by the Author.
