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At 5/20/08 02:31 PM, Xeptic wrote: Is this going to be story-based? Or at least have a some form of storyline? There seem to plenty of willing animators and artists so far so I thought it would be cool if we have a couple of cutscenes in between levels and/or bosses, all in different styles.

What would you do for cutscenes in a game like this though?

At 5/20/08 02:45 PM, adman1993 wrote:

At 5/20/08 02:31 PM, Xeptic wrote: Is this going to be story-based? Or at least have a some form of storyline? There seem to plenty of willing animators and artists so far so I thought it would be cool if we have a couple of cutscenes in between levels and/or bosses, all in different styles.

What would you do for cutscenes in a game like this though?

That would depend on the storyline I suppose, maybe in between the levels there could be a (short) funny sketch about the happenings in the ship. I don't know, just adding my two cents. Cutscenes would mean there would be more openings for animators.

At 5/20/08 02:58 PM, Xeptic wrote: What would you do for cutscenes in a game like this though?

That would depend on the storyline I suppose, maybe in between the levels there could be a (short) funny sketch about the happenings in the ship. I don't know, just adding my two cents. Cutscenes would mean there would be more openings for animators.

I think cutscenes would slow up the game experience. While this is a group effort, at some point you just gotta cut it off. If we make a job for any and everyone the game will become unmanageable and disconjoined.

These kinds of games have very little if any story behind them. This genre is one of those you just pick up your sticks and play types. Its a far cry from Final Fantasy where you have to really get engrossed and attached to the characters.

Heres some other thoughts based on some other posts i read:

RE: Super bomb
I think having a super bomb/bail out weapon is key. Sometimes action is just to hot to handle and having the ability to collect / use a superbomb as a bailout i think is essential. I think it would be neat for each characters super bomb to 'look' different but essentially i think it should do the same thing ie clear the screen. Again, that feature in all the games its used is like your get out of jail free card.

RE: power meter
I'm still 50/50 on it. I think it could complicate things and make a ton of work if we have the power meter be unique to each weapon. If we have it so that each characters power meter controls that particular characters power shot then cool. I think just keeping it simple in terms of the power meter stands for how long the powershot lasts for would be fine. We could make each power shot different for each character and call it a day. Maybe Nene is a giant pink beam.. maybe pico's is a thinner multiway shot... maybe darnells somethin else.

Inertia
I think the ships should have very little if any inertia. When i was working with Gust on a different game it took a few tries to hit a sweet spot. Unless a character's ship is deliberately being given inertia for the sake of making it unique then i see no point in even exploring that. It makes it frusterating otherwise.

I think if we just stick to tweaking the player speed and weapon variety for each character then each will feel different enough for the player to bother playing with.

At 5/20/08 05:54 PM, Luis wrote:

These kinds of games have very little if any story behind them.

Hmm... what reason could Pico, Darnell, and Nene have for flyin' 'round in deadly space-fighters... in space?

Brainstorming! :D

- Alien Homonid's evil alien ex-wife who concidently is the queen is invading earth with an army of a bunch of different hired alien mercenaries. The gangs sent to blast 'em up!

- Luis ate a radioactive taco and turns into a giant space monster who spawns all sorts of types of creatures. The gangs sent in to blast the spawned buggers and find a way to save Luis! :P

- The Beard has grown even more powerful and is taking over all of NG... and the entire WORLD. Play as Pico and friends in the mission to battle through various NG characters and beasts under the control of The Beard in hopes of saving NG and the World.

Mullet King could also lead a magical army of random creatures in an effort to take over NG and rename it "MulletGrounds". :3

I tried. :C

I could help out with some small part of the programming. Although I think two or three programmers is really enough and gust and cojones should have no problems with this :P.

So actually I don't mind doing a few sprites instead for a change. Eh, I'm flexible.

At 5/20/08 05:54 PM, Luis wrote: I think cutscenes would slow up the game experience. While this is a group effort, at some point you just gotta cut it off. If we make a job for any and everyone the game will become unmanageable and disconjoined.

These kinds of games have very little if any story behind them. This genre is one of those you just pick up your sticks and play types. Its a far cry from Final Fantasy where you have to really get engrossed and attached to the characters.

I suppose you're right. I wasn't talking about fully fledged 5-minute long features though, just something that'd make the transition between levels smoother (4-5 seconds?), especially if every level is going to have it's own distinct style. But you're right in that it would probably unnecessarily slow down the game.

At 5/20/08 12:49 PM, Luis wrote:

I was thinking more like boxed pics of characters, with dialogue to the side, with maybe 2-5 lines per boss (kinda a back&forth between the boss and the character you've selected).

I think the full-screen might be too much of a distraction now that i think about it. maybe just a little slice or something that doesnt invade the whole screen would be more proper.

That was a similar image to what I had. The action could just pause for a second and an image of the boss could slide into the top-left corner to deliver a bit of dialogue, then an image of whoever your character was could slide into the bottom-right to deliver a character-specific comeback, and all could begin.

As for multiple characters - it really doesn't complicate things too much from a coding standpoint so long as you guys are all willing to draw everything :P

well we're wrapping up the american idol actionscripter edition today... so any interested parties for that today was your last day to evaluate how you could help with that. we're moving on after today and you'll get locked out.

Hmnm, i could have a try. Trying to cut back on collabs, its filling up my flash submissions page. So i might, i might not.

Ach, missed page three :s

At 5/20/08 05:54 PM, Luis wrote: RE: Super bomb
I think having a super bomb/bail out weapon is key. Sometimes action is just to hot to handle and having the ability to collect / use a superbomb as a bailout i think is essential. I think it would be neat for each characters super bomb to 'look' different but essentially i think it should do the same thing ie clear the screen. Again, that feature in all the games its used is like your get out of jail free card.

If people want to do cutscenes, I think this'd be a good opportunity. When you use super-weapons, you could pause the game and have a little two to four second mini-scene appearing over the top half of the screen to show you activating them, before a big bang wiping everything out.

Inertia
I think the ships should have very little if any inertia. When i was working with Gust on a different game it took a few tries to hit a sweet spot. Unless a character's ship is deliberately being given inertia for the sake of making it unique then i see no point in even exploring that. It makes it frusterating otherwise.

Meh, I always hated it when people stick inertia in their games for no other reason than because it's slightly more complicated to code and therefore showing off. Sometimes it's appropriate, but you definately shouldn't go overboard. Maybe have it taking a tenth of a second to go from stationary to full speed or something, just to give an illusion of physics without annoying anyone.

At 5/21/08 01:05 PM, Luis wrote: well we're wrapping up the american idol actionscripter edition today... so any interested parties for that today was your last day to evaluate how you could help with that. we're moving on after today and you'll get locked out.

Wait, what?

At 5/21/08 01:05 PM, Luis wrote: well we're wrapping up the american idol actionscripter edition today... so any interested parties for that today was your last day to evaluate how you could help with that. we're moving on after today and you'll get locked out.

Cut me out of coding, I'll to some sprites / animation.

At 5/21/08 01:49 PM, Paranoia wrote:

At 5/21/08 01:05 PM, Luis wrote: well we're wrapping up the american idol actionscripter edition today... so any interested parties for that today was your last day to evaluate how you could help with that. we're moving on after today and you'll get locked out.

Wait, what?

Meh it was a side comment really. I just want to have the 3-4 actionscripters who are going to work on it settled so that we can get the art production going. I was talking to Cojones and since he isnt overseas i wanted to have him be the point of contact for the programming end of it. In other words i want to be the funnel in the art production and i want someone else to be the funnel in the programming. This way we dont have people coming from all over the place and things being made behind the scenes and 'magically' popping up somewhere along the build.

Im gonna just punch up a game doc, with a shopping list of atleast the first levels assets. i think we're being too democratic. lets get this show on the road and figure out changes as they are needededed.

I'll handover my fla with the level one 6000px layout so that you programmers can mess about.

i'll explain the process of making art for the game when i have that doc typed up to those interested in that aspect.

I can contribute sprites or cutscenes but not explosions. I can't animate explosions too good :(

At 5/22/08 10:39 AM, BritishMoose wrote: I can contribute sprites or cutscenes but not explosions. I can't animate explosions too good :(

Ya theres two things i HATE animating.. explosions and walk loops.

Let me in, I'll supervise the script kiddies if you want. I'll work as a scripting liaison for this project. It sounds like the programmers here want to get into the nitty-gritty so I'll let them script and I'll just fill in the gaps, working as as a director and supervise production. I might throw in a few particles and polygons while I'm at it.

Welllll since im a mod and im supervising / being the bottleneck for the art I think it would make sense if jmtb was the bottleneck for the programming end of it. In other words maybe people can grab the art from him as i feed it. Gust is always on when im at work, and everyone else i rarely see online!

As a side note i do find it weird that theres so many programmers who threw in their hat. Its such a chore getting a programmer to buy into an idea normally! DIVAS.

Okay, everyone who wants to have access to the project SVN to participate in building the game register on origo.ethz.ch. It'll be created in a couple hours hopefully.

If it's not too late, I'm very interested in this project and would like to get involved ;P.

I really need to do something like this to get me back into Flash.

cool i just registered. I'll be populating the game doc into that thing so if you want to be in the loop make sure you register!

Heh, I'm interested but probably won't be a real part of it. (coder)

For the coders, each person should have their own area that they focus on. One could focus on enemy movement/AI/tactics while another could focus on a nice efficient overall engine and yet another could focus on the overall game flow (deciding when and where enemies come from)

If you want someone for the AI part, I'm game =) Thats the part I like doing. I hate programming things like the game flow =/

Also, AS3 FTW. You're getting nothing from me in AS2 =P

Gust is always on when im at work, and everyone else i rarely see online!

Gust and I (and authorblues and some other programming people) sit around in the IRC channel in Gust's link all day. It's a good way to communicate, given people leave their clients open whenever they're online. People tend to say "Hi", not get a response within the first 30 seconds, and leave. That isn't really how IRC works, typically... gotta just let it run in the background and check in from time to time. Not sure if that's sort of thing is of any interest to anyone, but it's an option.

As a side note i do find it weird that theres so many programmers who threw in their hat. Its such a chore getting a programmer to buy into an idea normally! DIVAS.

Well the 'community project' has a nice ring to it--that's my excuse :p

Let me in, I'll supervise the script kiddies if you want.

I'm on board for this as long as we're still doing the AS3 :x

Okay, everyone who wants to have access to the project SVN to participate in building the game register on origo.ethz.ch. It'll be created in a couple hours hopefully.

Looks sweet! Signed up, couldn't find the specific project. SVN will definitely help control the looming clusterfuck, heh

gogogo

If your still in need for more artists i can help if you need it. I can do some powerups, weapons, etc. doesnt matter.

Dougy its called ngff

I really want to participate but the coder niche has clearly been overflowed... and me no speaky the as3's... ah well...

At 5/22/08 08:31 PM, Luis wrote: Dougy its called ngff

Yeah I managed to catch it the first time around. I've signed up for Origo under the name "DougyTheFreshmaker" (crazy, huh?). I couldn't access the repository or anything (even for browsing), though, so I guess you or Gust has to set people up or some such. Gust seems to be MIA tonight, but I'll bother him about it whenever he's around.

Even though I may not be doing much, I also signed up...under of course "El-Presidente."

At 5/22/08 09:50 PM, DougyTheFreshmaker wrote: Gust seems to be MIA tonight, but I'll bother him about it whenever he's around.

You have to remember they don't have clocks in Latvia just yet...they still go on sun dial.

added dougy and presidente

this is my very amateur attempt at making a 3-d ship design...

(not finished)
(very bad)

At 5/22/08 10:23 PM, chickendance333 wrote: this is my very amateur attempt at making a 3-d ship design...

(not finished)
(very bad)

its not that bad. it has a very maxi pad look to it maybe it can be nene's :P