clyde

Amateur Game Making Night

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Sounds awesome! If you need any help from someone with little to no experience in making games, I'm your man.

edit: Your description of the music sort of reminds me of this song that I wrote a long time ago for fun. It's probably not exactly what you're looking for (I guess I was a fan of cheesy midi instruments back then), but I thought I'd post it to get some ideas flowing!

I totally want to use this song if I have permission to.

So uh, now what.

I decided today that my goal will be to make progress on the dancing game and post about said progress three times a week. I think that that will keep me motivated and moving without overwhelming me. If you want to contribute anything to the dance game project at any stage, please do so. I am taking no ownership of this project. If anyone wants a piece of it, then as far as I'm concerned, they can take it and do whatever they want. If anyone wants to add songs in, mod the game in progress, or use my sprites or code, they are more than welcome to do so.

If you have a separate idea that you would like to work on, but are having difficulty with, then I would be excited to help.

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And how do I access this game. Because I'd be up for suggesting some stuff.

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This is a fun thread. I approve. *approve*

 

I'm currently tinkering around with a javascript-based tool for creating and navigating branching dialogue trees with various conditions. I'm sure lots of things like that exist already, but soon there might be one more. If it ends up being awesome I will share it. =P Also, branching dialogue trees are gross.

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And how do I access this game. Because I'd be up for suggesting some stuff.

I'll post progress atleast three times a week and include links to things like image files and playable builds. It might be a few weeks before I have a build.

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Here's a thing I made a while ago and sort of gave up on because I couldn't figure out how to make it fun. GIVE ME YOUR IDEAS.

 

Left-clicking spawns an explosion that knocks the ball around. Middle-clicking spawns the object displayed in the upper right corner. Scrolling the mouse wheel selects different objects to spawn. There are explosive barrels and two types of ships - one which breaks apart into the other upon colliding with the ball or an explosion.

 

Also here's my horrible blog posts documenting what little progress I made.

 

Key takeaways:

 

 

I’m thinking that this idea maybe works best as a sort of puzzle game, where the goal is to clear a map in as few clicks as possible. The only real problem I can see going down that angle is that I’m no expert in level design, and I can easily see myself making the game too easy or too difficult as a result.

The other path down which I could take this idea is more of an action high-score based game, where objects spawn at semi-random (or maybe even predetermined) intervals/points, and the goal is to chain together as many explosions as possible for higher combos. But don’t wait too long, or they’ll explode on their own, and any chains caused by self-explosions don’t count!

 

The deeper I get into this, the more worried I am it won’t actually work as a puzzle game – not enough player interaction. It’s just kind of click-and-watch right now. Maybe sound effects, or an actual constructed level will make it all feel better.

Some ideas I’ve had proposed to me and/or am considering to solve this problem are:

  • Making it a multiplayer competitive game, sorta like pool (the details are still up in the air as to how THAT would work).
  • Giving the player an avatar to walk around and drop bombs (kinda like Bomberman, I suppose, but with more focus on destroying the level than killing enemies).
  • Giving the player the ability to drop a limited number of items (or perhaps rewarding the player items for good chaining of explosions).
  • Including a rudimentary high score even in the proposed puzzle mode – using things like looping explosions, such as a single ship splitting and creating two chains that meet in the middle to reward extra points.

 

I recently had a pretty sick idea for a sort-of-platformer that I'm interested in exploring, and once I shape the idea better in my head, I'll write something up about it and get your opinions, or not, whatever works.

 

EDIT: Whoa, I just realized that this build is actually older than I thought (not much, but old enough to make a difference). I'm going to upload the latest build sometime tonight, I think, with some more thoughts.

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Hi guys! I've created a permanent Google Hangout link for people to pop in to screenshare their work, chat, and look for partners and stuff whenever they have the time to. It's probably not necessary but I feel like this sort of gathering is pretty interesting especially in a creative context.

 

And here's a thing I made art for a couple months ago:

 

http://gamejolt.com/games/arcade/blocpk/18692/

 

It's actually all pretty poorly implemented but it's something. It's a local multiplayer post apocalyptic basketball thing, so if you want to play it grab a spouse or a roommate.

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Not to worry! Google Hangouts allows you to creepily listen to people work while you think of something to say!

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I have a notebook at home that I scribble my game ideas into. A while back i started playing with gamemaker and managed to make a hilariously terrible tutorial led man walking around with no animation.

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Hi guys! I've created a permanent Google Hangout link for people to pop in to screenshare their work, chat, and look for partners and stuff whenever they have the time to. It's probably not necessary but I feel like this sort of gathering is pretty interesting especially in a creative context.

 

And here's a thing I made art for a couple months ago:

 

http://gamejolt.com/games/arcade/blocpk/18692/

 

It's actually all pretty poorly implemented but it's something. It's a local multiplayer post apocalyptic basketball thing, so if you want to play it grab a spouse or a roommate.

 

Clyde, maybe you could add Hangout link to the original post with a little explanation of stuff? I also wouldn't mind a day and date where we get as many people together as we can, have a little amateur hour round table for questions, discussions, input etc? Or would that be too much?

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I propose we make a game composed entirely of mechanics mentioned in the Game Mechanics to Retire thread.

 

 

Idea: Game composed entirely of Escort Missions with QTEs. QTEs must be performed using a peripheral such as PS Move, guitar hero guitar, DJ mixer. However, you only get to find out which peripheral by listening to the inane bladderings of your escortee. 

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I propose we make a game composed entirely of mechanics mentioned in the Game Mechanics to Retire thread.

 

 

Idea: Game composed entirely of Escort Missions with QTEs. QTEs must be performed using a peripheral such as PS Move, guitar hero guitar, DJ mixer. However, you only get to find out which peripheral by listening to the inane bladderings of your escortee. 

 

Or we could do an escort mission where the guy you're escorting is tailing another NPC, and you have to keep him from walking too close and giving himself away by using kinect voice commands.

 

And clyde, you can absolutely use that song! Just credit it to 'ihavefivehat'.

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I'm in for any kind of narrative stuff, since I love to write. I could also perhaps get some writing pointers to anyone who shares the same interest, it could be useful! I'm also kind of good at Gamemaker, but it's been a while since I used it.

 

I have an idea for a kind of deeply systemic, emergent stealth game that focuses in a semi-horror setting. It's not survival horror per say, but some of the tension does derive from the fact that you're stuck in a somewhat creepy place with creepy things looking for you or guarding stuff. Think the first Thief and its supernatural enemies, only done well (those moments kind sucked, but there was potential there).

 

I also have this stupid, though kind of crazy narrative idea for a game like this if it happened to have co-op, but in retrospect it's kind a dumb. It's basically a plot twist that involves the co-op element in the game. I'd rather not tell it in fear that it's so dumb, people will just roll their eyes and make fun of it. :P

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Interesting....

 

I was dabbling in XNA for a long time trying to make an Xbox Live Indie Game. I had a lot of stops and starts, some of which are chronicled here (excuse my poor writting style) http://gamerdork.net/?s=dewar

 

After MS announced that they were canceling XNA, I grabbed Unity and have been dabling a bit there, but not too much as my job has become much more difficult (in a good, i-feel-useful sort of way) and I'm just worn out by the time I get home. I'm presently working on trying to create an Elite/Freelancer type game, except totally turn based so it's more of a relaxing explore the galaxy type thing than a dog fighting simulator.

 

At current, I'm stuck with some economic modeling calculations, but I'll bore you guys with those details later.

 

Edit: I have a microphone setup and would be happy to hang around in Google on occasion. I have some C++ and C# experience, but most of my programming knowledge is back from QBasic before "Object Oriented Programming" was even a thing.

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I'm trying to learn Unity. I'm not very far in the learning process. I'll probably creep on this thread/thing for a while.

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The main thing that gets me in Unity (and C# in general) is trying to figure out what has permissions to see what variables and other objects, and getting them to interact properly without just marking everything as public and going for it.

 

Edit: The video tutorials on the Unity site were actually quite good.

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Yes, their tutorial series is really, really excellent. Thorough and easy to follow.

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A monument to my stalled projects!

 

A while ago, I started working on a vintage adventure game in AGS, but I kind of stalled. I built a decent intro and demo area with most of the functionality, and some conversations, but no real puzzles.

 

Here is some of the (unfinished) background art, first walk cycle, and the name. I think I was going for a deliberately busted perspective thing. i'm not sure it worked, because I didn't always do it. Hah.

 

 

coming soon! haha. yeah right.

 

 

nerdalert.gif

test-walk.giftrekwalk.gif

dorm1.gif

comic-shop2.gif

shop-unfinished_zps7ba4c33a.gif

 

nerd mortal enemy concept/portrait art:

 

jocks.gif

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Great idea. Absolutely no real experience of making games (except coming up with complex house rules for various tabletop games as a kid (Y)) but totally keen on picking up a few things and contributing. 

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