[ON HOLD] Bonne Battles

[bdk336]

NOTICE: This is temporarily on hold while I pursue smaller non-legends projects that I will also put up here. The experience gained from doing other games should carry over to benefit this one as well.

EDIT: ok I've officially started work on the Bonne game. The name I've got up right now is just there until I think of a better one or one is suggested.

Okay well I've finally narrowed down the choice of first game I create to two options, and I am prepared to undertake both. I just want to focus on one first and I need your help choosing which. Also if you have any comments, questions or suggestions regarding either idea I would love to hear it. So here goes:

Game Concept 1:

The Story: You are a specially built by Tron to be the best tank pilot in the world. Your job as a is to drive customized Bonne machines into battle, your exceptional skills allowing you to handle machines with greater capabilities and larger weapon arrays than your peers.

The Basis: You will build and customize a small fleet of Bonne machines, creating each one to fulfill a unique role in battle and selecting the one(s) appropriate for each mission. You will be given a wide variety of missions to accomplish, the spoils of which may be put towards further expanding, upgrading and arming your fleet.

Major Features:

• 360 degree rotation of both tank and turret
  
• A wide variety of chassis, upgrades and weapons to choose from
  
• Unlocks including weapons from Megaman and Reaverbots and possibly Glyde
  
• Environments including towns, countryside and ruins (more details pending)
  
• Many types of missions, including enemy elimination, raiding, digging, rescue, escort and boss battles
  
• Missions are not strictly solo, many may be performed with the aid of a small team following you or other bots scattered around the area and some will even take place during large battles, of which you are a part
  
• Enemies ranging from police, to Glyde, to Reavers and even the Caskets
  
• As you progress through the game not only will you encounter stronger and more dangerously positioned foes, you will also find that even the weaker enemies begin to get smarter and even work together to bring you down.
  

Minor Features:

• Comic relief, mainly in the form of those oh-so-loveable servbots
  
• Legends-Style title screen with Servbot antics in the background
  
• Civilians to run around panicking and animals for you to abuse
  
• The introduction of my "Servbot status display" to be implemented in future games and released for public use; it's basically a Legends-Style health bar with servbot sprites, based on the station's smilies, used to indicate a servbot's current condition (like in MoTB)
  

Possible Features:

• Short mission segments in aerial/aquatic vehicles
  
• The ability to get out of your machine in order to get into tight areas, manipulate objects and enter and control empty turrets, tanks and possibly enemy vehicles
  
• Online co-op or vs modes depending upon how the game is recieved
  
• Unlockable challenge missions
  
• A mission/level/map editor with sharing capabilities
  
• Later battles may take place against stolen Bonne machines and weapons due to the variety and power of weaponry available to them.
  
• Objects and environment may be designed so as to give the impression of looking down from a 70 degree angle (to enhance the look and feel of the game) in this case the rotation animation for vehicle chassis will be reduced to 16 frames in order to create the proper angles, the turrets however would retain their full animations (note that creating 16 angled frames requires significantly more effort and skill than creating an un-angled sprite and simply rotating the whole
  

Game Concept 2:

The Story: You are the Reaver mainframe responsible for the protection of the ruins you are assigned to. Your job is to stop the diggers from pillaging the valuable treasure buried within the ruins by positioning and giving directives to the reaverbots under your command.

The Bassis: You must position reaverbots in such a way as to prevent the advance of the diggers into the ruins. Every treasure they steal reduces your score and may even bolster their abilities in the next wave, you must prevent this. But whatever you do, DO NOT allow them to take the refractors powering the ruins, lose all of those and it's game over. The reavers you position will act on their own but you may need to manually assign them targets when they just can't seem to get the job done. Be sure to change your layout often as the diggers will quickly learn to deal with or avoid troublesome areas.

Features:

• A wide variety of built in maps
  
• Access to nearly every Reaver in Legends 1 and 2 including bosses, when they are unlocked of course
  
• A wide range of enemies with varying size, combat prowess, skills and intelligence including civilian diggers (easy), well-equipped professionals (challenging) the Bonnes (tough), Glyde (pathetic) and even the Caskets and Megaman (oh ****!)
  
• A learning AI that remembers where your defenses are placed and develops better ways to deal with enemies as the game progresses
  
• The ability to manipulate not only reavers but also other obstacles such as traps, switches, barriers, doors and floor tiles
  
• A progressive mode in which the ruin starts small and a new room is generated randomly each wave
  
• Once again, just to stress the point, a huge variation of enemy types, backgrounds and abilities; some are puny and can slip through tiny openings, others are big machines specially designed to clear the biggest sections of the ruins, many carry special tools and equipment to ignore, avoid or destroy obstacles while some are simply able to kick bots over and throw them at eachother.
  

Possible Features:

• Map editor with sharing capabilities
  
• In-game map editing (to a limited degree)
  
• Multi-Level ruins
  
• Boss Waves
  
• Laying the ground work for a follow-up game in which you now control the Bonnes (this would focus upon battle strategy and defending key areas rather than keeping enemies away from key places)
  

Yeah I know it's long, if you want more details on a specific aspect, have ideas or want to help I'd be more than happy to give you specifics and listen to what you have to say.

P.S. Yes Mir@k I will ask for your help with the graphics once I have gotten down the basic game mechanics.

[duo]

They both sound like great ideas. The second sounds more original, but it might not be as much fun to play (or at least not the megaman 'run and gun' type of fun). Are the games going to be 3d?

[mirak]

If you are extremely sure that you can execute any of them with the level of programming skill you have, then by all means, go for the one you like the most.
BUT, if you're just brainstorming and haven't actually thought about how you'll make anything, then i'm afraid i won't have high expectations of the game.

I'm pretty sure you know what i'm talking about.

And about my choice, both sound like strategical games, which are very hard to do as far as my own game programming experience goes, if you can do this then that's quite a feat! Little people can after all. Since both sound similar in term of gameplay, i'd choose the servbot's game first, since it's low on graphical difficulty (servbots are incredibly easy to make in ANY style of art) and sounds like it can hold a bit more fun factor than the other, which focuses on serious gameplay. I love both genres, serious and comedic, but my choice is servbots.

[snowman]

Though Concept #2 sounds very cool, the first one sounds much more varied, will probably have more of a "Legends" feel to it, and will have a more enjoyable atmosphere. Servbots are probably much funner to work with than Reaverbots, and they really stand out more. Ruins are nice, but like Reaverbots, they can get very dark and boring. Servbots, like the rest of the Bonnes, are always full of colour!

What kind of landscapes will the game take place on? They could really add to the feel of the game!

Of course, like Mir@k said, do the one you like the most. If possible, you could maybe make one first, then the other!

[Qwertman]

2 sounds cooler. I was never good at protect the base type games though.

[bdk336]

First off no they won't be 3d, I wish I could make 3d games and all of my best game ideas are three dimensional but even if I can make them without a team it will take years (unless I just use alot of sprites in place of actual models), with the exception of very short and simple ones. These games are both going to be top down.

So far it sounds like the Bonne game is more popular. I do understand the requirements behind these types of games and have a good idea of how I would go about programming them.

One thing I did forget to mention is that with the Bonne one results are likely to materialize faster since, while it does require some AI programming, it does not need the more complex behaviors of an actual strategy game.

One thing that would likely cause trouble I've taken care of already in a test game. I already have the code worked out to properly change the direction that things face in (this requires a rotation animation with 180 frames the way I have it set up now) and, even more importantly, acquire the direction of a given object.

I have two variants of generically drawn tanks, one of which has 360 degree rotation of both tread and turret (individually from eachother) using the a and d keys to rotate the turret and arrow keys to rotate/accelerate treads and the other which moves in the arrow key directions and has a turret that turns to face the mouse (not likely to use this design in the game since I want limitations on turret rotation speed and this would make aiming harder).

Looks like I'll probably end up doing the Bonne game now, once I've made the final decision I'd like to use this thread to hear what people want in the game since I want to cater to the audience.

Oh by the way if you aren't good at defense games you probably wouldn't like mine since it will be designed to introduce new concepts to the genre which will also force you to consider many more factors and more serious tactics.

P.S. Should I make a poll for this thread?

Edit: I should also mention that my next most developed game idea is basically where you play as megaman but you get to find/earn not only all of your special weapons but also many weapons/equipment used by enemies and can carry far more weapons into battle by creating a set number "configurations" of three attachments which can be switched out in battle provided that you don't mind being vulnerable for about 10-15 seconds. Obviously though there would be a limit upon the number of weapons and/or configurations you could carry at once. Note that the game would be designed in such a way that you would need to use multiple well-thought-out configurations in order to get through ruins and major battles in one piece. Also I have not decided if it will be platformer or top-down style as of yet.

Note: original list of game features for concept 1 has been updated with features I forgot and a few I thought of as I was reviewing the test game engine. Expect further updates to both concepts.

UPDATE: I know this isn't all that much but figured I'd post it anyway to show that I am working on it. As of today I've Completed the programming for the parent objects for vehicles and turrets and introduced the major scripts for type determination, turret creation and weapon usage. Yeah it isn't all that much but given the demands of school and the fact it's only been about a week I think it shows that I am working hard that I already have some of the major groundwork laid.

[mirak]

Can we have some screenshots or something?

[duo]

I don't think there are any yet.

[bdk336]

No point in putting in screenshots when I haven't even made the beta art (the "art" I make to approximate the desired look of objects before I get the good sprites made) yet. right now it's the sprite equivalent of wireframes.

Also I took the servbot smilies from the station and I'm making good progress on the animations for the sprites based on them. These sprites are going to be part of my status readout (shield, energy, etc) and I plan on starting on the energy meter soon

Also on that note it would have been nice if the sprites on the site were in strip form

EDIT: I've been caught up with school and an iffy internet connection for a while but if all goes well I can at least put up some the non-object sprites (since I'm gonna be getting help with the object sprites). I'm also trying to get up a few working rooms so I can get a short gameplay video up (it will still have the pre-beta art but it's to showcase the mechanics. Speaking of which does anyone know of a free way to record video off your computer screen?

[duo]

Camstudio is good on windows, xvidcap on linux.

[Tau]

I use RecordMyDesktop on Linux. Works great as long as you don't mind converting .ogg videos.

[bdk336]

I'm too lazy to get Linux I have Windows XP, thanks.