AuthorTopic: Community Game Development Project  (Read 38717 times)

Offline AlexHW

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Community Game Development Project

on: November 18, 2005, 08:25:12 pm
Community Game Development Project
November 18, 2005

________
Overview:
This is a project intending to loosely replicate the game development process.
As leader and coordinator of this project, I first shall be requesting an open
submission of basic game concepts which should consist of a simple sketch and
description.

Once a decent number of submissions are made, there will be a vote upon which
couple to develop or if a vote seems unlikely, then I will just pick a few or
something.
The ones who submitted them will have the chance to become the lead designer of
their game concept and flesh the design out and make sure their team understands
the vision of the game.

Those interested in doing art for a game shall submit some examples of their
work and I will decide which team they get placed on. I will also decide what
type of art they will be doing. For example: I could tell one person to do
background tiles, another person to do linework & animations, and another person
to color the linework.. or I can make just one person do all the art, haha! But
I will likely not do that.

Once all that is sorted out, I will give the designers instructions and the
initial development stages will be commenced to define the necessary assets for
the game. Once these are created and the designers have created necessary
concept art of the important things in the game, the artists must adhere to the
specifications and produce the game art.


______________________________________
Current objective
Game Concept Submissions & Artist Submissions:

First off, we'll need some ideas for a *PUZZLE* genre game(since that is the
genre we'll be focusing on). Those who wish to participate, or not, can submit a
conceptualized sketch of their game idea and a description for it.
Once an ideal handful are recieved, a couple will be chosen and if the submitter
doesnt want to be the designer, someone will replace them.
note: please say so if you will or will not be the designer(other people can
offer to be a designer for a dif project if their concept isnt chosen).

Example:
Description:

This puzzle involves dropping predefined shapes
constructed of cubes downwards onto other
shapes. By stacking shapes onto others and
filling in rows, the player recieves points.

You can also see the next shape in the upper-right
corner of the screen. This allows the player a
chance to plan ahead for his next drop.

Also, those who wish to be an artist for one of the chosen concepts should post
a few examples of their work and once the final concepts are decided on, teams &
positions shall be organized.

_______
End Goal:
To produce the necessary assets to fullfil the creative processes/stages involved
with a small scale game development project.


Addition thoughts:
Since the genre is Puzzles, it wouldnt hurt to browse online for examples of
puzzle games if one has no initial ideas. By doing research, one can become
inspired upon a certain subject and develope new ways of seeing something.
One should also keep in mind of what could be popular and sell well, since if
these projects are finished, we could find some coders willing to put life into
them and perhaps some could be sold.
(if any game is sold, profit will be divided evenly among those involved).

Also keep in mind that becoming a part of a team brings certain responsibilities
to the individual, and anyone who is not pulling their weight will be removed
from the team and a new person will be seeked to replace them.


I look forward to leading the chosen teams to their victory.
Let the games begin ;)

Offline crab2selout.png

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Re: Community Game Development Project

Reply #1 on: November 18, 2005, 09:57:42 pm
This is pretty cool idea, Alex. Don't really have anything at the moment to add to this topic, so I'll post a couple examples of fun puzzlegames that I liked.

http://logicmazes.com/
Couples examples of mazes, but the real interesting puzzle I found was 'Theseus and the Minotaurs'. The point of it is to escape a maze, but the trick here is that the minotaur travels twice as far as you do, so you must take advantage of the priorities of his walking algorithm to escape past him to the exit.

Bejewled http://www.astatix.com/bejewled.php
Desciption on the page there

http://oos.moxiecode.com/#Examples
Outside of Society: The author of this website likes posting little flash apps of puzzle ideas he liked. Look for the puzzles mixed in with some other stuff on the left column. Sometimes there will be a little description of the puzzle included and often the name of the puzzle these flash apps are based on is used. I really liked the Denki blocks one.

And of course the classics such as Tetris, and um, others.

Can anyone tell me the name of this puzzle game? You control a cannon at the bottom and it shoots coloured bubbles. At the top, rows of different coloured bubbles are added every x amount of seconds. The point is to shoot the bubbles so that they connect to bubbles of the same colours. Three or more and it pops. Also, if any balloons have no link to the ceiling they pop as well.

Offline flaber

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Re: Community Game Development Project

Reply #2 on: November 18, 2005, 10:04:48 pm
Quote
Also, those who wish to be an artist for one of the chosen concepts should post
a few examples of their work and once the final concepts are decided on, teams &
positions shall be organized.

do i say I want to be an artist for one of them now??
or should i decide on that later once the ideas are posted?

Offline AlexHW

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Re: Community Game Development Project

Reply #3 on: November 18, 2005, 10:26:14 pm
do i say I want to be an artist for one of them now??
or should i decide on that later once the ideas are posted?

You can post some examples of your work(about 3 is good) anytime. By doing so, I will know that you are willing to become part of a team to create art assets once projects are chosen.

Offline Xion

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Re: Community Game Development Project

Reply #4 on: November 18, 2005, 10:40:59 pm
Finally! Hold on while I brainstorm.

Edit: A mockup is in the works
« Last Edit: November 19, 2005, 04:54:09 am by Xion Night »

Offline Skalle

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Re: Community Game Development Project

Reply #5 on: November 19, 2005, 12:17:11 am
Yo there Alex. It seems you haven't mentioned anything about programming, and I think you know as well as I do these games won't make themselves. Are you the programmer, lead programmer, neither, or whatever? Might be good to know things about that. Might want to know about music, debugging too etc.

Quote
Those interested in doing art for a game shall submit some examples of their
work and I will decide which team they get placed on. I will also decide what
type of art they will be doing. For example: I could tell one person to do
background tiles, another person to do linework & animations, and another person
to color the linework.. or I can make just one person do all the art, haha! But
I will likely not do that.

These I's seem to say that you are the man when it comes to decisions, though there are some things here I don't agree with completely. I think those who wish to participate should be able to apply for certain positions, like tileartist, AI programmer or sfx creator (or random for that matter, if they want to). The thing about you making one person do all the art seems stupid:(although you probably said it as a joke) there should be any number of artists I think, as long as they are not to many making it too messy.

Can anyone tell me the name of this puzzle game? You control a cannon at the bottom and it shoots coloured bubbles. At the top, rows of different coloured bubbles are added every x amount of seconds. The point is to shoot the bubbles so that they connect to bubbles of the same colours. Three or more and it pops. Also, if any balloons have no link to the ceiling they pop as well.

I think you're looking for the name "Bust a move". I was going to suggest this game too. There's also another version of the game I like, called FrozenBubble.
« Last Edit: November 19, 2005, 12:18:51 am by Skalle »

Offline AlexHW

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Re: Community Game Development Project

Reply #6 on: November 19, 2005, 01:07:35 am
At this point we do not need programmers, the majority of the work will be focused upon the visual and conceptual stages.
Once we surpass those stages and teams have a solid product to display, if possible, coders could be seeked out to construct a working program from the assets produced by the team. Those who work with sound can be seeked out as well.
From there, we can question how the games can be shared, whether there are any good ways to go abouts selling it if need be.

People are allowed to voice there interests in regards to a specific position, but that doesn't garuantee them it. I will be the one choosing like you said. Teams will be small, I'm thinking a maximum of 3 artists per team, but most likely there will be only 2 per team.

Offline Conzeit

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Re: Community Game Development Project

Reply #7 on: November 19, 2005, 04:16:10 am
Alex, what a great comunity activity, hopefully this catches on.

arent we forgetting about nyanyakoneko? he offers to make programmer-art games in his campaign, I'm sure he'd have no problem colaborating with this activity.

what I dont understand is, why a puzzle game in a art-based board? it makes no sense, puzzle games would seem like the typical project programmer only project, why have one of those here? seems like it would be much better to start off with a sidescroller, an adventure...hell even RPG or RTS.



Offline AlexHW

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Re: Community Game Development Project

Reply #8 on: November 19, 2005, 05:21:28 am
Thanks Camus,
I encourage people to be creative, but my intention is to be somewhat restrictive and minimal. By focusing upon the puzzle genre, I feel we can still maintain the creative aspect without being too excessive in regards to ideas and art. It is when things become bloated that issues may arrise such as people slacking or people being complexed over extra things.
By keeping things small and simple, it hopefully will allow us to make good progress and finish things. None of these projects will be huge, it's not worth trying to make a large game with this type of system where a team is put together on the fly. Normally you'd want to build your team first.

Offline Derek_R

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Re: Community Game Development Project

Reply #9 on: November 19, 2005, 05:26:33 am
Sounds liek a great idea Alex. I'd pitch in, but im out of time atm, and don't really think im up to any of the positions other than coder xD. Hope this all works out! Maybe if theres another later ill join up :).

good luck guys