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Apocalypse Tribe HQ _ The Apocalypse Bar _ The AT game Brainstorm

Posted by: AC9breaker Jul 12 2005, 01:36 AM

I was thinking about possible scenarios and ideas for the game, and thought maybe making this thread would be a good way to get things rolling. I think it was agreed that the game would be a 2d scrolling action game.

Story: I've been trying to come up with original ideas but end up hating them. Someone proposed that it be set in a futuristic setting, I think its a cool idea too. I was thinking something post apocalyptic too such as Fist of the North Star or Mad Maxx.

features: Several AT personalities could be bosses. Example Cushinator could be a ninja robot that dances and melms you while you try to figure out his weak points or SCU could be some huge robot thats chases you while fleeing on the back of some truck all the while the characters have to chuck things or shoot him.

Also each selectable character could have their own special move of sorts. Such as the ninja vanish from Dive's mock up beigelaugh.gif

Lastly on the ideas a stage involving vehichles of some sort. Well those just a few of the things Ive been thinking.

Posted by: HC82 Jul 12 2005, 10:04 AM

I think it would cool if the AT and AT affliates were the good guys, playable characters, or characters that assist you along the way. We want to maintain that team feeling.

I'm all for some sort of sci-fi post-apocalyptic setting. It could be a tribe born out of some sort of apocalypse. Mad-max like, with other tribes warring against each other for supremacy.

I guess things like why the apocalypse occured and why there is war would be aspects to think about. I think the excuse of "total anarchy" and people just fighting to fight for basic rulership would be kinda lame, unless there is a greater reason for trying to gain supremacy.

Just some ideas, though. Since this is sci-fi, the fictional aspects allows for some fantasy elements as well. Our ideas don't have to be so grounded to reality.

Possiblity for quality storyline is fairly large with a sci-fi setting.

EDIT: I was thinking about the whole AT radio thing. It would be like some sort of means for AT to communicate with each other on the fly.

Posted by: Dive Jul 12 2005, 01:00 PM

Just throwing out a plot idea.

ATHQ is the fortress of The Apocalpyse Tribe. The security of HQ has been compromised and AT has been forced to evacuate due to being overrun by mutants, zombies, republicans, etc. You receive a distress call and you must fight your way through the wasteland to reach the base of the mountain that ATHQ site upon. You must then fight your way into ATHQ and up the many floors, clearing out the infestation to reach the Control Room and repair the security mainframe.

Posted by: Icaras Jul 12 2005, 07:43 PM

"The President has been kidnapped!! We need some BAD DUDES to save him!!"

seriously though... Smash TV.

i would say the original COntra, but if you want to play a better version of that.. hey.. Metal Slug.

Posted by: proj Jul 14 2005, 02:07 PM

Nothing wrong with making the AT members bosses.. that's sounds pretty funny. So I can help with the coding aspect..

In Jr.High I did a game called 'The Jamacian Ninja Posse Game'. It had a single room with a boss and a switch. I like the ideas of having ninjas because that means you get to have cool moves, tools etc. Anyone skilled enough to do a character animation mockup.. I can plug it into a 2d engine I have laying around and upload a prototype.. basically what we would need to start for a prototype would be:

---
1 character sprite organized into a single image file (currently I can load TGA files natively)

so 32x32 or 64x32 is a pretty good frame size.

Each animation cycle should be in a serious of consecutive frames in the image. See the attached tga for an example from a prototype I did recently. It was a top-down tactical game so there is a series of frames for the different directions you can travel.

--
1 background

For the prototype we could just use a single image that scrolls but for the real deal you actually want to use a tilemap to save on space. A tilemap would be where you have an image that contains pieces that fit together then a file that is something like:

1,1,1,1,2,2,2,1,1,1,1,1
1,1,1,13,2,2,21,1,1,1,1

etc etc that specifies which piece of the image to use in that place.

---

Story wize I like the character development in initial-d and think that would be neat for a ninja game.. You start out as a delivery boy, the first few mission you have to take food to people living in an apartment complexes and learn to use your ninja skills do deliver food to the windows (ala crazy climber, bionic commando) you have a time-limit to deliver the food.. This is actually the way your dad is training you to be a ninja without you knowing it..

Second set of levels is post-life-changing-event that introduces antagonist but you are too weak to really defeat them at the end of this set of levels. After failing you meet your 'oracle-savior' type character who tells you about the next stage and what you must do to defeat the uber-boss.

Third set of levels is collecting the powers and pieces ot make the ultimate sword/item whatever that will allow you beat the bad guy (think zelda and the master sword)

4th set of levels is you fighting through boss liar to defeat his ass.

Each set may only be 3 smallish levels with a 2-3 bosses at the end but I think it could be fun.

 med_inf.tga ( 16.04K ) : 25
 

Posted by: Dive Jul 14 2005, 02:23 PM

Wow, sounds good proj. If you came on board/led the coding team, this would save me so much time as I can then concentrate 100% on sprite animation.

I'll get a fully animated sprite completed to those specs soon.


Posted by: proj Jul 14 2005, 02:30 PM

Yeah I've already got an engine which can do this pretty easily. We'll just get a little prototype going first and see how that goes.

Posted by: Dive Jul 14 2005, 02:49 PM

hmm I was thinking, now that we have someone who knows what he is doing, maybe instead of simple side scrolling ,we can do something more like X-Men Legends 3/4 view gameplay. Too many ideas again. beigelaugh.gif

Maybe like this


 

Posted by: Crushinator Jul 14 2005, 03:05 PM

That is a good idea for the perspective, Dive. Reminds me of Fallout or Syndicate Wars. buttrock.gif


Posted by: proj Jul 14 2005, 03:09 PM

Yeah I have an iso tile object that can do this but the only problem is from my experience it is a lot harder to do a good job on the iso stuff. To do it right there are some layering issues to deal with. The artist I was originally working with on the tactical prototype was using 3ds max with the shader plugin to do the graphics and we eventually figured out how to do the orthographic projection with the correct angle (I think it's like 55deg) to get the right look..

Basically to do it you need your tiles to have a 2/1 pixel rise edges
----
-- --
-- --
-- --
-- --
----

This ensures that when you put to tiles side to side that the top of the middle lower tile locks in. Then if you want doors etc you basically just make them longer. There is a lot more to this than first appears and I think sticking to straight 2d would be far better to get something actually finished ;)



Posted by: proj Jul 14 2005, 03:10 PM

umm. that ascii art was copmletely butchered.. when i get to one of my home machines i could upload some of the sample art if anyone is interested in how you put together this type of tileset.

Posted by: Dive Jul 14 2005, 08:21 PM

QUOTE (proj @ Jul 14 2005, 04:09 PM)
...and I think sticking to straight 2d would be far better to get something actually finished ;)

Yea that does sound a lot more involved. 2D sprites will be a lot quicker to create then the isometric variety. I haven't really messed with 3D programs, all of my experiene is in flat perspectives. Let's just go with the original plan for this project, the next game can incorporate this. beigelaugh.gif

Posted by: Wiryu Jul 14 2005, 10:57 PM

Proj is way smart in the art of video gaming O.O

Posted by: Dive Jul 15 2005, 06:40 AM

In starting to come up with a character to design for proj's prototype, I had to stop and think about what kind to make, as I wanted it to be something I would use for the final version. We initially wanted a 4 player game with more than 4 "classes" to choose from. Since I want this game to completely feel "AT", I got to thinking about what 4 archetypes would represent the populace best. I came up with the following conclusions.

1. Pirate
2. Ninja
3. Robot
4. Feral

For starters, let's stick with 4 designs. Subsequent versions can contain the male/female versions of the archetype. Here are the characters I think should be included in the first version.

1. Female Pirate
2. Male Ninja
3. Male Robot
4. Female Feral

Sound good?

I can handle the Pirate and maybe the Ninja sprites, but I am not that great with mecha, and Retehi expressed interest in Feral character design.

So for proj's prototype I will work out a female pirate and at least have a walking animation completed soon.

Posted by: proj Jul 15 2005, 11:27 AM

Okay one character with walking animation would be a good start. The engine is pretty much data driven so you will be able to experiment by editing an ini file for now.

Posted by: Vitamin D Jul 15 2005, 11:31 AM

Haha nice. This is really taking shape. Yeah I was thinking there had to at LEAST be a ninja. beigelaugh.gif The rest of the types are also very AT. It will be so damn cool when this is underway.

Posted by: proj Jul 15 2005, 12:41 PM

BTW there are image formats you can do the sprites in. 32bit with a full alpha channel or 24bit with color keying. I don't care what the color key is but make it something easy if you want to use that (like 0xff00ff or 0x0000ff). I have a number of blending options available in my software rasterizer so I prefer to use the full alpha channel (you can do additive, subtractive or alpha blend). That's why I support the TGA format by default because it has nice 32bit ARGB format support.

If you want to do color keying though I'm fine with that then you can stick with BMP or TGA format.

Posted by: unitself Jul 15 2005, 12:47 PM

beigesmile.gif

this is getting interesting!!!

I think we need to (finally) get technical now.
1. Number of colors and a set palette?
2. Character size?
3. Background (level) size?
4. Buildings, street, grass, landscape - that kind of thing?
5. Assorted background do-dads that will be interacted with - barrels, weapons, windows, etc?
6. Various weapons and/or armor? Size and color?
7. SFX? !!

All of this art will be done sprite-like, right? If so, I would LOVE to help out on any and everything.

side extra icing type stuff -
1. Flaming barrels!
2. 'splosions!
3. dead bodies - memories of the poor victims before you arrived beigesmile.gif
4. homages to past and present AT'ers
5. Proj, does this engine of yours allow for parallax scrolling backgrounds? Did I use that phrase right? hehe.. For example - all early Sonic games.

Posted by: AC9breaker Jul 15 2005, 04:27 PM

I'd like to take a stab at doing the robot.

I like SCU's thought of organizing things. Maybe we should set a date for when these character designs should be done. Just a date we can try to aim for.

Also, as for the story, I think we should hold off intill the characters are done. Then build the story around them. It seems easier to build a story around characters in my opinion.

P.S. Seems great to have a person as skilled in this area as you Proj. Also, Dive if possible could you send me the link for that program you used to make the mock up?

Posted by: proj Jul 15 2005, 07:09 PM



So roughly timeline wise it should look something like this:

finish art prototype
we don't need to have strong concept art at this point just something workable
2-3 animations (walk, attack, etc)
1-2 backgrounds
do some kind of concept art figure out how much art we want to generate, determine colors, look, etc
rough game flow breakdown
finish 2-3 characters and 2 levels, first level widgets, first particles and ui
flush out bugs and gameplay
break the rest of the game down into mini-milestones (usually per-level)
finish it up.. add polish and possible some minor features

To address unit's engine questions directly:
- the engine supports 32 bit color, 'unlimited' layers, alpha blending etc
- palette's are not worth the effort anymore for modern game programming
- there is a rough particle engine which we i would like to expand to do some nice environmental effects
- i think for general level design i will go with 3-4 layer parallax scroller and add some generalized trigger support

I have a sample game which is just about done running on this engine, I originally wrote it to do games on symbian OS (cellphones). If we get some file space I can upload various versions of the game (it's a texas holdem poker game) as well as some other 3d demos I have laying around.

Posted by: proj Jul 19 2005, 01:25 PM

BTW Like i said before any animation is good at this point to give me something to work with. Don't worry about it even looking very good, it will help to see things in motion to actually craft some good animation.

Posted by: Wiryu Jul 21 2005, 08:41 AM

first i just passed by to see progress......but i think i might actually try to contribute beigebigrazz.gif

Posted by: Wiryu Jul 25 2005, 12:35 AM

Come on guys, we got something going here, lets not let this die THIS fast :D

Posted by: Dive Jul 25 2005, 02:39 AM

QUOTE (Wiryu @ Jul 25 2005, 01:35 AM)
Come on guys, we got something going here, lets not let this die THIS fast :D

It's not dying at all, I am currently working on some character design, I just didn't have anything to update yet. I know Retehi and AC9 are also getting some designs together. Of course this isn't stopping anyone else from throwing out some plot/gameplay ideas, so if anyone has some thoughts, lets hear them.

I just had a usual busy week and was out of the house a lot this weekend.

Posted by: Wiryu Jul 25 2005, 01:10 PM

wonderful :D

Posted by: tanshin Sep 8 2005, 12:30 AM

so is this idea crushinated.gif ?

Posted by: AC9breaker Sep 8 2005, 12:47 AM

I think its just been woend.gif for the moment.

Everyone seems real busy to finish up the things we've started. I believe dive had sevral sketches done for some of the classes and Retehi's been pretty busy himself moving and all. I also have sevral robot sketches done myself too but, just haven't had the time to work them in adobe illustrator.

Posted by: tanshin Sep 8 2005, 01:44 AM

I think the only thing I could contribute that's worth anything is music, since I love writing it, but I believe someone already mentioned having someone in mind for that before. So I've just been kind of sitting back and watching the development. I hope something good comes out of this, it would be awesome.

Posted by: AC9breaker Sep 8 2005, 02:16 AM

QUOTE (tanshin @ Sep 8 2005, 03:44 AM)
I think the only thing I could contribute that's worth anything is music, since I love writing it, but I believe someone already mentioned having someone in mind for that before. So I've just been kind of sitting back and watching the development. I hope something good comes out of this, it would be awesome.

Oh shizzle, a song from the Tanshin, thats like getting Yoko Kanno to compose our flash animations! I don't see any reason why you can't do a song. Even if someone else did plan on working on it.(which I don't think so) Besides maybe this would be motivation for some of us!

Haha Man, we need to play some ninja jams on AT radio. "Everyones going down..."

Posted by: Dive Sep 8 2005, 04:26 PM

Breaker pretty much explained it all. I would love to get this project going again.

As far as music, I really don't have anyone lined up to compose anything. I may have mentioned that my brother could do some tracks but I haven't set anything up with him yet. The option for anyone to come up with some title and background music is wide open.

Posted by: AC9breaker Sep 8 2005, 08:51 PM

So people don't think we're doing nothing but blowing hot air, I'll show what I've been working on.

Here's a concept for a robot I've been working on. Here is the rough sketch I started out with.
user posted image________user posted image

user posted image



To the right is a cleaned up version of the same character in nothing but black and white lines.
Personally I really like the face but feel rest is pretty uninspired. but I'm hoping once I get the inking done and get other screens done for it, it will turn out better.

*Edit Started working again on the illustrator one and added some more details. perspectives still need work.

Posted by: tanshin Sep 8 2005, 08:52 PM

hmm, I'd need to know the basis of the game before I can start anything, so I can figure out what mood to give the songs. I guess it wouldn't hurt to go ahead and start experimenting with a few different types of music, sometimes stuff that failed for one purpose serves another quite well when I write music.

Wow, that looks really nice, breaker.

Posted by: AC9breaker Sep 11 2005, 10:00 AM

Here is a pretty much almost done sample of the character. Thoughts? If people like it I'll work on doing the animations, if not I'll hit the drawing boards again. Ether way its all fun. beigesmile.gif

user posted image

user posted image

Edit--Testing different settings.

Posted by: Wiryu Sep 11 2005, 11:55 AM

Damn breaker, thats a nice drawing! :D Inspired me to possible draw a few too, regardless of how not cool they are ;)

Posted by: Bryn Sep 11 2005, 09:07 PM

QUOTE (AC9breaker @ Sep 11 2005, 11:00 AM)
Thoughts?


Great job Breaker. Looks awesome. I especially like the insectile design of the legs. beigesmile.gif

Posted by: Dive Sep 12 2005, 04:56 PM

That is so badass Breaker. definitely keep working on it. I'll have some stuff to show when I get done with this reformat I been working on all weekend.

Posted by: proj Jan 25 2006, 04:21 PM

Hey I'm still here. I was on a 6 week vacation in mexico and got some good stuff done. I finished a big project at work in Nov. and am kinda chilling right now. I'll post a little demo app soon so you guys can get an idea of how we can get the art into a game.

w3rd! oh yeah.. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Posted by: proj Jan 25 2006, 04:39 PM

I love the concept art for the robot. What do you think about composing the bosses etc from multiple independently moving sprites. One for each of the body, upper arm, lower arm, upper and lower leg+foot. They would then need to be animated seperately which would pose a different problem but could significantly reduce the ammount of graphic work needed.

Posted by: AC9breaker Jan 27 2006, 12:48 PM

Oh sweet, welcome back proj! Glad you liked the design. Actually, I already made an animated walking gif, but I seem to have taken it off my host space. I hope I saved it on my computer before I did. I also quite a few other frames done for other motions such as attacks. But http://apocalypse-tribe.com/athq/index.php?showtopic=2265 I have lost all of that stuff.

I'm not sure I understand everything you mean about composing bosses from multiple sprites but I think I was planning something along that lines. I wanted to design a boss that was greater then the screen could fit so you would have to jump up high or climb some kind of platform to attack some critical areas that would cause something like, an arm to fall off ,or a leg, etc. When I get home tonight I'll look for it and PM it to you so I can get your opinion on it.

I actually have a lot of ideas for this and I've also been working on a story line and character bio's too. I also wanted to do something for the ending where the characters are forced to choose between a loved one or all of humanity or something like that and, it has to be a unanimous choice or else you guys have to fight against each other between who's choice will be selected. There would also be a hard to get secret ending thats basically the happy ending of the game. The only trouble I really have is the lack of time to devote to this.


Posted by: proj Jan 27 2006, 01:57 PM

I think you have some awesome ideas. Finding time for a whole game is difficult, it's true. The first step is to just build something small and fun. Perhaps a single boss and animated character that can be controlled.

So that being said I think you are absolutely on the right path. I will try building a stick figure from multiple sprites to show you what I mean. Give me a bit of time the code I wrote on vacation is not compiling correctly right now and I'm still trying to get the scripting aspect of the engine nailed down.

Posted by: AC9breaker Jan 28 2006, 07:29 PM

QUOTE (proj @ Jan 27 2006, 03:57 PM)
Give me a bit of time the code I wrote on vacation is not compiling correctly right now and I'm still trying to get the scripting aspect of the engine nailed down.

Just out of curiosity, exactly what assembly language are you using? I took several courses in high school, and I actually liked writing programs, although we never did anything fancy and, I'm sure I'm no where near the level of coding something this advance. But, I would love to try advancing my skills in that area.

Posted by: proj Jan 29 2006, 03:18 AM

So far all the code is in C++. The scripting is lua (www.lua.org). I would like to write most of the game logic in lua as it can be a real pain to write in c++ ;) C++ is good for writing the rendering etc when you really need the performance and memory management.

Posted by: tanshin Feb 3 2006, 08:26 PM

I'm gonna go ahead and start writing a few scores. What would be preferable, midi-type classic game sounding stuff, or more modern stuff?

Posted by: AC9breaker Feb 4 2006, 10:41 AM

I think a mix of stuff would be sweet. When I'm doing random brain storming, or sketching, or working on the computer, I usually have this song called Assimilate by Skinny Puppy playing. In fact I've had dreams where the game was complete and that song was the BGM for the particular level. So maybe something like that or, maybe stuff like the Streets of Rage 2 music.

Posted by: tanshin Feb 4 2006, 09:16 PM

lol, skinny puppy. I'll download that song and see if I can make something similar without infringing copyrights beigebiggrin.gif

I'm in the process of writing a song inspired by that robot.

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