Quote:Original post by Oluseyi I pulled out of the contest. It's compromising the design, and it's been too long since I made a game for me to work under that kind of deadline pressure (plus it really bothers me that my current build is ugly).
Hey, sorry to hear that you're not in the contest, but good that you're sticking with it!
Quote: I'd like to throw one (easy) side-scrolling level in to break up the monotony - say a fight against a projectile-wielding enemy (do you shoot back, or should we have something more interesting like hitting the projectiles back like a baseball or using a mirror to reflect energy projectiles?)
Can you do physics lite? For some reason the idea of being able to reflect richochet projectiles in a big, varied tunnel is calling to me. If you ever played the old game Super Cobra, it would be sort of like that, with your character a flying superhero who has no weapons, but must either evade or reflect projectiles. It could be an "invasion into Dr. Doom's layer" sort of level. You'd want to reflect bouncing projectiles back at the shooter or else you'd risk getting hit the closer you got. You could also make the power to bounce shots like a limited shield (sort of like in the original Asteroids). Oh, and for additional evilness: Force the character to constantly move forward.
Erm... or not. [grin]
--------------------Just waiting for the mothership...
Quote:Original post by TechnoGoth For instance you are battling Polka Dot in the break room of the communications tower if wait till he standing beside the cake on the table before unleashing the one liner “Its time for you to receive you just DESSERTS!” you can knock him backwards into the cake.
I don't know if you've looked into it but the Adventure Game Studio seems to be pretty powerful tool for creating 90's styles Adventure games. I was playing around with it eariler today and it seems that you can do quite alot with it.
Quote:Original post by Wavinator Can you do physics lite?
I have PyODE installed.
Quote:For some reason the idea of being able to reflect richochet projectiles in a big, varied tunnel is calling to me. If you ever played the old game Super Cobra, it would be sort of like that, with your character a flying superhero who has no weapons, but must either evade or reflect projectiles. It could be an "invasion into Dr. Doom's layer" sort of level. You'd want to reflect bouncing projectiles back at the shooter or else you'd risk getting hit the closer you got. You could also make the power to bounce shots like a limited shield (sort of like in the original Asteroids).
I like it. Sounds interesting.
Quote:Oh, and for additional evilness: Force the character to constantly move forward.
Oh, you devil, you! [smile]
Quote:Original post by TechnoGoth I don't know if you've looked into it but the Adventure Game Studio seems to be pretty powerful tool for creating 90's styles Adventure games. I was playing around with it eariler today and it seems that you can do quite alot with it.
I am aware of it, but I haven't seriously considered it. Right now I'm sticking with Python thanks to the expressiveness it provides me, plus it'll serve as impetus to develop a number of ancillary tools (like a better debugger, possibly an IDE [plugin for Visual Studio?], effects libraries, etc). I discovered that free Python development tools and utilities for serious development were actually pretty poor, in my opinion and experience.
If I understand correctly, you want an easily accessible game which allows the player to play a quick game, but which has great replay value in that each game will take a different course depending on the actions of the player.
Dialog options would change based on player's actions.
For example, if player has just pushed Polka Dot into the cake, "I don't believe you, Mr. Frigid. Polka Dot couldn't be standing behind me with his hypnotic accordion in his hand, because I just took care of him in the communications tower." could be one of the dialog options.
If the player has not pushed Polka Dot into the cake yet, but has prevented the communications tower from being used as an amplifier, "Even if Polka Dot were standing behind me, his hypnotic accordion would be of no use now that I've disabled his converter in the communications tower." might be one of the dialog options.
Of course, if the player hasn't even set foot yet in the communications tower, one of the dialog options could be "Polka Dot? Behind me? With his hypnotic accordion? Oh, no! I give up!"
I recently played Temple of Elemental Evil, which makes use of a dialog system like that. I found the dialog trees more entertaining than the rest of the game.
You either believe that within your society more individuals are good than evil, and that by protecting the freedom of individuals within that society you will end up with a society that is as fair as possible, or you believe that within your society more individuals are evil than good, and that by limiting the freedom of individuals within that society you will end up with a society that is as fair as possible.
Since I pulled out of PyWeek, I have the luxury of revisiting the design from the ground up, while maintaining the core concept. I've pushed it from a "quick one-off" to a studied skill-building approach. As milestones in the development of Power for Good, I plan to develop and improve my character art, design and animation skills, as well as find a technical workflow that helps me get them from my head to paper to the screen.
It's still going to be implemented in Python, for the simple reason that Python is a great language with horrible game development-oriented utilities. I don't mean libraries; I mean debuggers, IDEs and so on. Trying to write Power for Good for PyWeek, I was constantly frustrated by the poor available infrastructure (I don't have Visual Studio right now, and I couldn't afford Visual Python for it anyway). So, while developing my game, I fully expect to develop a variety of usable, learnable, fairly intuitive game-oriented tools as well.
Finally, to respond to Silvermyst's comment (are you back? no one seems to be able to stay away from GDNet indefinitely! [smile]), I think that's an excellent idea and should be an integral part of the design. I'll need tools for rapidly creating and managing dialog trees as a subset of scene resources.
By the way, you grokked the idea fully.
I'm tied up with the development of a web-based publishing system right now, but I'll continue trying to develop and mature Power for Good, most likely by expanding the story and fleshing out the roster of characters. I really like the farcical approach, so I'm going to adopt that - and give my hero a bit more of a personality, full of tics and foibles of his own.
So we have Polka Dot. What other characterizations can we come up with? (Disco Daddy would be a lame repetition, even though he can claim the cultural "Disco Sucks" zeitgeist as his origination... or his love for Saturday Night Fever.)
