Evening Reading
GDC 08 continues with a fairly steady stream of info coming. Nick had to cancel at the last minute which kinda screwed up our plans for coverage...
GDC 08 continues with a fairly
steady stream of info coming. Nick had to cancel at the last minute which kinda screwed up
our plans for coverage but hopefully Faylor can kick a few more things our way while he is
there.
- Pondering Blu-Ray?
- Wikileaks splash
damage
- MS sharing some
secrets
- Facebook flopping! OMG
PANIC!
- Navy shoots stuff
As for the the videogame news around these parts for today:
- Shacknews Street Fighter 4 Preview
- Bionic Commando Rearmed PC in May
- Gearbox's Aliens Game Co-op!
- LucasArts on Force Unleashed
- Grand Theft Auto 4 Movies
- MMO Future?
- Unreal Tournament 3 Patch 1.2
- Still Alive Hits Rock Band
- Crytek on Consoles
Lastly, everyone give a whut whut to Maarten for being so sassy around these parts and
getting a lot done behind the scenes around here. WHUT WHUT!
-
RomSteady
replyShack XNA Attack
Str8Dog drafted me into helping a small team create an XNA game from start to finish.
http://shacknews.com/laryn.x?id=16320708#itemanchor_16320708
In order to focus the team, the first thing that needs to be decided on is the base game design. I've gone back through the design vault and selected five basic game designs, each one based on a popular game, and Shacked them up. Any one of these could be completed by a co-located team over a 48-hour period, but given that the team is going to be spread out, I'm thinking 10-14 days is a viable timeframe.
Basic schedule is prototyping for three days, development for four days, integration for two days, bug fixing and playtesting for the rest of the scheduled time.
All of these are going to be 2D only, with the only 3D effects being scaled/rotated/skewed sprites. Basic Xbox 360 development tenets will be followed to ease future porting to the Xbox 360, but the PC will be the primary development platform.
Please jump into each of the subthreads and give feedback and most importantly vote. Your votes will determine the path this team follows.
The * rating is how hard I believe each one would be to do.
Voting closes tomorrow when Evening Reading kicks over. At that point, we'll begin.-
1* Hunt the WTFHorse
Single player, based on "Hunt the Wumpus"
Essentially a Shackified port of one of the "Wumpus" games.
Old "Wumpus" source is here:
http://www.atariarchives.org/morebasicgames/showpage.php?page=178-
[deleted]
-
[deleted]
-
i used to play the hell out of hunt the wumpus.. i was really little tho.
-
-
-
-
This sounds like the best option to me. I like it, and it sounds like it'd actually have a chance of being fun.
-
Love the Gyruss music.
-
I like this one the best
-
-
"Clean the Tubes" Design Document
Base Requirements
-----------------
All assets will be rendered to look best at 1280x720x32.
The game will be scaled up or down to match the horizontal resolution, but will always maintain the same aspect ratio.
At the base resolution, all fonts shall be a minimum of 24 pixels tall.
No critical information shall appear in the outer 5% of the screen.
A color-blind friendly palette should be adopted for all enemies.
Where possible, enemies should be created in black and white so they can be colored by code.
Main Game States
----------------
Intro
Main Menu
High Score List
Game
Enter Name
State Descriptions
------------------
Intro
-----
Animated background with title in center of screen with the text "Press ENTER or START to Begin" at the bottom of the screen.
If ENTER is pressed on the keyboard, then the keyboard will be the input device of choice until the game is exited.
If START is pressed on any of the connected Xbox 360 controllers, that device will be the input device of choice until the game is exited.
Main Menu
---------
On the main menu, there are four options. Pressing A or ENTER will activate that entry.
NEW GAME --> Starts a new game.
WARP < 1 > --> If the player has played before, pressing left or right will allow the player to skip to a
later level. Once the level is selected, pressing A or ENTER will go to that level.
HIGH SCORE --> Displays the top 10 scores.
EXIT GAME --> Exits to the Windows desktop.
High Score List
---------------
Displays the top 10 high scores on one half of the screen.
On the other half of the screen, the game credits will scroll on an infinite loop.
Pressing any key or button on the controller will return to the main menu.
Enter Name
----------
Displays the top 10 high scores on one half of the screen.
The entry that is being filled in by the high score is highlighted.
If the gamepad is the input device of choice, the other half of the screen is occupied by a virtual keyboard where they can enter their initials.
If the keyboard is the input device of choice, the other half of the screen just has an entry blank and instructions.
Game
----
Game is a seperate state machine.
Game States
-----------
Game Start
Level Intro
Level Populate
Level Attack
Level End
Game Win
Game Lose
Game Flags
----------
Paused (returns Active Controller Disconnected || isPaused)
Tame (returns Player Spawned < 3 seconds || State == Level Populate)
When Tame, enemies do not attack
Game Start
----------
Sets base flags.
Determines base level from main menu entry path.
Moves to Level Intro.
Level *
-------
On Level * states, player can move.
Pushing an arrow key, thumbstick or a D-pad direction will cause the player to move towards that direction using the shortest possible path. If the player reaches that direction and the D-pad/arrow key is still pressed, the player shall continue traversing the circle in the direction the player pressed.
Pressing A or SPACE fires. If enemies are not currently in an attack pattern, they cannot be hit.
Pressing START pauses the game and brings up the in-game menu, which has two options:
RESUME GAME
QUIT TO MENU (passes the game to the Main Menu state)
Level Intro
-----------
No enemies appear.
Level title appears screen center.
Level Populate
--------------
Enemies fly in from screen borders. Patterns decided by level. Recommend using level number as a bitflag to determine potential patterns that are randomly selected.
Bit 1 = Straight in.
Bit 2 = Loop from left.
Bit 3 = Loop from right.
Bit 4 = Swoop in, attack, swoop out. Do not join center.
Bit 5 = Swoop in, attack, survivors join center.
Bit 6 = Add to center.
Level Attack
------------
One to three enemies are pulled from the pool in the center and moved into the attack ring where they are vulnerable to attack, but they can attack as well. Attack pattern depends on enemies.
Level End
---------
Level end occurs when all enemies are dead.
If there is another level, changes to Level Intro; else changes to Game Win.
Game Win
--------
Game win occurs when all levels are complete.
After showing victory screen, game goes to Enter Name state if score > lowest high score, otherwise goes to High Score List.
Game Lose
---------
Game lose occurs when all player lives are lost.
After showing "Game Over" screen, game goes to Enter Name state if score > lowest high score, otherwise goes to High Score List.-
Is it 'Clear' or 'Clean'? I kinda like 'Clear' since that's sort of what you are doing...clearing the clogs?
-
-
I was thinking retro blocky stuff, like taking internet meme's and represent them abstractly in a retro form.
-
-
-
If you still need level soundtracks I'll be available
-
is this going to be an "open source" project? I'll be kinda peeking into the source code and checking out how you guys solved game problems and see if i came up with the same solutions / how I implemented them compared to you guys.. I think it'd be a great learning experience if you could make the source public in "stages" (ala: day 1 source, day 2 source, etc)
-
-
-
-
-
-
3* Containment
Single player, twitch-action hybrid of "Pong" and "Kaboom"
Requires the Xbox 360 controller.
Player controls two sets of "shields," each one controlled by either the left or right thumbstick. Both sets of shields rotate around a center point and move where the sticks are moved. Slowly, atoms are added into the playfield that bounce around. Players move their thumbsticks to move shields to bounce the atoms back into play. The more atoms in play, the higher the score multiplier. Once all atoms leave play, players lose one shield.
-
-
5* Guitar Loser
One player, based on "Mastermind"
Party is nearly over, and you've got a drunk hottie who isn't hooked up yet. Find the right chords to get her out of her clothes and into your bed before she sobers up and gets out of your life.
Control would be through either the Xplorer 360 controller, Xbox 360 controller or PC keyboard.
Four note combos for the keys. On easy, only three keys would be used. Medium, four. Hard, five. Expert, five plus the four nearby chords. Insane, five plus all two-note chords. The more notes you have right, the less clothes she is wearing. The more that are in the right location, the closer to the bed she is.
I think this one would be most difficult because of the amount of content required.-
-
yeah but change the hottie to a dude
-
-
[deleted]
-
I agree that it sounds complex, but the code for "Mastermind" is actually very simple.
Again, the difficulties here are on the code side handling three different input devices, but with proper abstraction that is fairly simple. On the art side, it's just the amount of content that makes it a challenge.
-
-
-
-
-
Or a public SVN perhaps? It might inspire otherwise-lazy people to contribute.
-
I'll throw up a trac site for it
http://trac.edgewall.org/
wiki + defect tracker + svn web frontend-
-
-
-
-
-
TortoiseSVN is what I've used on several projects, it is good, and easy. If an artist can use it, then it's OK.
-
-
TortoiseSVN is hella sweet
-
-
-
-
[deleted]
-
-
[deleted]
-
-
-
-
-
[deleted]
-
-
[deleted]
-
-
-
-
-
Electric VI - a game where you help the band in hell get to the green building to defeat the dance commander. After ordering a rock and roll evacuation you conjure up electric demons and Jimmy Carter to brave high voltage and pink flamingos to pull the plug on the party and return to McDonnelzz to buy the drugs.
The final level is in a GAY BAR GAY BAR GAY BAR -
-
GO Str8Dog GO!!
-
-
Dumb XNA Question
I want to screw around with this thing. I understand the need for recompiling and having certain things change between a PC and 360 version of a game, but what's involved in switching between the two once I get it to the point where I want to take my PC game and move it onto the 360 to start doing testing on there?-
-
-
-
-
You can also copy the project and hack the project file.
http://letskilldave.com/archive/2007/06/27/making-your-quot-game-in-60-minutes-quot-work-on-the-xbox-360.aspx
-
-
-
-
-
-
