I'm afraid you're all too late, the Dinosaurs have already allied with the Nazis.

http://www.moddb.com/mods/dino-d-day/news/dino-d-day-the-mod-released

There's some nice looking zelda-esque Assemblee projects, and a four player RPG. You/we may be able to talk to the designers if we wanted some help.

Here are the sketches I was talking about. They are in no way final, in fact is someone doesn't like the character, I'd love to see what would be a good replacement.


The last dude is a little odd, and was at 3 am. Kind of a combination of a big soldier type but really passive, eastern europe meets native america. *shrugs*

Just some concepts to inspire/enrage to get us thinking visually.

I got three people connected and moving around without lag. I don't think any of the people who joined can see each other moving, but the game starter can. Looks like a great start, I actually thought networking would be one of the later things to work on, so it's nice to have it getting worked out now!

Michael! Glad to have you aboard, your style is also fantastic.

And neon, now's the time for concept work for characters, enemies, items, and landscapes so go for it man. I'm on a huge spriting/pixel kick so you don't have to work on assets yet.

I did a version of the "druid" girl and a combination of my previous character sprite and the adventure hero, I'll post them as soon as I can get them scanned and fixed up.

night mode is unpleasant

Dying is a bad thing, especially in a game where people rely on you. What's wrong with a minor consequence? Making a character have to carry you would increase the incentive to revive you sooner, and hopefully they'd want to because you'd have an indispensable item/skill.

I think the puzzles should be impossible with one living member, extremely difficult with two, and hard with three, depending on what items are needed. Also each character would have weakness that would presumably be remedied by having the whole team, and worsened by trying to go it along, not just with puzzles but with traps, enemies, and bosses.

I'm not trying to force my opinion, I guess I don't really get your alternative.

  Keep in touch with us Tim!

Some design things:
TheDustin asked about dungeon structure, and I'd love to have medium sized (half hour to 45 minute sized) dungeons with a checkpoint after the miniboss(es), or whatever. If we could make them fairly organic in shape either to fit the environment or dungeon theme I would love that to death, if anyone knows me that's my favorite part of Zelda.

He and Kadoba critiqued my design about player deaths a bit. If possible I'd like each puzzle to require as many characters as possible. If someone dies, the puzzle should still be possible, but it would become more challenging with each player death (could be done by having puzzles require multitasking, multiple enemies, etc.) As for "resurrection", I think discouraging death at all costs is the goal, first to help the team work together offensively and defensively, and also as a limit to the griefing aspect of dicking around. You know if you through the dude into the fire again, you're going to have to carry him. I'd like to have one (maybe 2) "resurrection" sites, depending on the size, and they'd have to be unlocked.

I do like the idea of player resurrecting each other though, maybe it could be limited and item based to try to keep the same level of consequence, but also for just-in-case scenarios like boss fights. I'd like to think dying would be a fairly rare occurrence if the players are actually trying to work together, supported by items that allow for team defense or what have you. It's definitely something we can test out to see how it compares to Gauntlet or Left 4 Dead.

Okay, before this message gets too long I'll say a few things about art. Like I said, I love jad's work. Pen, that to amazing and exactly what I'm looking for. We have two small problems now though. First, jad's design for the miner girl and her respective home by pen clash in style. I think this can be helped by assigning the more cartoonish anime style to only one "nation", though jad I would love to have you help design anything else if you have the time. Once we can find which style fits best with which nation, everyone's (include my own) desire for megalomania will be settled a bit. The idea behind it, again, is making the characters feel more like people and the places feel more like countries, based on unique national art styles.

Secondly, is everyone cool with jad's sprite size idea? It's currently 40x40. I think we should get that settled as soon as possible as I've been starting some basic tiles and enemies, and I'd like to get a standard.

so excited

[Dig Deep]

Hey why not, I could put this piece to use.


Dig Deep

http://unsilentwill.deviantart.com/

Jad... oh man oh man oh man. so great. Extraordinarily inspiring.

Imgaination is the key here, and you have that bleeding out of you. If anything, Genericman is a little too generic. I don't understand why an entire country of people would wear overalls, but it's apparently an idea that's not going to die anytime soon. Anime is done to death, rebirth and death again, but I can't help but love these designs, and I'd hate to screw them up by changing the style too much..

I am all for bigger more expressive/animated sprites. It's more effort and time but if everyone's cool with that, awesome.

... Awesome!!

Apparently there are two beta apps, so we could definitely try them out.

http://code.google.com/p/napkin-wave-gadget/
http://wave-samples-gallery.appspot.com/about_app?app_id=18016

All I know is they look right and the first one doesn't have an eraser.

Those look great Kramlack (I did see it!), so now we have your style and my style to work with, the other two are still open! Maybe something more feminine, as I (along with Jad, whose ideas are awesome by the way) would love to have two female characters, and a style that could bring a uniqueness to their land/dungeon/whatever, without them necessarily being a race of women.

(I still don't get this miner fixation guys, what's up  )

Again, if you can avoid generalization. Four Swords had FIRE NATION, WATER LAND, TREE PLACE, CASTLE THING which was pretty lame, even by Zelda standards. Moreover, think of how the people in each place deal with things such as: land structure, animals, technology and even forms of government. This treads the line between design and story--we don't need even an agreed upon plot to give the design of each place an interesting style.

Yeah the music is so great, but for sure we'll have to see it with the visuals, or we could even start to design the visuals around it.

To move things forward, let's put the focus on Design for the moment, as getting the basics of the plot is important, but the specifics don't need to be held on so tightly and can always be adapted as everything comes together.

Again, the front post has been edited to include the foundations of the project, the Wave is starting once people get their invites, and what's left is open to  your own style and imagination ( )!

Astounding.


I need watch this again. I want to watch it as much as I can, it's brilliant and...

Games used to be about exploring new interesting and impossible worlds. Somehow that changed into "experience war"...

I like it, and I want to see more like it. 

Good to hear you're with us. I think the front page does a good job of presenting a cohesive idea.

As for having a story, if nothing else I just want to avoid clichés, justify this project's time and effort for more than a fangame. Ashkin, I like your story ideas, and it's actually not that complex. Having a big bad enemy is something I want to avoid, and I think I can. Again, none of these ideas affect gameplay too much, so we should really put off story design until we can get some other assets going.

The cool thing is, for the lobby system, Zelda has that in place where all dungeons are open (at least in the first one), but the items you have restrict where you can go, and later on that was done in combination with plot events. Also, we could still combine that with a pervasive world, but with certain "checkpoints'?

Nice ideas Dustin, especially the enemies, we need more of that. I'm actually pixeling up some concepts for them  at the moment.

I think the idea of magic with be dealt with in the game, but in a unique way to again, avoid the high-fantasy über-generic ideas. But, the items found (as Zelda is really about items) will have different properties, that may be "indistinguishable" from magic if you catch my drift.

Inventory on the other hand is something we have to consider, basically depending on how big we want the game to get. Four Swords had what, a sword plus some random found item. I think at the moment, we should go for that and keep the controls within the bounds of a NES, and if need be we can implement a GB style item screen.

Ashkin, I think the dungeons should probably be the focus, just four (five, hee) gigantic, well designed, beautiful structures. But like I said, if we could have maybe two or three small towns be region around a descent sized over-world it could be great. Also, that plot is similar to the one I had in mind, but I think plot will come along during the process later on.

So I'm official putting this project into the Work Stage, I think we have a great foundation and a lot of room to be creative still, and I'll be sending out some PMs to get some more art going. Also, what do you think of my idea for the name (on the first page)?