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[torncanvas]

Premise
Dinowaurs is a (for now) one-on-one multiplayer online cartoon dinosaur combat/strategy game.  In other words, it's going to be totally sweet.    Think "Worms/Gunbound meets Starcraft + psuedo MMO"

In a side-view scrolling arena, players can strap crazy weapons to their dinosaurs - who are all oblivious to the fact that they're actually fighting in a battle - while little villagers scurry about to force the dinosaurs to attack the enemy and capture all the territory on the map.  Maps are laid out like Scorched Earth - i.e. a 2d side-view height map.  Along the map are villages, half belong to one player, half the other.  So the goal is to use the crazy weapons you can build at your villages to attack the enemy dino and enemy villages to capture every village on the map.  So the capturing is kinda like team capture-the-flag in that sense.

Each player can create 3 dinos, choosing from 4 different herbivorous races, and then customize the color, choose a team, and add accessories for each dino.

Dinosaurs

Anklyosaurs - The "dazed" one.  Constantly staring off into space, and captivated by small/shiny things, like bugs and butterflies.


Brontosaurs - The "hungry" one.  Either eating or hungry.  Or both.


Stegosaurs - The "sleepy" one.  It takes all the energy in the world to wake up long enough to realize it's time to go back to sleep.


Triceratops - The "angry" one.  Who knows what the problem is.  Bad weather?  Problem with the misses?  The state of the games industry?

Accessories

Knight helmet - hats are a big part of customizing the dino


Tanuki suit - suits are available as accessories

Arenas

Concept for Snow Mountain level - we've added to and made the villages smaller, and added some dirt layers to mimic a "cut-away" style since this image.


Concept for Grassland level.

[torncanvas]

Intuition has been working on Dinowaurs in earnest since mid-October, though it's inception came about around late April.  It has been a long time coming, and we're nearing a playable private beta.  I just wanted to get your guys' feedback on some things about the game, and use this thread for feedback about playing the game itself once we're ready for you guys to test it.

We'll have a much more clearly explained blog post in the future for those who are still confused.   I really wanted to get some input on the art stuff and the personality traits of our dinos so far.  Above is the logo in its early form, and I'll be adding in the dinos shortly.

[torncanvas]

Concept art for levels.  Does anyone have any suggestions for things the make the levels look more "war-torn" that don't involve too much work?

I'll try to post up the game design rules soon to see what people think.

[alphasmart]

First the obvious question: what, no velociraptors?

anyway, I very much like what you're doing here, though I'd prefer to see some more content.  How would these dinosaurs use weapons, for example?  I'd need to see the little people giving the dinosaurs strapons.  I mean strapping on weapons to the dinos.  yeah.

I love your cute vectorish art style.  That tanuki suit especially is both cute and fantastically rediculous!

With the war-torn look, while your arenas look stunning they don't really lend themselves to the kind of levels you find in worms or gunbound, which are nice and destructable.  The plain level especially isn't great as the setting forces it to be flat, which in worms is boooring (usually), so I'd be interested to see what it looks like when there's stuff going on.  I mean where are the people?

In conclusion I'll definitely be keeping an eye on this project.  I'm not a huge fan of adverts early in development (boo hype boo) but I look forward to seeing where you guys will take this.  How far is it in development?  What are you making it in?  How much will it cost? *hopes for freeware*.  Good luck!

[torncanvas]

Hey, thanks for the feedback!  Heh, yeah no velicoraptors...yet.  So far, just herbivorous dinos.  More content - noted.  I'll see what I can do about that.

Our current level is fairly hilly, so hopefully that will help things.  Otherwise, yeah that's a tough issue since our terrains aren't destructible.  I think the RTS aspect of the game makes up for it, though.

About "adverts early in development."  I wouldn't exactly say we're that early in development.  We're a week or two away from private beta testing, which we think is a couple months away from final release.

The game is Flash client-side with Java server-side and will be available on Kongregate.com.  It will be free-to-play and you'll be able to experience all or nearly all of the game for free.  Some items will be for sale, though we haven't decided exactly what.

Thanks again, and I'll see what I can do about posting more stuff so you can give us more feedback.

[Farmergnome]

Dude sounds awesome, I always wanted to play a dinosaur combat game that wasnt primal rage.  Just make sure the weapons are pretty big and awesome, sort of take like the weapon systems of a large tank or hellicopter, strap them to the back of the dinosaur, jesus that would pwn.

[torncanvas]

Yeah, that's basically what we had in mind.  Check this out:




Do you have any suggestions for weapons?

[Farmergnome]

missle packs are a great start, more you can fit on there the better, try bionic eyes too, they look sweet... no wait, scratch that, cannon eyes, like the dinosaurs have had there eye replaced with a cannon, that would look hella badass.  The air craft carrier dinosaur is kickass btw, almost too kickass for words.

You could have all sorts of fun doing some really overly huge warheads strapped to a kamikaze dinosaur too.

[Melly]

Those concepts are so full of awesome my eyes can't handle.

[torncanvas]

Hey yeah, kamikaze is a great idea.  The original design calls for game over when the dino dies, but we've overhauled the design twice now, and dinos spawn at the nearest village instead.  So we really could have kamikazes...yeah good idea

[Stij]

^coolest thing I've seen all week.

Also, some form of tail-mounted melee weapon would be cool.

[Golds]

Dinosaur in trouble.

[Chris Whitman]

Nice concept and art!

I like the clean lines and the good use of contrast.

[Alex May]

Very awesome. The model dino is superb. Looking forward to it :D

[Alec]

Art looks sweet! Can't wait to try it out.

[torncanvas]

Thanks guys.  We're working as hard as we can over here to get something going that you can actually give feedback on.  We're really close to the point where private testing would actually be useful to us.  If anyone wants to test privately, you can e-mail me and let me know.  Otherwise, we just need to get some bug fixing out of the way before we start making things look pretty again, at which point I can post some screens for real feedback on visuals.

Golds, that loop is badass.  You know of any more music from those guys?  I couldn't find anything on the rest of the site.  P.S. your gamma 256 game looks freaking awesome.

[Alevice]

dino riders much? not that that's a bad thing.

[torncanvas]

We were a bit delayed by the awesomeness of GDC.  But here are some screens of in-game action.


So each player starts with half of the villages, then you try to continually push the other guy all the way to the last village.  You have to destroy all the enemy villages, then kill the other dino.  If the enemy dino dies before all the villages are destroyed, it spawns at the nearest village.  So it's like a one-dimensional capture-the-flag deathmatch in that sense.


Enemy villages can attack you, and villages to the outside are more powerful and are stronger than those in the middle.  They also unlock more powerful weapons for you to produce.

Here are some more images since I don't want to post a ton in the thread itself:
http://www.intuitiongames.com/images/Dinowaurs_prod_hud.jpg
http://www.intuitiongames.com/images/Dinowaurs_villagers_closeup.jpg
http://www.intuitiongames.com/images/Dinowaurs_cluster_bombs.jpg
http://www.intuitiongames.com/images/Dinowaurs_mushroom_cloud_huge.jpg

Just in the past couple days, the game became fairly stable, so it could actually be useful to get some people testing.  Anyone who wants to test should just drop me a line.  We could really use some help to find out what we can change so that the game is more fun, and so that our battles don't last 30-40 minutes like some do right now.

[Melly]

You're oozing awesomeness man. Making a mess all over the floor too.

[alphasmart]

This looks hawter than hawt, especially seeing the rather unnerving injuries the dinos can get.  Finish please!  One piece of critique though: change the font of the numbers in the top-left to a sans-serif font.  It seems a minor thing but a font like that really sticks out from the rest of the field and looks soo out of place.  Other than that it looks excellent!  (I don't see the aircraft carrier anywhere though...)