...Just a title I threw up there. It could work as the final name for the game, though, if people actually like it... and if I decide I like it. Right now I'm liking it, I think.
When considering the competition theme, I thought about airplane dogfights and how an interesting game might be made of them.
I thought of stunt pilots who do crazy and foolish things like flying upside-down and standing out on the wings of planes.
I thought of a scene from
Porco Rosso where the pilots ran out of ammunition and began to fire at one another with their sidearms.
Then I imagined all this in a game... but also
with grappling hooks.
The core idea of the game is a 2D, side view aerial combat game for two players where the goal is to shoot down the enemy plane and force the opposing pilot to deploy his parachute... but not to kill him. It's a gentlemanly sport! Killing the other pilot will cause a person to lose the match.
Both planes are "moving forward" (scrolling background and such). Players can adjust speed (move forward or backward horizontally) or altitude (all vertical movement will be in arcs and circles; loops will be natural). Players can also exit their planes and move about the field with the use of grappling hooks. If the plane is left unattended for too long, it will slowly drop, and it is obviously much more vulnerable with nobody to move it out of the line of fire. However, an expert will be able to perform such daring actions as grappling to the enemy plane and throwing the pilot out of it. Players can even, if they so choose, take control of the opposing plane and put it in harm's way.
=FEATURE GOALS=Minimum (competition build):-Basic flight mechanics
-Plane machine guns (limited ammunition)
-Independent pilot movement
-Backup revolvers for when machine guns are empty
-Grappling hook mechanics
-Basic fisticuffs -- knocking foes off planes, etc.
Expanded (ideally also the competition build):-Polish (nice menus, etc.)
-Character voices (silly taunting and such)
-Interesting flight environments (balloons and the like to grapple from)
-Multiple levels
-Character generation/determination based on player information (name, home, etc.)
Great (possible future work beyond the competition):-Multiple aircraft and tools to unlock
-Loadable player profiles (win tracking, equipment saving, etc.)
Fabulous (hopeful level of completion):-Online multiplayer!
...I can draw nice, cartoonish visuals... and hopefully write happy electronic music as well... but it's going to be too much work for me to try tackling the programming as well.
I need help!I need somebody who is willing to see this through the competition and also continue to work on it beyond the deadline. It won't be anything too dedicated, of course; I imagine we all have jobs or other things eating up our time. But I would like somebody who can keep working with this on some level until it's a really nice game, polished and packed with features... even if that means putting in continued effort beyond the competition deadline (and it probably will, since it's a fairly ambitious idea).
I'm not looking for a slave, of course; I need a partner! We'd both be working together to figure out the gameplay details and further features.
I'm kind of hoping someone will already have a platforming engine that supports slopes, moving surfaces, and grappling hooks; I figure that would be a great to build off, and it doesn't seem too unreasonable to think someone might have something like that lying around from a previous project.
Regardless, the concept doesn't seem out of reach if one of us is just doing images and the other is just doing programming... so
who wants to be in on this?
[Expect images soon, hopefully tomorrow... I started doing pencil drawings before I saw the contest announcement, but now that I've seen the rules, I'd feel uncomfortable doing any further work; it seems like it would be cheating, since the contest doesn't start until tomorrow. Meanwhile, here's a picture I recently did for PleasingFungus; I'm hoping to use a similar style for the characters in "ASitMoC":
http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/4871/peopleexample.png]