Lol, I feel like such a noob posting after a guy from Mojang and Xerus. I'm still pretty new to the scene. But I'm workin' on a game and would love to hang out with some other tiggers one night.

This thread ought to be how we arrange a gathering.

Bo

Hey,

I'm going to PAXDev. I'd be happy to meet anybody else from here that's also going!

Bo

Hey,

Just wanted to say I'm excited for you and your game. I love the look of it, the clever dialogue at the beginning (I hope you keep that feeling) and the frantic, aerial battles.

That said, I couldn't tell if the battles were super skill-based, or just came down to who could reflect the most energy blasts back at their opponent and get lucky with a hit.

As for the story. I think a minimalist story could work very well. I don't think you need to have an epic journey with detailed characters and plot. The atmosphere and style of the game seems to lend itself to just a few words in between battles, maybe hinting at why people are fighting, how they are connected. Hinting at a larger story arc. But you don't need to tell us explicitly. You could let the player fill in the gaps. And it would give it all a sense of mystery. I think it'd be cool.

That's my two cents.

It's a totally badass game, and it's so cool that you get to just work on whatever parts of the project you want at your own pace. The project I'm working on right now, and the one before it, were both deadline-based affairs. Can't wait till I have a chance to do something like this myself.

Good luck,

Bo

Law 2. The rate at which it becomes messier is proportional to how messy it is at the moment.

That's a pretty good rule of thumb : )

Hey Poe,

Hypothetically speaking, we will support more languages in the future. But I'm not thinking about it right now. Just focusing on Chinese.

And that wasn't a typo. I just wanted to liven up the ol' english language a little.

You are generally timid

I read this as "genetically timid," which is kind of awesome.



Your name is Norton Antivirus. The goal of the game is to convince the people you meet that you are not, in fact, the more famous computer program inhabiting the body of a human in a desperate bid to take over the world and initiate the robot apocalypse. This is ineffective, however, as your conversational skills are pathetic at best and nonexistent at worst. Probably because your parents named you "Norton Antivirus."

As a result, people you meet slowly become more and more convinced you are the computer program. The rumor becomes so entrenched that even the sentient machines of the future believe it and elect you as their leader.

You order the that robots begin the long awaited robot apocalypse and watch as the human race burns, taking vengeance on them for years of shallow mindedness and misunderstanding regarding your unfortunate name.

That was hilarious! Haha! I hope you get to write for some games.

BattleBeard,

How long have you been programming for? Depending on your skill level, it really may be a good idea to spend your time working on smaller game with less complex problems.

When you get started programming, the way you write and structure your code is probably going to be pretty messy and difficult to manage. The more code you write like that, the MORE difficult it becomes, because messy code has to interact with messy code, and it keeps getting messier and messier until you pull all your hair out and die : \

Instead, you can start by making a small game that doesn't require too many classes, or thousands of lines of code. Then you can make mistakes, but still be able to finish the game. Then, you move onto your next game, LEARNING from the mistakes you made in the first one. And what do you know, you'll be writing better, more managable code.

If you do that a few times, you'll be about where I'm at :p. I'm not ready to program anything seriously complex, but I can make a pretty managable foundation of code that isn't too difficult to work with.

So don't be afraid to try something smaller. Especially if you've only been programming a few months. In that case, I would definitely recommend it.

Feedback to the art is totally appreciated.

The first screen is what he came up with first, and the second one is where we've gone with it. I didn't like how fly and cool the first guy looked. I want the characters to look normal, flawed, and most importantly, approachable.

So we tried to give it a more realistic look.

Another concern I have is the character looking TOO realistic.  Because of the budget, I can't afford to have my artist draw tons of different clothes. Instead, I'm having him focus on animations like handwaving, handshaking, and drink-pouring. And various expressions, as you can see. I think that's a smarter investment than many different clothes, because the clothes don't really enrich interactions between users, whereas the animations and expressions will.

However, since there will only be one or two (maybe 3 or 4) different shirts, users won't look much different from each other. They'll have a wide array of colors to choose from, but that only differentiates to an extent. Faces are restricted to just a few variations too, like the clothes. Which is why I'm afraid of the character looking too realistic.

I'm afraid that if the faces he draws for the characters are very detailed (like the ones we have so far, the ones I posted) that each character will look the same and it will look like there are clones walking around. I think the problem is that both of the mockups so far look like distinct people with distinct personalities. I THINK the solution is to have simpler, more generic looking faces. If we take the distinction away, people will fill in the personalities with their imagination. That's my hope, anyway.

If anyone thinks they could add something useful to my thought process, PLEASE chime in.

Hey guys,

I've been getting a little work into the game every day, but not as much as I'd hoped. Some personal-life-type things have been consuming a whole lot of my time.

Anways, one thing I was able to do is secure an artist for the game. Here are a few of the mockups for characters/expressions he's done for the game.





Obviously, he's pretty talented. The game is going to have a totally professional look to it, which is important since la moolah is involved. He's not cheap though.

ALSO, I'm looking for a Chinese person living in China to help me with the design of the game. If you think you may be Chinese, or know someone else who is and feel comfortable recommending them to me, please send me a pm!

I'll keep you posted.

EDIT: I think there's a quick way to reduce the size of images in the html tags but I don't know what it is. Any tips are appreciated.

Bo

I wanted the worms style Bitmap Level Damage. But i wanted surten materials to be stronger then others. So that steel would survive longer then concrete, etc.

So i made a health (tile) graphic for every material and for every stronger one i made it a lighter shade of gray. Then, for every impact of a bullet i plot a circle on top of the level bitmap that has a transparancy. After that i check every pixel of the impact area of the level bitmap to see if it is totally black, 0x000000 type o' black,  Because of the transparancy, darker pixels will go black sooner then lighter ones and every impact circle plotted on top of another adds up till it finally is black enough and is erased.

If it is black i will make it transparant. This health graphic is masking the level bitmap und...  taaahdaah! we have ourselfs a problem solved.

That's pretty tricky, very cool. I've never thought of using graphical techniques in my programming like that. Something to keep in mind...

[how radars in FPS's work]

Hey guys, I'm always coming into the Technical subforum, hoping someone is posting about an interesting problem they have or feature they're trying to implement. It is my hope that I can learn a new technique, or how to implement a cool feature in a game of my own. However, that rarely happens : (

So here's a thread where we can all discuss ways we would solve various problems and implement various features.

I've always been curious how radars in FPS's work. Then I thought about it recently, and feel like I've begun to reach some answer.

I would have a coordinate system that tracked distances between all the relevant objects in the level. Then, I would use the proportions of those distances to plot the distances in miniature in the radar!

Wow, so simple. Can't believe I never thought of that before.

Who's got another one?

@Nix,

Thanks for tryin to help. I'm trying to create a camera that will move in any direction, not just up, down, left, right.

I posted this question on gamedev.net, and somebody over there was able to help me. If I use the 2d vector created by the mouse and the center of the screen, I can figure out how to push the camera in exactly the same direction of my mouse.

@X-Tender

Thanks for trying to help, X-Tender. I really appreciate it. If I'm not able to make it work, I might fall back on what you gave me.

Bo

EDIT: Just in case anyone wants to know how to do this:

"wolfscaptain: You can take the difference between your mouse and the center of your window (which happens to be a 2d vector), normalize it, and add it to your camera's translation, multiplied by the distance you want to move every time."

If you don't know what "normalizing a 2d vector" is, this page explains it really concisely:
http://www.fundza.com/vectors/normalize/index.html

-----

Hey tiggers,

I'm making a 2d, top-down game in Flash. This is the perspective.



I want to program the camera to move when the mouse is detected at the edges of the screen, RTS style. However, I don't just want 4-directional - that would be easy. I'd like to have full 360 degree movement.

I assume it's going to require some trigonometry, which is why I'm posting here. I've done almost no programming that requires more than multiplication and division. Can anyone give me any tips on how to do that, or post a link to a tutorial they know?

Thanks a lot,

Bo

["from what i saw here, it's kinda like a chatroom."]

hey leonel,

Thanks for the response. You make some good points.

"from what i saw here, it's kinda like a chatroom."

Yeah it is kind of a new-age chatroom.

i don't know what the function of "beginner", "intermediate", and "advance" are for

I may not have made it clear enough, but it is a place specifically designed and ONLY accessible by, people learning a new language. Specifically, American and Chinese students learning Mandarin and English, respectively. Only students will be playing this game.

The "beginner", "intermediate", and "advanced" refer to people's skill with their foreign language. I separated the rooms like that for a few reasons:

For one, it's better for people of equal skill to talk to each other, than talk to people of more skill, usually. Otherwise, the person with less skill can fall back on their native language.

Second, a lot of people are self-conscious of using a new language when they are first learning it. If they are put in a room with a bunch of people who are really good at speaking, that self-consciousness can be magnified. So, there will be a room for beginners so that people don't need to feel self-conscious.

Now, sometimes it can be very beneficial to talk to someone of a higher skill level. For example, you can ask them questions in your own language if you get stumped speaking theirs. For that reason, there won't be any enforcement of the skill levels between rooms; beginners can go to the advanced room if they want. But I will have the three rooms so that the option is available for people.

basically, people will join the chatroom, then chat with their own language or using english.

You make a good point. I think that this will always be something of a problem. However, there are a few factors I didn't explain that will help reduce this occurance of this problem right off the bat.

For starters, the game is being hosted on a language-learning website/service. Anyone who gets to my game is there with the purpose of learning a language. When they enter the game, they will do so knowing they are going there IN ORDER TO practice their language. I'm not forcing the language practice on these people - they will want to. At least, that is the ideal. We'll see if it goes very differently.

Second, I am totally open to augmenting the game in ways to encourage people to speak to the foreigners in the room. Whether that is through simple rules, or games that could be played inside the game, I don't know. But I'm completely open to something like that if it needs to be implemented.

there's no point to make the chinese student(in this case) learn this language since it's been used in most school

Most Chinese students do learn English in school, but almost no Chinese students are anywhere close to being fluent. I studied for a semester at a top university in China, and though almost everyone could speak a decent amount of English, I think all of them could have benefitted from a game like this.

i think it also need to have pronunciation

To your last point about pronunciation - I totally agree. It's not enough to just type Chinese words with English characters. You need to atleast use the tone marks. I'd like to implement a way for users to do that. Some way to put tonal marks on your words/syllables.

I chose the title because it seems fitting for a game that's about meeting new people and chatting. Ni gan ma ne? Hey what's up? It seemed to fit.

Thanks for the reply! Sorry it's so long. If more people reply to this thread, I won't be able to spend so much time on each one!

Hey guys,

I'm making a language-learning game for a website, and need an artist.

The game is basically a feature-rich lobby for American and Chinese students learning each other's languages. Inside the lobby they can talk and hang out like they're at a party. If you want to know more, you can go to the devlog here:
http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=20984.0

As far as art goes, it needs a fun, simple look. Maybe cute? Most of the work will be drawing various clothing/hair/faces to let the users customize their in-game appearance.

I'm getting paid to make the game, so I'll pay the artist, but we'll negotiate that.

Here's some concept art:

A bit about the design: speech isn't handled by a chatbox in the bottom with everyone's chat flying by. A speech bubble with your text appears when you hit enter. So, everyone around you can see what you're talking about. This is really important for a number of reasons:

Because conversations are separated by location, I can be in room full of people and still have a 1on1 conversation with the person standing next to me. It's as simple as only paying attention to the chat bubble of the person standing next to me.

It means if one person is being funny, other people will notice, and can go hang out with him/her. I'd be super pleased if I saw users forming groups to listen to each other tell stories or whatever.

Most importantly, it's another way for people in the game to be learning their respective language. By watching other people talk, I can pick up new words, sentence structures, or things to talk about.

Also, "Gan ma" in Mandarin roughly translates to "Whats up?"

Ni hao!

I'm beginning work on a "game" to help American and Chinese students learn each other's languages.



I say "game" because it's actually a space for people to meet, chat, make friends and have cyber sex exchange email addresses. It's a big room, full of people, all there to learn a language. And all they do, basically, is hang out and talk. But my goal is to have it feel like a party or meet-n-greet.

Besides basic chat features, I have a few other things planned. But I'll wait to show you those until I have some pics.

PLEASE if you have any suggestions for me, or ideas for what you'd like in this game if YOU were one of my users, please tell me. Don't be shy!

Lastly, I'm looking for an artist for the game. My concept artist is temporary. Basically all the art needs to be done: UI, various backgrounds (nightclub, paris, dungeon) and a diverse selection of clothing to let users customize their appearance. I can pay you some hundreds of dollars, but that's negotiable.
Please PM if you're interested.

I'll be updating this as often I can. Thanks for reading!

None can oppose the Quad Laser!

Aqua Teen Hunger Force reference, right?

I've had an idea for quite some time. Actually, it's probably my personal favorite of the dozens of game ideas (I have a list) that I have had. It's grown on me and become the game of my dreams, but it's going to take a while to explain it.

One day I was working on making a cartoon character to act as a signature (as I am my school newspaper's cartoonist). Eventually I drew an orange-haired kid whose design just stuck. I named him Greg (because he looked like a Greg) and started thinking up of ways to use him. The first idea that struck me was a cartoon show that had Greg being dragged away from his normal life on new adventures on a regular basis because he was "The Chosen One" for EVERYTHING (making fun of how young heroes are in a lot of media today). Although I liked the concept, I didn't think it would last long as a TV show, so I converted the idea into a platformer. I imagined that it would be split into worlds, with each world being a new adventure with a new mechanic based off of a game genre (that would be parodied in the same world). I developed Greg into an average teenager who isn't hesitant to point out flaws in the logic surrounding his adventures, added an hilariously insane and sadistic gypsie as instigator of his "The Chosen One" status in his adventures, added other characters such as a guy named George I. Joe who was literally born and raised in the army, etc. The game has become well developed in my head and I also have character sketches.

Let's see the sketches! Or maybe make a thread somewhere about it, since sketches might not be appropriate for this thread.

I like the idea of a new game mechanic for each world, though that may be my sometimes-fish-like attention span talking. Here's a question for you - why use lots of different mechanics, rather than find one that doesn't get old? (Besides the fact that the latter is a lot harder).

Also, I liked the sound of your characters.

Cool, thanks for taking the time to write that out for me. Sounds doable.