I know this thread has been inactive for a while, but I really like the idea and execution behind this game. One thing that stood out to me in Kaiju movies are the human responding increasingly desperate schemes to stop the Kaiju. It rarely involves just air launched rockets, but rather luring / herding the Kaiju into power lines, tank ambush, experimental freeze ray, or a Kaiju sided rocket to the sun. Will this game involve such elements?

A friend pitched to me an idea he said was inspired by the TV show Sense 8. It sounds a lot like what you described. While exploring a world where this sort of thing is be possible would be an interesting premise for a game it doesn't actually describe a game itself.

If we say that Pac Man upon eating a power pellet signs a contract with an exorcist for as long as the exorcist is at an all you can eat restaurant and suddenly the 1980's Pac Man is the game you are describing.

Astro-Bootlegger: Deliver hooch to Speakeasies while avoiding the law, in Space!

My ideal game dev environment would be a place with nice weather (low pollen), a variety of good food options, a 2nd job that pays the bills but requires little to no mental effort. A reason to sleep all day and stay up all night to avoid daytime distractions and take advantage of the quiet of night.

I never got to do this but some of my college friends did and they speak highly of it:

Graveyard Shift Hotel Desk Clerk in a resort town.

It would be fantastic place to live with good food options. Banging away on your computer all day looks like what you are supposed to do. Occasional social interactions prevent you from felling like a hermit. Room and board more or less provided by employer. Valuable networking connections possibly walking in through the front door.


Why yes I am developing a steam punk MOBA, you seem to know an awful lot about the Unity editor.

I can't tell if you are doing this already, but you aren't, you may want to split the cannon into multiple smaller sprites thus saving on unused white space on the sprite sheet. For example if the base of the cannon does not move, render that separately from a single sprite and have the rotating turret rendered as a second sprite on top of it. Like wise the gunpowder bloom coming out of the cannon doesn't need to be centered on the cannon but can be rendered with the appropriate offset values

On of the big eye opening moments for me as a Unity3d developer was when I found I could Instantiate Prefabs, and GetComponent<> from the instantiated object. Coming from a more traditional Windows/C# development background, this process of using a visual editor in conjunction with scripts was quite the learning experience.

I don't know if you already know how to do this, but it is well worth looking up if you don't. This technique can be applied to creating bullets from a gun, creating dynamic levels, or spawning enemies in random locations.

Good luck and have fun with your future game projects.

You are aware that "Dragoon" most often refers to a type of soldier that was used during the Napoleonic wars? Even in modern times the designation still lingers, for example the Royal Canadian Dragoons are an active unit in the Canadian army who drive tanks. You are entitled to use what ever words you want when creating your world (that is the whole fun of game design after all). Just be aware there might be some confusion over what your audience expects and what you deliver.

One of my earliest gaming memories was playing a PC game called "Arctic Fox" at a friends house. It was a tank driving game with many keyboard shortcut commands. We played the game together where one of us would drive the tank and the other would work the weapons and radar system. My friend could probably play it by himself but let me be part of the crew when I came over. Being a late 80's game it had an abundance of keyboard commands so the weapons and radar person had more than enough things to do even if it was looking through the manual for what button elevates the main gun.

That long preamble was to sets up this game design question: What games out there play well as local coop with a single avatar? Either Pilot/Gunner on a single vehicle or some other combination of dissimilar but complementary roles.

I would like to make or play a game that would give a similar experience as Arcitc Fox for me to play with my son. I am reluctant to play coop games with multiple avatars because he tends to run his avatar off a cliff or trigger some other fail state then sit there board or demand my controller. The single avatar preferably with a helper mode would be a nice balance allowing me to play and my son to feel like he is contributing.

BTW we already have Mario Galaxy, but he hasn't figured out how to aim the wii mote at the screen.

The Dreadnought era of naval warfare has been criminally overlooked by game developers in my opinion. I wish you the best in making this game a reality.

A 1st/3rd person perspective multiplayer shooter in a Steam Punk universe. The player will control a squad of AI soldiers via generic orders and body swapping to individual soldiers. Soldiers are fragile and die from a single bullet or bayonet wound. The Squad will also have a morale value that will determine how close the squad is to breaking and running. Defeating another player will be as much about breaking the enemy squad's morale as it is killing off individuals of the squad.

The level of technology will allow for inaccurate slow reloading range weapons so that the Bayonet will still play an important part in combat. Some sort of magic crystal technology will allow for airships to warp in and deliver troops to docking points on the battle field so long as the crystal's frequency is in tune with the airship (base capturing mechanic).

The goal of the game will be to earn points by holding Crystal Docking points throughout the map. Each docking point will have a timer until its next resupply drop. If the player is at the docking point when the resupply arrives all dead or routed squad mates will replaced with fresh troops. If all troops under the player's command dies he can pick a docking location to squad deploy at. Game balance can be accomplished by having the docking locations further from the player's base resupply at a much slower rate thus lowering the time dead players on the loosing side need to get back into the fight.

Normally the squad will keep formation relative to the member the player has body swapped to. The formation can be altered

The squad commands will be as follows:
Move: Skirmish Formation - squad members spread out so that they are harder to shoot
Move: Line Abreast - Squad forms a Line shoulder to shoulder so that they can better support each other in melee
Move: Charge - Squad moves in the direction the player is facing and engages in melee combat with any soldier encountered.
Move: Go to Ground - Squad Stops moving relative to the player and crouches. The player can still move and body swap to squad members to deploy them to make the best use of cover.
Move: Follow Me - Squad breaks out of Go to Ground mode and resumes formation movement.

Fire: Hold Fire - Squad doesn't shoot except if the player swaps to them and shoots.
Fire: At Will - Squad shoots as they reload and have visible targets.
Fire: Now - Squad shoots at the command and returns to Hold fire mode. (Good at significantly lowering enemy Moral at one time)
Fire: Fix Bayonets - Squad fixes bayonets and stops reloading in favor of stabbing. Will still shoot if under At Will fire mode.
Fire: Unfix Bayonets - Squad unfixes bayonets and resumes reloading and shooting.

Morale will be negatively effected by the following:
* Seeing friendly soldiers die
* The close proximity of Enemy soldiers with bayonets
* A bullet passing close to a soldier

Morale will be positively effected by the following:
* Time
* The close proximity of Friendly soldiers
* Seeing enemy soldiers die

I missed this log when you first posted it. On the sword strike animation subject:

1)You should have the sword stop moving past the point where it would have hit the enemy. It will give the impression that the swing had power to it, as opposed to the character just rubbing his sword against his opponent.

2)Since players like to see their actions occur instantaneously when they press the button (physics be damned). It is good practice to render and detect the blow the frame after the user presses the button, then use the rest of the animation to recover from the initial motion. You can set this up by making you characters' idle pose a precursor to the strike pose.

With your permission I would like to mess with your sprites to give a more illustrative example of what I am talking about.

I had a former employer contact me about a developing a game for profit share. I told him I didn't have the time. A quick google search later and I find out the FCC/FTC fined his company into non existence due to fraudulent advertising and a non complaint refund policy. I am glad I got out of that company when I did.

So you want to go through the process of releasing an unpolished game for free, and not worry about any negative side effects if you later release a great game for money that built off the unpolished free game?

Then I have good news for you. There are so many unpolished games out there no one will notice another. Much less bear a grudge towards you as a developer. For example Notch of Minecraft fame did a bunch of Ludum Dare's back in the day. I bet nobody has ever said "I am not going to try out this Minecraft. I played The Europa Arcology Incident and was not very impressed by his game development skills."
   
http://ludumdare.com/compo/author/notch/

Taking a game to release is an interesting process. It is not a bad idea to go through the release process on your platform of choice to understand how long it will take and the potential pitfalls.

A GDD at the hobbyist level is a great way of preventing a game idea from keeping you up all night without actually having to implement everything. 

Writing down your ideas will prevent your brain from dredging the idea back from your subconscious every 15 minutes to remind you how awesome it is and how you should totally not forget it.

Or is this just me?

Game Jams are an excuse to complete a game. If you have dozens of half complete game ideas cluttering up your hard drive that you are afraid to show the world because they don't live up to your vision. Do a Game Jam, you can show the world a semi functional game and nobody will judge you for its poor quality because you made it in 48 hours.

At least that is why I like game jams.

Also with a built in audience of your fellow developers you can get some interesting feedback on what worked and what didn't. So Game Jams are a good time to try some new game mechanics.

Using other games as a reference is a good idea but be more specific in what you are borrowing from other games

For example:
'Keen' is a puzzle adventure game that blends the 4 directional movement of classic Zelda games with the turn based decision making of Final Fantasy Tactics.

If I had enough money I would open a Cyber cafe with a back room game studio. The latest stable build would be available on all the cyber cafe computers for anyone to play (while we record their play sessions and analyze how people interact with our game). We would hold regular game jams, digital art contests, and sponsor game development classes for the public. Any one who shows talent would be offender an internship and eventually a job in the game studio.

so when my girlfriend said I should make a game about a cat, I was like why the F not?

By far the best reason to make a game. Especially when you stay up until 3 am trying to fix that one bug, your girl will have no one to blame but herself.

I mean it looks good keep it up.   

Going of the gifs, you might want use the camera to indicate the ship's movement when in the stall/engine off mode. It was pretty hard to tell which way the plane was headed once the smoke trail turned off. Alternatively you could add wingtip vortexes to give a stable frame of reference when pulling fast turns.

A side scrolling 2.5d brawler like castle crashers, only the entire game takes place on the tops of moving vehicles on a futuristic five lane highway. The vehicles would have different roof heights and be slowly moving in relation to each other. Players and enemies die from loosing all their health or being knocked off a vehicle and onto the road (where the next car that comes along hits them). Aesthetic would be mad max biker gang fighting against Judge Dredd style dystopian law enforcement.