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[Ashkin]

I'm not entirely sure about potions. Legend of Zelda doesn't really use potions a whole lot. Well, FS didn't...

I think instead of just going with normal items, we should put a unique twist on them. Steam-powered boomerang, anyone?

[Shawny]

everything in this thread is delicious. :333

[BlueSweatshirt]

Make a general "Bottle" item, then?

I don't know your structure, but you could make a property of some kind to tell what's in it.(health juice, magic juice, milk, water, fairy, etc.)

It would probably be the easiest to implement as compared to other items with more complex functions.

[unsilentwill]

The idea I had for items, again up for debate/suggestions, was each character had a offensive item and a defensive item, and within each dungeon would be a chance (two?) for so called "enchantment", where an ability and new visual style would be applied to the item of your choice. It would be called different things by each place, either "spirit", "essence", "skill", or "upgrade". They could be things like fire, magnetism, light, needle, explosive, venom...

(I have a lot of this planned, but I don't feel like imposing all of my idea on the project unless there is a serious lack otherwise)

I like the hammer, grappling hook, sword, and drill. How about metal trap, whip, boomerang?

With four players and 2 items each, the basics would be covered, then could be enhanced by the various "enchantments", mixed and matched and whatnot. Or do guys thing we should let each character have an inventory?

Also Tim, it'd be great to see the basics, solid objects and enemies, picking up and throwing, talking/npcs and doors. If we can get that up, we'd probably be ready to start actually making it happen.

[Jad]

I'd like to stray away from rpg-ish inventory shenanigans and focus more on hands-on gameplay, collaboration and puzzles

just saying

[unsilentwill]

Seems like we have that sorted out. No objections, anyway.

I think I managed to combine all of the feedback into a compromise for what each of the four nations/dungeons/whatever could be. It's kind of a unique twist to the now-boring idea of four elements.

How about....

1. Weaving - A large island (maybe with a landbridge on low tide?) home to a society based on nature and a "dungeon" based on the idea of weaving. Think roots, textiles, spider webs, patterns, mazes, fractals, etc.

2. Arid - The west of a large continent, dry and with thin high mountain peaks, fast winds, everything is sort of rapidly moving and violent, "dungeon" based on dryness. Think evaporation, heat, sun, sharp crumbling rocks. The "dungeon" is a millenia old structure built at the peak of a mountain at the center of the range that splits the continent into east and west.

3. Rain - Based on the rain-shadow effect, the east of the continent would be full of cliffs and plateaus plagued by cold and rain, but everything is low and flat and calm, foggy and even scary. The "dungeon" would be the same building as the previous, but different areas, maybe it could even been done out of order, come back to different parts at different times. For the theme of rain, think the flow of water and destructive properties of ice, dark storms and floods.

4. Smoke - I loved the concept drawing of the miner nation (or whatever), but I think it could stand to be more mode and less fantasy/sci-fi. It could be a poorly planned nation without buildings placed wherever, multiple office structures and a massive system of mines and tunnels that have hollowed out the bedrock, leading to the "dungeon" of industry. (That sounds way more negative that it needs to be, social commentary should be left to the player, not the designer in this case). For smoke, think roads of pipes and huge furnaces, behind-the-scenes moving parts, saws/conveyor belts, smoke-filled rooms and vents.

5. Boss "dungeon"... ?

Again, just some starting ideas to see if we can agree on something and get spriting! 

[michael]

me likey 

[Jad]

Where are the 'normal grassy lush plains' D:?

No but seriously I love these ideas, they're all delicious and I really feel I could work with them. O: They all have a nice feel to them and evoke mental imagery just when you read about them - good stuff!

[SirNiko]

Oh, I like this design. I loved Four Swords on the Gamecube, but was dismayed it took so much hardware to just get my local group of buddies playing. An online version of this would be grand.

Regarding death, you could make the game pseudo-competitive like Four Swords. Players who die lose points and might get a low ranking at the end (But are otherwise instantly revived and can immediately rejoin). You might include a mix of rooms that don't require more than one player, but go faster with more (lots of chests, lots of monsters, lots of buttons). You have players swapping between working together to overcome an obstacle, then fighting over who grabs the loot in order to get the higher score.

Add an optional co-op mode where player scores are added together L4D style. It's all about helping everyone else in order to get on the high-score table.

Or, you could make it so that players have to repeat a room if somebody dies. If you get halfway through the room and one player dies but the remaining three can finish the room without him then the last player gets automatically revived in the next room. You might even make it so dead players get a ghost that can screw with monsters to make them easier, or can still solve puzzles, just more slowly. There are lots of ways you could go with that, depending on the style of play you want to encourage.

-SirNiko

[Ashkin]

I would love to be able to annoy my "friends" as a ghost.

It could be fun to somehow possess dead enemies for a limited time, so that you could help with puzzles.

[michael]

yes, i also had the idea that dead players as ghosts, could still run and around and interact to a limited extent

maybe some puzzles would require ghosts   

[Ashkin]

Somehow, this project seems to be going at a slow pace. I think we should set up some goals.

Design:
Decide on what the four dungeons will be
Decide on the characters and their differences
Draft out some basic items

Art:
Whip up some sprites for the characters once they're decided on
Draw concept art to get the idea of the landscapes across
Make some mockups to get the general feel for the gameplay.

Music:
Get the general feel of the music we want
Compose a few basic tracks

Programming:
Create prototype of networking
Prototype some items
Get player movement feeling right
Decide on HUD arrangement


Any other ideas we need to work on?

[Lord Tim]

Here is a bit of an update:
http://www.rocketninjagames.com/dangerous/

Movement with arrow keys, and X to sword/action.
Right now the only interactable stuff is the grey guy(NPC) and the switch.

I'll probably work on some enemies next, so that we can prototype items etc.

Also, some arts would be awesome so I don't have to look at my programmer art.

[unsilentwill]

Oh fantastic Tim! We can do so much with that alone. Keep it up! 

Yeah the progress it rather slow, us artist folk aren't terribly reliable but we still have some great guys interested, and since Assemmblee and Gamma are coming to an end we might get so more work done, however I'm not adverse to sending out so more PM reminders, and the Google Wave is always open dudes.

As for the list, I think we have some of it covered. Not done necessarily, but solid starting points to work from for the moment.

Design
Decide on what the four dungeons will be (unsilentwill Reply #165)
Decide on the characters and their differences (jad/unsilentwill)
Draft out some basic items (jad/unsilentwill)

Art:
Whip up some sprites for the characters once they're decided on
-For this we need to get a basic sprite size standard. I like jad's idea for large sprites, so how about 40x40?
Draw concept art to get the idea of the landscapes across (pen Reply #132)
Make some mockups to get the general feel for the gameplay.

Music:
Get the general feel of the music we want
Compose a few basic tracks

Programming:
Create prototype of networking
Prototype some items
Get player movement feeling right
Decide on HUD arrangement

We're getting there, and again if anyone has any art (sketechs, notepaper, sticky notes) it is appreciated, especially for getting each area's specific style down.

[Jad]

PLACE-HOLDER SPRITES

I cannot stress this enough

GOOD PLACE-HOLDER SPRITES THAT WORK AS BASES that you can expand upon.

While we figure out the gameplay on both a macro- and micro level * __ *

Because we cannot simply come to the conclusion that 'hey we'll have to ditch drill girl' and she's already fully pixeled, drill and all - or well we could but I think either we'll just not feel up to it and the game will get worse, or we will actually drop her from the game and then lots of work will have gone to waste.

With the minuscule amount of actual O.K.ed finalized concept and gameplay material we've got right now, we can't "whip up" some of the single most important game play pieces and then condemn ourselves to the gamble that it all MIGHT fit together in the end.

We need gameplay basics, ideas for puzzles, etc. Then we need to create simple assets that we can use for proof of concept. When that works we continue on like that until we have something we can all agree upon. During this stage we make more (and fiddle with existing) concepts to make them work with the actual game play.

THEN, when there is both concepts and gameplay that match. Then is where production starts.

Also I have 1 year (oh I want mooore) of experience of actual game industry work where we were condemned to work with basic assets that sucked balls but couldn't be changed. We will not condemn ourselves to this if we want this project to have even a basic chance of survival, ok? It worked for guy balding because it was all based on arne's huge game doc and the game is supposed to be random and have all kinds of variables, so people can just shove whatever fits into the gameplay frame into it.

The scope for this thing is so much more huge. The underlying idea calls for so much more coherent structure between different concepts. We will have to make sure that happens if we want this to see the light of teh day

yo

this is all my response to the bullet point of

Whip up some sprites for the characters once they're decided on

that is, in essence, me saying that the stage of 'once they're decided on' should come later than this.

And that there should be a prototyping phase where art assets are provided more sketchily before PRODUCSHON starts. Of course, sometimes you can go just from idea to production without having to 'try it out' but then you've gotta be in that sweeeet spot where you just know exactly what's going on.

We're not there.

OVER AND OUT

[unsilentwill]

jad is totally right, we need to keep our focus.

Hey you! You reading this! Draw something please. Anything.  I don't want to tackle this thing by myself!

Here are some sketches I did this week (I could have sworn I stopped drawing on notepaper, it makes me look like I'm 12...)

The fourth guy that hasn't quite existed yet, from the other side of the mountain. The wet side. His design needs work/creativity... mainly I was just excited about his weapon. It's an umbrella-rapier-shield! Kind of a shift on the sword/shield mechanic that should be avoided.


A quick design for the first(??) level, the weaving one. Inspired by A combination of the Great Stupa (http://img2.travelblog.org/Photos/1878/9127/t/36082-Great-Stupa-eastern-gateway-2.jpg) and the Mosque of Selim (http://plaidnet.greenwichacademy.org/arthistoryslides/slideidgal/Islam%20Slides/islam19.jpg). And look! Enemies! We also need those.


Finally I did some basic/generic sprites for now (jad's is just for style reference).

Opinions and revisions are requested!

[Atnas]

Looks like this changed a lot since I posted! Just going to dump these here for closure, tree was from an abandoned project I thought would find a home here.


Love the dungeon ideas and stuff (WEAVING YES!) but it's looking like it's going to be styled so much more seriously/realistically than I'd like.

[unsilentwill]

All of those look great, I hope you can stick around.

Seriousness and realism are my personal style to be sure, but there's a reason I wanted this to be a community/open project. I think a mutiplayer game could do well with different styles of art/music/gameplay. With four styles, there's a lot of room for humor, more magical things, and bizarre aesthetics. How it comes together without breaking apart is something I think I have under control/job description.

If you have ideas for an area, tell us and hopefully we can compromise into a game not too serious, not too fantasy, not too anime, and all around interesting.

[shig]

So far, the engine features only two buttons for each player: Attack (A) and Use (U).
I'm trying to come up with movelists for each character using these two buttons.

Something along these lines:
U - Uses/picks up stuff.
A - Basic attack.
A(hold down) - Special attack. Should encourage/depend on teamwork a bit.
A+U - Special ability. Not necesarily an attack. Should encourage/depend on teamwork a lot.

So for Drillchick(DC), we'd have:
U - Uses/picks up stuff.

A - Pickaxe.

A(hold down) - Drill Rush.
DC pulls a huge drill out of nowhere and dashes in a straight line drilling anything in the way. This attack is most efficient when there are many enemies in a straight line and, with some ammount of cooperation, the team can lure enemies into tight corridors.

A+U - Dynamite.
Places a dynamite on the ground. Deals very heavy damage but takes a while to explode and doesn't really have long splash range. Once again, with some cooperation, the team can lure/keep monsters near it until it explodes.

So... What do you guys think about it?
I have some ideas for druidypoo, too. Will be posting them later.

[unsilentwill]

Hey guys, I've spent some time this week sketches some puzzles and enemies, but I'd rather not post them until I see more of your ideas because I do not want my ideas and styles to be the focus of this game.

I know I should get on to making a more coherent design documents with some of the things we have discussed, but I'm not sure if everyone agrees on finalizing them.

So, I'm going to be away this weekend and I think that now's the time to decide what you'd like to do for the project, and show a little of it. Scraps, bare ideas, four pixels, whatever you have. A simple "I'm still interested" would do, but discussion could be key.

The basics so far, in few words, are a four player zelda-style adventure using the directional pad and roughly 3 keys, one for use/talk/pick up (sometimes) and two reserved for two items (sometimes--see umbrella) that along the way get upgraded to an "element" based offense or defense special ability. There will be some form of currency. There will be four unique dungeons based around a common theme related to a specific area. Each area will have a distinct artist style and be the birthplace of each different main character.

So. All thoughts are welcome, we have a great engine in the works and I'd love to see what styles you guys can come up with, finished or not!