A new game development

Glaurung666 · Post by **Glaurung666** » August 22nd, 2007, 1:17 pm

I am trying to find people that will collaborate for building an open-source game. It is a turn-based game. What's so special about it? Well, everyone gets to play their turns in the same time. This can cause the turn playing much more fun, because you won't have to wait for the other's to end their turn (when 8 people play, I think you all know what that means: there are high chances to never end that game). Personally I never managed to finish a turn-based game in multi player, because I don't have that time, it takes days! But I am able to solve this problem, maybe you guys will appreciate. More information on my forums:

http://thedevelopers.forumotion.com

Any question you have, don't hesitate to ask.

Post by **Jetrel** » August 22nd, 2007, 3:53 pm

Suggestion:

Use wesnoth's art.

Don't be dumb and try to make your own, you'll never succeed without someone who is absurdly dedicated to the job. I know that you want to be unique and all, but the alternative is looking like these buttheads after a full 2 years of work or so:
http://www.mandicor.org/

Post by **vonHalenbach** » August 22nd, 2007, 4:06 pm

Jetryl wrote:..., but the alternative is looking like these buttheads after a full 2 years of work or so:
http://www.mandicor.org/

Ugh, Ugly.

Post by **Iris** » August 22nd, 2007, 4:12 pm

Jetryl wrote:I know that you want to be unique and all, but the alternative is looking like these buttheads...

Huh? What could be worse than my artwork?

Jetryl wrote:... after a full 2 years of work or so:
http://www.mandicor.org/

- Comment cannot be published in these forums -

Glaurung666 · Post by **Glaurung666** » August 22nd, 2007, 4:17 pm

My game is not something that focuses on graphics. My goal is a good gameplay. With this multiplayer trick we can make people play a lot in little time, making it very entertaining. Even more, there is little room for drawn graphics, my game will consist of graphics made with an algorithm, depending on the map - because the game will look more like a geographical map, rather than hexes with units being displayed like they really look like. Instead we will try to use simple and nice marking that "This is a unit, NOT a city". The only art is needed is for the borders, menus, and maybe some presentation. But right now, having the game coded is what I see as the hardest thing to achieve.

Anyway, I thank you for advising me. Maybe I will grab some things from the wesnoth graphics.

Post by **Urs** » August 22nd, 2007, 4:52 pm

Glaurung wrote:My game is not something that focuses on graphics. My goal is a good gameplay.

ummm... Ok. But the gameplay will be a good deal more enjoyable with better graphics. And units aren't the only thing we have. There are terrain graphics, objects, portraits, etc...

Jetryl wrote: Don't be dumb and try to make your own, you'll never succeed without someone who is absurdly dedicated to the job. I know that you want to be unique and all, but the alternative is looking like these buttheads after a full 2 years of work or so:
http://www.mandicor.org/

Bookmarked. In the future, whenever I get discouraged an feel that my artwork sucks, I will go to this site and think to myself "Maybe I'm not that bad after all".

Elerium · Post by **Elerium** » August 22nd, 2007, 5:12 pm

And I thought I had seen worse

Post by **Iris** » August 22nd, 2007, 5:20 pm

Ah, you just haven't seen my game. I'll post a screenshot after getting back home and back here, for it currently only runs on Linux at home.

Post by **Jetrel** » August 22nd, 2007, 6:51 pm

Shadow Master wrote:
Jetryl wrote:I know that you want to be unique and all, but the alternative is looking like these buttheads...
Huh? What could be worse than my artwork?

Jetryl wrote:... after a full 2 years of work or so:
http://www.mandicor.org/
- Comment cannot be published in these forums -

Wait, what?
Are ... you one of the guys who was spearheading that thing?

My basic review of their art/game is; they've got a full set of awful placeholders, which they've been replacing with rather good 3d rendered sprites. The game will probably be rather good once they get the 3d renders all finished, but as long as there are a significant number of placeholders in there, it really brings the whole thing down.

Furthermore, they've been around about as long as we have, and really haven't seriously delivered on the content. It's a question of choosing to put in the necessary time - they can't have had more real-life obligations than I do. And thus, they've chosen not to put in enough time to really finish the game. I don't fault them, it takes a lot of work and it's often not fun, but it is a choice that they've made.

So, yes, these are harsh words, but it's been there for a few years, and the game ain't done.

Post by **Iris** » August 22nd, 2007, 7:15 pm

No, I just put that blue sentence because what I thought when I saw the screenshots is *not adequate*. I have nothing to do with'em. Not even had heard/read of them before. (Wait, is this an April Fools's joke?)

Anyway, I guess that's what happens when you give some kids programming knowledge and a compiler and an image editor.

http://i144.photobucket.com/albums/r176 ... /meta1.png

MY artwork. Notice the awesomely coloured text and code.
EDIT: changed it to be a link so it doesn't slow down your browser/connection. It's about 400 KB. EDIT2: no, it's actually about 240 KB.
EDIT3: way too many edits. Did I mention that when I saw the name "Mandicor" I thought it was some golosine dessert, liqour or something suchlike?

Post by **Jetrel** » August 22nd, 2007, 7:26 pm

Other news:

Someone should seriously made a game out of this public-domain art:
http://lostgarden.com/2005/03/game-post ... acuum.html

Post by **vonHalenbach** » August 22nd, 2007, 8:41 pm

I think we should try to get this guy "Danc" on board here

Post by **Jetrel** » August 22nd, 2007, 9:08 pm

vonHalenbach wrote:I think we should try to get this guy "Danc" on board here

I wish. He's currently an employee at the beast. Aka Microsoft. And he's working on software. And from what I read at his site, he actually cares about and believes in the programs he's developing.

Which makes me want to throw rocks at him, because by making them proprietary software, he automatically makes them inaccessible to the vast majority of potentially genius-level users of the software. To make a long point short, I'll use a metaphor - imagine what a crime it would have been if mozart had been unable to afford a piano. This is the same crime that proprietary software commits; by making a tool too expensive for a student to buy, or justify their parents buying (or in extreme cases, making it too expensive for the average -adult- to buy), you bar a great many of what might become masters at the tool from ever even beginning the art. It has to be available for a student, because most people just don't have the time in their adult lives to take on major, life-changing hobbies like that (like learning to do computer art) - if they do investigate it, they're definitely not going to go out on a limb and drop several hundred dollars on it.

OSS is a means to this end, but the end is something far more fundamental than hacking the product - it's being able to simply use it.

Because, like, raise your hands here - how many people have done non-trivial experimenting (the kind necessary to learn a huge software package, which means a few years of hobby use/tinkering), with packages like MS Visual Studio (or whatever their flagship dev program is), AutoCAD, or 3DSMax? And I'm talking a legal, paid-for copy, here, that you bought for your own hobby. Anyone?

Unsubstantiated claims abound in the above rant, and I say - big friggin' deal. You can't prove anything about these classes of hypothesis, and they're no less tenuous than, say, the entire reason for the creation of OSS in the first place.

Post by **vonHalenbach** » August 22nd, 2007, 9:14 pm

I agree with y o u !

Post by **Urs** » August 22nd, 2007, 9:16 pm

Jet wrote:the beast

The correct term, I believe, is the borg

And yes, I agree with the above rant.