[Forum Project #1] Steam Run Design Document

[AliceXIII]

i'll make some edits to it then i'll post it in a bit!

[phyzix5761]

Hey guys. How have you been? I've been watching this thread for a while and wanted to suggest you guys make use of git repositories and host the project on github or something similar. This can help you attract more people to GE and it can also help you stay organized with the different tasks.

Good luck!

PS. There is a great resource called opengameart.org that has tons of free and open music and art.

[skydereign]

Hey guys. How have you been? I've been watching this thread for a while and wanted to suggest you guys make use of git repositories and host the project on github or something similar. This can help you attract more people to GE and it can also help you stay organized with the different tasks.

Good luck!

PS. There is a great resource called opengameart.org that has tons of free and open music and art.

As we start moving into actual coding we might do that. Though I have a feeling most people here aren't well versed with source control.

On a side note, my brother and I have been discussing story. He or I will probably post some ideas tomorrow. Didn't get around to uploading the debug ged today, but I want to set it up to be a little less obtrusive to our actual game.

[AliceXIII]

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ej7u7as7te66a15/ArcME.zip

ok i went through it all and made sure it works it's my very first map editor i ever built so it doesn't use malloc, calloc, or realloc to set the file size it uses a constant file size right now and a couple arrays to sort the data and then pack it into one big array and save it..

would benefit from using structures instead of arrays to sort data and using malloc or a calloc / realloc duo to set the file size correctly to the actual map size all of which isn't to hard to change but here it is bare bones from when i first made it!

wouldn't recommend using this one in particular not till those changes have been made.

[NightOfHorror]

Count me in!

[Jagmaster]

Did some modelling today, just mocked up a sort of machine (robot spawn point thing or some contraption).
I guess I must have had Vessel in the back of my mind while modeling today. I imagine backdrop pieces and other environments being nitty gritty than Vessel, like H.J.B.'s metal slug example.

Clay Render


Very quick, lazy, and crappy texture work.

It obviously needs a lot more texture attention, but it's an example I'll get around to actually making textures later.

If you need me to mockup a character or something Sky, lemme know.

Just to throw a story climax idea out there, I thought a pseudo-George Orwell 1984 sort of environment would be interesting, with tons of robots watching and keeping tabs it's citizens. The protagonist could be a rebel seeking refuge in the underground catacombs beneath the city. Beneath the city there could exist various "Black markets" where one could buy spare equipment and go on side quests (maybe too rpg-ish). Above ground, the protagonist would be a very obvious target as the robots would detect him as an "unlisted citizen" and immediately go after him. You could either go guns-a-blazing at this point, or try to sneak your way around without getting caught, in effect silently killing off the bots without causing a commotion.

At some point the protagonist would rally a band of rebels and attempt to take down "Big Brother" with more advanced weaponry and gadgets made from the various rare items you've collected throughout the game.

[skydereign]

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ej7u7as7te66a15/ArcME.zip

ok i went through it all and made sure it works it's my very first map editor i ever built so it doesn't use malloc, calloc, or realloc to set the file size it uses a constant file size right now and a couple arrays to sort the data and then pack it into one big array and save it..

would benefit from using structures instead of arrays to sort data and using malloc or a calloc / realloc duo to set the file size correctly to the actual map size all of which isn't to hard to change but here it is bare bones from when i first made it!

wouldn't recommend using this one in particular not till those changes have been made.

Taking a look now. Everything needs to start somewhere.

It obviously needs a lot more texture attention, but it's an example I'll get around to actually making textures later.

If you need me to mockup a character or something Sky, lemme know.

Very promising. I look forward to seeing it with more intense textures. Depending on how the art styles mesh, we might need to do a 3d modeled player.

Just to throw a story climax idea out there, I thought a pseudo-George Orwell 1984 sort of environment would be interesting, with tons of robots watching and keeping tabs it's citizens. The protagonist could be a rebel seeking refuge in the underground catacombs beneath the city. Beneath the city there could exist various "Black markets" where one could buy spare equipment and go on side quests (maybe too rpg-ish). Above ground, the protagonist would be a very obvious target as the robots would detect him as an "unlisted citizen" and immediately go after him. You could either go guns-a-blazing at this point, or try to sneak your way around without getting caught, in effect silently killing off the bots without causing a commotion.

At some point the protagonist would rally a band of rebels and attempt to take down "Big Brother" with more advanced weaponry and gadgets made from the various rare items you've collected throughout the game.

Sounds pretty good. The story my brother and I came up with got a little heavy for this game, and didn't fit the gameplay mechanics quite as nicely. Though robot ai controlling the masses is a bit futuristic, so perhaps there are some people with all of the robot steam technology running the show. Still act in the same way though.


As for the boosted powers depending on how you play, we might try something like this. The player's affinity is based off their primary weapon when entering the level. So, if you enter a level with a flamethrower, you get an extra bonus with it and perhaps other abilities. For every level you complete with the affinity, it levels up. Eventually if you max a certain affinity, the power up it provides extends to all other starting weapons. You can replay levels to boost affinity for the other types. The affinities could be named, such as pyrotechnic (flamethrower), sniper (sniper), the brute (shotgun), mechanic (gears), electrician (lightning weapon), and magnetist (rail gun or other).

[lcl]

I could make the dialog engine.
I have a pretty good one already done, so I'd need to only change it to fit in to this game.
If you skydereign, or somene else has some features in mind for the engine, please tell them to me now so I can make the engine work
the way you'd like it to.

[skydereign]

I could make the dialog engine.
I have a pretty good one already done, so I'd need to only change it to fit in to this game.
If you skydereign, or somene else has some features in mind for the engine, please tell them to me now so I can make the engine work
the way you'd like it to.

Great, I'll add you to the list. Here are a few things it should probably be able to do. Not all of these are a must, but it would be ideal if we were able to use the dialog engine for other parts of the game (for instance the shop).

• Display text longer than 255 characters
• Be able to type out the text in customizable speed
• Color formatting
• Avatar of the person talking
• Be able to send an event to a specified actor when text finishes
• Perhaps have multiple choice question answering
• Scrolling
• A text creator (that way people working on story won't have to worry about the formatting the dialog engine uses)

[happyjustbecause]

Just to throw a story climax idea out there, I thought a pseudo-George Orwell 1984 sort of environment would be interesting, with tons of robots watching and keeping tabs it's citizens. The protagonist could be a rebel seeking refuge in the underground catacombs beneath the city. Beneath the city there could exist various "Black markets" where one could buy spare equipment and go on side quests (maybe too rpg-ish). Above ground, the protagonist would be a very obvious target as the robots would detect him as an "unlisted citizen" and immediately go after him. You could either go guns-a-blazing at this point, or try to sneak your way around without getting caught, in effect silently killing off the bots without causing a commotion.

At some point the protagonist would rally a band of rebels and attempt to take down "Big Brother" with more advanced weaponry and gadgets made from the various rare items you've collected throughout the game.

Sounds pretty good. The story my brother and I came up with got a little heavy for this game, and didn't fit the gameplay mechanics quite as nicely. Though robot ai controlling the masses is a bit futuristic, so perhaps there are some people with all of the robot steam technology running the show. Still act in the same way though.

That sounds interesting and is similar to what I was thinking. The main character could be part of some kind of revolutionary group that's trying to overthrow the powerful ruling establishment. This could be an excuse for the steampunk equipment, because the revolutionaries are just trying to make do with whatever they can throw together while fighting the more advanced opposition. But I assume we want the game to consist of mostly steampunk enemies/environments, so having the enemies you face being more advanced kind of limits that.

For the gameplay, how do we want upgrades to happen? Do we want to have there be hub areas where you can buy/build things? Or will it just be done through the start menu? Will there be leveling up of the player/enemies or just the weapons? Hubs are cool things to do in games, especially a steampunk community, but I kind of like being able to switch things out in the middle of a level.

Mass Effect 2 (maybe 3 also) had weapon boxes where you could switch your weapon out (otherwise it's done through a hub) and Dead Space/Mass Effect 3 had workbenches scattered throughout the level, but I guess that doesn't really work with a 2D game.

[skydereign]

That sounds interesting and is similar to what I was thinking. The main character could be part of some kind of revolutionary group that's trying to overthrow the powerful ruling establishment. This could be an excuse for the steampunk equipment, because the revolutionaries are just trying to make do with whatever they can throw together while fighting the more advanced opposition. But I assume we want the game to consist of mostly steampunk enemies/environments, so having the enemies you face being more advanced kind of limits that.

The big brother could easily be holding a monopoly on new technology, such as innovations in electricity. This way we can still have some slightly futuristic elements mixed into it.

For the gameplay, how do we want upgrades to happen? Do we want to have there be hub areas where you can buy/build things? Or will it just be done through the start menu? Will there be leveling up of the player/enemies or just the weapons? Hubs are cool things to do in games, especially a steampunk community, but I kind of like being able to switch things out in the middle of a level.

Originally I was thinking the upgrading would happen outside of the actual levels. To go with this story idea, when underground, you would be able to enter a workshop and start building/upgrading your gadgets and weapons. Due to the lack of resources and money, you would have to enter the above world to get new parts (or buy them on the expensive black market). This could help set a barrier on the kind of weapons you can create in the beginning of the story. I do like the imagery of entering places like that in the level though, so the underground could be the home base level that allows you to enter other levels in the game. We could also include similar hideaway workshops within the levels, where other refugees from the underground are hiding (some could be black market bases used to get parts). The player though could equip any weapon they have within the level (this is more necessary for gameplay purposes).

[happyjustbecause]

Originally I was thinking the upgrading would happen outside of the actual levels. To go with this story idea, when underground, you would be able to enter a workshop and start building/upgrading your gadgets and weapons. Due to the lack of resources and money, you would have to enter the above world to get new parts (or buy them on the expensive black market). This could help set a barrier on the kind of weapons you can create in the beginning of the story. I do like the imagery of entering places like that in the level though, so the underground could be the home base level that allows you to enter other levels in the game. We could also include similar hideaway workshops within the levels, where other refugees from the underground are hiding (some could be black market bases used to get parts). The player though could equip any weapon they have within the level (this is more necessary for gameplay purposes).

Yeah that sounds good. I especially like the hub serving as a place to go to other levels and also providing places to upgrade/switch weapons. Comic Jumper is a really good game which has that and it replaces the main menu:

This is a video exploring the hub of comic jumper, you can just jump around to see what it's all about. I especially like the stats menu . But the hub hosts the collectables of the game, provides physical objects to show your achievements in the game, it's where you upgrade your character, where missions/challenges are launched, and where you can talk to other characters for exploration bonuses.



Perhaps the hub that is created can be something cool and creative like this.

[AliceXIII]

been gone for the past 2 days..

but im working on making the map editor's loading and saving scheme work better, if anyone has any suggestions on how they want the map editor to look or work then just drop it on here!

[lcl]

@AliceXIII: You could make the editor nicer to use with these few little things..

- Make the selected area box be in the center of the mouse. This way it'll be much easier to click it.
- Make it possible to scroll the tiles with arrow keys and/or mouse wheel.
- Make it possible to hold down mouse button for placing blocks continuously.
- Make the placed piece to be seen instantly after placing. It's kinda annoying to only see the black box before moving the cursor..

All these are possible to be done in Game Editor and pretty easy ones really.
If you wonder how it would be possible to use the mouse wheel, here's how to (sky taught that to me ):
1. Go to the mouse button up / down dialog.
2. Where you usually click a mouse button scroll with the wheel to the direction you want. (It doesn't show any button being clicked but it still works.)
3. Now do just as if it was a normal mouse button down/up event.

I wish these helped you.

@Skydereign: Should the dialog engine support external files for the dialogs?

[AliceXIII]

- Make the selected area box be in the center of the mouse. This way it'll be much easier to click it.
- Make it possible to scroll the tiles with arrow keys and/or mouse wheel.
- Make it possible to hold down mouse button for placing blocks continuously.
- Make the placed piece to be seen instantly after placing. It's kinda annoying to only see the black box before moving the cursor..

1.) should have been fixed already.. i fixed that a long time ago.
2.) can do!
3.) could also do!
4.) should have also been fixed already..

1 and 4 are probably due to the fact that this may be my actual first implementation of this map editor i had updated it after this first implementation and fixed those problems awhile back but i guess i dont have that particular update on hand so they are noted and being taken care of!

*EDIT*-
https://www.dropbox.com/s/1y8dx6sfw0opu ... mplate.zip

after searching on a couple old drives i found the updated version, the map editor is ArcRPGME.ged the ArcRPGE.ged is a predefined RPG game template cool little project i put a ton of time into worth checking out if you want!

also another note this updated version allows you to nudge tiles and objects as many pixels as you want, problem 1 and 4 fixed, creation of maps in the form of arrays having, 10 zdepth layers to lay your objects and tiles on although zdepth isn't saved right now.