For story stuff: Should have a simple scripting language to move players to certain points on the screen and to show dialogue down the bottom of the screen with the character portrait. Will have to associate a portrait with each character.
I haven't been able to get any more work done on this this week as my computer has been out of action, but it's up and running again now. Some more ideas about how things might work in game:
Have a key that puts you in 'rock position' which allows you to do special moves, possibly using some sort of rhythm game mechanic. If both players do it close to each other and do well with the mini-game, the other band members come out as well, making their attacks even more powerful.
There will probably be some sort of 'rock power meter' that will build up as enemies are destroyed, and using the rock position will deplete the meter.
So I spent a few hours today working on the character system for the Kurodust Beat 'Em Up game I mentioned in my last post, and thought I'd post a few screenshots. I got Anna to take a few photos of me doing some moves so I had some sprites to work with, and starting hacking away. So far I'm pleased with the progress, hopefully I'll get some more work done on it this week. Not sure what I'm going to continue with, I'll either start working out how I'm going to do levels / maps, or keep working on the character movement.
So, I was thinking in bed last night about my Alien Shmup idea, when I came up with an even better idea that I'll probably try to work on first. Basically it would be a Double Dragon style beat-em-up, using the guys in my band as characters. I don't expect the subject matter to have wide appeal, but I love doing stuff that involves my mates, so it should be fun. Continue Reading »
Just some notes I took on a game idea I might try to implement in XNA (my Sheep Flocking thing has kinda stalled, mostly due to my computer needing a reinstall and me not getting around to reinstalling XNA yet).
Kinda like a vertical scrolling Crimson Land, shoot 'em up kinda thing.
Play as an alien that has crash landed, and are killing all the humans
that get in your way
Cartoonish style
Different humans, civilians run away when they see you (run into their
houses, have to shoot them before they get there), military units try to
attack you
Some sort of power up structure
Maybe try for an isometric view? Might not have the skillz
Weapons:
Some sort of rocket launcher, make it more alien like
Some sort of plasma weapon
Some sort of electrical weapon (arcs to enemies within range of impact)
Anal probe weapon? (might be stealing too much from Destroy All Humans)
Have some rudimentary physics perhaps? (objects being blown away from
the point of an explosion, perhaps just use Flee Steering Behaviour with
velocity being inversely proportional to distance)
Maybe need to create some sort of urgency, something draining as time
goes by that needs to be replenished by killing humans... blood? brains?
an enzyme found only in the liver of an earthling?
I've put up a page for the game I'm working on, which I'm using to build up my game development skills so I can put them to use on some of my more ambitious projects. This new game is basically a fun little simulation of a flock of sheep, which has to be protected from wolves by a farmer with a shotgun.
So far I've got a bunch of flocking behaviours implemented for the sheep (thanks to this great book) and I'm working on tweaking them so they behave the way I want them to. Soon I'll add in the wolves which will hunt them down, then the farmer to protect them. The final product will hopefully be just a fun little simulation that plays out randomly each time, I may even add in reproduction so that any sheep or wolves killed get replenished over time, provided the whole flock or pack is not killed off.
I'm writing it in XNA which has been quite good, takes some load off a lot of the graphics stuff, though obviously the AI is still pretty math-heavy, which has been taxing my poor simple brain a bit. Damn I love this IDE though, Intellisense is a wonderful thing.
I'll put up some screenshots at some stage.
Hrmm, Microsoft has announced that they're releasing a development kit to enable people to develop and share games for XBox Live Arcade, funky. Perhaps I'll stick to learning .NET for my Zombie game and see if I can use this kit when it comes out. Hopefully I'll be getting a 360 when the price drops around Xmas, so it'd be pretty cool to have it running on there as well, and possibly get to share it if I ever finish the damn thing.
OK, well I think I've finally got this site looking and behaving the way I want it to, it was a bit of fun to set up. I've put up a few of the bigger project pages that I'm working on, though I'm not entirely sure how I want to use those pages yet, so I'll probably refine them over time.
Now to actually use this thing, I guess... I'm still not sure what I'm going to do with it, I just knew I wanted a space to display stuff I was working on, and maybe put up opinions and thoughts on movies and games and stuff (as if there aren't enough of those on the interwebs).
I think what I'll probably end up doing is just using the blog as an archive of ideas for games, movies, artwork, etc., which I'll post as I come up with them and it'll mean I have a nice searchable database of ideas, with the added bonus of it being displayed to the world, in case anybody's interested.
I just realised though... I don't have my name on this thing anywhere. Might have to make a few more modifications to the design and put a header in there somewhere, though I kind of like the way it looks now without it. Maybe just on the front page.
If you see this before I get around to it... Hi! I'm Ben James, and this is 100101.org.
Just seeing what happens when I have more than one blog entry in here....
(You know, the word "blog" still bugs me, when I first starting "blogging" the word didn't exist, and all we had were "online journals". There's something about the word "blog" that just sounds... obscene. Still, it's part of the language now, and has a different meaning than online journal nowadays, so what choice do I have?)
First post! I'm not sure what I'm going to end up using this blog for, I just thought it would be good to have someplace to show off my hobbies to friends and family, and maybe a place to store ideas when I come up with them (rather than scattering text files around my hard drive). Plus maybe one of my ideas will get seen and used by someone, which would be cool (as long as you credit me!)
So I'm using Wordpress, which I found out about when setting it up for somebody at work, and found it kinda cool. Quite funky how I can make all the modifiications I like, and my PHP experience from the last 2 and a half months at a new job are coming in quite handy (though I'm used to PHP5).
So, the place is still under construction, and this first post is really just so I've got something to compare database entries against between posts and pages, but I thought I'd make it the real first post anyway.
