8 replies to this topic

[Exerro]

Hi,

I have an idea for a game, that I think is actually quite good, and if coded right, will be a very entertaining game.

The short version:
What I have in my head is a kind of technology based building/mining/researching game where you mine resources to research large technology trees to advance through the ages and get to the main goal of building a gigantic space empire.

The long version:

Spoiler

I am thinking of a game where you start off in the caveman era, ( maybe add a few traits to the character making him harder to control and act more ape like or something ) and have to mine resources and build machines and structures that help you research and advance through eras/ages. The ages and rough dates will probably be like this:
Prehistoric 1000BC
Stone age 500BC
Bronze age 0BC
Dark ages 200AD
Medieval 700AD
Renaissance 1200AD
Industrial 1500AD
Electrical 1900AD
Nuclear 2000AD
Digital 2100AD
Nano 2200AD
I know they kind of bunch up into the same date at the end, this is mainly because of how much technology has advanced recently.
Oh and you won't go through ages as a day by day thing, you will have to research technology and when you get to a certain point ( or maybe number of technologies researched ) you will advance to the next era, unlocking new resources and getting rid of old, useless ones.

The landscape will be open world, and have randomly generated dynamic terrain ( meaning you will be able to destroy/edit it and hopefully build anywhere on it, although it would be much easier to have a tile based building area at the spawn as this would also stop the player going to far from the start and prevent the world from getting too big )

I am thinking it will have to be a side scroller ( even though aerial view would be easier ) because you don't find resources like uranium sitting around on the surface, and it wouldn't really be possible to do any mining if it was aerial view. On the topic of resources...
Wood ( prehistoric - industrial ) - building
Stone ( stone - medieval ) - building
Bronze ( bronze - electrical ) - crafting
Iron ( bronze - nuclear ) - crafting
Coal ( dark ages - electrical ) - upgrading/power gen
Gunpowder ( medieval - nuclear ) ( unless until industrial ) - weaponry
Gold ( renaissance - nano ) - crafting
Aluminium ( industrial - digital ) - crafting/building
Oil ( industrial - nuclear ) - power gen
Uranium ( electrical - nano ) - power gen/weaponry
Dark matter ( nuclear - nano ) - power gen/weaponry
Neptunium ( nuclear - nano ) power gen
From here on I will need some creative ideas of elements/materials that will be found in the future I will need some more building/crafting materials

So why would you need to build? Firstly: to craft. Just like in Minecraft where you build a crafting table to craft, you will make far more complex crafting structures like ore extractors, robotic arms and more. Secondly: mobs - the main cause of lag and main part of what make a game fun....
I am not entirely sure whether I will include mobs, at least not in the first release. I will certainly try to make the game be able to support them so if I change my mind it isn't too hard to add them in, but the collision will be expensive and pathfinding is always an issue for me ( not sure why, I just find it really hard to get it right and not lag the ... out of the game )

On a game mechanic side of things:

Spoiler

The land will be a single entity that's very very big and use 'per pixel collision' so the player will be able to walk through invisible pixels etc
I have considered using blocks, but they just look ugly in my opinion and wouldn't really add anything to the game.
Resoures will all be their own entity, per-pixel collision again, and will all be generated at the start of the game. Resources that aren't available in the current era will not be rendered and return false on collision checks
Buildings will be the same as resources, but have slightly more data, and have a function that is called every game loop ( kind of like blocks and tile entities in minecraft I guess )
Day night cycle - easy stuff - probably render a white sky image with different colours for day and night ( black - light blue )
I might also look into the love2d physics module so the player could have seperate body parts that all move individually - that will probably be quite complicated so probably just a 6-10 frame animation for the player moving.
As for going to space...I think the first full release will just have the ability to create a rocket which will get you an achievement and save&exit from the game. Working on the space and rocket flying part of things will come afterwards as that will be like a whole different game. I think the way the game will save will be like solar_system = { planets = { ["spawn"] = { resources{ ["coal"] = { id = 1, x = 1, y = 1, w = 1, h = 1 etc } } terrain = { image } } } }

I think it would be possible to make something that looks really great even in side view!

So what do you think? If you don't like the short version, I would recommend reading the long version to get a better idea of what will happen.
If anybody would like to help, PM me or post in the comments please . Otherwise, please post any ideas in the comments below and I will hopefully include them.
If you don't know what you can do to help, just say you're in...at the moment I could do with ideas, artwork, coding, sounds, websites......anything really. I haven't actually started coding yet, as I want to know how much help I am going to get and how much I will have to do myself.
Also, if anybody has any experience in 3d rendering/3d games, and could possibly set up the game to be 3d, that would be amazing and greatly appreciated. The only reason I am not making a 3d game is because I have never been able to make a 3d rendering program It's kinda embarrasing really.

[Mads]

For a game this big, don't use LÖVE. Use a compiled language instead.

Also, don't go here asking for help when you haven't done anything yourself.
If you expect to get help, you almost always have to be able to offer something, and you certainly have to prove that you can do something yourself. The less you can do, the more you should offer.

And don't expect this to be done within a few weeks or months. What you're proposing will most likely take years to make, even if you get someone to help you. And to return to what I said before, if there is no revenue within a short period of time, your "helpers" will eventually lose interest, and you will probably too.

[Exerro]

The only reason I suggested to use love is because it is quite well known and uses lua, which is probably the most well known language on these forums. Also, the main reason I haven't started on it yet is because I want to know how much help I will get, which will also determine how big the game is. I'm not saying I won't help with the coding, I will probably do most of it, but if I get a lot of help, the game can afford to be a bit larger. I am aiming on it taking at most a couple of months, if I don't get any help then it will lose some of the more advanced features and if I get a lot of help then it will almost definetely gain some ( things like mobs and multiple planets )

Do you have any suggestions of a language/game engine that is fairly easy to learn and would be good for this task?

[Tjakka5]

I would love to help, I have some experience with Love2d myself, and have already made some (unpublished) games with that.

[Exerro]

Tjakka5, on 21 August 2013 - 08:48 AM, said:

I would love to help, I have some experience with Love2d myself, and have already made some (unpublished) games with that.

Awesome! Do you have skype? If you do, PM me your name and I will add you or vice versa if you prefer.

[Mads]

I'd suggest C++ and OpenGL 3.2. This version of OpenGL is widely supported(even on Macs ). C++ is also fairly easy.

[Exerro]

Mads, on 21 August 2013 - 09:44 AM, said:

I'd suggest C++ and OpenGL 3.2. This version of OpenGL is widely supported(even on Macs ). C++ is also fairly easy.

Ok thanks for the advice! Is OpenGL java? I can remember using that when I started to learn java ( and then gave up because Lua is so much better ( for what I was doing then at least ) )

[Mads]

awsumben13, on 21 August 2013 - 09:51 AM, said:

Mads, on 21 August 2013 - 09:44 AM, said:

I'd suggest C++ and OpenGL 3.2. This version of OpenGL is widely supported(even on Macs ). C++ is also fairly easy.

Ok thanks for the advice! Is OpenGL java? I can remember using that when I started to learn java ( and then gave up because Lua is so much better ( for what I was doing then at least ) )

LWJGL is a library for Java, which provides an OpenGL interface. I recommend going with C++ though, as you can compile native applications. GLEW and GLFW are handy libraries for setting up your context.

You'll need to actually know C++ of course, and that very well.

[1lann]

For a game like this, people are paid like thousands of dollars to make this and it can take a year or more, with professional adult programmers. So don't get your hopes so high... Maybe you should start something simpler, similar (and possibly even simpler) to rymdkapsel or something.