Let's make... the first ever Dream17 videogame

Sit yourselves down in here and have a chinwag about whatever takes your fancy.

Moderator: Dream17 Staff

What kind of game should we try and make?

Adventure
2
14%
RPG
2
14%
Platformer
2
14%
Strategy
2
14%
Shoot-em-up
1
7%
Racing
2
14%
Fighting
2
14%
Puzzle
0
No votes
Mutli-Genre
1
7%
Other (write in comments)
0
No votes
 
Total votes: 14

User avatar
Worm Mad
Staff Writer
Posts: 221
Joined: Mon Feb 28, 2005 9:52 pm
Location: England
Contact:

Let's make... the first ever Dream17 videogame

Post by Worm Mad » Sun Aug 04, 2013 3:06 pm

So, anyone up for working together to make a short computer game? I don't mean a fangame but something original.

I'm up for writing/design duties, if anyone else is interested. Also, if you have a preference for the type of game, there's a poll for that (my personal preference is an adventure game).
Worm Mad - is he a mad worm or a person mad about worms? I'll give you a clue - it's not the first one.

User avatar
SupSuper
leek hackspinn0r
Posts: 377
Joined: Mon Feb 28, 2005 5:04 am
Location: Portugal
Contact:

Re: Let's make... the first ever Dream17 videogame

Post by SupSuper » Sun Aug 04, 2013 3:22 pm

Here we go again. :P

(programming)
Team17 Forum Refugee | OpenXcom Developer

Plasma
Newbie
Posts: 35
Joined: Wed Jun 12, 2013 2:21 pm

Re: Let's make... the first ever Dream17 videogame

Post by Plasma » Sun Aug 04, 2013 3:58 pm

Consider me intrigued. I'd offer to help, but unless it's a Strategy or FPS (neither of which are very likely), I don't think I could add much. Other than small ideas and such, obviously.

It's pretty much going to depend entirely on the artist(s) though.

User avatar
Star and Moon
Regular
Posts: 242
Joined: Tue Jun 11, 2013 6:00 pm
Location: Outside of Time and Space

Re: Let's make... the first ever Dream17 videogame

Post by Star and Moon » Sun Aug 04, 2013 8:21 pm

I voted Multi-Genre, because having multiple genres = more original.

User avatar
Zeor
Senior
Posts: 737
Joined: Thu May 26, 2005 3:21 am
Location: Science and Outer Space

Re: Let's make... the first ever Dream17 videogame

Post by Zeor » Tue Aug 06, 2013 12:20 am

I always thought that regular old vs. fighting games are a great way to develop flavorful characters in an engaging way.
Zero72, Team17 Forum member (and former Cartoonist), June 2002 - June 2013.

Zeor TV - [fart noise]!

User avatar
Worm Mad
Staff Writer
Posts: 221
Joined: Mon Feb 28, 2005 9:52 pm
Location: England
Contact:

Re: Let's make... the first ever Dream17 videogame

Post by Worm Mad » Tue Aug 06, 2013 1:03 am

The Artist Formerly Known as Zero wrote:I always thought that regular old vs. fighting games are a great way to develop flavorful characters in an engaging way.
Hoho, I remember the last time we tried to make a community fighting game.
*screen goes blurry*
*Flashback [soundtrack - nightmarish disjointed music] - Worm Mad is being buried alive by drawings of sigworms that are falling from on high, Ben "S2k" Paddon pulls him out of the pit. Worm Mad walks off as Ben waves him goodbye. Ben picks up a design document and is consumed by a horde of tiny fighting worms leaving behind only a skeleton. SupSuper walks in and picks up the design document. He looks at the walls, they start to run red with blood. Close in zoom of Sup's eyes. As we pan back out, we find him dressed in a straight jacket - rocking back and forth - and laughing manically.*
*cut back to present day*
*starts to sweat*
*screams*
FORUM FIGHTERS! FORUM FIGHTERS EVERYWHEEEEEREEEEE!
*jumps out of the window and runs away*
Worm Mad - is he a mad worm or a person mad about worms? I'll give you a clue - it's not the first one.

Mr Phillby
Newbie
Posts: 27
Joined: Sun Jun 09, 2013 2:08 pm

Re: Let's make... the first ever Dream17 videogame

Post by Mr Phillby » Tue Aug 06, 2013 6:11 am

How about an action-platformer with a metroid style upgrade system? There'll be a basic story about saving your girlfriend/family/pet frog from aliens/communists/whatever.

The twist is you have the option to return to previous points in the narrative at any time and your character retains his memory of future events, opening up additional dialogue choices and branching paths!

For example, let's say you encounter a guy called bob early in the game. He's friendly and helpful and let's you restore your health at his house. Later on you're ambushed by the baddies and captured. You are robbed of your equipment and forced through a stealth section to escape. During the stealth section you overhear that Bob phoned the baddies and ratted you out for cash. Now if you return to the scene in Bob's house you have the option to cut his phone line, preventing your future capture. Now you get to play through the stealth section with all your equipment and in a decidedly non-stealthy manner.

Now apply that sort of thing to the entire game and I'm sure it won't be a complete nightmare to design and program!

Xinos
Regular
Posts: 136
Joined: Mon Jun 10, 2013 3:50 am

Re: Let's make... the first ever Dream17 videogame

Post by Xinos » Tue Aug 06, 2013 1:21 pm

I really think we/you should focus on entirely on gameplay and getting a prototype working before even thinking about story and dialog. Some basic notion, sure, but leave character design and plot out of it until we actually need it. So if the game is 3D, just make white corridors and use spheres and boxes as characters in the beginning.

I've found that whenever we've done game projects at school, people who want to work on story never contribute to anything useful and their ideas are too complicated to implement and don't fit with the gameplay. They just drag the team down haha.

That said, I'm mostly interested in making some kind of arena/deathmatch game. Anything multiplayer really as that would be more fun to play-test and would allow us to avoid too much AI. We once did a 8 week project making a Twisted Metal-like game, that was allot of fun! (http://portfolio.onechock.com/twisted.shtml)

Plasma
Newbie
Posts: 35
Joined: Wed Jun 12, 2013 2:21 pm

Re: Let's make... the first ever Dream17 videogame

Post by Plasma » Tue Aug 06, 2013 1:39 pm

Mr Phillby wrote:Now apply that sort of thing to the entire game and I'm sure it won't be a complete nightmare to design and program!
Programming it would be simple. Level design would be... Deus Ex-esque, I suppose. Difficult, but doable. It's making a feasible story that's the hard part. It'd mean coming up with something that involves time travel but without plotholes, it'd need non-convoluted reasons why you'd go back to a certain point in time while also avoiding the whole "rewinding to whenever's safe" problem, and it'd need to justify why after rewinding they just don't do something radically different (like in your example, why not just buy like a gazillion guns or run away).

Incidentally, I can't help but notice you said "cut his phone line" as if it'd matter. You're stuck in the 1990s! :P

User avatar
Worm Mad
Staff Writer
Posts: 221
Joined: Mon Feb 28, 2005 9:52 pm
Location: England
Contact:

Re: Let's make... the first ever Dream17 videogame

Post by Worm Mad » Tue Aug 06, 2013 5:21 pm

Mr Phillby wrote:How about an action-platformer with a metroid style upgrade system?
I'm going to be honest, I played Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams recently and I kind of hate platformers now. Although I guess Metroid's different, in that you can at least shoot stuff. :P
Mr Phillby wrote:The twist is you have the option to return to previous points in the narrative at any time and your character retains his memory of future events, opening up additional dialogue choices and branching paths!
Well, time travel is my one true love! (the game Sup and I were working on, a while back, would have had some time travel in its last section)
Mr Phillby wrote:Now apply that sort of thing to the entire game and I'm sure it won't be a complete nightmare to design and program!
lol. My main problem is that it seems a bit big in scale. Having tried to make a large-scale game before (RIP The Legacy, *sniff*), I'd prefer to work on something smaller and actually get the thing completed.
Xinos wrote:I really think we/you should focus on entirely on gameplay and getting a prototype working before even thinking about story and dialog.
I see what you're saying but I think it depends on the type of game. For something like Worms, then yeah, the gameplay should come first. But with something like an adventure game, the gameplay and story are intrinsically linked (puzzles emerge from your character's needs, the needs of the characters around you, and the various tools at your disposal - as a result of the world you're inhabiting).
Xinos wrote:I've found that whenever we've done game projects at school, people who want to work on story never contribute to anything useful and their ideas are too complicated to implement and don't fit with the gameplay. They just drag the team down haha.
To be fair, I did use to make games in KnP/TGF when I was younger, so I'm not completely unfamiliar with the practical side of making games. Okay, so it wasn't actual programming and the games weren't massively complex but I did surprise some of my friends with some of the things I managed to do (a friend who considered himself a leet programmer but could only make Breakout clones was surprised that I managed to create a fairly large Pokemon-esque RPG, for example).

I think the people you're talking about are bringing the team down because they just want to come up with some vague story/game idea and expect everyone else to do the work - "We should make a game about the land of Miraboo. I've written the complete history of its people here and the game should encapsulate what it would be like to live through 1000 years of history (your character's immortal)". A game's designer shouldn't just be writing story/dialogue, but planning how the gameplay/puzzles work, and making sure everyone in the team is happy with the direction of the project.

It's a tricky job and one that I've struggled with, when making games in the past. With 'The Legacy', the goal was to make a classic old school adventure across multiple time periods. This wasn't a problem from a writing/design perpective (I wrote over 45 pages of puzzles/dialogue/story/etc) or a programming perspective (Sup programmed most of what I'd written). It wasn't even a problem from a music perspective (numerous people offered to help out). It was a problem however from an art perspective as - 1) most artists wouldn't commit to a project of this scale for no pay, 2) most artists only liked one or two of the eras in the game - often the space section which Sup and I hadn't got up to. What we should have done was got artists involved earlier on with the project, which would have allowed us to find out exactly what they were happy to do and plan the game accordingly. As it was, we were forced to give up, despite all our hard work.

I do think it's unfair to say that writers/designers aren't useful when making games. If you're making a game with characters/story, a good writer is as necessary as a good artist/musician/programmer in crafting a professional product. Even if the game is story-light, designers are crucial in making sure the game isn't an unstructured mess. It is vital however that everyone is on the same page, though, and understands what each other are capable of. Otherwise, you'll end up with a game that never gets finished or is lacking in key areas.
Worm Mad - is he a mad worm or a person mad about worms? I'll give you a clue - it's not the first one.

Plasma
Newbie
Posts: 35
Joined: Wed Jun 12, 2013 2:21 pm

Re: Let's make... the first ever Dream17 videogame

Post by Plasma » Tue Aug 06, 2013 6:39 pm

Incidentally, my own opinions on the genres:

Adventure - Very big, particularly in the art department. You can't make a small adventure game, it's just never enough.
RPG - Haha no.
Platformer - Could work quite well... if someone can think of a concept for it. But generic platformers have been done to death at this point.
Strategy - I'd absolutely love to, since I'm researching strategy AIs right now (trying to make one that can work with the player). Personally, I think this has the most potential to work, but I'm not sure people would find it that... fun to make.
FPS - Easiest to do. Generic as hell. Has upsides and downsides.
Racing - ....well okay, this is the easiest to do, but it'd be so boring it's not even worth doing.
Fighting - Ridiculously art-heavy, and nobody's volunteered for art. I'd love a Dragonball-style game, but oh well.
Puzzle - have fun trying to come up with puzzles. That's not easiest.

User avatar
SupSuper
leek hackspinn0r
Posts: 377
Joined: Mon Feb 28, 2005 5:04 am
Location: Portugal
Contact:

Re: Let's make... the first ever Dream17 videogame

Post by SupSuper » Tue Aug 06, 2013 7:26 pm

Obviously it should be a racing game, duh. :roll:
Team17 Forum Refugee | OpenXcom Developer

Xinos
Regular
Posts: 136
Joined: Mon Jun 10, 2013 3:50 am

Re: Let's make... the first ever Dream17 videogame

Post by Xinos » Tue Aug 06, 2013 10:26 pm

A strategy game would be fun. I would love to do something that rhymes with Advance Wars in terms of gameplay. It could also be interesting to a sidescroller strategy game, using destructible block terrain like in Spelunky but you run around gathering resources for your robot dispensers. (speaking of which, I require that our Dream17 Vending Machine is somehow featured in the game)

User avatar
Worm Mad
Staff Writer
Posts: 221
Joined: Mon Feb 28, 2005 9:52 pm
Location: England
Contact:

Re: Let's make... the first ever Dream17 videogame

Post by Worm Mad » Tue Aug 06, 2013 11:35 pm

Plasma wrote:You can't make a small adventure game, it's just never enough.
I'm not sure about that. I've played plenty of small free indie adventure games that were fun. They may not be a main meal but they're good if you want a short gaming snack.
SupSuper wrote:Obviously it should be a racing game, duh.
SUPER RPG RACER! GOOOOO! :o
Xinos wrote:I require that our Dream17 Vending Machine is somehow featured in the game
I concur. In fact, I'd even go so far as to suggest "Dream17: The Vending Machine: The Videogame" if that made any sense at all. :D
Worm Mad - is he a mad worm or a person mad about worms? I'll give you a clue - it's not the first one.

User avatar
worMatty
Chatroom Patriot
Posts: 187
Joined: Thu Oct 20, 2005 11:15 pm
Location: Chester, UK
Contact:

Re: Let's make... the first ever Dream17 videogame

Post by worMatty » Fri Aug 09, 2013 10:28 pm

I would discourage 'over-thinking' if that's a thing. Too much planning is dangerous.

User avatar
Pooka
Staff Writer
Posts: 363
Joined: Mon Feb 28, 2005 8:57 pm
Location: London
Contact:

Re: Let's make... the first ever Dream17 videogame

Post by Pooka » Sat Aug 10, 2013 5:21 pm

Worm Mad wrote:I do think it's unfair to say that writers/designers aren't useful when making games. If you're making a game with characters/story, a good writer is as necessary as a good artist/musician/programmer in crafting a professional product.
Agreed.

I may be on hand for music, sound and scripting duties if you need me to be.
Superfrog: the best things in life are green.

Xinos
Regular
Posts: 136
Joined: Mon Jun 10, 2013 3:50 am

Re: Let's make... the first ever Dream17 videogame

Post by Xinos » Sun Aug 11, 2013 7:03 pm

Worm Mad wrote:I do think it's unfair to say that writers/designers aren't useful when making games. If you're making a game with characters/story, a good writer is as necessary as a good artist/musician/programmer in crafting a professional product. Even if the game is story-light, designers are crucial in making sure the game isn't an unstructured mess. It is vital however that everyone is on the same page, though, and understands what each other are capable of. Otherwise, you'll end up with a game that never gets finished or is lacking in key areas.
You are defending the roles of writers in productions much bigger than the one I was talking about, so yes I too agree with you. (And I certainly did not say anything bad about designers, I think they are the quite essential when you are designing a game)

My point was just that if we are going to make a small gameplay centric game, something like Spelunky, Worms, Bomber Man etc. then assigning writers may not be very impactfull to whether or not the game is any fun. My school project example was just that, a two month project where the goal was to create a prototype of a game, or a "vertical slice". We spent many meetings and much time discussing the story for the game, and almost nothing of that was actually a part of the game. Luckily we had already decided on gameplay mechanics early, that it was a 2.5D platformer where you can flip gravity and rotate the level, so we could go ahead and build the levels and create artwork for it while our two story guys just wrote a backstory. Now if we were creating an adventure game like To the Moon or a character driven rpg, then yes writing would be very important and essential for the design. But it wasn't in our case. This is the game btw.

In any case, there's nothing wrong with making a story based game, but I think it will take allot more time and effort than a project focused entirely on gameplay. And if we can make a small game by the end of the year that will show us how well we can actually work together and what our capabilities are.

I got a really annoying headache, so I am sorry if I sound angry or whatever.

Xinos
Regular
Posts: 136
Joined: Mon Jun 10, 2013 3:50 am

Re: Let's make... the first ever Dream17 videogame

Post by Xinos » Fri Aug 23, 2013 4:58 pm

I killed it, didn't I? Murdered everybody's creative joy. I'm sorry :(
I know where the exit is...

User avatar
Worm Mad
Staff Writer
Posts: 221
Joined: Mon Feb 28, 2005 9:52 pm
Location: England
Contact:

Re: Let's make... the first ever Dream17 videogame

Post by Worm Mad » Fri Aug 23, 2013 5:52 pm

lol, nah. Actually, I came up with a game idea a little while ago. Me and SupSuper are still bouncing it around to see if it works. I don't want to get into specifics (in case we decide it sucks) but I can tell you it's a game with racing in it... only not a racing game.

But yeah, regarding the whole writer thing, it depends on the game. If you're making a story-focused game (adventure games, etc) then the writing is something you should be thinking about early on. If it's anything else, you should work out the core gameplay first. I still think good writing can benefit most games though (an FPS with funny dialogue will be more memorable than one with boring stock phrases). But yeah, having whole meetings about the story for a platformer is insane (and I'm saying that as a writer).
Worm Mad - is he a mad worm or a person mad about worms? I'll give you a clue - it's not the first one.

User avatar
Cisken1
Settled in
Posts: 75
Joined: Mon Nov 09, 2015 5:13 pm
Location: No idea, it's dark in here.

Re: Let's make... the first ever Dream17 videogame

Post by Cisken1 » Mon Dec 21, 2015 2:45 pm

BUMP

*runs away*

Post Reply